Sharyn McCrumb - St. Dale

“Okay, the race is at one o’clock,” he said into the microphone. “So we don’t have time to go somewhere for lunch. Actually, Columbia would be favorite, because anyplace closer than that is going to be wall-to-wall people. We’re going straight to the track, and those of you who are young enough or brave enough can try the Darlington culinary specialty: hamburger steak smothered with onions. Take each other’s pictures in front of the palm tree there at the entrance.”

“It’s raining,” Cayle pointed out.

“I know,” said Harley. “I hope it quits, because if it doesn’t, there won’t be a race.”

By a stroke of luck, which despite Justine’s insistence, Harley refused to chalk up as a miracle to St. Dale, the rain stopped, the track was dried off, and the 53rd Mountain Dew Southern 500 roared to life.

“There are still so many terms I don’t understand,” said Bekasu plaintively. “What is a Biffle?”

Justine groaned. “In your case, Bekasu, it is a cross between baffled and bewildered.”

The green flag went down, and Bill Elliott’s number 9 Dodge took the early lead. When he still had it forty-three laps later, Harley was thinking that Sarah Nash would be sorry she missed this one, but after that Sterling Marlin led the pack, and Harley began to feel like a kid at a window watching a party he hadn’t been invited to. He had fully intended to worm his way onto pit road again before this race, still trying to make connections, but then he’d made the mistake of talking about Neil Bonnett at Daytona, and the memories wouldn’t leave him alone. Now common sense, a rare but unwelcome visitor, had dropped by to urge him to reconsider.

Darlington was the track that gave you fair warning to call it quits, but nobody ever listened. In 1997, Earnhardt had passed out here in the first lap of the race, and he had ended up in the hospital with a million people scared to death over his condition, but within days he was back in the driver’s seat as if nothing had ever happened. A few years earlier the Black Lady was also the scene of Neil Bonnett’s first serious crash-the one that left him with amnesia for many months. He had gone headfirst into the wall-a warning from Fate perhaps, but if so it had gone unheeded. Like Neil, Harley was forty-something and out of the sport after a wreck that any sane person would take as a divine message to call it quits. But also like Neil, he couldn’t walk away. What else was there in life that compared to this? He didn’t want to be a car dealer or a sportscaster while the show roared on without him. His thoughts seemed to go around in laps, too, always ending up back where they began: got to get back out there.

Nobody tried to talk to him during the race, or if they did he was oblivious to the interruption. He stared at the track with the glazed look of someone who was filtering this race through a dozen past ones. Halfway through the afternoon, a tap on his arm broke his reverie. It was Jim Powell, whose anguished expression said that he wasn’t thinking about the race.

“I think Arlene is sick.”

Harley hated hospitals. He’d been in too many emergency rooms after one wreck or another, and even worse was having to go there as a visitor, when some other driver had pushed his luck too far. He sat alone in the hallway now, staring at a pamphlet on heart disease, reading the same line over and over without absorbing a word of it, and cursing the sadists who had outlawed smoking in here.

It was a good thing that the race was still going on, so that traffic had not become a nightmare, because the ambulance had to go from Darlington to Florence.

“Aren’t you going to Wilson on Cashua Ferry Road?” Harley had asked the ambulance guy. He’d remembered the place from his racing days.

“No ER, buddy. Have to take her to McLeod in Florence. You gonna come in your car?”

Harley nodded. Most of the Number Three Pilgrims had insisted on leaving the race to accompany the Powells. Reverend Knight was going to ride in the ambulance with Jim and Arlene, while Harley, whose car was parked at Darlington in preparation for the end of the tour, had agreed to bring Matthew, Jesse Franklin, Justine, Cayle, and Bekasu. It was all the car would hold, but the one remaining passenger, Ray Reeve, hadn’t really wanted to go anyhow. He hated hospitals as much as Harley did, and besides, he didn’t want to leave in case Little E. won the race. He took Cayle’s cell phone so that they could call him from the hospital and tell him how Arlene was doing and how to find them. Meanwhile, he would stay by himself and finish watching the race. When it was over, he’d go back to the bus, find Ratty, and direct him to the hospital.

The ambulance attendant had looked doubtful at Harley’s proposal to follow them. “Well,” he said, “you can try, but we’ll be burning rubber-lights, siren and all. Doubt you could keep up.”

Harley Claymore smiled and smiled.

“Oh, good. You’re still here.” Bill Knight had come around the corner, looking tired but composed. He was in professional mode now, Harley supposed.

“Of course I’m still here,” said Harley. “How is she?”

“Well, she’s in and out of consciousness. We don’t really know anything yet. Except that it was a heart attack, of course.”

“Knew that before we got here.”

“Yes. At her age, it can go either way. At least we got her to a hospital in good time.”

“Where’s everybody else?”

“Well, Jim wanted Bekasu and me to stay with him, and with Arlene when we’re allowed to see her. We’ve sent Matthew off with Justine.”

Harley nodded. “That’s good. Get the children out of the way.”

“Er-something like that. Cayle has gone to call the Powells’ daughter in Seattle, and then she’s calling the airline about their flight tomorrow, and so on. And Jesse Franklin is wrangling over Medicare forms or some such red tape with a hospital administrator.”

“Jesse? I thought he wouldn’t say boo to a goose.”

“Well, when it counts, he can assert with the best of them. He said he asked himself ‘What would Dale do?’ and there’s been no stopping him since then. You should have heard him giving orders to the doctors. There is one more thing that needs to be done, though. Harley, the thing is…Arlene is asking for Dale.”

“She what?”

Bill Knight sighed. “I think she’s forgotten that he’s dead. She’s a bit agitated. I don’t know. Anyhow, she keeps saying she wants to see Dale Earnhardt. And we thought-that is, Jim suggested that if we were to bring in that fellow who impersonates Earnhardt, she wouldn’t know any different, and it might calm her.”

“Okay.”

“Oh, good. We’d really appreciate it.”

“What do you-you mean you want me to go find him? Go back to Darlington now?”

“Jim said that maybe the race isn’t over yet, and the Impersonator might be around. He usually shows up near the end of the race, doesn’t he?”

Harley stared. “So you want me to drive back to the Speedway-do you have any idea what post-race traffic is like?”

“Well, yes,” said Bill. “Bristol was only last Saturday. Seems longer, doesn’t it?”

“And you expect me to find that-that imposter, and bring him back here? You think I can do that? What if he didn’t show up at this race?”

Bill Knight smiled. “Oh, I think he will. By now I’m beginning to believe that Dale will help us out with a miracle.”

He hauled himself to his feet. “Don’t you start.”

“And Harley, get this done quickly, if you can. Drive quickly.”

Harley sighed as he got to his feet. “Oh, I can drive quickly,” he said. “I can do that.”

Justine held Matthew’s hand as they walked down the corridor of the hospital. “I thought about taking you to the cafeteria,” she said. “I’ll bet the food is pretty good. I had a boyfriend one time who was so cheap he used to take me to dinner there.”