St. Dale. Sharyn McCrumb
it with fascinating characters, and repeats the melody through subplot after subplot until readers are bewitched.”
—Spartanburg (SC) Herald Journal
“McCrumb draws you close, makes you care, leaves you with the sense, sought for in most fiction, that what has gone on has not been invention but experience recaptured.”
—Los Angeles Times
Also by Sharyn McCrumb
Ghost Riders
The Songcatcher
The Ballad of Frankie Silver
The Rosewood Casket
She Walks These Hills
The Hangman’s Beautiful Daughter
If Ever I Return, Pretty Peggy-O
Foggy Mountain Breakdown and Other Stories
The PMS Outlaws
If I’d Killed Him When I Met Him
MacPherson’s Lament
Missing Susan
The Windsor Knot
Paying the Piper
Highland Laddie Gone
Lovely in Her Bones
Sick of Shadows
Zombies of the Gene Pool
Bimbos of the Death Sun
SHARYN McCRUMB
St. Dale
KENSINGTON BOOKS
KENSINGTON PUBLISHING CORP.
http://www.kensingtonbooks.com
To Jane Hicks—the voice in my headset
There are only three real sports: mountain climbing, bullfighting, and automobile racing.
—Ernest Hemingway
Contents
Chapter I
Midnight in Mooresville
Chapter II
The Also-Ran
Chapter III
Tri-Cities
Chapter IV
The Knight’s Tale
Chapter V
Richard Petty in Heaven
Chapter VI
The Bride’s Tale
Chapter VII
An F-14 in a Clothes Dryer
Chapter VIII
Racing With the Angels
Chapter IX
May the Best Man Win
Chapter X
Circus Maximus
Chapter XI
Paycheck to Paycheck
Chapter XII
Martinsville
Chapter XIII
The Garage Mahal
Chapter XIV
The Rock
Chapter XV
The Pass in the Grass
Chapter XVI
Talladega Ghosts
Chapter XVII
The Changing of the Guard
Chapter XVIII
The Mother Church of American Racing
Chapter XIX
The Lady in Black
Chapter XX
Checking Out
AUTHOR’S NOTE
How I Came to Write St. Dale
Chapter I
Midnight in Mooresville
It was not the end of the world, but you could see it from there.
She was an educated woman with a career and a social position to think of, so she lived in fear that people would somehow hear about what had happened to her in April, 2002, on the road to Mooresville. A supermarket tabloid might shanghai her into the role of prophetess of a new religious cult, and people she didn’t even know would point and stare at her, and think she was a fool. The thought made her shudder. So she only told a few friends about the peculiar incident, and those to whom she did mention it heard it in the guise of a funny story, open to some logical explanation. Of course, Justine had accepted it without batting an eye. Had been expecting it, she said. But then Justine’s vision of reality was pretty much at right angles to everybody else’s anyhow. She herself had stopped trying to make sense out of it, because she had the terrible feeling that Justine was right, and that what really happened was…what really happened.
“It was not the road to Damascus,” she would say, invoking Biblical precedent, “because I had just come from there. Damascus. Virginia, that is, a little town on the Tennessee line, a couple of hours north of where I ended up that night, broken down on the side of a country road en route to Charlotte.”
It was not the end of the world, but you could see it from there. She had pulled over to the side of the road and flipped on the visor light to look at the map. Now the engine wouldn’t start, her cell phone had no signal, and the dark road was deserted. She hadn’t seen a house for miles. In this landscape of pine woods and barbed-wired pastures, streetlights were nonexistent, which was part of the problem. She must have missed a road sign somewhere back there when she got off I-77.
She was pretty sure she was somewhere north of the city, maybe in Iredell County, which wasn’t where she was supposed to be at all. By now she ought to be closer to the city limits of Charlotte, but the sky was dark—no bleed-in of artificial light from the sprawling city—so that was past praying for. It was her own fault, though. What kind of an idiot would have taken Justine’s advice about a shortcut in the middle of the night? Justine, for heaven’s sake, who could get lost in a revolving door. Now here she was, trying to follow a set of directions that were vague at best. (“Turn left after the yellow house, only I think they painted it.”) Oh, why had she listened? There wasn’t much traffic on I-77 in the middle of the night, for heaven’s sake. If she’d stayed on the Interstate, she’d be home by now.
Well, at least Justine had been right about that Oriental rug outlet in Virginia. It had been a great place, cheaper than any place she’d found in Charlotte. Of course, that was exactly the sort of thing that Justine invariably was right about. They called Justine “The Shopping Fairy,” because if you wanted designer purses, Italian tile for your bathroom, or an 18th-century American candle stand, Justine could tell you three places to find it and which one was the best deal. Just don’t ask her about more mundane matters, like how much to tip the waitress, the name of the Speaker of the House, or how to find Charlotte when it’s too dark to read road signs.
She ought to turn off the radio to save the battery, but Garth Brooks was singing “The Dance,” and she couldn’t bear to cut it short. Another two minutes wouldn’t matter. Later, Justine would tell her the significance of that song, marveling that she didn’t know it already, but she didn’t. That intersection of those two roads of pop culture was simply not on her radar screen. She had not been thinking about him. She was sure of that.
She had not been afraid, because she’d