St. Dale Read online

  St. Dale

  Sharyn Mccrumb

  Based on the Dale Earnhardt Memorial Pilgrimage after the NSCAR legend's death, Sharyn McCrumb has crafted a tale of transformation and everyday miracles. Suffused with incisive Southern wit and unforgettable characters, "St. Dale" looks into the heart of America-its secular saints and cereal-box heroes, wild dreams and unrealized ambitions, heartbreaking losses and second chances-and celebrates its unbreakable spirit.

  Sharyn McCrumb

  St. Dale

  © 2005

  To Jane Hicks-the voice in my headset

  There are only three real sports: mountain climbing,

  bullfighting, and automobile racing.

  – Ernest Hemingway

  Chapter I

  Midnight in Mooresville

  I t was not the end of the world, but you could see it from there.

  She was an educated woman with a career and a social position to think of, so she lived in fear that people would somehow hear about what had happened to her in April, 2002, on the road to Mooresville. A supermarket tabloid might shanghai her into the role of prophetess of a new religious cult, and people she didn’t even know would point and stare at her, and think she was a fool. The thought made her shudder. So she only told a few friends about the peculiar incident, and those to whom she did mention it heard it in the guise of a funny story, open to some logical explanation. Of course, Justine had accepted it without batting an eye. Had been expecting it, she said. But then Justine’s vision of reality was pretty much at right angles to everybody else’s anyhow. She herself had stopped trying to make sense out of it, because she had the terrible feeling that Justine was right, and that what really happened was…what really happened.

  “It was not the road to Damascus,” she would say, invoking Biblical precedent, “because I had just come from there. Damascus. Virginia, that is, a little town on the Tennessee line, a couple of hours north of where I ended up that night, broken down on the side of a country road en route to Charlotte.”

  It was not the end of the world, but you could see it from there. She had pulled over to the side of the road and flipped on the visor light to look at the map. Now the engine wouldn’t start, her cell phone had no signal, and the dark road was deserted. She hadn’t seen a house for miles. In this landscape of pine woods and barbed-wired pastures, streetlights were nonexistent, which was part of the problem. She must have missed a road sign somewhere back there when she got off I-77.

  She was pretty sure she was somewhere north of the city, maybe in Iredell County, which wasn’t where she was supposed to be at all. By now she ought to be closer to the city limits of Charlotte, but the sky was dark-no bleed-in of artificial light from the sprawling city-so that was past praying for. It was her own fault, though. What kind of an idiot would have taken Justine’s advice about a shortcut in the middle of the night? Justine, for heaven’s sake, who could get lost in a revolving door. Now here she was, trying to follow a set of directions that were vague at best. (“Turn left after the yellow house, only I think they painted it.”) Oh, why had she listened? There wasn’t much traffic on I-77 in the middle of the night, for heaven’s sake. If she’d stayed on the Interstate, she’d be home by now.

  Well, at least Justine had been right about that Oriental rug outlet in Virginia. It had been a great place, cheaper than any place she’d found in Charlotte. Of course, that was exactly the sort of thing that Justine invariably was right about. They called Justine “The Shopping Fairy,” because if you wanted designer purses, Italian tile for your bathroom, or an 18th-century American candle stand, Justine could tell you three places to find it and which one was the best deal. Just don’t ask her about more mundane matters, like how much to tip the waitress, the name of the Speaker of the House, or how to find Charlotte when it’s too dark to read road signs.

  She ought to turn off the radio to save the battery, but Garth Brooks was singing “The Dance,” and she couldn’t bear to cut it short. Another two minutes wouldn’t matter. Later, Justine would tell her the significance of that song, marveling that she didn’t know it already, but she didn’t. That intersection of those two roads of pop culture was simply not on her radar screen. She had not been thinking about him. She was sure of that.

  She had not been afraid, because she’d always considered country roads, even dark ones, infinitely safer than cities, and also because she didn’t see herself as the sort of person who was likely to be attacked by a crazed killer lurching out of the woods. Unfortunately, she was exactly the sort of person whose car broke down just when she became good and lost. She didn’t suppose Justine could be blamed for that. Now it looked as though she could either spend a long night in the car or ruin her Ferragamos hiking up a country road.

  She had cast her eyes up to the closed sunroof of her Chevy and said to no one in particular, “Please get me out of this.”

  She did not remember hearing the other car drive up. She had been too busy seething and working out the withering remarks about shortcuts that she would make to Justine the next time she saw her, while in the back of her mind she was trying to decide whether to walk or wait in the car until sunup.

  The tap on her driver’s side window startled her so much that she dropped the useless phone. In the rearview mirror she saw a black car parked close behind her bumper, its headlights illuminating the scene so that she could see the shadow of the man at her car door. She lowered the fogged-up window, half expecting to see a baby-faced highway patrolman-certainly not expecting to see that eerily familiar face: mustache, sunglasses and all, (sunglasses?) beneath the red and black “Number 3” Goodwrench cap.

  She was so startled that she said the first thing that popped into her head, which was, “I thought y’all’s headlights were just decals.”

  He nodded. “Yep. Sure are.”

  She glanced out the back windshield into the glare of headlights bright enough to illuminate the road. “But-”

  “Your car died?” he asked.

  She stared up at him, so detached from the experience that she found herself thinking, You’re one to talk.

  He nodded, no trace of a smile. “Okay, then. Flip the hood latch and I’ll take a look.”

  “Are you-”

  But he ambled around to the front of the car without giving her time to finish and raised the hood while she peered out through the windshield, thinking that it was a good thing she was driving a Chevrolet. He probably would know how to fix it.

  As he poked around in the engine, she sat there, her mind full of so many simultaneous thoughts that she forgot to get out of the car to actually voice any of them: I don’t think it’s the battery, because the power windows still work…Excuse me, sir, are you who I think you are?…Justine, it was him. Hat, white firesuit, everything. Of course, I’m sure! I saw his face plain as day in the headlights…Listen, I have half a tank of gas, so it’s not that…The Reverend Billy Graham, Dear Sir: Can dead people come back from heaven or wherever and fix cars?…Hey, I was a big fan of yours…well, my friend was anyhow…and I just wanted to say how sorry I am…

  The roar of the engine interrupted the flow of her thoughts.

  He slammed the hood and walked back, dusting off his hands, one against the other. “It ought to get you home,” he said.

  “What was wrong with it?” she called out above the noise.

  He gave her a look that said Do you know anything about cars? and shook his head. “It runs fine now. Wanna race? I’ll spot you a quarter mile.”

  She shook her head. “I don’t think so…sir. Besides, I’m lost.”

  “Oh. Well, the Interstate’s ahead a few miles. Keep on going. You’re on Route 136 in Iredell County.”

  “Oh. Okay. But I think it’s Route 3 now. They renamed
it.”

  A smile flickered across his face, and she thought, He hadn’t heard about that, which emboldened her to say, “Well, thank you. Um-Thanks for your help. And-Look, before I go-do you have any messages for-well, for anybody?”

  Again the smile. “Yeah,” he had said after a moment’s consideration. “For Mike Waltrip.” As he walked away, the man in the white firesuit said, “Tell him: next February, pray for rain.”

  Chapter II

  The Also-Ran

  Harley Claymore

  “You didn’t say nothing about having to wear this cap.” The scruffy man in front of Harry Bailey’s desk held up the black baseball cap with the white number 3 sewn above the bill. The script “3” had cartoon angels wings on either side and a halo encircling the top. “Now, I don’t mind staying sober for ten days. Well, I can, anyhow, but you didn’t say nothing about this fool cap.”

  “Perhaps it was an oversight on our part.” Mr. Bailey consulted the folder on his desk more for effect than for information. Then he looked at the dribbles of rain sliding down his office window, obscuring the view of the Dumpster outside and the one tree in the parking lot, still leafless in early April. Finally he looked up at the scowling man in the damp leather jacket, who was leaving a puddle of rainwater on his tile floor. It was an odd jacket-it had black and white checkered patches from shoulder to elbow and red trim on the pockets. The perfect costume for the tour, Mr. Bailey thought; though perhaps he ought not to put it like that to this proud little man who apparently wore such outlandish garb in the street. And he was objecting to the cap? He repressed a shudder. At least it would have kept the fellow’s head dry.

  “An oversight,” he said again, forcing a smile. “On the other hand, Mr. Claymore, you claimed to have won the Daytona 500 in 1992.”

  The fellow had the grace to blush. “Well, I won a race at Daytona in 1992, anyhow. Same track, just not the hyped-up race. They have other events there during the year, you know.”

  Mr. Bailey nodded. “We looked it up on the Internet. We here at Bailey Travel may not know much about stock car racing, Mr. Claymore, but I assure you that we do know how to Google. It says here that a driver named Davey Allison won the Daytona 500 in 1992. Perhaps we ought to see about hiring him for this job instead.”

  Harley Claymore snorted. “Hell, mister, don’t you know anything? If Davey Allison was still on this earth, I reckon things would be so different that you could have hired Earnhardt himself for this damn bus tour, ’cause Davey could have driven rings around-”

  “I thought you wanted this job, Mr. Claymore. I thought you needed some ready cash.” He was watching the scruffy little man, noting the signs of strain about the eyes and the tinge of sweat on the upper lip. He would take the job, all right. He just wanted to save face by protesting his reluctance. That was all right. Mr. Bailey had allotted three minutes for that.

  “Well, that’s the God’s truth,” Claymore said, running a hand through his broom-straw hair and shrugging. “You think Brooke Gordon was a rottweiler, you should meet my ex.”

  Mr. Bailey nodded sympathetically, wondering who Brooke Gordon was. “We pay a thousand a week plus expenses,” he said. “The tour begins in August at the Bristol Speedway. It will get you to the tracks should you wish to make contact with some of your former associates about future employment.”

  “Well, you said you needed a NASCAR expert for a guide, and I sure qualify as that-”

  Mr. Bailey glanced at his notes. “Although, in fact, you are not the third-generation NASCAR driver you claimed to be? Your father did not win the race at Talladega in 1968?”

  Harley Claymore smiled and shifted his weight to the other foot. “Well, he didn’t lose it, either. Bill France didn’t build that track until ’69.”

  Mr. Bailey continued to give him the unblinking stare of a monitor lizard. Harley blinked first. “Well, okay,” he said. “My dad drove dirt track in the fifties. Wilkesboro and Hickory, and all, before the sport got so jumped-up. He raced against Lee Petty and Ralph Earnhardt-none of ’em made enough to live on back then. And my grandaddy-he did his driving with a second gas tank full of moonshine on U.S. 421, and that ought to count for something ’cause Junior Johnson got started that way too. Only, Junior made it to the pros and my people didn’t. Until me.”

  “Yes. You did drive in the Winston Cup circuit-until you lost your sponsor. A drinking problem.”

  “Naw, I can hold my liquor pretty well. I think it was food poisoning that day. But, you know, when you throw up all over a Make-A-Wish kid, the sponsor finds it tough to forgive and forget. Uh-I won’t be driving the bus, will I?”

  Mr. Bailey closed his eyes. “Mercifully, no.”

  “Anyhow, I do know racing front to back. Stats, cars, trivia. All of it. Like…let’s see…like: Junior Johnson used to run races with a chicken riding shotgun with him in the car. Did you know that?”

  “Indeed, no. Does it happen to be true?”

  “It does. Google away, Mr. Bailey. But, see, about this trip-I thought you were just taking racing fans on a tour of Southern speedways.”

  “That, incidentally, yes.” Mr. Bailey paused, choosing his words carefully, “But actually the trip is being advertised as an Earnhardt Memorial Tour.”

  “Oh, sweet Nelly,” Claymore groped for the plastic chair and sank down in it. “You’re shitting me, right?”

  “I assure you we are perfectly serious,” said Mr. Bailey, who had decided that sarcasm would be wasted on Harley Claymore. “Unlike you, Dale Earnhardt did win the Daytona 500, you know.”

  “Well, finally. He lost it about twenty times, too. He and that soap opera lady who always lost at the Daytime Emmys ought to have got together.”

  “Dale Earnhardt is a legend,” said Mr. Bailey. “Did you know him while you were on the circuit?”

  Harley shrugged. “Seeing a black Monte Carlo in my rearview mirror still gives me the shakes.” He waited a moment for Bailey to correct him, but there was no response. Back when Harley was still racing they had been driving Luminas, not Monte Carlos but, in deference to Mr. Bailey’s ignorance of the finer points of racing, he had mentioned the model that was now synonymous with the Intimidator.

  “I mean, do you have any personal anecdotes about yourself and Dale Earnhardt?”

  “Nothing out of the ordinary. He put me in a headlock once in a drivers’ meeting. Snuck up on me from behind, like he always did. And he gave me the finger a time or two when he went past me in a race.”

  Bailey closed his eyes. “Perhaps we should forget about personal anecdotes. I’m sure we can provide you with some more heartwarming stories about Dale Earnhardt.”

  “What the hell for?”

  “Because he is a legend, Mr. Claymore-is that your real name, by the way?”

  “Sort of. It was Harley Clay Moore. My dad was into cars, and he named me for Harley Earl and Willie Clay Call.” He could see that the names meant nothing to Mr. Bailey to whom the world of motor sports was a never-opened book. “Anyhow, I changed it when I was eighteen and needed a classy name for the pros. See, claymores are…”

  “Scottish swords. I know.”

  “Well, I was going to say antipersonnel mines in Nam. I thought it sounded cool.”

  Mr. Bailey’s face was impassive. “No doubt,” he said. “We were discussing this job. Bailey Travel has been inundated with requests for a tour in honor of Dale Earnhardt. More than a year since his death, people are still grieving. They are putting the number three in Christmas lights on their houses and I’m told that they raise three fingers during the third lap of every race as a tribute to him.” He paused, shaking his head wonderingly at the improbability of such a thing. “We have received considerable correspondence and even e-mails from articulate and respectable people”-People with valid credit cards, he thought-“who tell us that they want such a tour, a gesture of mourning if you will, in honor of the late Mr. Earnhardt. People want to say goodbye. The speedways where he drove are now
shrines. People want to pay homage at his racing shop in Mooresville. They long to lay a memorial wreath on the track at Daytona.”

  Harley Claymore shook his head. “I never would have believed it.”

  “Well, he died on camera in the biggest race of the sport, so that was a factor. Our firm offers a Graceland Tour as well, so we are familiar with the mindset of the devoted fan and the fact that people need closure. They feel that they know these celebrities. It is a personal loss. I grant you that we here at Bailey Travel did not expect to find this phenomenon in a NASCAR milieu. But there it is.”

  “But he was just a regular guy who had a knack for driving,” said Harley. “He was good at it, but so was Neil Bonnett. So was Tim Richmond. And nobody’s painting their numbers on billboards.”

  Mr. Bailey shrugged. “Why Elvis and not John Lennon?” he said. “Who can explain these things? Still, Mr. Claymore, the demand is there and we have devised this tour accordingly. To celebrate the life and sport of NASCAR’s most illustrious driver. And now we need someone-a name, if you will, to host it.”

  “Well, I guess I ought to be flattered that y’all picked me instead of Geoff Bodine.”

  “Mr. Bodine was unavailable. So do we have a deal?”

  Harley Claymore looked at the Winged Three on his cap and sighed. “Eleven hundred plus expenses?”

  “And you are to be sober and reliable. And you will wear that jacket and the number 3 cap.”

  “Deal.” Claymore spit in his palm and held out his hand.

  Harry Bailey pointedly ignored the gesture. “We will write down some suggestions for the commentary you will be making on the tour. For instance, you might begin by explaining why Dale Earnhardt is associated with the number three.”

  “Why?” said Harley.