~
George sat in the coach and wrung his hands. “Sir, I really think we should sit outside. This ain’t proper.”
“I’ll be the judge of proper, George.”
Bertha said, “Let the man be, George. I like it in here.”
They rode and rocked in the coach as John spoke about the farm, life in Newport, and their future.
“George, you and your family can work for me, and I don’t care as slaves or free, but you all work off your purchase price, and then you will be free.”
George shook his head as if to clear it. Hard to believe. “Sir, I can’t tell you enough what this means to me. And we will earn our freedom, you won’t worry about us. But what I would like to do is fight in the war. I believe we slaves need to fight for our cause. I appreciate what the white man does for us, but we need to do all we can do, too.”
John peered at George. “Seriously?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Bertha? What about you?”
“Me and the kids will work for you while he’s gone.”
John rocked and stared at his feet.
“Sir, you let me fight in this war, give us our freedom, and we will work for you for the rest of our lives.”
John held out his hand. “You got a deal.”
George shook it. “Deal.”
~
August, 1863
John Sellers heard the dogs yelping and baying and knew a guest approached. He opened the door as a pair of Union soldiers rode to the rail at the porch and dismounted.
This can’t be good. He leaned back through the doorway. “Bertha. I think you better come here.”
The men dismounted and tied the horses. One unloaded a gun, a bag and the other grabbed an American flag. They walked up the steps as Bertha came through the door and howled.
The men stood side by side. “We’re here to see Bertha, wife of George.”
“No, no! Please, God, no.” She shook her head and knelt on the porch.
John pulled her to her feet. “Easy, Bertha. Come on.” To the men, “Give us a minute.” He held her and she sobbed into his chest. “Okay. Okay. Be strong.” He rubbed her back and the back of her head. She took a deep shuddering breath and faced the soldiers.
The blond man, who looked like a boy, took a deep breath. “Ma’am, we are sorry to inform you that George was lost at the Gettysburg battlefield.”
She looked up into the sky, her eyes searching. “So he’s lost.”
He cleared his throat. “Um, a casualty, ma’am. He died in battle.”
The children came out to check on mom. She shooed them back into the house. “Go on. We’ll be inside soon.” Took a deep breath. “Tell me.”
The bearded man spoke up. “George fought bravely. He held the line during battle and fought with strength and fortitude for ten hours. Just before nightfall he took a shot to the neck. The troops carried him off, but he fell to his injuries within the hour.”
The blond man spoke. “When in medical care, he said to tell you, his wife, that he loves you and you are the light of his life. He also said he’d be waiting for you on the other side. He gave me this, too.” He handed her a note.
“I can’t read.”
John held out his hand. “I can read it for you.” She handed it to him.
He cleared his throat. “My darling Bertha. If you are reading this, I am probably gone. Please don’t cry for me. I fought for freedom for you and the children and other slaves all over this country. Hopefully our fight will win freedom for every black man woman and child in this great country.
“I also want to give you my Bible, which Mrs. Wentworth gave me. Private Goodell read it to me regularly.” John looked up, questioning.
The blond soldier held up his hand. “Me. I wrote the letter for him, too.”
“He read Psalm 23 to me. ‘Yeah, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for thou art with me.’ and many other verses that have given me comfort. I hope they will comfort you, too. Hopefully you get the Bible and maybe Mr. Sellers can read it to you, too.” John stopped and drew a breath.
Goodell handed the Bible to Bertha. “Thank you,” she said.
The soldiers remounted and left. John held Bertha. “I’m so sorry for your loss.”
She wiped her tears. “Will you read this to me?”
“Every day, Bertha.” He watched the soldiers ride away, dust billowing behind the horses. “Every day.”
North Carolina
I’m one of those lucky guys whose wife loves NASCAR more than me. She seldom misses a Sprint Cup race, and watches the Nationwide, too. Visiting the NASCAR Hall of Fame was no sacrifice for either of us; together, we thoroughly enjoyed it.
GRAMPS—SOUNDS LIKE CRAMPS
The family entered the building and I stayed back as far as possible. I did not want to be seen with them. Neither of my parents know how to dress; my little brother is a goober, and my younger sister an embarrassment. Since Dylan is twelve and Ashley eight, they probably can’t help it. But my parents? They both wore NASCAR jackets: gaudy red, blue, and gold on him and black, red, and green hers. Disgusting. Gaudy pictures of stupid cars and racers’ images covered most of the body of the jackets, every other space bore sponsors’ logos.
But the worst, most mortifying individual in the group was Gramps. Rhymes with cramps.
He wore a button-up sweater, unbuttoned, the green thing hanging limp on each side, draping over his gray slacks, a belt around his middle, just below his chest, held together with a huge belt buckle, with ‘NASCAR’ engraved on it. Capped it all with a tucked-in yellow polo shirt. Ugh. His white hair stuck out both sides of a black baseball cap with the number ‘43’ on it. Worse, his grey-white eyebrows were so long he could braid them. They have all embarrassed me one too many times these sixteen years. I hung back.
For weeks, everyone talked about seeing the NASCAR Hall of Fame. We live in North Carolina, the stock car capitol of the world, and I couldn’t care less. So why couldn’t I stay home? Mom didn’t trust me. Oh, she sugar coated it with, “Justin, please. It’ll be fun. Do a family thing. Learn a thing or two.” I did not care. Leave me home with my games. But no, I had to struggle to stay as far away from them as possible without leaving the building.
We got cards to enter and stopped at kiosks to program them. The stupid kiosks asked me questions.
Name?
It wasn’t going to let me in without answering. Right. I’d enter ‘Justin Wilson.’ They’d sell it to a bunch of rednecks and I’d get ads for chewing tobacco for the rest of my life.
I entered, ‘wanna behome’
Email address? ‘
[email protected]’
Favorite driver? Great. I had to pick.
“Pick Slider Gilbert.” I jumped. Gramps stood behind me, smelling like a cigar, Ben Gay and Old Spice. Rather than make it an issue, I chose Slider Gilbert. We entered the Hall of Fame.
A huge video screen showed wrecks, big ones, hard ones, multiple cars. I’ve seen a million of them on Grand Theft Auto, a game I’ve played at Billy Hebert’s house. No way my mom was letting me play that. She thought. Billy and me played all the time.
The family was spread out, Gramps watching the video, Mom and Dad looking at a wrecked car. Dylan hopped up and down in front of me. “Come on. Let’s look at some wrecks.”
“Go away.”
“Okay.” He took off and went under the rope to get in the wrecked car. And then came the security guy to haul him out.
Embarrassing.
This thing was going to take all day, as Gramps stopped to read every plaque, every sign. He would call Mom or Dad over and point something out, they would discuss the nuances of the body, the tires, the driver, whatever. I found a bench on the other side of the room and sat. Please ignore me! But no, Mom waved me over and we went up the ramp into a round room. A driver’s Hall of Fame, I guess.
The top screen played the life of Darrel Waltrip. I recognized him, an annou
ncer. Boogity boogity boogity, the most idiotic statement known to man. Next it switched to an owner, some guy. I found another bench. Everyone else wandered around, looking at cars, trophies, and drivers’ suits. A woman walked into the room and stared at Gramps. She let out a squeal and ran up to him.
“You’re Scooter Wilson,” she gushed. I knew him as Gramps, and his first name was Tony. Somehow he got the nickname Scooter. She shook his hand and smiled, acted like an idiot, then ran out. Huh?
Next she came back with a half dozen people. “This is Scooter Wilson.” She almost knelt at his feet. What was up with that? Next they brought out pens and asked him to autograph anything… jackets, shirts, papers, even their skin.
What was the deal with Gramps-rhymes-with-cramps?
The owner video ended and over the speakers a woman’s voice announced that Scooter Wilson would be interviewed and signing autographs in the Inspection Area.
Maybe when Mom told me about today I should have listened.
We walked to the Inspection Area, where a stock car sat with an aluminum rack hung over it, apparently to lower onto the car to check its compliance.
Gramps walked around to the back side of a small table, sat with a guy, and the interview started. The usual stuff.
“How’d you get started?”
“Outrunning cops while running moonshine.”
Huh? Gramps?
They talked about NASCAR for a while, then Gramps got into it, you could say. Probably because we were in the inspection place.
“Well, NASCAR wanted the cars to have minimum weights. Everyone tried to get their cars as light as possible. We got ours four hundred pounds below the minimum and then filled the roll bars with buckshot. Then we put a trap door under it, so out on the track the driver would trip the door and the car that passed for minimum weight suddenly had an advantage.”
I thought I would have to physically pick up my jaw. Gramps? I wrestled with conflicting emotions: shock at his flagrant breaking of rules, and marveling at the clever idea.
“Flipper Jones brought the car in to the first pit stop and I yelled at him, ‘Did you open the trap door?’ He was all hyped up from the race so he just reached down and tripped it. Buckshot blew out the bottom of the car and the entire pit crew fell over one another, sliding on the bbs like they skated on a sheet of ice. The car slid around trying to get out; I thought it would slide into the pit wall.”
The crowd roared with laughter.
“Another time we wanted to have a fuel advantage, so we ran forty feet of fuel line inside the frame and roll cage, giving us a more than a half-gallon advantage. Of course NASCAR figured it out eventually. But we had a saying, ‘It ain’t cheatin’ if you don’t get caught.’”
He spoke with a twinkle in his eyes as he reminisced about the good old days.
“I don’t know this man,” I mumbled. I learned he won the season championship as a driver, and then later as a crew chief. No one else ever did that. When we left the building three hours later, I knew I wanted to get to know Gramps—I wish I could call him Scooter—better.
~
“Who wants pie?” Mom set the pumpkin pie in the center of the table.
Dylan shouted, “I do. I do.”
I smacked his head. “It’s a rhetorical question.”
“What’s rhetorical?”
“Eat your pie.”
Nothing like Mom’s homemade pie with whipped cream topping to finish a Thanksgiving feast. I kept glancing at Gramps, eating in almost total silence, watching and listening to the others. There was a guy who had so much history, but we ignored him. I tried to think of a good question, but every one sounded stupid. The meal ended and everyone pitched together (that is, us kids) and did the dishes. Dylan and Ashley actually helped a bit, surprise.
Afterward, the family sat in the living room, Gramps in his recliner—his territory—the remote within reach. He opened the drawer of the end table and pulled out a big cigar.
Mom got up from the couch. “Dad, please no. Not in the house.”
“It’s my house.”
“I know, Dad, but the kids... please.”
He shrugged and stuck the stogie in his shirt pocket.
I saw my opportunity and screwed up my courage.
“Hey, Gramps, you want to show me around the shop?”
He looked at me to see if I was joking. “Sure.” He struggled to his feet and walked, hunched over, to the back door. “We’re going out to the shop,” he announced.
“Can I come?” Ashley ran up and grabbed Gramps’ leg.
“No!” I shouted. “I mean, no, Ashley. Not this time.”
She trounced off frowning, her arms crossed over her chest. Gramps winked at me.
With fallen leaves crunching underfoot, we walked to the beat-up old barn, now a shop. Gramps lived on this spread for his entire life, and Mom said since Grandma passed, it was getting away from him. She said he’d have to find a little house soon.
He slid the door back and hit the lights, a grid of fluorescents that lit up the place like daytime… or more. A dozen cars sat, some gleaming under the white light, others dusty, some broken and sad looking. One under a tarp. He pulled out the cigar and fired up a gold lighter. The smoke drifted around his head and ascended.
“What you want to see?”
“I don’t know. I just... I thought you might want to smoke that cigar.”
He patted my shoulder, a heavy hand. “Smart man.”
He called me man. Cool.
Now what? We stood in the center of the space, surrounded by cars, tools, signs, and memorabilia. What could I say? “I didn’t know you were such a hero until the Hall of Fame.”
He harrumphed. “I didn’t either. Until they elected me. Just a worn-out old driver and car builder.” He took a couple of puffs, meditating. “The drivers get all the credit. But without a fast car? Most of the time if you watch an interview of a winner, he’ll say, ‘The team put together this great car, I knew it was a top five car,’ or something like that. Without us they’re nothing.” Puff puff. “I won the championship, got all the credit and accolades, toured and lived like a rock star. Meanwhile the crew stayed behind and made the cars better for the next year. I decided I wanted to build the cars. That’s where winning starts. We built cars, got every inch of horsepower and suspension we could, and low and behold, we won another championship the next year. That meant more to me than driving the car.” Puff puff.
He walked to the workbench and rotated the handle of the vise. “We built some great cars. Mostly Dick Parker’s. He won six championships. Later it was Preston Gardner. That man could drive.” He let the handle drop on the vise and it tinked as it stopped.
“What are these cars?” I turned to the rows of cars along each side, pointed toward the center.
“Oh, stuff I picked up during my life.” He laid his hand on the fender of a light blue Dodge. Not the hand with the cigar. “This one’s going to the Hall of Fame. Won nineteen races, it did.” He slid his hand along the fender and over the roof, like a breath of fresh wind over a meadow of flowers. “Lot of memories. Lots of good times.”
I walked over to a black car, no stickers on it, but the engine erupted out of the center of the hood, like it rose up there, a boil of horsepower. “What’s this?”
He stuck the cigar in his mouth, set his hands on the windowsill and peered inside. “A gift. We won the championship in ’68, and Jim Bedford gave me this car. I been working on it.” He stood and leaned against the door. “Funny, we spent decades working on horsepower and don’t get me wrong, it’s super important, but later I got to designing handling, suspension. And this car sticks like glue. This car is a box of fun, I tell you.” He set the smoke on the workbench, grabbed a towel and wiped the hood.
“Want to go for a ride?”
“In that thing?” Could we? “Is it legal?”
“It’s got the plates and lights, yeah.”
“Sure.” Now this could be f
un. Maybe like Grand Theft Auto. A little.
He pulled a pack of gum from his pocket, white and red. ‘Beeman’s.’ I don’t know where he got it, I’d never seen that gum anywhere. I took it, unwrapped it, and we chewed gum together. It tasted wonderful—like licorice.
“Every race day, the team would pass around the Beeman’s and we chewed it all day. Together, you know? Kind of a superstition. Nobody wouldn’t chew Beeman’s, afraid they’d jinx the team.”
Right then I wished I could have been on that team.
He opened a lockbox on the wall and fished out a set of keys. Got in the car and hit the starter. It groaned and stopped. He got back out. “Well, this is embarrassing. ‘The great Scooter Wilson’ and the battery’s dead.” He unclipped some hooks on the hood and raised it up, then found a neon box on wheels and attached two leads to the battery. Jumped in and fired it up. The car rumbled to life. Okay, that’s an understatement. The earth shook. The engine loped, like it didn’t want to run.
“Is it okay?”
“Oh, yes. It just doesn’t like running slow. Don’t we all?” He looked over the engine, then dropped the hood and latched it. Looked over the car, I guess to see if everything was okay.
“Hop in.”
I got in and shut the door. The engine loomed in front of us and shook like a race horse at the gate.
“Put on your seat belt.”
I reached back and couldn’t find it.
“It’s a five point.”
Five point. I looked at him, uncomprehending.
“Watch.” He flicked two belts from the top of the seat, two from the sides and one between his legs. Stacked the metal parts onto one another, slapped over a metal clip, and pulled them tight. I struggled to keep up. It worked like Ashley’s car seat when she was a baby.
“No, the other ones first.” He pointed and I got it. He yanked my straps tight. Really tight.
He snapped the throttle and the engine erupted. The entire car shook, like a dog held back from chasing a bone. I’ve never felt such power and we hadn’t even moved yet. The unburned gasoline—or whatever it was—burned my eyes. He slipped the car into gear and we rolled. As we neared the house, Mom ran out, waving for us to stop.
“What’re you doing?”
“Going for a drive.”
“In this?”
“Yep.”
“Be careful”
Gramps snicked the car in gear and took off before she finished her sentence. We rumbled to the highway and he checked each gauge. He turned right and accelerated, the car shoving me back in the seat. “Whoa.”