Sharyn McCrumb - St. Dale

“The Darlington Motor Speedway is called the Lady in Black. Everybody knows that.” Harley began his spiel by stating the obvious, but then he noticed Bill Knight’s smile of disbelief. “Okay, maybe not everybody knows it, but certainly anybody who follows motor sports. Would one of you like to tell the reverend how Darlington got its nickname?”

“It was the first track to be paved,” said Jim Powell.

“The Lady in Black,” said Arlene with her vacant smile. She rested her head on Jim’s shoulder, and he smiled back and patted her hand.

“Are you going to spout all those numbers at us now?” asked Justine wearily.

“Nope,” said Harley. “You’re going to be sitting through a race there, so I guess you can work it out for yourselves. The information will be in the program, I expect. But I have driven here, so I might have some useful points to make.”

“Fire away, Harley,” said Matthew, who was sporting a new Earnhardt windbreaker bought for him at the Daytona gift shop by Bekasu.

“They also call Darlington ‘the track too tough to tame,’ which means that a lot of drivers can’t handle it. Earnhardt himself said something to the effect that every so often the Lady in Black slaps you down if you get too fresh with her. Anybody know the top three drivers having the most wins of the Southern 500? Wanna guess, Cayle?”

“Is that a hint?” She smiled. “One of them must be my namesake.”

“That’s right. Cale Yarborough has five wins. David Pearson has the most, and then Earnhardt. By the way, the last Winston Cup race Pearson ever won was on this track-the 1980 Rebel 500. Darlington can be tricky, because it’s lopsided on account of the ponds.”

“Ponds? It has ponds?” said Bekasu.

“Well, no. Not like Lake Lloyd at Daytona. People don’t wear life jackets to race here.”

“Do they at Daytona?” asked Bill.

Harley smiled. “Well, Tom Pistone used to. He worried about going in the water. What I mean about ponds here is that when Harold Brasington was trying to build this track back in 1950, the farmer who owned the adjoining land wouldn’t sell him the portion that his pond was on, so Mr. Brasington had to work around that obstacle to build his speedway, and he ended up with a track shaped like an egg. Wider on one side than the other. Because of that, it has tighter, steeper turns on one end. Keeps you on your toes. If you’re not mindful of which turn you’re going into, you end up going into the wall. Ever heard of the Darlington Stripe?”

“Paint mark along the side of your car that you get from scraping against the wall as you race,” said Jim Powell. “Badge of honor.”

“Are we going to the Stock Car Hall of Fame?” asked Justine. “It’s right there in front of the Speedway.”

“No,” said Harley. “Not with the crowds we’d have to fight to get in there on race day.”

“Speaking of the race,” said Jesse Franklin, “are we going to bet on the winner again? Dibs on Mark Martin, and five bucks says he wins. Unless one of the rest of you folks want him.”

Cayle waved away Mark Martin. “Bill Elliott,” she said. “I promised Sarah Nash I’d cheer him on.”

“Well, I’ll take Dale Junior,” said Justine. “He’s better on the super speedways, and he’s never even made the top ten here, but it just wouldn’t feel right to root for anybody except an Earnhardt. Here’s my five bucks.”

“What about you, Harley?” asked Jim Powell, who had taken off his hat to collect the wager money. “I was thinking of taking Rusty Wallace, just because I want him to break that losing streak, but if you were going to pick him, I’ll plump for Dale Jarrett. This track calls for old-style racing, and he’s good at that.”

“Jeff Gordon,” said Harley. “I’ll stick with Jeff Gordon-masochist’s choice.”

“Didn’t he just win on Sunday at Bristol?” said Bekasu.

“Yeah,” said Harley. “Well, with my luck he’ll win every race I ever attend for the rest of my life just to depress me.”

“Harley’s being a gentleman,” Cayle told them. “He’s picking the least likely driver to win. Gordon’s been on a thirty-one-race losing streak before Bristol. Take Matt Kenseth, Bekasu. You have sweaters older than he is, but he’s got real promise. And he’s from Wisconsin, just like Alan Kulwicki.”

“Whatever,” said Bekasu, going back to her book.

In the back of the bus, Ray Reeve cleared his throat. “I’d like to get into the pool,” he said.

The others turned and stared at him.

“Well, sure, Ray,” said Jesse Franklin. “Anybody you like, but I thought you stopped caring who won after Dale passed away.”

“I know, and I’ve been agonizing about it. I thought about what Earnhardt did after Neil Bonnett died. He went back to the track and practiced an hour after Neil crashed. So I thought he’d think I was soft if I didn’t move on. Well, last night in the hotel room, I took that Gideon Bible out of the nightstand, and I Bible-cracked.”

“But you’re from Nebraska,” said Justine. “I thought Bible-cracking was a Southern thing.”

“I expect they do some form of it everywhere,” said Bill Knight.

“So you opened the Bible and pointed at random to a verse, and now you want to get into the betting pool?” said Bekasu in cross-examining mode.

Ray Reeve reddened. “Well, the thing is I got Matthew seventeen, verse five. Knew exactly what it meant. Justine already picked him, but I’d like to go half with her.”

“Glad to have you!” said Justine. “I hope we split the pot!”

Jim Powell smiled. “Okay, then. Ray is backing Little E. in the Southern 500.”

“You know, Ray, Dale Junior isn’t all that good on short tracks,” said Harley. “He’s a restrictor-plate racer.”

“Don’t care if he wins or not,” said Junior’s new supporter. “I just decided to root for him. I can cheer him on. He’s Dale’s boy.”

The Darlington traffic was just as bad as it had been in Bristol-both races took place in small towns overwhelmed by an extra fifty thousand people for the weekend. Harley thought it was just his luck that the tour finale occurred at a track that wasn’t out in the middle of nowhere. Because it had been built in the early days before NASCAR became a major attraction, the Darlington Motor Speedway wasn’t a rural Pompeii, set amidst acres of empty fields that turned into parking lots a few days a year. This track filled a Wal-Mart-sized hole on a commercial road, with rows of small stores and houses all up and down the road around it. It wasn’t even a four-lane thoroughfare. No wonder people keep spreading rumors that NASCAR was going to move the Labor Day race to California, Harley thought. Now that racing was a billion-dollar enterprise, this track, with no fancy skyboxes or modern amenities, must look pretty poky to the corporate moguls, but he for one hoped the relocation wouldn’t happen. Darlington was a tradition that went all the way back to the days when Petty and Earnhardt meant Lee and Ralph, not Richard and Dale. He’d hate to lose that just for glitz.

His greatest concern at the moment was not the traffic but the weather. A misting rain fell out of a sky the color of pewter. That could spoil everything. You could play football in the rain, but motor sports was different. Driving out there was dangerous enough without factoring in a slick track from a mix of oil and rainwater. If it started raining, they’d stop the race. Sometimes drivers sat for hours waiting for the go-ahead to resume. Harley filled a few more miles with chatter by explaining that if more than half the designated laps of a race were completed during the afternoon, the winner would be whoever was ahead when the weather finally forced them to cancel it.