Sharyn McCrumb - Once Around the Track

She slid into the booth beneath that goofy motor oil photo, musing again on how strange it was that images of someone she actually knew could constitute a décor. Badger posters. Badger clocks. Badger sofa throws. Of course, there were certainly worse examples of human commercialization. The real merchandise monsters were NASCAR’s two most popular drivers, Jeff Gordon and Dale Earnhardt, Jr. The range of products bearing their names and likenesses was downright frightening. Toothbrushes. Shot glasses. Valentine candy. Christmas ornaments. Mouse pads. Bath mats. She supposed that there were actually people who decorated their houses in NASCAR driver motif-there was rumored to be a Badger bathroom somewhere in Ohio-but from her outsider perspective, the resulting décor didn’t bear thinking about. If she’d had to live amidst such a theme decoration, she would have felt that she was trapped inside a TV commercial.

To his credit, Badger himself seemed oblivious to these commercial tokens of fan loyalty. If he turned up at the shop and you happened to be wearing, say, a Badger Jenkins tee shirt, he affected not to notice. She thought that was a good strategy. It avoided embarrassment for everybody. Any other reaction on his part would have been asking for trouble. If he had acted pleased to have people sporting his likeness on their chests, he would have seemed conceited, and if he made fun of it, he would come off as an arrogant ingrate. Ignoring all Badger-themed merchandise was by far the most diplomatic way to handle the situation.

While she waited for Marengo’s favorite son to arrive, Sark sipped her coffee and looked over her notes, so that she would know what sort of questions to ask him. In her experience, the more you knew about somebody, the better the interview was likely to be.

According to the biographical material, Badger was a lifelong resident of the county, and he had grown up on a farm that had been in his family for five or six generations. He was an only child whose mother had died when he was born. According to the articles, he had been part Cherokee, which gave Badger a Native American heritage in which he took great pride. He’d been raised by his father on that family farm in the hills north of town, where he had spent a seemingly idyllic childhood in country pursuits, most notably hunting and fishing on his beloved lake. He sounded like Tom Sawyer, Sark thought. Or possibly Conan the Barbarian. She wondered what a typical day with him would constitute. Nothing likely to appeal to a city girl, she supposed. Fortunately, anticipating this, she had worn an outfit that would have served her well on a hike in Yellowstone: khaki pants, hiking boots, and a tan wind-breaker over a Team Vagenya tee shirt. In the trunk of her car she had stashed a snake bite kit, mosquito repellent, and bottled water.

She was making notes on her list of possible interview questions when Badger turned up, about twenty minutes late, with his usual nonchalant grin. “Sorry about that,” he said.

She gave him a bitter smile. “Oh, don’t mention it. I’ve just been enjoying myself here in the shrine of St. Badger.” She indicated the phalanx of posters bearing his likeness that surrounded them. “And here you are in the flesh. Should I kneel?”

He pursed his lips and did that little head jerk that meant the remark had stung. “Laraine put those things back up when I got this new ride. She says it’s good for business. Anyhow, I didn’t mean to be late. I didn’t forget. I got stuck behind a logging truck going over the hill where you can’t pass.”

Sark raised her eyebrows. “Safe driving? From you ?”

He nodded. “If you get a speeding ticket, all it costs you is a hundred bucks or so, but if I get a speeding ticket, all hell breaks loose, and the press never lets me hear the end of it. You ready?”

Sark gathered up the pile of press releases and scribbled index cards and stuffed them back into the large purse that served as her briefcase. “Where are we going?”

“Figured I’d take you out to my fishing cabin on the lake. Let you see my natural habitat.”

“Okay,” said Sark, who had been expecting this. “Shall I ride with you? Let me get my camera gear out of my car.” And my change of clothes and my snake bite kit, she added silently. You couldn’t be too careful around lakes.

“Well, we’ll be headed west from here, and there’s a shortcut back to the interstate north from there, so it would save you time if you just took your car, instead of having to come all the way back down here. Why don’t you just follow me?”

Sark stared at him. He was serious. “Because you won the Southern 500 at Darlington,” she said.

“Not in that old pick-up truck, I didn’t,” said Badger.

“Yeah, well…driving is driving. I’ve heard that Dale Earnhardt, Jr. and Jeff Gordon have sometimes tried without notable success to keep up with you .”

He grinned. “Aw, I told you, I try to be a good boy off the track. Come on.” He jingled his keys and headed for the door, stopping to give Laraine a bear hug on his way out; then he strolled out to the parking lot.

“Well, how hard can it be to follow him?” Sark wondered aloud. “It’s just a two-lane blacktop country road.”

Laraine nodded. “That road sure has a lot of curves, though. Some steep hills, too, every now and again.”

“Exactly,” said Sark. “That ought to slow him down. Badger will probably be the perfect person to follow. Where driving is concerned, his ego must be rock solid. I don’t suppose he feels the need to show off by speeding down ordinary roads to prove how macho he is. I’m sure I’ll be fine.”

“That’s what everybody says,” muttered Laraine, but Sark was already scurrying out the door, fishing in her purse for her sunglasses.

Badger was waiting in his truck revving the engine when she emerged from the diner. As Sark walked to her car, she took a precautionary look at Badger’s license plate, just in case they got separated by traffic. (In Marengo?) Oh well, it still wouldn’t hurt to know the license number. Red trucks were certainly not at a premium in north Georgia, and it would be reassuring to know for a fact that you were following the correct one.

It took her a moment to realize that the Georgia truck tag was a vanity plate, because it consisted of a series of numbers, much as standard-issue plates did. But to someone who had been studying Badger Jenkins’s biography for several days now in preparation for this interview, the numbers were indeed significant. They were the numbers of cars he had driven in the early days of his career.

She was sitting there behind the wheel thinking how endearing that license plate was-sentimental without being too boastful. (He could have had one that said “Champ” or “NASCAR 1” or some such slogan of self-importance. Well, he did have such a slogan on his Crossfire, but she supposed that was in keeping with his celebrity image around Charlotte. Here among the home folks he’d probably be given no end of grief for such pretensions. Besides, such a tag would be a dead giveaway to fans that the truck belonged to Badger, but she didn’t suppose that there were all that many Badger Jenkins groupies roaming around in the vicinity of Marengo. Except, perhaps, Laraine.)

Sark was so intent upon her meditation on the tasteful vanity plate that she was completely unprepared for the abrupt takeoff of the truck she was supposed to be following. Badger screeched out of the diner parking lot in a red blur, headed north on the two-lane blacktop that was only “Main Street” for about a hundred yards, before it became a country road again, at which point they would probably make the jump to light speed, Sark thought wryly.