Sharyn McCrumb - Once Around the Track

Tuggle decided to let it go. Badger was worried about his future, and he was probably wise to do so. Scaring him wouldn’t help. Privately, she resolved to monitor the situation. Perhaps Melodie was simply a semicompetent boor who liked to latch on to celebrities; if she was something more dangerous than that, Tuggle would have to decide what to do about it. A tire iron would be favorite, she thought.

“Look, Badger,” she said. “I’m on your side. You know that, right? We may have our share of disagreements, but I won’t stand by and see anybody take advantage of you, boy.”

He nodded with that sad-eyed hound look of his. With a weary sigh, he hauled himself to his feet. “I’m going home,” he said.

“Thanks for worrying about me. I know you’re on my side. But I’m fine, really. I’m lucky to have her.”

As she heard him exit the hauler, Tuggle muttered to herself, “Boy, you’d be better off swallowing a tapeworm.”

The next morning at ten minutes to ten, a haggard-looking Badger turned up in the office and perched on the edge of Deanna’s desk. He bore very little resemblance to the handsome daredevil in the posters surrounding him with mocking images of his idealized self. Without a word, Deanna went to the office refrigerator and took out a blue Gatorade, which she handed him in silent commiseration.

He accepted it with a feeble smile and took a few fortifying sips. “I’m meeting Melodie here,” he told the secretary.

Deanna’s sympathetic expression hardened into the one she usually reserved for cockroach sightings. “I know,” she said, biting off every word. “She called and said she was on her way. She asked me to have coffee ready for her.”

Badger nodded. He never interfered in interoffice dynamics. Opinion varied on whether or not he even noticed them.

Deanna said, “There’s something else I need to tell you before she gets here. I guess you can’t do it, but…Well, the Roush people called and asked if you could possibly do them a favor. One of their drivers was supposed to make a visit to the children’s ward of a local hospital today, but their guy is not feeling well himself, and obviously nobody wants a driver who might be contagious going to visit sick children. I’m rambling, aren’t I?”

Badger, who had closed his eyes, nodded.

Deanna took a deep breath. Sitting two feet from Badger always made her nervous. She’d tell her envious friends, He’s so macho I’m afraid he’ll short out my birth control patch. But she knew that such feelings were all in her head. Badger treated everybody just the same. “Well, anyhow, Badger, all the other Roush drivers are otherwise committed today, and so they phoned here asking for you. They wondered if you would go to the children’s ward. The children are really looking forward to a visit from a NASCAR driver, as you can imagine.”

Badger opened his eyes and sighed. “The Roush people called us?” he asked.

The secretary nodded. She thought she knew why he’d asked which team had called. If the team had been Hendrick or DEI, then the driver the children were expecting to meet might have been Jeff Gordon or Dale Earnhardt, Jr. Nobody would want to be the substitute who walked into a room full of kids expecting either of them. The howls of disappointment would be deafening. But Badger probably figured that he was as kind and personable and famous as the Roush guys-well, anyhow, he wouldn’t be too much of a disappointment as a substitute.

“When do they need me?” he asked.

“Well, this afternoon,” said Deanna. “At one o’clock. But I checked on the whereabouts of that textile mill you’re visiting, and they are too far apart. You’d never be able to get to the hospital in time.”

Badger nodded. He looked up at the black-rimmed clock on the wall behind the desk. Five minutes until ten. “Which Roush driver is sick?” he asked.

Deanna told him.

“He’s a good guy,” said Badger. “He’s doing this for nothing, of course.”

“Yes, I’m sure he is-or was. Before he got the stomach flu.”

He ran his hand through the bristles of his newly cropped hair. “Yeah, he would. He’s not rolling in money, either. Not yet, anyhow.” He sighed. “Did you tell them I had another commitment?”

Deanna shook her head. “I told them I’d ask you and let them know.”

“So you think I should do it?”

She gasped. “Oh, I would never tell you what to do, Badger. I just didn’t want to make a decision without consulting you first.”

“I appreciate that, Deanna.” He sighed again. “I think I ought to go. Look, is there anybody around today who could go with me? Is Sark here?”

“No. She e-mailed her press release about the race and said she wouldn’t be in. Almost everybody is off today. Well, Rosalind Manning is here. The engine specialist. She stopped in for coffee on her way to the shop, but she’s not a publicist. She doesn’t seem at ease with people somehow. I mean, she’s polite and all, but…”

“She’s smart, though,” said Badger. “Went to MTA, didn’t she?”

Deanna fought to keep a straight face. “MIT,” she said. “But they’re both found in Cambridge.”

“Whatever. I just need somebody to carry the autograph cards and help me field questions in case any reporters show up. And, you know, keep me on schedule. I have a real hard time saying no to people, even when I know I have to.”

“I’m sure she’d be glad to go with you,” said Deanna, who wasn’t sure at all, but she could not imagine anyone turning down a chance to spend the day with Badger. “If you were going, that is.”

“Call them back. Tell them I’ll do it.”

“Do what?” said Melodie Albigre from the doorway. There was a dangerous lilt in her voice, and she was jingling her keys as if she might throw them at his head.

Deanna, who had picked up the phone and was in the process of punching in the number of the Roush office, gasped at the sound of the Restrictor Plate’s voice. She started to replace the receiver, but Badger touched her wrist, and said, “No. Keep dialing, Deanna,” he said. “It’s all right.”

Melodie made a show of consulting her watch. “We need to get going, Badger,” she said. “You know what traffic is like on I-85 on weekday mornings.”

Badger nodded. “I can’t go,” he said.

“What do you mean you can’t go?” She swept into the room, her voice rising with every step she took.

Thank God for cordless phones, thought Deanna, scurrying toward the back room just as someone on the other end of the line picked up. She figured that as long as she was out of earshot she’d call Rosalind’s cell phone, too, and tell her to get to the office as fast as she could. Badger needed rescuing.

“I can’t go to the textile mill,” said Badger, who was using his slowest drawl and wearing his most mournful retriever expression in hopes of averting the coming storm. “Something important just came up.”

His manager’s scowl suggested that she ate retrievers for breakfast. “Something came up, did it? Where is Tuggle? She can’t schedule practices on my day.”

Badger hesitated. Tuggle would back him up. She said she would. Any time he needed an excuse, she said, he could claim he had a team meeting, and she’d swear it was true. He sighed. The hospital appearance would probably make the local papers, anyhow, which meant that Melodie would find out sooner or later. Why postpone her tantrum? Besides, Badger generally told people the truth, anyhow. He was handsome enough to get away with it. In his experience, people usually forgave him for whatever it was he had done to piss them off. And if they didn’t, well, there were always more people to replace them in his constellation.