Sharyn McCrumb - Once Around the Track

“No,” said Sark. She drew a line through Dumped by Gold Digger and wrote beside it Ideological Differences. “Okay,” she said. “Let’s get to the silly stuff. What’s your favorite song?”

“‘Georgia on My Mind’,” said Badger without a second’s hesitation.

“Oh. The Ray Charles version?”

“Who?”

A glimmer of suspicion flickered in Sark’s brain. “‘Georgia on My Mind’.” How do the words go again?”

Badger sighed. “I’m from Georgia, okay? That’s supposed to be my favorite song.”

“Whereas your actual favorite song is?”

He shrugged. “Can I say the National Anthem, then? When they sing it before the race, I swear I tear up every time.”

“Okay, forget music. Favorite food?”

Badger looked uneasy. “What am I supposed to say?”

Sark shuddered, considering the possibilities. God knows, she thought. You’re from the rural South. Aloud, she said, “Grits?”

“Well, not my favorite. But I do like ’em every now and again. One time in New York I ordered them, and they charged me fifteen dollars for them as a side dish. Called it polenta. ”

Sark considered writing down “polenta,” but thought better of it. “Don’t you know what your favorite food is?” she asked.

“Yeah, but that’s not the point, is it? That’s one of those gimmick questions that’s supposed to tell fans what kind of guy you are. For your image. Like maybe if you’re from Wisconsin, you say cheese, or if you’re sponsored by a cereal company, you name the cereal. Or maybe if you want people to think you’re macho, you say buffalo in bourbon sauce.”

Sark tapped her pen on the notepad. “Just tell me, okay? What is your favorite food? Say anything. I don’t care!”

Badger sighed. “Bologna on Wonder bread,” he said. “And tomato soup.”

“Fine!” said Sark. She wrote down buffalo in bourbon sauce .

The rest of the interview went along placidly enough, highlighted by Badger’s heartwarming stories of bottle-feeding orphaned fawns and the rescue of his giant turtle. Sark thought she could make quite an appealing press kit out of an expurgated version of Badger’s life story-minus a few DUIs and youthful escapades, that is.

She checked the notes on her clipboard. There was only one more matter to cover. “They asked me to talk to you about our sponsor,” she said, fighting to keep the irritation out of her voice. Why me? she thought . Surely there’s somebody higher up the totem pole who could handle this.

Badger had assumed his earnest retriever expression again. “Oh, yeah. That drug. They said I might have to talk about it in interviews some time.”

“Well, I expect it will come up,” said Sark. “So they want me to give you some pointers in how to deal with it.”

“How about I say I take it regularly and that it works?”

Sark took a deep breath. “You really have no idea what the sponsor is, do you, Badger?”

“Some kinda drug.”

She chose her words carefully and said them slowly to make sure they sank in. “Vagenya is a drug to enhance sexual desire. In women.”

Badger frowned. “I thought that was illegal.”

“I’m sorry?”

“Is that the stuff guys drop in ladies’ drinks to knock ’em out?” He squirmed in his chair. “I sure never needed to do that.”

Suddenly, she had a flash of what a media interview with Badger might be like. She would have to go with him. She would have to devise a signal for shut up . She would make him memorize sound bites. Oh, hell, was it possible simply to hire a Badger impersonator? No, probably not. He was one of a kind, all right. She would have to prepare him for all possible contingencies, and step one was explaining to him just what product his race car would be advertising. Oh, boy.

“No,” she said carefully. “You don’t put Vagenya into a woman’s drink. It’s…um…Do you have Mark Martin’s cell phone number?”

Badger’s eyes widened in bewilderment for an instant, before he realized who had sponsored Mark Martin. “Oh,” he said. “Like Viagra, you mean.”

“Exactly.”

“Oh.” He digested this information for a few anxious moments. “And that’s gonna be my sponsor, huh?”

“Right.”

“So people are gonna give me a hard time about it.”

Sark sighed. “Some of them might.” She repressed a shudder, as she pictured the unauthorized tee shirt slogans. The cartoons on Web sites. Leering woman fans holding up signs at the races: BADGER JENKINS GETS ME HOTTER THAN VAGENYA .

“But I don’t have to say that I use it myself?”

“No. Please, no.”

He brightened at once. “Well, that’s good! Then all I have to say is that it’s a good product and I hope it helps people who need it.” He pulled a box of breath mints out of his pocket and held them up as if posing for the camera. “It’s a good product and I hope it helps people who need it,” he said in tones usually used by finalists in the Miss America pageant. Then he resumed his customarily goofy grin. “Was that okay?”

Slowly, Sark nodded. Now that she thought about it, the combination of Badger and Vagenya might actually work. In interviews, Badger would assume his most earnest guide dog expression and repeat his catchphrase with a worried frown of sincerity every time the subject came up, and only the truly heartless would give him grief about it. Of course, there were a lot of truly heartless people in sports media, but even they would get bored and stop baiting him up after the umpteenth repetition of Badger’s earnest sound bite. If you continue to taunt someone who bears your torment with dignity and grace, eventually the tormenter is the one who looks bad.

Something else might happen, too, she thought: a backlash of sympathy. People said that when Mark Martin first acquired Viagra as a sponsor, the teasing was merciless, but he was so calm and serious about the matter that soon people began to respect him for having the guts to drive for such a potentially embarrassing sponsor and for taking all the taunts with such grace under pressure.

Maybe the same thing would happen to Badger with the Vagenya sponsorship. Maybe this new need for gravitas would reveal a whole new dimension to his personality. She glanced over at Badger, trying to picture him as a dignified elder statesman of Cup racing. He had opened the plastic breath mints box, and now he was tossing a mint into the air and trying to catch it in his mouth.

The dignified elder statesman of Cup racing. Yeah, right.

“Idon’t think this is a good idea,” said Tuggle, but she could see by the looks on the women’s faces that it would be pointless to argue further. Still, she had to try. “You ladies hired that boy to race. Not to give y’all pony rides.”

One of the socialite types pouted prettily. “But it’s our money,” she said. “And people keep asking me if I’ve gotten to ride in the race car yet, and I’m tired of telling them no .”

“And as you pointed out, Tuggle, we did hire him. It’s our car and our team. I don’t think this little adventure is too much to ask for people who are making all this possible.” Christine Berenson did not raise her voice, but there was stainless steel in every syllable.

Tuggle took a deep breath, swallowing a few sarcastic comments that would have been hazardous to her employment status, and scowled, wondering if further wrangling would be a waste of breath. It probably would be, but she figured she owed it to Badger to try. They were partners, her and him. Crew chief and driver. “It’s like a marriage,” she often said. “Lots of hassling, no sex.” She might be hard on him, in terms of what the team needed from him, and she certainly never cut him any slack, but that didn’t mean she’d let anybody else treat him like a hired hand.