Sharyn McCrumb - Once Around the Track

“Well, except for Badger,” said Diane Hodges, the former Miss Texas who had married into Oil. “He could make my toes curl through a locked door.”

A large framed poster of Badger Jenkins in his firesuit hung on the wall of the office. With one accord, the investors turned to study it. One or two smiled approvingly, and one of them said, “He reminds me of my grandson.”

“Perhaps we should have tried harder to find a female race car driver,” said the investor from Winnetka. “There’s that girl at Indy-”

“We can’t afford her,” Christine replied with the assurance of one who has had this argument so many times that her response was a sound bite. “There are half a dozen women in the lower echelons of stock car racing as well, but either they are under contract to one of the big teams in development programs or they are out of our price range. Or both.”

“I like Badger just fine,” said Miss Texas.

“I’m sure that a lot of women will agree with you,” said Christine. “That bodes well for our recruiting of new secondary sponsors. Companies who sell primarily to women will want an image that appeals to them.”

“Oh, honey, he does.”

“And remember that souvenir merchandising is a significant source of income in motorsports. Pretty faces sell tee shirts…hats…coffee mugs. The potential is huge. Even if he loses, we’ll still win. But, of course, we want to win.”

Grace Buell Hoskins Tuggle hoped that the job interview wasn’t going to include lunch, not that she minded a free meal, but from the looks of the ladies on the interview committee, every one of ’em about two ribs short of a shadow, she figured their idea of a noonday meal would be a lettuce leaf and an Ex-Lax pill. They were skinny enough to be drivers’ wives for sure, but they looked a little too steely-eyed and Old Money for that.

Now back in the old days, when Daddy had been racing, the wives were whoever the racers had happened to marry back when they started out working in the factory or wherever, and their lined faces and plump bodies testified to a lifetime of hard work, starchy food, and infinite patience with race-crazed husbands. Grace, who was pleased that her initials also stood for Grievous Bodily Harm, but who preferred simply to be known as Tuggle, did not hold with fad diets and plastic surgery. In her opinion, if being a willowy size two got you a race car driver for a husband, then they ought to put warning labels on Slim-Fast.

Wheel men! Lawn jockeys with 800-horsepower egos. Fortunately, she was past the age to confuse foolhardy with sexy, which was just as well, because no driver worth his salt would listen to a pretty girl giving him orders over the head set anyhow. They’d listen to her, though. If they had any sense they would.

Her daddy had been a force to be reckoned with on the racing circuit, back in the days when North Carolina was the hub of the world-Hickory, Asheville, Wilkesboro, Winston-Salem. She often said that her blood type was Hi-Test . And then there were her two husbands-the driving one from her wild younger days, who had put her heart so far into the wall that she thought she’d never get over him. Well, she hadn’t really, that was the truth of it. But at least she had learned from that experience that restrictor plates were not a bad thing for the human heart. Her second husband, Doyle, was a mechanic, and she claimed that she’d married him “for entertainment.” He didn’t take your breath away like the first one did, but he didn’t make you want to put a hose to the exhaust pipe, either, so she reckoned it evened out-less joy, less sorrow. That’s what getting older mostly meant anyhow.

Drivers. Like tigers. A lot of fun to look at, maybe even okay for a brief, wary encounter, but try to hold on to one and he will rip you to shreds. Well, maybe times had changed with all these West Coast pretty boys coming into the sport, but Tuggle didn’t think so, and she rejoiced in the fact that she was too old to care.

She wondered if she ought to offer the benefit of her wisdom to this charmed circle of designer-clad ladies, but she decided against it. They were too old to care, too, whether they knew it or not. And maybe they were into the sport for philosophical reasons. An all-woman team. Well, whatever kept the sponsors happy.

She assumed an expression of polite interest, which on her bulldog features looked like a double-dog-dare, as she waited for the questioning to commence.

The regal one they called Christine began by saying, “Perhaps you could tell us a little bit about yourself, Grace.”

Tuggle winced at the sound of her given name, sounding like a sermon title in the precise diction of this high-maintenance woman. “It’s Tuggle, if it’s all the same to you,” she corrected her. “As for my qualifications, my daddy ran dirt track and Late Model Stocks around the region-wherever he could afford to go and still keep his day job. Back then family was about the only pit crew you could afford, so he trained me and my brothers early on.” As if in answer to an unspoken question, she added, “They’re dead now.” She kept her voice steady-well, mostly steady-willing herself not to think about little Gary, dead in a rice paddy in Vietnam, and Cole, the daredevil, hitting the wall at Hickory in those days before fuel cells, when the word fire stuck in your throat.

“And I believe you raced yourself at one time.”

She nodded. “They used to have Powderpuff Derbies, as they called ’em. Good for attracting a crowd to the track on off nights. Daddy said I was almost as good as Cole, but, of course, I quit that foolishness once I grew up. Keeping a marriage going is a dern sight harder than winning an old stock car race.”

“Times have changed since those days,” said one of the younger women in a not-from-around-here accent. “NASCAR is rocket science now. What makes you think you could manage a team in a sport dominated by engineers?”

“Well, I reckon you will have engineers,” said Tuggle. “Strategy hasn’t changed. Maybe the cars are better now, and NASCAR keeps adding rules as fast as folks can think up ways around ’em, but it’s still the same old sport it used to be.”

“Now, we realize that our aim of having an all-women team is a bit unusual.”

Tuggle shrugged. “Well, it’s not traditional, of course. Back in my day, the old-time drivers had a saying: No tits in the pits . But times do change, don’t they?” She flashed a wolfish smile at the circle of frozen faces.

“Times do indeed change,” murmured Christine. “We consulted various experts, you know-fitness instructors, physicians, engineers-and they seem to think that there’s no reason a female pit crew couldn’t do the job, providing that they were carefully chosen and properly trained.”

“Likely as not,” Tuggle agreed. Women came in all shapes and sizes, especially in these exercise-crazed days. She’d known a few gals who could bench-press tractors. Find some of them and there wouldn’t be a problem.

“Of course, we will need someone to oversee the operation. I understand that is a customary to have a team manager and a crew chief, but we see no reason why a competent person couldn’t do both those things as one job. What do you think?”

Tuggle thought she’d have to have had more than one Bloody Mary for breakfast to tell this group of wine and cheese ladies what she thought about anything. She needed the job, and if that meant agreeing to use St. Christopher’s medals for hubcaps, she’d go along with it to keep the team owners happy.

“And we are already in negotiations with a driver. This one.” With a proprietary smirk, Christine Berenson slid an eight-by-ten photo out of a folder and passed it across the desk.