Once Around the Track by Sharyn McCrumb Read Free Book Online

components and get our people to overhaul them. That ought to work.” It won’t win you a championship, she was thinking, but with reasonable skill on the engineers’ part and a halfway decent wheel man, it ought to keep you in the game.
    “And you’ve had your application cleared by NASCAR? Got assigned a number and all?”
    They nodded. “Apparently you can’t pick your own number,” one of them remarked.
    “Well, no. Teams are assigned numbers. Some of them not in use are still already taken,” Tuggle explained.
    “We wanted number 7.”
    “Taken,” said Tuggle. “Both 7 and 07; both. Why did you want it in particular?”
    They glanced at each other uneasily. “Well, there’s a feminine product, Monistat 7 for yeast infections, and we thought—”
    Tuggle’s eyes glazed over as she tried to picture Badger Jenkins as the spokesperson for a yeast infection product. He’d have to carry pepper spray to the drivers’ meetings. Thank God that number was taken by Robby Gordon, who already had a sponsor. She’d have paid money to see Robby Gordon’s face if the yeast infection people had approached him about sponsoring his car.
    “Twenty-eight would have been a good number, too!” said Diane Hodges, the former Miss Texas. “I think that pharmaceutical company with the birth control pill would have come on board if we could have got that number.”
    “That was Davey Allison’s number,” said Tuggle. “And Ernie Irvan’s.” Both Daytona 500 winners: one of them dead and the other so badly injured he’d never race again. No, you wouldn’t see the number 28 back on a NASCAR track anytime soon, and she was glad of it. She wouldn’t want to see anything disrespectful done with that number. She didn’t want to jinx Badger, either. Repressing a shudder, she said, “So what’s our number?”
    Christine Berenson said, “NASCAR assigned us the number 86.”
    Tuggle tried not to wince. Not an auspicious number in Cup racing. It had been used fewer than a dozen times in the past thirty years, and never with any notable success.
    “Isn’t 86 a slang term for terminating something?” asked one of the women.
    “Maybe they want to eighty-six a woman’s team,” another one said.
    “It’s just a number,” said Christine, with the weary patience of one who has had this discussion often. “Randomly assigned, I expect.”
    “It’s okay,” said Tuggle. “It’s as good a number as any. Better than some. At least it’s not a number whose past would overshadow you, like…oh…22.” 22. Now that was a number to conjure with. The legendary Fireball Roberts, who had died after a fiery wreck at Charlotte in the sixties; country singer Marty Robbins, who used to try to come in second because he didn’t need the prize money; the respected and popular modern drivers Ricky Rudd and Bobby Labonte; and Daytona 500 winners Bobby Allison and Ward Burton. They all had driven the 22. She’d hate to have to compete with that reputation in her first season. At least it wouldn’t take much to eighty-six the previous reputation of number 86. She said, “So if you’ve got enough money to buy engines and chassis, you must have a primary sponsor lined up.”
    “We do. A pharmaceutical company has developed a pill for women—you know, like Viagra. It’s supposed to—”
    “I know what Viagra does,” said Tuggle, hoping to forestall the lecture. “For women, huh? What’s this one called?”
    “Vagenya.”
    “Virginia?”
    Christine smiled. “Yes, it does sound like the way Southerners pronounce the name of the state, doesn’t it? Actually, I think the makers may have been playing with the words ‘virginity’ and ‘vagina,’ but who knows where they come up with these peculiar names for drugs nowadays? Anyhow, since it is a women’s team, the company decided that we would be a good place to advertise their product. So our sponsor is Vagenya, and our colors are royal purple and