St. Dale. Sharyn McCrumb

it with fascinating characters, and repeats the melody through subplot after subplot until readers are bewitched.”

      —Spartanburg (SC) Herald Journal

      “McCrumb draws you close, makes you care, leaves you with the sense, sought for in most fiction, that what has gone on has not been invention but experience recaptured.”

      —Los Angeles Times

      Also by Sharyn McCrumb

      Ghost Riders

      The Songcatcher

      The Ballad of Frankie Silver

      The Rosewood Casket

      She Walks These Hills

      The Hangman’s Beautiful Daughter

      If Ever I Return, Pretty Peggy-O

      Foggy Mountain Breakdown and Other Stories

      The PMS Outlaws

      If I’d Killed Him When I Met Him

      MacPherson’s Lament

      Missing Susan

      The Windsor Knot

      Paying the Piper

      Highland Laddie Gone

      Lovely in Her Bones

      Sick of Shadows

      Zombies of the Gene Pool

      Bimbos of the Death Sun

      SHARYN McCRUMB

      St. Dale

      KENSINGTON BOOKS

      KENSINGTON PUBLISHING CORP.

      http://www.kensingtonbooks.com

      To Jane Hicks—the voice in my headset

      There are only three real sports: mountain climbing, bullfighting, and automobile racing.

      —Ernest Hemingway

      Contents

      Chapter I

       Midnight in Mooresville

      Chapter II

       The Also-Ran

      Chapter III

       Tri-Cities

      Chapter IV

       The Knight’s Tale

      Chapter V

       Richard Petty in Heaven

      Chapter VI

       The Bride’s Tale

      Chapter VII

       An F-14 in a Clothes Dryer

      Chapter VIII

       Racing With the Angels

      Chapter IX

       May the Best Man Win

      Chapter X

       Circus Maximus

      Chapter XI

       Paycheck to Paycheck

      Chapter XII

       Martinsville

      Chapter XIII

       The Garage Mahal

      Chapter XIV

       The Rock

      Chapter XV

       The Pass in the Grass

      Chapter XVI

       Talladega Ghosts

      Chapter XVII

       The Changing of the Guard

      Chapter XVIII

       The Mother Church of American Racing

      Chapter XIX

       The Lady in Black

      Chapter XX

       Checking Out

      AUTHOR’S NOTE

      How I Came to Write St. Dale

      Chapter I

      Midnight in Mooresville

      It 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