St. Dale. Sharyn McCrumb

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.”