Brake Caliper – The part of the braking system that, when applied by the driver, clamps down on the brake to slow the car.
Soon after Axel turned sixteen, we headed to Tulsa for the Chili Bowl. I hadn’t been in three years and wasn’t even racing this year; this was all about Axel. It was also strictly a “boys” trip.
Sway, Alley, Emma, and my mom took the girls to the Florida Keys for the weekend. This left me traveling with all the males in my family. Not something I enjoyed.
I had one order for my wife, though. No partying with my sister. She agreed, and I hoped she kept that promise.
Despite my concerns for my wife, all was outweighed by Axel’s excitement.
The entire plane ride you could see the excitement in his eyes, but you could also see the nervousness peeking through at times.
The racing started with hot laps and practice on Monday and the final A-Main event on Saturday. Wes flew us to Tulsa on Sunday morning. Axel’s midget was already there waiting for us, courtesy of Tommy and Justin’s cousin, Greg.
After a half-assed continental breakfast Monday morning, we were on our way to the Tulsa Expo Center to get Axel registered.
My brother had other ideas and was acting like an idiot trying to get free bagels from the Embassy Suites where we were staying.
“Come on, Spencer,” I groaned. “For once... act normal.”
I just wanted to get to the track, and my idiot brother, who was forty-three years old, was conning innocent hotel clerks out of ten dollars worth of bagels.
“Not possible,” Cole, Spencer’s youngest, guffawed with a smile. “He’s incapable of it.”
Still arguing, we all piled into a cargo van Alley rented for us.
“People are going to assume you’re some kind of... weirdo… stealing bagels like that,” Aiden told him, eating a package of peanut M&Ms he stole from the counter in the lobby. He wasn’t any better.
“Oh, and what will they think of you?” Spencer snorted, angry he didn’t get his bagels.
“Well, based on the tightness of these damn jeans, they are going to know for a fact that I am hung like a fucking horse. Where did these come from?”
“Your wife probably,” Spencer replied, ripping the candy from his hands. “That’s what you get for letting her buy your clothes.”
Axel didn’t say anything while all this was going on. Casten tried to provoke him, but he never responded. He stared out the window at the snow along the Interstate 44 while his iPod blared in his ears, his head bobbing to the beat.
I knew this was his distraction, so I didn’t bother him and pulled his annoyingly entertaining twelve-year-old brother away from him.
“Why don’t we give Axel a break?”
Casten smiled. “I don’t think so. It’s fun to get him mad.”
“Fun for you or fun for him?” my eyebrow raised in question.
“Me, of course,” he bounced up, snatching Axel’s phone from him as he was sending Lily instant messages.
Axel snapped, yanking his headphones from his ears.
“Give that back!” he yelled, causing everyone in the van to look over at him.
“All right, boys,” keeping my voice calm, I put my arms between Axel and Casten. “Casten, give him his phone.”
“He should be concentrating on racing... not Lily in a bikini,” Casten snickered, holding the cell phone above his head, giving Lane and Cole behind him a clear view of Lily’s modeling pose.
My first thought was, why she was sending him that kind of thing? My second was you weren’t any better at sixteen. If a sixteen-year-old Sway had sent me a picture of herself in a bikini, you wouldn’t have seen me for hours while I took proper care of bleeding my pressure valve.
Now that his little brother, as well as his cousins, had seen his half-naked girlfriend’s body, I was sure Axel was irritated with Casten.
“You fucking jerk,” he stood up, reaching for him once again. “Give that to me!”
If you thought I was protective of Sway, my son had inherited that side with Lily.
In one quick motion, Axel had grabbed him by the sweatshirt, dropped his shoulder, and punched Casten in the stomach with, I was sure, as much force as he had. Casten fell over, clutching his stomach, coughing, and then choking as he started crying.
I wasn’t sure what to do, because really, if Spencer had done that to me, I would have punched him. “Uh ...” I stammered as I glanced between Axel, who had sat down now, having pulled his hooded sweatshirt over his head, and Casten, who was hunched over in pain.
There wasn’t much of a size difference between the boys, and I figured that had to have hurt. I knew when Spencer punched me at that age I felt it. Axel wasn’t big by any means; he was the smaller of our kids at barely five-foot-eight. Casten was catching him in size, but still, Axel put all he had into that punch.
This was one of those moments where I needed Sway; she’d know exactly what to do. Looking to Spencer and Aiden for advice did nothing. They couldn’t believe he did that either and stared back at me with wide eyes. Axel had hit Casten before, but never like this.
Aside from Casten’s coughing, an eerie silence spread over the van. Thankfully, he stopped the crying. My dad, who’d remained quiet this morning, nudged me when Axel took the sleeve of his black sweatshirt and swept it across his cheek, wiping tears aside. I knew he didn’t mean to hurt his brother, but he was also already freaked out about racing in the Midget Nationals. He didn’t need his little brother adding to his already jumbled mindset.
Oh, goddamn it. Where was Sway? Now I had two kids crying.
“Talk to him,” he whispered, slouching in his seat, tilting his head toward Axel in front of me. “And, for God’s sake, comfort the little one.”
Both my parents were suckers for Casten, as most people were. I had to admit that Casten was adorable. He looked similar to Axel, but had Sway’s big eyes, thick black lashes, chubby cheeks, and nose with my good looks. We had made some cute kids.
When he fluttered those sad, big eyes, everyone gave into him.
Casten had pulled the hood of his sweatshirt up over his head, as well. His tears were still streaming down his cheeks as he tried to shield them from view. I could count the number of times I’d seen either one of my boys crying, and it was usually earned.
Not that being punched in the stomach didn’t warrant a few tears, but he had to understand if you provoked someone enough, they reacted. Maybe not in the best ways, but they reacted in some form. And you were usually not on the favorable side.
“Are you all right?” I whispered in Casten’s ear, lifting his gray sweatshirt to see a swollen pinkish mark just below his ribcage on his left side. Axel had really nailed him. Already there were faint purplish bumps forming around the pink raised skin, indicating a bruise was forming.
Remaining slouched beside me, Casten didn’t say anything and wouldn’t look at me.
Thankfully, we pulled into the Tulsa Expo Center. It wasn’t even ten yet, and already the day had turned to shit.
Justin and Tommy met us outside the Expo Center. Tommy, not knowing what just happened, grabbed Casten when he jetted from the van and threw him over his shoulder. Casten vomited down his back and then started crying again, but reached out with his foot to trip Axel as he walked by.
That started an all-out war between them, ending in Axel slamming Casten against a pillar outside, his hands fisted in his sweatshirt. Casten’s head snapped back against the metal. “Leave me alone!” Axel pulled him forward and then pushed him back against the pillar once more. “I mean it, leave me alone!”
Tommy, Justin, and I intervened.
“Axel, Jesus, stop it!” I warned sternly, pulling Axel while Justin grabbed Casten, holding him against his side in a somewhat protective stance.
Casten’s eyes were wide, filled with tears and fear.
Axel pulled his hood back over his head, grabbed his backpack, and headed inside with me following close behind him.
Reaching out, I took a hold of the strap of his backpack, jerking him backward. “What the hell was that back there?”
“Nothing,” he snapped, handing the registration desk his release forms and then handing the minor waiver to me. “Sign that.”
I did and handed it to the lady behind the table, her eyes focused on me and my son glaring at each other. “It wasn’t nothing. Your brother could be seriously hurt from that.”
“Doubt it.”
His phone beeped in his hand. He glanced down but didn’t answer it, instead slipping it inside his jeans.
His chin came up, and his head tilted to the side. I could see so much of myself in him right then. “Keep him away from me today.”
This was not what I had planned for today.
A fellow Cup driver of mine, Andy Crockett’s, son, Hayden, came walking up to Axel. “Axel, you get registered?” He smiled when he saw me standing behind him. “Hey, Jameson, my dad’s over there somewhere.”
Hayden was already dressed in his racing suit, waiting for practice sessions to begin, and I could tell Axel was anxious to do the same.
From the time I had started coming to Midget Nationals with my dad when I was probably eight, the excitement of being at the world’s largest midget race had never faded.
Chili Bowl Midget Nationals was the only event that took the best midget drivers from USAC, Badger (Midget Auto Racing Association), the Rocky Mountain Midget Association, USAC sprint car drivers, USAC Silver Crown drivers, and the World of Outlaws. All the best open wheel drivers in the world were put in one place for one weekend of competing for twenty-four starting spots in the A-Main. I honestly believed the racing at the Chili Bowl was some of the best in the world.
Too bad I wasn’t racing this year. This year was about my son who was already strapping into his car.
Hovering over him, I handed him his helmet as he pulled his buckles over his shoulder one at a time.
“Stay relaxed out there, buddy. Just get a feel for the track and the way the car feels to you.”
Axel nodded, his gaze fixed ahead of him. It was apparent now was not the time I would be able to talk to him. He needed to get out there and calm himself down.
When he reached for his helmet after pulling the arms straps tight, his hands trembled.
As his dad in that moment, I wanted to comfort him, but as a fellow racer, I knew he didn’t need it. He needed the car.
The practice sessions were formatted differently for national events like this. You received a number when you registered, and that designated which was your first practice session. Axel was in the seventh session. This was good because it was later in the afternoon and a good amount of rubber had been laid out on the clay.
Midgets had a starter in them with an in-line clutching system, which meant they had one gear just like sprint cars. The only difference was that the driver could take off at will as opposed to a sprint car where you needed a push to get going.
Justin found me after his practice session, his expression both uneasy and frankly, a little annoyed. “What’s with him today?”
We took a seat in the pit bleachers.
“I don’t know,” I shrugged. “Nerves I guess.”
Justin seemed to contemplate this for a minute. “Yeah, I guess this is the biggest race he’s been in, huh?”
Nodding, I examined Axel’s first few laps on the track. In his practice session he had Hayden, Tyler, Cody, Ryder, Brett Lucan from the Badger division, Travis Quinn from the Rocky Mountain Midget Association, and, worst of all, my dad, more importantly, Axel’s grandpa... the king of the open-wheel… racing on dirt.
“This oughta be interesting,” Spencer said, a hotdog in one hand and a plate of nachos in the other, taking a seat on the other side of Justin.
“Do you ever stop eating?” I asked, stealing a cheesy nacho. “No, do you?”
“No.”
The official waved the green flag for the start of the hot laps. Jimi started midway through the field and hung out toward the rear, getting a feel for everything. Axel seemed to do the same for the first three laps of the twenty-lap session. Coming out of turn three on the fourth lap, he went up high on the berm, passing by Tyler and Cody in turn four, leaving him in some clean air.
Axel spent countless hours watching racing and learning from some of the best around the world. He knew how to race, and I knew damn well he could win this race if everything lined up. You couldn’t just have talent, not at these events. Engines blew, drivers misjudged, and race officials made shitty calls at times. It wasn’t about talent all the time. Mental awareness was the key and knowing what could happen was half the battle.
But the most import aspect of winning was keeping a clear head, and that was something that Axel did not have right now.
Brett Lucan of the Badger Division was an eighteen-year-old kid who Axel hated.
Probably as much as I hated Darrin back in the day.
Brett was always looking for a fight and constantly sought out Axel on the track if he could. Keep in mind this was the same kid Axel got suspended over last year. This was also a reason why Brett raced the Badger series now. Even though Axel was suspended, the Riley family did hold a certain bit of weight with USAC.
Usually the kid couldn’t finish a race without ending up in the catch fence so it was rare he actually got to Axel during a race. It was generally after the race or at national events when their paths crossed again.
As I said before, this was a practice session. It wasn’t a time to be battling for position with anyone, and Axel understood that to an extent. Lucan did not.
When Axel came out of turn two on the eighteenth lap, Lucan swept down under him, pushing him up into the wall and then back down on the cushion. Usually that was a move by another racer saying, “Hey, I’m down here and have position on you.” In open-wheel, it was easier to see another driver as opposed to stock cars, but you still couldn’t see everything. That was where we usually relied on small taps from other drivers. That was not a small tap and ended up cutting Axel’s tire down and breaking the front control arm.
Axel sat up near the wall on the backstretch when they threw the caution and ended the practice session early to clean up the mess. He stayed in the car, which was probably a good thing when we heard the engines of the cars filing off the track beside us. My dad’s car pulled up right beside Lucan’s car. Dad revved the engine twice, before waving, pointing to the track, and then throwing his arms in the air. This was racer talk for, “What the fuck was that?”
Tommy was down on the track helping Axel, when Justin, Aiden, and Spencer broke out into laughter at our sixty-three-year-old father picking a fight with an eighteen-year-old kid over his grandson.
Drivers who have watched Axel from the time he raced his first USAC race at age four also got in on the “What the fuck, Lucan?” action... drivers like Ryder Christenson, Cody Bowman, and Tyler Sprague just to name a few. Sure, these were my boys and thought of Axel as their own, but that was how racers worked.
Let’s just say Lucan never made it past the second night of racing; he had no friends after pulling that move. No friends on a track was bad news any way you looked at it.
Keeping Casten and Axel separated the rest of the evening was easy. Casten and Cole were quite the pair together and spent the majority of the week in Ryder’s pit—Casten thought Ryder was the greatest… probably because Ryder and the boys had about the same maturity levels.
After the wreck with Lucan, Axel’s patience was non-existent.
Tommy and Greg went to work changing out the right control arm and gears for tomorrow’s heat races while Axel stood just outside the hauler signing autographs.
Most of the people surrounding him were the same who surrounded my dad and me, but I noticed a girl standing awfully close to him who I didn’t recognize. Van was here with us, keeping his distance, but I could tell he was aware of the situation.
“Who’s that?” Justin asked, nodding in the direction of the girl.
“I don’t know. Fan maybe...” my voice trailed off when the girl leaned over and kissed him on the cheek. Axel flinched away from her indicating the kiss wasn’t wanted.
“Looks like he’s got the Riley charm with the girls,” Justin snorted, walking away.
There was one bad thing about your son dating your best friend’s daughter—what if he broke her heart?
Knowing Axel, he had no intention of ever hurting Lily, but then again, I never had any intention of hurting Sway. I’d like to think that Justin understood that, after all, we’d become pretty close over the last sixteen years.
I watched for a little while as fans and the media continued to crowd around Axel. He had just turned sixteen in December, which meant he was the youngest driver here and that was news.
A group of girls around seventeen, maybe eighteen, shuffled past me, smiling. I knew what they wanted when they pushed their programs in my face.
“Is that your son?” the shorter black-haired girl asked with a small smile.
Without looking up, I nodded. “Yeah.”
“Wow, you look too young to have a son.”
My eyes met hers for a moment before handing the program back to her with my autograph spread across the cover. “I’m damn near forty. I’m old enough.”
The blond one giggled. “You still married?”
Jesus, she’s bold.
I laughed. “Yes.”
“What about your son?”
“He’s dating someone.”
This wasn’t the first time someone asked about Axel’s dating status. I actually got that a lot around the time he turned fourteen and won the Hut Hundred. There was no way around it now, my little spaz son was famous and sought after by women—women Sway and I wanted to keep away from him.
Before Axel could get completely swamped by fans, I pulled him aside to get some food, alone.
We ended up at El Guapo’s Mexican restaurant in downtown Tulsa.
Axel was quiet until midway through dinner when his phone kept vibrating.
He finally shut it off and sighed.
“Girl problems?” I hinted, taking a drink of my beer.
“You could say that...” he nodded, pouring salsa and sour cream on his nachos. After another few minutes of silence he opened up to me. “Lily... well, I think she wants to date other guys, maybe closer to Hillsboro.”
Justin and his family still lived in Hillsboro, Indiana. It was easier for them with the majority of the Outlaw races taking place in the Midwest. This was not ideal for Axel and Lily, but over the last sixteen years, they’d remained best friends and eventually began dating. Most of the time they went weeks without seeing each other, but there was also a great deal of the USAC races that took place in the Midwest enabling them to reunite.
Time wasn’t about to get any easier for them and probably never would with Axel’s desire to race. This coming season he was set to race his first full season in all three of the USAC divisions. Time would definitely not be on his side.
“And how does Lily feel about this?”
Axel glared. “She’s with some kid named Brian tonight. She says he’s just a friend.”
“Just a friend?” My eyebrow raised in question.
“So she says,” I could tell Axel did not think Brian was just a friend.
“Is that why you shut off your phone?”
“No.... yes. I just....” He sighed, pushing his half-eaten plate of nachos aside. “I just feel like I’m being pulled all over the place, and she doesn’t understand that. I thought she understood, but now, I just don’t know.”
“I’m sure she does, buddy. She’s grown up around it as well.”
“I know.”
The waiter brought by another beer for me and refilled Axel’s Pepsi. “Did you talk to Casten?”
“No.” His eyes met mine. “I never meant to hurt him, but Jesus... he’s got to stop sometimes.”
“He’s twelve, Axel, and he will always be your little brother. He doesn’t always know when to stop. Look at my siblings... they still piss me off daily.”
He nodded but didn’t say anything.
“Axel... you need to think before you react with him and Arie. They’re your family. And on the track, well, the sooner you realize how mental this sport is compared to how physical it is, the better off you’ll be.”
Axel chuckled. “Grandpa tell you that?”
“Yeah, some of his timeless wisdom.”
When we headed back to the hotel, Lily sent him another text message, telling him she loved him and wished him good luck tomorrow. “See, I don’t get it.” He showed me the message. “She tells me she’s hanging out with other guys, and then she tells me she loves me... what the hell?”
“Just give her space. Being sixteen is hard enough. Then you add on having a boyfriend who is a professional race car driver, and that’s a lot to handle. Think about how she feels with girls all over you?”
“She hates that,” he groaned. “Mom does too, huh?”
“I’m sure Lily does, but your mom is different. Before being my wife, she was my best friend and understands what I go through every day. She’s seen it from the beginning.”
Axel nodded again, buckling himself into the front seat of the truck we drove here. He looked like he was going to respond to the message Lily sent him, but he stopped and slipped the phone inside his coat pocket.
“Do you know that girl who kissed you on the cheek?”
He didn’t look over at me, but just stared out the window as I pulled out of the parking lot. “Yeah, that’s Shaylee. Her dad is a sponsor rep for Wyle.”
“Do you know her well?”
“Not really,” he shrugged. “She’s at most of the races, but we don’t talk that often.”
“Be... careful.”
Again, he didn’t say anything, and part of me wondered if something had already happened between them.
I made a mental note to talk to Sway about this. She’d know what to say.
THE REST OF the week through all the heat races, Axel kept advancing. They had two hundred and sixty-three drivers here this year with ten main events planned for Saturday. The fastest four qualifying cars were in the A-Main with the top two cars from each main advancing to the next main.
Since Axel broke the control arm in practice Monday, we had some trouble getting the setup to the point where he felt comfortable, so he ended up starting in the D-Main event.
Lily showed up on Friday night improving his mood greatly.
Looking back on the way I acted at events like this when I was his age, Sway was always what I needed. It wasn’t any different for Axel.
Casten made an appearance shortly after Lily arrived. He smiled, but surprisingly didn’t say anything.
Tommy and Greg were changing the gears on Axel’s midget before the last heat race when Axel pulled Casten inside the hauler, leaving me and Aiden standing in his pit wondering if we should follow them after what happened Monday.
Even though you fought with your siblings, there was never a time when I didn’t love them. Yeah, I’d hated them on occasion, but I never wanted to hurt them. And I knew Axel never wanted to hurt Casten.
After about three minutes, they came walking out and went different directions.
“What was that about?” I asked Casten, making sure he was all right. Since he and Axel had gotten into it on Monday, he hadn’t been the high-spirited little boy he usually was.
Casten shrugged, retrieving a Gatorade from the cooler beside the hauler and sitting down in a pit chair. “He told me he’s sorry.”
“And you said?”
“He better be.”
“Casten... if I remember Monday morning at all—I remember you actually started that.”
“So....” He gave me a blank stare, as if he couldn’t understand where I was going with this conversation. Little jerk.
I kicked his leg. “You should apologize, too.”
“Geez, Dad,” he groaned, throwing his head back, annoyed. “What do you take me for, some kind of idiot? I said sorry.”
“Good,” I picked him up out of his chair and threw him over my shoulder. “Now... let’s go cheer on your brother.”
“Put me down.” He wiggled, laughing when I squeezed him harder. “You look ridiculous, put me down. I’m not a toy.”
My right hand scooped him into a headlock before setting him safely on the ground. He smiled but rolled his eyes and straightened his hat. “Have some dignity.”
“Do you even know what that means?”
“No, but neither do you, apparently.”
Everyone filed into the stands when the cars lined up. Aiden, Spencer, and Van made their way to us with Lane, Cole, Logan, and Noah close by. Who knew where Charlie had disappeared. Between the two of Aiden’s boys, Charlie was the worst. Whenever Charlie was a handful for Aiden, Dad stepped in and laid down the law with them. Most of the grandkids were petrified of Jimi, for good reason.
Dad set fast time and was locked into the main with Justin, Ryder, Cody, and Tyler. By the time the B-Main rolled around, there were four positions open. Axel wanted one of those positions.
The stands were packed with fifteen thousand fans all eagerly awaiting to see what this sixteen-year-old kid from Mooresville had to offer the greatest midget racers in the world.
The race got off to a rough start when Shane Jennings flipped on the second lap, bringing out the red flag for ten minutes while they cleaned up the mess. That was when the real fun began.
On the front row, Axel was lined up against an Australian driver, Dylan Cottle.
Cottle had won events like the Hut Hundred, Turkey Night, and the Cooper Classic last year. He was tough competition, but I knew Axel had the talent and patience to outrun him.
Off the track Axel was like me, impatient as hell. On the track, he showed fortitude in situations like this.
“He’s gonna choke,” some kid behind us said. Spencer and Casten turned to look back at the kid, glaring. “What?” the kid asked. “He is.”
Casten took Spencer’s fries, loaded with ketchup, and tossed them back at the kid, ketchup spraying him in the face. “Looks like you’re choking now.”
That’s my boy.
Turned out, Axel didn’t choke as he stayed right with Dylan all twenty laps and locked in a spot in the A-Main tomorrow night.
I called Sway to let her know, and she told me Arie got a tattoo. I was not impressed by this at all. My little angel was fourteen; she didn’t need a tattoo. Apparently, it was small and on the inside of her ankle, but still, this was not good news to me. It just meant she was growing up, and that depressed me.
Back at the hotel that night, it took a good hour to get my hormone driven sixteen-year-old son away from his girlfriend. They must have spent a good twenty minutes in the parking lot making out.
This time Justin was not impressed. “This is not good,” Justin sighed, closing the curtains so he couldn’t see them any longer. His hotel room was right next door so we decided to open up the mini-bar. “Your son better not break her heart.”
“I have no control over that.”
His eyebrow arched as he chucked an airplane bottle of rum. “Regardless... put yourself in my shoes... think of that as Arie out there.”
I leaned out the door of the hotel room. “Axel, get your ass in here!”
Justin started laughing, tensely throwing back another bottle. “My point exactly.”
THE NEXT MORNING, it was back to racing.
“You beat me... I didn’t make it out here until I was nineteen,” I told Axel.
“How’d you do?” Axel asked as we walked into the Tulsa Expo Center around seven on Saturday morning.
I pointed to the plaque on the wall. “You tell me.” My name appeared on the wall seven times—the first being in 1999 when I won the event, my first time there.
Axel was calm and withdrawn that morning. Much like me, he retreated when he needed to focus, spending much of his morning inside the hauler away from everyone. Lily made her way in there for a few minutes, but eventually she knew he needed to be by himself.
About an hour before driver introductions, my dad and I made our way inside the hauler to check on Axel. He was sitting at the table, his head resting on his arms, hiding his face.
“You ever coming out of here, boy?” Dad asked him, pushing him over so he could sit next to him. “I need some healthy competition out there.”
“I’m hardly competition for you, Grandpa.” Axel answered, his face still out of sight from us.
Dad nodded toward him and then the door before rubbing Axel’s back once. “See you on the track, kid.”
Axel didn’t respond, just kept his head down. We sat there in silence before he finally looked up at me, “I’m... scared,” his voice was soft.
Instantly I saw the little boy I saw before his first Dirt Nationals, looking to me for advice and more than anything, reassurance. I knew then everything my dad tried to warn me about when I was Axel’s age. Talent could only take you so far, he was right. Confidence, determination, and a clear level head was what won races and championships. To do that, you couldn’t be second-guessing yourself. Something I never did, of course, but Axel, he worried a lot about what others thought and turned to them for comfort.
“There’s not much I can tell you that will comfort you, buddy. I know you can do it.”
His eyes met mine, his expression wary. “With Grandpa out there?”
“Every race I’ve ever won, I’ve looked at my competition. To be the best racer you can be, you want to beat the best. Personally, if I won a race where Grandpa or Justin and Tyler were in it... I would feel like I really won.”
Axel seemed to understand but still held some nervousness.
“You got the talent, buddy. I’ve seen you do it before, just keep that in here,” I tapped the side of his head.
We didn’t have much time, but as we made our way outside so he could get to driver introductions he hugged me. Really hugged me. Both arms wrapped around me tightly.
Kissing the top of his head, I returned the hug. “Go get ‘em, buddy.”
When the race started, Axel lined up behind Dylan Cottle and Cody Bowman in the fifth row beside Shane Jennings, a fellow USAC midget racer he’d raced with since they were nine.
After a four-lap yellow in the beginning for a few tangled cars on the start, Axel began moving up the field from his tenth starting position. He hugged the inside edge of the track, protecting his position, at times driving up on the berm for the first fifteen laps.
With eighteen laps to go, he passed Cody for fourth. With fourteen to go, Travis Quinn flipped, bringing out the caution. When the race restarted, Hayden went airborne just before the start-finish line and was, in turn, hit by Shane Jennings, who also flipped.
After the yellow, the race was on with twelve laps to go. Axel was running fourth with Ryder, Justin, and Dad in front of him. He shot down low with nine to go and got past Ryder for third.
He bobbled a little on the backstretch allowing Ryder to catch him again, only to pass him on the front stretch.
“I think he can pull this off!” Tommy said, nodding.
I couldn’t say anything. I was too busy biting my nails. Yeah, that’s right. Twelve time NASCAR Cup Champion biting his nails over his son racing in the Chili Bowl.
Justin held his ground for two laps before Axel swept past him on the line. He was right on Dad after that. Every move he made, Dad blocked him just like he should. It was going to take more than just talent to get past old Jimi. Axel finally understood that when he pulled back about a car length and followed every move he made, waiting for his opening. With one lap to go on a quarter-mile track, everyone, including Tommy and me thought Jimi had the win.
I looked down for just a brief second as the cars came out of turn two; the fifteen thousand fans went into an uproar, as did Spencer and Tommy beside me. Looking up, I saw Axel shoot up the track into the cushion, bounce off it and the inside rail, only to slingshot forward into Jimi, their nurf bars banging. They came out of turn four side-by-side, and Axel simply drove away as if it was no effort.
My son learned the art of patience.
He had the car to beat his grandpa all along. But he knew if he made his move too soon, he’d spend the next few laps holding him off and eating up his tires, potentially allowing Jimi to get back by him. This way, Jimi was the one who ate up his tires holding Axel off.
I nearly cried.
All those times my dad told me how proud he was of me, and how seeing your child living their dreams meant far more than winning yourself, made sense to me now.
Tommy and Spencer hugged me, Van and Aiden hugged each other. Casten was screaming with Lane, Cole, Noah, and Charlie as we watched our own bring home the victory.
My dad stopped in the middle of the infield, just like he did when I won this event back in ‘99 and ran over to Axel.
Axel was the youngest driver in the history of the Chili Bowl Midget Nationals to win. Three generations of drivers had finally been placed on the wall.
The party in Axel’s pit was similar to the one that took place when I won back then. Axel had his first beer. Casten told everyone his brother won, while Lane and Logan took advantage of all the girls swarming around.
There was a smile plastered upon everyone’s faces that night, including mine and my dad’s.
“He was strong out there,” Dad said, drinking a beer beside me as we watched Lily congratulate Axel with a kiss that made me a little uncomfortable.
“He had patience,” I agreed, slinging my arm around my dad.
Dad smiled and leaned into me. “Something you still don’t understand at times.”
I removed my arm. “I resent that.”
“You would... now go party with your son. I’m exhausted.”
I knew I had patience. He was full of shit.
I sat back out of the spotlight that night. This was Axel’s time, not mine. I declined to sign anything for the fans, only to push them toward Axel. “He’s the talent,” I would tell them. No one seemed to be overly offended by it. I just wanted them to understand what this meant for him. It meant everything.
The next morning was the first real conversation I was able to have with Axel without someone around.
“How does it feel?” I asked Axel over breakfast before we headed home. Sway was already planning a party with Emma to celebrate his win for when we got back. Now just might be my only time to talk to him alone for a few days.
“I’m not really sure....” He smiled wide. “It hasn’t really sunk in yet.”
Pushing the front page of the Tulsa World toward him, I smiled. “This might help.”
Spread across the front page was a picture of Axel standing on the roll cage, his fist in the air with my dad beside him. The title read: The kid dominates the legend.
He smiled while reading it and then pushed it aside, looking up at me. “Thanks, Dad.”
“For what?”
His eyes stayed focused with mine as if he was trying to make me see before shrugging.
“For everything.”