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"He's the best driver this side of heaven," I said with a straight face. J.P. hesitated, so I added, "And he'll work dirt cheap."
So we were back in the game.
I'll leave out all the parts about the phony biography I concocted: the IDs and the NASCAR driver's license and all, which took some ingenuity on my part, but just because something is hard work doesn't mean it is interesting. Maybe if we had been an important team, people might have taken a closer look, but we were so hopeless, I believe we could have put Tim Flock's monkey behind the wheel without causing much comment. Maybe the Cherokee factor helped, too. NASCAR is all about diversity these days. Well, you don't hardly get more underrepresented than "dead," so I figured we were doing them a favor, even if they didn't know it.
"Victor" came to live with me in my little A-frame back in Possum Holler, east of Kingsport, though we didn't let on about that, because people want to think NASCAR drivers live glamorous lives. Anyhow, we didn't spend much time there, because we had to make up for lost time in the racing shop.
We decided to take it easy on him at first—no fan meet and greets, and no TV. The press interviews were the easy part. Sportswriters expect cliches and platitudes from the drivers, and in these touchy times only a fool would give them anything else. I had to explain that to the Champ, but once he caught on, he could talk piffle with the best of them: "Like to thank the sponsor and the good folks at Trampas-LeFay for all their support. We just never got it to work quite right. Maybe next week."
Even dead people can manage to say that.
Nobody had to teach the Champ how to drive again. Some of the technicalities of race cars might have changed in fifteen years, but the sport itself was still a cross between ballet and mud wrestling, and the Champ was still a master at the technique. They're still mostly racing at the same old tracks, so he knew all his old tricks at them, as well: how to pass at Bristol, where to speed up in Turn Two at Darlington, and which groove to run for speed at Talladega.
Of course, we still had to work mechanical magic to give our driver a competitive car to work with, and, considering how many millions of dollars the other teams had that we didn't, I almost wished I'd conjured up a rich sponsor instead of a dead driver, but what with one thing and another, we did manage to get him into the race at Charlotte.
The Champ still knew how to drive, and we did a thing or two to the car that they didn't catch us at, and so his qualifying lap was good enough to get us in at a starting position of twenty-eighth out of forty-three positions starting the race. We didn't figure we had a chance to win, but they pay more than fifty thousand dollars even to the guy who finishes in last place, and that was money we needed to stay in business. We didn't expect a top-ten finish.
We didn't get one, either, because no shoestring operation can compete with the wind-tu
"What the hell's the matter with him?" Kit Porter, our beleaguered crew chief, who is better than our record would have you believe, was whiter than the ghost we were currently employing.
I came to all the races to look after the Champ, but since I wasn't part of the pit crew, I lingered behind the wall, making myself useful in case they needed any repairs midrace, beyond the usual repair resource: duct tape. I had been checking out the next set of tires, and not watching the track, when Kit stormed up to me, wanting to know what was wrong with our driver.
"He's letting cars pass him like he was standing still. Every time a car comes near him, he scoots out of the way like he's terrified. Like this was his very first race."
I shook my head. That certainly didn't sound like the Champ. He didn't win a NASCAR championship by being a shrinking violet. Fifteen years ago I had seen him beating and banging his way down the track, racing against Dale Earnhardt himself, and he never gave an inch. The Champ had gone into the wall so many times he could probably tell you which speedway he was at by the taste of the dust. Why would he suddenly lose his nerve?
I walked over to the wall to observe the progress of the race. It isn't easy to watch a race from the infield, especially at a mile-and-a-half track like Lowe's Motor Speedway. I could only see the cars for the few seconds that they swept past our pit stall on their way to the next turn in the oval, but that few seconds was enough to show me that Kit Porter had been right about our driver: He was dodging the other cars for all he was worth, and it was costing him track position with every second, as one by one even the slowest cars started whizzing past him.
"What's the matter with him?" asked Kit. "You'd think he'd never raced before."
I mulled that over. The Champ was certainly no rookie, but that body he was currently inhabiting had belonged to Eddie Taylor . . . who had died in a head-on collision. I wondered if somewhere deep in the muscles of that body was an ingrained fear of car wrecks. He sure had a right to feel that way, but I couldn't let that memory wreck our race team. I had an idea, though. NASCAR teams are in constant radio contact with their driver. They can advise him on tire wear and fuel mileage, and up on top of the grandstands a spotter warns him of trouble ahead or a car gaining on him out of his line of sight. So I could talk to the Champ, but since team frequencies are made public, I would have had a lot more listeners than just the Champ. "Give me a headset," I told Kit Porter. "Our driver needs a pep talk more than he needs a spotter right now. And put us on a closed-cha
Kit Porter handed me his own headset. "Whatever works," he said. "But make it quick."
I nodded, and took a deep breath while I worked out what to say. I sure hoped the cha
Silence.
I tried again. "What I am telling you is that the body driving the car is afraid of dying in a car wreck. And that body seems to have a pretty good memory of what that was like. Next caution, bring it in for a pit stop. There's one thing we can try. Eight wheels corner better than four. You know what I mean?"
I heard a grunt in my headset, and the Champ said, "Yeah."
I went over and tapped the crew chief on the shoulder. "I told him to come in for a pit stop next caution. When he does, disable his brakes."
"What?"
"He needs to relearn racing as a contact sport. Do it." Eight wheels corner better than four. I was referring to the move in racing when you speed up on the inside of the car you are passing by, not slowing down going into the turn. You are, of course, going too fast to make the turn, so in the middle of the turn your car slides up the track, flush into the car that you are passing. Using that other car as a crutch keeps you safely on track and allows you to complete the pass. The problem is that sometimes doing that puts the other car into the wall.
The Champ had cut his teeth on that maneuver, but the other passenger in our driver's body would be appalled at the thought of deliberately hitting another car. I figured if we took out his brakes, he wouldn't have any choice.
A dozen laps later, one of the rookies ran out of talent and hit the wall on Turn Two, which gave us that caution lap we were waiting for. The Champ pulled in, the pit crew swarmed all over the car, and, per my instructions, they kinked the two front brake lines.