LITMIR.BIZ

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      “I’m a minister,” he said to the shop owner. “I could open the church.”

      “Most of these people wouldn’t go, sir. They need to be where Dale has been and, besides, people keep showing up all the time, and if everybody here left, there’d be no one for them to talk to, I guess. It’s better here.”

      Bill Knight found himself wondering if people had gone to the cathedral on that winter day in 1170 when news of Thomas Becket’s death had reached them, and if so what had been done to comfort them.

      A man in a well-cut black overcoat set a red-and-black Earnhardt hat in the pile with the other tributes. He saw the minister watching him, and gave an embarrassed shrug. “I just wanted to say good-bye,” he said.

      A short man in a Rescue Squad ski parka hurried over. “Thought I recognized you, Doc!” he said to the man in the overcoat. “I’m glad you’re here. A couple of the guys have been arguing over this, and you’ll know—do you think a good trauma team could have saved him after the wreck?”

      The doctor shook his head. “No. He was dead before they got him out of the car. A hundred and eighty miles an hour. We’re all just bags of water, you know. People. Just bags of water.”

      As he turned to walk away, the short man crossed himself. “Well, he’s in heaven, anyhow,” he said. “I know that.”

      The doctor watched him go. “In heaven,” he said. “You know, I was thinking about that on the way over here. Here’s a guy with a ninth-grade education and an average face, and by driving a Chevrolet, he gets to be the fortieth-richest person in America and hang out with movie stars—and I wondered: just what kind of a heaven would there have to be to top that?”

      Knight knew that some ministers would have taken that remark as an invitation to expound upon the joys of being in the presence of God, but he couldn’t bring himself to do it. He would have felt like a salesman. Perhaps, after all, it was better to let people speak their minds, without trying to rationalize away their grief. Faith was for later.

      For the next hour, until the cold wind numbed his face and forced him to leave, Bill Knight mingled with the Speedway mourners, going from person to person, saying little. Just listening to the grief and the memories.

      A year later, when the Children’s Home needed someone to chaperone young Matthew on his Last Wish trip, Bill Knight volunteered, thinking that perhaps he could understand the boy’s feelings as well as anyone. Besides, he might finally learn exactly what a restrictor plate was.

      Chapter V

      Richard Petty in Heaven

      The Volunteer Parkway

      After the luggage had been stowed, a process accompanied by prolonged debates about who got carsick and who would sit where, the Number Three Pilgrims, as Harley now thought of them, allowed themselves to be herded into the bus to take their seats.

      The buxom ex-beauty-queen type, whose gray hair was silvered blond, stopped in the aisle beside the driver and called out, “Lord, I hope nobody’s taped a Bible verse to our steering wheel!”

      “Shut up, Justine!” said her traveling companions in unison.

      The minister, who was next to board, looked up at Harley with a puzzled frown. “Bible verse?” he said.

      Harley sighed. It was starting already. Unauthorized trivia. He leaned in close and whispered, “I think she’s referring to the fact that at the 2001 Daytona Darrell Waltrip’s wife taped a Bible verse to Earnhardt’s steering wheel. It’s a Christian tradition in NASCAR.”

      “Oh, yes,” Bill Knight nodded. “The race in which he died. A Bible verse to his steering wheel.” He considered this fundamentalist tradition for a moment. “I wonder which verse it was.”

      Harley shrugged. “Somebody here is bound to know.” He consulted his clipboard, trying to match names and faces. He knew the minister and Matthew, the two newlyweds were joining them at Bristol…He looked up from the list, as one name gave him pause.

      “Cayle Warrenby,” he said. “Cayle?”

      The baby-faced blonde in black jeans raised her hand. “I get that a lot,” she said. “My mother wanted to name me Gail, but my dad was a big racing fan.”

      “Well, I knew you weren’t named after the vegetable,” said Harley.

      “No. My dad even called our dog Old Yeller, after that Chevy Laguna Cale was driving when he won Daytona in ’77.”

      Harley smiled. “I guess you’re lucky they didn’t name you that, you being a blonde and all.” He sighed. “Cale Yarborough. Used to drive for Junior Johnson at one time. And I’ll bet old Cale was the Winston Cup champion the year you were born, right?”

      She nodded. “Yes, but since he won it three years in a row, that gives me a little fudging room on my age.”

      “So, where you from and all that?” asked Harley. He had written himself a note to ask that. It didn’t come naturally to him.

      Cayle gestured to include her two companions. “Little towns around Charlotte, all of us,” she said. “I’m an environmental engineer, Bekasu here is a judge, and Justine is—well, she—um…this is Justine.”

      A hand shot up in the air, and the tinkling of silver charm bracelets punctuated a cry of “Here I am, y’all!”

      “Welcome aboard,” said Harley, who knew the type. With very little encouragement Justine would take over the bus and talk nineteen-to-the-dozen from here to Florida. She would bear watching. He glanced down the roll. “Cayle Warrenby, Justine, Rebekah Sue Holifield—”

      “Hostage,” said the stern women in the white linen suit, raising her hand.

      Harley wasn’t going there, either. He gave her a wary smile and said, “Okay then, who’s next? Reverend William M. Knight—”

      “Bill!” said the silver-haired man who looked like he ought to be doing boomer-oriented commercials, for vitamins or mutual funds, maybe.

      “And that’s young Matthew with you. Welcome aboard, guys. Mr. and Mrs. Shane McKee…Oh, no, they’re meeting us at the Speedway. I’ll tell you about them in a minute. Mr. Reeve? Mr. Franklin?”

      A scowling older man in a black cowboy hat and a dark sport coat raised his hand. “Ray Reeve,” he said. “Norfolk, Nebraska. We’re not traveling together. We’re just sitting together.”

      “So what do you do back there in Nebraska?” asked Harley, wishing he’d thought to take out a pen to record the answers he wouldn’t otherwise remember.

      “Agro-business.” Mr. Reeve leaned back in his seat, arms folded, to indicate that the interview was over.

      “Jesse Franklin,” said his pink-cheeked seatmate with a nervous smile. “Michigan. I guess you’d say I’m a native, but my folks were from down here, so I’m sure I’ll feel right at home.”

      “We can provide an interpreter if you need one,” said Harley with a straight face. “And what do you do when Brooklyn, Michigan turns back into a cow pasture?”

      “In non-race weeks, you mean? Ah. I guess you’d say I’m a bureaucrat. I’m the county auditor. Caught the racing bug from my uncles, though, when I was a kid. Nice to meet all you folks.”

      “Welcome aboard,” said Harley. “Who’s next here…Mrs. Richard Nash?”

      Midway toward the back of the bus a slender tanned arm went up, and a woman said, “Here.”

      Harley looked up. That’s all she said. “Here.” She was a fine-featured woman who might have been anywhere in age between fifty and seventy, depending on whether that well-preserved handsomeness owed more to good genes or to an expensive plastic surgeon. She wasn’t wearing much jewelry or makeup, and her clothes

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