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getting friendly with them. One night in the summer of 1971, he buddied up to Wylie in the infield to inquire about the car. This was a few months after Wylie and Maddy had moved into a clapboard cottage on her father’s dairy farm, trying to save for the baby. At the time Wylie was working as a mechanic at the Ford dealership, but on Thursday nights he’d been moonlighting at the track, picking up a few extra bucks clearing wrecks for an outfit called AtlasTowing. Mostly the job was an excuse to watch the races now that Maddy wasn’t driving anymore—that and a chance to talk up the Fairlane to the other drivers. After all the blood and sweat he’d poured into that car, after all the races he and Maddy had won, he hated the thought of selling it, but they needed the cash.
    Wylie didn’t resent Maddy or the baby or even the prospect of fatherhood in general, though it was true, here in the homestretch, that he’d started second-guessing himself. Every time Maddy grabbed his hand and held it to her stomach (and she did this constantly) he was more convinced that he didn’t have what it took, that he lacked the enthusiasm or patience for kids—in short, that he’d make a half-assed father, no better than his own, the kind of man who ends up ruining his family or leaving it.
    When Lester ambled over, Maddy was holed up inside the wrecker reading Dr. Spock while Wylie watched the late models take practice laps. Lester offered him a beer from the six-pack dangling on his finger, then tapped his can against Wylie’s.
    â€œTo fatherhood,” he said. “To babies that sleep all night and look like their daddies.”
    Lester’s wife, Gladys, was pregnant, too, eight months to Maddy’s six, but Wylie didn’t feel like talking babies with a guy who acted as though they were just another notch on his belt. In fact, he didn’t much feel like talking babies at all. When Lester started telling him about the fancy cigars he’d bought for the big day, Wylie tuned him out and found himself staring at the wrecker’s door, the hand-painted silhouette of Atlas straining under the weight of the globe.
    By the time Lester finally got around to asking about the car, Gladys had started back from the concession stand witha milkshake, picking her way through the muddy infield. She had the glazed-over look in her eyes that Maddy was starting to get—like she was so deep in her own private babyland that any minute she might wander off or float away—but the second the mothers-to-be recognized each other, they both clicked into focus. Maddy hauled herself out of the truck, the two of them suddenly carrying on like long-lost sisters, though before that night they’d been nothing more than casual friends. After a minute or so, Lester horned in, trying to make nice with Maddy. He pointed at her stomach and asked her did she have a little Richard Petty in there.
    â€œIt’s a girl,” Maddy said, an idea she’d been clinging to since the day she learned she was pregnant.
    â€œAh.” Lester crushed his beer can and tossed it in the grass. “Future race queen.”
    Maddy stood there with her arms crossed, staring Lester down until he understood he’d put his foot in his mouth.
    â€œLouise Smith, then!” he said. “Ethel Flock!” These were old-time lady drivers, a couple of Maddy’s heroes. She let him off the hook with a thin smile and turned back to Gladys, leaving Wylie and Lester to talk money.
    Lester wanted the Fairlane at half the asking price. Wylie almost told him where to stick it, but no one else was interested and Maddy’s due date was coming up fast; half was better than nothing at all. At the end of the night, worn down by Lester’s haggling, Wylie finally caved. They shook on it, Lester said he’d call as soon as he got the cash together, and that was the last Wylie heard from him.
    Over the next few