Sharyn McCrumb - Once Around the Track

“Badger was lucky,” Tony said again. “There was a guy at his local track who was getting too old to do any racing himself, but he still wanted to be in the game, so he sold the equipment to Badger and stayed on to help him learn the ropes. Badger was a natural-I’m not saying he wasn’t good-but there are a heck of a lot of guys who are good that never get past Late Model Stocks.”

“So you decided to work for a Cup team instead?”

Tony nodded. “I figured it would be a good way to make connections within the sport. Racing is in many ways just a small town. What about you?”

Taran sighed. “You’ll laugh,” she said.

“Try me.”

“I’m the team flake. Everybody else is doing it for the experience, or for a feminist cause, or because they’re just crazy about stock car racing. But not me. I’m the fool who is crazy about Badger Jenkins.” When she said it, she was watching him carefully to see if he was having trouble wiping a smirk off his face, but he had simply nodded and given her a look that might have been sympathetic.

“Guys in firesuits,” he said, unwrapping another Granola bar. “A lot of people mistake them for Superman, I guess. I’ve seen it dozens of times. But why Badger in particular?”

“It sounds ridiculous,” she sighed. “I was dating a guy who got me interested in NASCAR, and he was a Mark Martin fan. He kept telling me to pick a driver, so that it would be more interesting when we watched the races together.” She stopped for a moment, remembering Rob, one of the company’s electrical engineers. A nice enough guy, she supposed, if you liked Italian food and watching Stargate on the Sci-Fi Channel, which was okay. She just couldn’t see doing that for the rest of her life. Besides, Rob looked like a mild-mannered frog in steel-rimmed glasses, and Taran thought that a permanent relationship with him would put you in the fast lane for old age. She decided that Rob himself had probably been born forty. But she’d always be grateful to him for introducing her to motorsports. He liked to watch the races with a clipboard of statistics at hand: Which driver had previously won at this track? Whose team seemed to be consistently good lately? Who had done well in practice and qualifying? As an engineer herself, she found this sort of scientific approach interesting, but since racing was, after all, a form of entertainment, she felt that Rob’s joyless method of analyzing the race left much to be desired. She wanted to care who won: to hope for his success, rather than to coldly predict it with an assortment of dispassionate statistics.

“He wanted you to pick a driver so that watching racing with you would be a competiton,” said Tony. “I’ll bet he thought you’d go for Jeff Gordon. He’s really popular with women and kids.”

“No,” said Taran. “He knew better than that. I’m an electrical engineer. He figured I’d go for the intellectual type.”

“Ryan Newman, then. Engineering degree from Purdue.”

“Right. And I do like Newman, but I don’t think choosing a driver is necessarily a matter of logic. You don’t cry over somebody just because he is the mathematical favorite.”

“Well, some people might,” said Tony. “But mostly not, I guess. People usually choose a driver who reflects their interests or their background. Home state, sponsor identification, looks-something. And then there are the people who won’t root for a Ford driver, or who hate anybody in a Chevrolet. There are a lot of sides to take in this sport.”

“I know,” said Taran. “Every week is like a football game with forty-three teams on the field.”

“So how did you come to pick Badger instead of Newman or Kenseth? Was it when he won at Darlington?”

Taran sighed a little, remembering. “No. It wasn’t when he won at all. I remember they interviewed him before the race, and he looked kind of shy and self-deprecating, and-Well, I know this is going to sound strange, but his accent reminded me of my grandfather. He died when I was seven, and he wasn’t real old. It was a car wreck. But anyhow, I heard Badger’s voice, and it was like hearing my granddad, I just felt like I knew him.”

“How did he do in the race that day?”

“He wrecked. Well, somebody wrecked him . And I just lost it. I was so terrified that I had jinxed him by liking him. He had a concussion, and I remember I kept checking Engine Noise all week to see how he was doing. Anyhow, by the time he got well and was back in the car-he missed one race, I think-I had gone online and bought a tee shirt, a coffee mug, and two key chains. I was hooked. Badger was it.”

Tony nodded. He’d heard similar stories from fans before. “So what happened to Rob?”

Taran shrugged. “We stopped watching racing together. He said I was too emotional. I guess it’s hard to concentrate on your chart of statistics when the person beside you is alternately shrieking and crying. So that was it. I didn’t miss him, though. I had Badger.”

Tony smiled. “It must have been a thrill for you to actually meet him.”

“Oh, no,” said Taran, shuddering at the memory. “It was ghastly.”

It had been a few days after Tuggle had selected the Team Vagenya pit crew, and Badger, having finally finished giving interviews and having his picture made with the sponsors and owners, had finally come along to practice. He went down the line, shaking hands and introducing himself to his new teammates. When he got to Taran, he stuck out his hand, smiled like a movie star, and said, “How you doin’?”

And she had backed away from that outstretched hand as if it had been holding a switchblade. She had just wanted him to go away.

It certainly wasn’t how she had pictured her first meeting with her driver. Once she had been chosen for the team, she had rehearsed the moment in her mind a hundred times, in every possible variation. From “How do you do, sir? Such a pleasure to meet you,” to “I’m sorry? I didn’t catch the name,” to wordlessly throwing herself in his arms, while imaginary violins swelled to a stunning crescendo and the team practice yard dissolved into a field of wildflowers. But nowhere in her wildest imaginings had she pictured herself backing away from her beloved Badger in abject terror.

But she had.

Now why was that?

She had given it a lot of thought since then. She wasn’t sure that Badger had even noticed her confusion. As she was backing away, Reve had put her hand into the small of Taran’s back and gently pushed her forward again. She managed to croak a feeble hello, and Badger shook her hand and moved on.

Since then she had relived that moment another hundred times or so, wishing that you could get instant replays in real life. At least she’d have a second chance. They were teammates. Sooner or later she might calm down enough to actually converse with him.

She had tried to figure out exactly why she had panicked. Well, she told herself, it isn’t every day that you meet your screensaver. Badger was shorter than she’d imagined, but otherwise he looked pretty much like his photographs, so that wasn’t the reason for her dismay. Perhaps it was simply the pressure of that first meeting, because to her, anyway, it mattered so much. With most people you meet you can simply be yourself, and either you hit it off or you don’t, and it’s no big deal either way, but Badger was the SAT and an EKG rolled into one: a human exam, and if she failed it, the chance might never come again.

They had probably chatted for a minute or two, but the voice in her head was chanting “Don’tletmesayanythingstupidDon’tlet mesayanythingstupid” so loudly that she could no longer remember what either of them said.