Читать книгу St. Dale - Sharyn McCrumb - Страница 10

“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.

“Well, because that was the number painted on the top of his race car.”

“No,” said Harley. “I meant why should I explain that? Will there be people from other planets coming along on this tour?”

“Ah-hah. Most amusing,” said Mr. Bailey. “And one last thing—for the duration of the tour you must say and think that Dale Earnhardt was the greatest driver who ever lived.”

“Oh, sweet Nelly.”

So Harley Clay Moore had taken the job. What choice did he have, really? What choice would any of them have had? Dale Earnhardt with his ninth-grade education had worked in the mills in the lean years and back in Alabama Neil Bonnett had been a pipe fitter. Their educations mostly took place out of school, hanging out in local garages or watching their fathers tinker with stock cars. Cars were what mattered; everything else was a distraction.

He sat on the sagging bed in the cheapest motel room he could find and watched the SPEED channel on the television, but it was showing drag racing. Nobody he knew. The brown polyester bedspread was patterned with stains and cigarette burns. He’d lived better than this once, but those days were getting more distant all the time and now he was used to rundown places like this. Why spend good beer money on fancy digs?

All Harley had ever wanted to do was race. The new face of NASCAR—the sponsors, the autographs, the hat and tee shirt sales were all necessary evils—the cost of the ride. Money buys speed, and the only way to get enough money to race these days was to cozy up to the national sponsors. Forget swearing, or chewing, or fighting off-track. Hell, you even had to knock the corners off your accent these days, because NASCAR was national now, and vanilla was the flavor of the month—every month.

He had mugged it up in Bailey’s office because showing your desperation never gets you anywhere, but he couldn’t fool himself. He had to find a way back in.