The Champion (Racing on the Edge)

by Stahl, Shey

  As a racer, Jimi couldn’t just walk away. Not without regrets.

  “Hey Jameson,” Tommy yelled from the back of the pit bike Lane was driving. “Can I get a ride with you back to Mooresville tonight?”

  “Yeah,” Setting my empty beer down, I jumped up to push Lane off the bike only to have him roost me in the face with gravel.

  “Asshole!” I yelled after him.

  He laughed and grinned the same grin he had when he was three.

  Lane was quite the racer on dirt bikes. He was racing in the GNCC which was the Can-AM Grand National Cross Country series, America’s premier off-road racing series. They ran a 13-round series that race on a wide variety of terrain that included hills, woods, mud, dirt, rocks and motocross sections. There a test of survival and speed, two things any Riley was good at.

  He’d just won the XC1 Pro Bike Class this year and had a very promising career ahead of him.

  He circled around the pits and came back by me as I was walking to my car.

  “How’s that dirt taste?” He smarted off with a smug grin.

  “How’s that car taste?” I asked just as smugly as I kept my eyes forward so he wouldn’t notice the amusement. He was hardly paying attention.

  “What ca—” he smacked right into the side of my dad’s truck sending him flying over the hood.

  “That car,”

  Walking around the side, I laughed at him sprawled on the ground.

  “Not such a hotshot now...are you?”

  Glaring, Lane didn’t say anything.

  Axel ended up partying all night with his friends and cousins while the old guys went home to our beds. I tried staying up when Axel won the USAC Triple Crown last year and ended up lying in bed for two days straight with the worst hangover ever. I was not meant to be a party animal any longer; those days had passed me by.

  Funny thing was that I was okay with that. I had something much better waiting for me in bed. I may not be able to party like a rock star any longer but I had no problems showing my wife just how much life my camshaft still had.

  I was able to sleep in my own bed that night before I left for Homestead to finish out the season. Sway was packed and ready to go with Casten and Arie when my phone wouldn’t stop ringing.

  Glancing through the numerous emails from Alley and Emma there were about ten calls from Justin and four from Tommy.

  I panicked thinking something happened to Axel last night. Trying to keep myself calm and guarded from Sway and the kids, I excused myself and stepped back inside the house to call Justin.

  He answered his voice rough and drained from any emotion.

  “Did you call me?”

  “Yeah, did you hear about Ryder?” there was a distance in his voice that I hadn’t heard in a long time. At least not since the plane crash.

  “No—why?” I stopped for a second and then panicked. Ryder wasn’t always the best influence on Axel and had gotten him in trouble on more than one occasion. “Hey, is Axel with you?”

  “No, he’s with Lily celebrating. I heard something about them going to Jacksonville.”

  “Oh, all right. What happened to Ryder?” Ryder was still racing in the USAC sprint car division and swore up and down this was his last season.

  There was a long pause before he mumbled. “He wrecked at Perris Auto Speedway last night...” another long pause. “He died this morning from head injuries.”

  I felt a sharp stabbing pain in my chest.

  “Are you serious? Please tell me you’re not serious.”

  I couldn’t understand why again.

  Why did this kept happening? Couldn’t we catch a break?

  “Justin,” I begged. “Jesus, please tell me you’re not serious?”

  “It’s not something I’d joke about, Jameson.”

  I didn’t say anymore.

  What could I say? Sorry. No, sorry wouldn’t do this justice. Justin and I grew up with him and Tyler. We made our way through the ranks together. Sure most of us went different directions but still, a bond had formed back then that was still there today and always would be.

  We have always known the dangers. But there was also something about those dangers that urged us to put it all on the line. The danger fueled the adrenaline.

  Justin said he was flying to Knoxville where Ryder had been living for the past few years to see his parents. I couldn’t though. I had to be in Homestead tonight.

  “Give his parents my best.” I told Justin before hanging up. With the Outlaws finishing up their season last night, he was free to go if he wanted.

  “I will. I haven’t said anything to Axel. I thought you should be the one to tell him. Ryder’s dad just called me about an hour ago which means it will be hitting the news any minute now. You might want to call him.”

  “Thanks Justin...I will call him.”

  Sway walked in just as I hung up with her cell phone in hand.

  She held the phone out. “Axel is looking for you.” Her eyes glazed with tears as she eyed me cautiously. She knew.

  “I’m so sorry Jameson.” She offered wrapping her tiny arms around me.

  Inhaling a deep breath, I pulled back to look at her. “It’s all right.”

  My eyes focused on hers.

  She didn’t even need to say it back, I already knew that she wanted to comfort me, tell me everything would be all right.

  “I love you.” She told me running her consoling hand down my cheek.

  Leaning into her touch, I dropped my head to pull her into a hug when Casten came inside.

  “What’s the deal?” he threw his arms up. “I thought we were leaving.”

  “Yeah, let’s go.” Arie added stepping inside behind him. “It’s hot in the car.”

  The kids took in our embrace and looked between each other knowing something was wrong.

  “Is Axel okay?” Arie asked her brow scrunched in confusion and nervousness.

  “Yes sweetie, Axel is fine.” Sway told her walking over to them. I nodded when her eyes met mine and then slipped inside the bathroom down the hall to compose myself a little. Though I didn’t cry, I needed a few minutes before I told Axel.

  I heard Sway through the door telling Arie and Casten what happened.

  “Ryder wrecked last night at Perris...he died this morning.”

  Neither one of the kids said anything. Just like me, they knew the dangers.

  I must have sat in that bathroom for a half hour just staring at the wall trying to find the courage to call Axel. The problem with it was that over time, he and Ryder had shaped a bond together. They’d raced in the same division for close to ten years now. Ryder was not only a fellow racer of his, but someone he looked up to. Just coming off a World Final win last night, this was not something I wanted to tell him. But I also didn’t want him to hear it on the news or from someone else.

  He answered on about the fourth ring with a groggy voice. “What’s up dad?”

  “How are you feeling buddy? Get any sleep last night?”

  “Yeah, I got a couple hours once we got to Jacksonville. I was gonna head to Perris today though. Shane sent me a text that Ryder got in a wreck there last night. I wanted to check on him.”

  I couldn’t get the words out before he asked.

  “Are you still there, dad?”

  “Yeah...uh buddy...Ryder didn’t make it. He died this morning from head injuries.”

  There was a sharp intake of breath from him followed by a deep shaky sigh before he asked, “Are you sure?”

  “Yeah,”

  I wasn’t positive but from the sound of the television in our family room, it was all over ESPN right now.

  “You’re coming to Homestead, right?” Axel asked after a moment of silence. I could hear Lily crying in the background.

  “Yeah, I need to leave now.”

  “I’ll meet you guys there.”

  “You don’t have to come buddy. Just...enjoy some time off.”

  “No, I need to be with my fa
mily right now.” He said this as though it was the only option.

  I think I’ve said this before but on the track, everything is up for grabs. Tempers flared, friends you thought you had no longer gave you room and would do anything to get a jump on you.

  Off the track, the racing community is like your family. They’d do anything for anyone. That never changes. With the plane crash earlier in the year, we had all pulled together and did what we could do to go one and now with Ryder, I knew we’d go on but it didn’t stop it from hurting. We needed each other.

  When Bobby cheated on his wife, multiple times, and no one agreed with it. But when she left him, who do you think was there to offer him a beer?

  Yes, guys like me and Tate who were fellow racers.

  Or when Wade Simmons, a 19-year old rookie NASCAR driver was killed in Texas last year during happy hour. We all gathered together and made sure his young wife and little girl would forever be taken care of.

  Tate, Bobby, and me made sure that those families, who lost their loved ones in that plane crash in May, were taken care of and had nothing to worry about financially. The heartache alone would be enough. They didn’t need to worry about trying to make a home for their family and deal with that. I guess what I’m trying to say was that when tragedy strikes like this, we pull together. That to me was us being champions in our sport. Sure winning them defined the trophy but being a champion, there’s a difference between earning the title and being it.

  Now wasn’t any different. After the Homestead race, about five hundred fellow racers attended Ryder’s funeral in Knoxville to pay their respects for one the greatest drivers the USAC division had ever seen. Not only had Ryder won the USAC Triple Crown ten times, he’d won events like Chili Bowl Nationals eight times, Turkey Night, The Hut Hundred and the Cooper Classic just to name a few. Basically, every race I’d ever won in a sprint car or midget, Ryder Christensen had done too, only multiple times.

  As a racer, you never want to attend another racer’s funeral.

  Why?

  It made the possibility of it happening to you and your family real. You see it. You see the family suffering and know that it could have been you. Death is suddenly right there in your face, taunting you. It reminds you just how precariously you’re balancing on the edge of disaster.

  Here’s the thing about a warning to a race car driver. We do not listen.

  We never listen, or I shall say ninety percent of the time, we don’t listen. Just like an engine light in your car. Most wait until you’re left stranded on the side of the road cursing yourself for not taking that damn orange light seriously. We were no different when racing. Dangers, well, they didn’t exist to us.

  A few months after Ryder’s death, a little too late I thought, he was inducted into the National Midget Auto Racing Hall of Fame.

  Too bad he wasn’t around to give his standard humble response of, “Ah well, I’m not that good. I just know how to go fast.”

  I heard those exact words from him a lot over the nearly thirty years I had known Ryder.

  Losing a fellow was never easy, losing a friend was worse. I’d had to deal with a lot these days and every time it never got easier.

  Ryder’s death took the biggest hit on Casten actually. He quit racing all together after that. Casten never really showed as much interest as Axel did anyway but after Ryder, he just said it wasn’t fun for him anymore. He never set foot in a race car again. I think part of the reason was because the midget he’d been racing was one that Ryder owned. It didn’t feel right to him anymore.

  I respected his decision because like I said, if you’re scared...you got no business strapping into that car.

  For the past few years, it seemed our entire family was spread across the states and even into different countries for the holidays. But that Christmas after all the loss we’d suffered, everyone was home.

  This was both a good thing and a disaster.

  Sway loved having everyone together at our place. I couldn’t understand why it always had to occur at our house but I kept my mouth shut when I saw how happy my wife was.

  Christmas morning started simple enough. The kids opened presents with us and I gave Sway her gift, alone.

  For a while, I’d been thinking about what I would get a woman who has absolutely everything she could ever want. With the help of my mom, I found a picture of Sway and me when I won Knoxville Nationals during our summer together in 1997. Sway had always been fond of the picture and told me that was the night she knew she’d fallen in love with me. The picture was the one they had used on the front page of the newspaper the next morning but from slightly a different angle.

  I was still sitting inside my sprint car, leaning toward Sway who was leaning inside the car. Her arms were around my neck with one of my gloved hands touching the side of her face as we kissed. Up until a couple weeks ago, I’d never seen the picture.

  My first thought was: Wow, look how young we were.

  My second: She was just as beautiful twenty years later and as she was that night.

  Though my early years of racing were becoming vague, I still remember that race and the feeling that washed over me when I saw her waiting for me.

  She says that’s the night she realized she loved me and I think deep down that’s the night I realized what her being there for me meant. I wouldn’t say I knew I loved her then, because I did love her but my realization didn’t come until a few years later, having been too caught up in racing to see anything past that. But I did love her back then.

  Sway would never understand what that summer meant to me. You could say it was just the summer I made a name for myself but back then, it was more than that. We were all just a bunch of kids but you honestly couldn’t tell any of us that.

  For Christmas I had that picture transferred into a canvas painting and hung it above our bed as she slept that night. When she woke up Christmas morning, naturally we made love. Carefully I pulled her on top of me and she straddled me for a better angle. Her head tipped back and she saw the picture.

  “Holy shit Jameson. Where did that come from?”

  She remembered the picture. I was sure of that when a smile tugged at her lips. “That’s the night.” She whispered so softly I had to strain to hear her. “How did you...?”

  “My mom found it.” I told her leaning forward to sit up. My arms wrapped around her backside pulling her closer as my lips found her collarbone. “Merry Christmas honey,”

  “Merry Christmas to you too,” Her lips met mine with a sudden sense of urgency.

  Though we were good at the dyno testing and align boring, that morning in bed with my wife of the last twenty-one years was all about love. The love I’d felt for her our entire lives. It was slow, passionate and all that storybook love you read about. Over the years, I would like to think I provided Sway with the fairytale fantasy she wanted to remember—now I knew I had.

  There was no doubt looking at that painting, and then looking at us now, we had something note worthy of a fairytale.

  After we made our way back downstairs, Lily was there along with Kale, her younger brother who was convinced he would marry Arie someday. I had a feeling my headstrong little girl liked him but wasn’t ready for anything serious after what happened with Ricky a few years back.

  Kale cared about none of that and he claimed he’d wait for forever.

  Today was also Axel’s twenty-first birthday.

  And where was my son?

  He was flying home from Australia where he’d been racing for the past few months.

  Much like me at his age, he lived to race. And since our weather here didn’t permit winter racing, he flew to Australia where it was. I spent many winters racing down under but these days, I enjoyed the time away. Every January though, I was itching to get back to it. That’s how I knew retirement wasn’t near.

  Axel ended up arriving shortly before the rest of the family arrived with a big smile on his face when he saw Lily had made it.
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  The real fun began when my sister’s asshole children showed up with the Double Mint twins and they started hitting on Axel. Up until that night, I had never heard Lily swear.

  But when the Double Mint twins corned Axel, she got her point across.

  “Most guys may fall for your fake breasts and your bleached out hair but Axel’s different. Leave him alone.” She told them in a civilized manner. Listening to them around the corner in the family room, Sway, Casten and I stood in the kitchen.

  Casten giggled and that’s when Sway slapped her hand over his mouth and pulled him to her.

  “Shhh,” she urged trying to suppress her own giggles.

  “Maybe he needs more than just a small town girl from Hillsboro,” one of them snarked back.

  Lily laughed. “Yeah because being from LA is so much better.”

  Axel interrupted by then.

  “You guys should leave.” He told the girls.

  That caused an actual fight between him and his cousins that Aiden and I had to break up. I think I’ve said this before, but Axel is not a big kid by any means. Where I was nearly six foot three, Axel is roughly five foot nine and weighed just under a hundred and fifty pounds. Noah and Charlie looked more like one of Spencer’s kids with their burly builds.

  Axel didn’t stand much of a chance but when Lily was involved, Noah and Charlie didn’t stand much of a chance.

  Axel ended up breaking Charlie’s nose and giving Noah a large gapping cut just above his eye before we got to them.

  See, I told you our family gathering never went well.

  Emma got upset with Axel, which made Lily even madder and she replied with. “If your sons would keep their fucking hoes under control, this would have never happened.”

  Emma stood there dumbfounded because she knew her sons were jerks and couldn’t say much about their girlfriends. She hated them too.

  Sway laughed and stepped in between them. Slinging her arm around Lily she pushed a plate of brownies toward Emma.