Take a Look – This happens when a driver, who’s following another, darts out and takes a look in front of him. He may or may not make the pass. Sometimes it’s used to make the car in front nervous.
It seemed in our rush to make it to a different track each night that this had us making silly mistakes here and there… and then there were the mistakes we had no control over but were forced to fix.
There’s no worse feeling, as a driver or crew, than spending fifty hours a week preparing a car for the next weekend to have it break and have to start all over again the next week, praying it doesn’t break again.
And, when it does, it’s crushing for everyone involved.
After the Triple Crown Nationals, still wanting seat time, we had the bright idea that I was going to run the Wild West Showdown, which was a six-night international driver challenge at six different tracks.
By the fourth night in Chico, I was beat and so was my engine. It blew up halfway through the feature race that night.
Now usually we would have time to change the engine prior to the next race but with the Showdown, they had racing in Chico on Wednesday night and then Skagit on Thursday, that was a thirteen-hour drive. So, ordinarily, we would have time to stop and change out engines in the sprint car we were running that night but, as luck would have it, we had to haul ass to Skagit to make it there in time for the race. It was around two in the morning when we left Chico after sleeping three hours alongside the highway. This left one option. We changed out the engine on the back of the trailer, going down I-5 at 70 mph. Not something I would ever do again with Spencer driving.
Tommy, and our other buddy Scott Pricket (Scooter), who we had met during the season, and me were hanging off the side of the open trailer changing out engines while Emma and Sway handed us tools we needed through the back window of my truck.
We weren’t using my hauler this week but an eighteen-foot open trailer and it wasn’t safe to be hanging off the side of it.
“Hand me the 9/16 wrench,” I told Scooter reaching my hand over the roll bars and holding on with the other to the torsion bars. He didn’t answer so I peeked my head up making sure he hadn’t fallen off the side. “Where’s the wrench?”
“Uh ...” he looked around beside him. “I think it’s in Woodburn. Do you still want it? We could turn around,” he suggested with a smirk.
We must have lost our entire set of wrenches that trip but we managed to finish changing out the engine as we barreled through the pit gates. Tommy’s hands were bleeding from bumping up against parts, I had a black eye from where Scooter dropped a crowbar on my face, and Scooter had a fat lip from where my hand slipped off a bolt and smacked him in the mouth, after he dropped the crowbar.
To this day, I hold my ground that that was an accident.
We ended up setting fast time that night but didn’t do so well in the feature and finished seventh.
Later that night, another driver and friend of ours, Reece Wilcox, a tall southern driver out of Memphis, came walking up to our trailer holding up our wrenches. “Can you believe some asshole was throwing wrenches on the freeway?” Scooter and I exchanged a smile. “His loss. Got me an entire set by the time I reached Olympia,” Reece shrugged and walked off with my wrenches.
Aside from scrambling to another track each week, I also had to deal with other racers and their attraction toward my best friend and sister. It never failed, no matter what track we were at, the men flocked to the girls. Alley was attractive—you could say that, with big tits, long legs and blonde hair, Spencer’s type. Not mine.
And, Emma, well she’s my little sister but she had the cute thing down and men loved that shit, I guess. But what was harder than seeing men pick up on my little sister was seeing them flirt with Sway. Maybe I didn’t know how I felt about Sway or the reasons why I was attracted to her but I was; seeing other men and, more specifically, other racers swarming her in the pits was not something I enjoyed. Avoided actually and I did a lot of walking away during conversations just to avoid it.
Unfortunately, there were times when I couldn’t walk away, like in Williams Grove in late October that year. It wasn’t long after Sway’s eighteenth birthday, I’d placed third in the feature so I was slightly annoyed just by that and the fact that we needed to be in Lernerville later in the week had me thinking we should have left by now but no, everyone was standing around bullshitting and drinking. This happened after every race so I shouldn’t have been so surprised. Besides Spencer and Alley, none of us were twenty-one, but that never stopped us from throwing back the beers after a race.
Parker Dunn, one of the biggest trash talkers in USAC, was another Silver Crown racer who’d I began to get to know based on the fact we were competing on the same series and I’d grown to develop a racing relationship with him, the kind where we showed each other respect on the track. That ended later that night when he crossed the line. The “Sway line” I’d built around myself and others.
“Hey,” Parker sat down next to me on the back of my tailgate after brushing off the dirt. Still suited in his uniform I could smell the mixture of methanol and mud. “Is Sway like your girlfriend or something?”
I took a slow drink of my beer, contemplating how I might answer that. It took me a few minutes and when I answered, it seemed I was trying to tell myself that same thing. “No, she’s my best friend.”
“Oh, okay. So she’s available then?” he asked looking over at her. I craned my neck forward to look over at her. She was standing beside Spencer drinking a beer, giggling at Tommy. Her hair was blowing with the subtle wind, her cheeks flushed from the cool crisp fall air. Wearing a black Bowman Oil hooded sweatshirt, she hugged herself to keep warm.
“No, she’s not available.”
“You said you weren’t dating,” his expression bewildered by my sharp threatening tone.
“Yeah,” I jumped down from the tailgate and leaned against it resting my weight on my arms. “She’s not my girlfriend but that doesn’t mean she’s available. I’m sure as shit not okay with her seeing you.”
“Why?” he glared my direction but looked back over at Sway.
“Because you’re a racer—nothing means anything to you but the next race.” I stood straighter.
He let out a dark laugh while raising his beer to his lips and then laughed again shaking his head. “I never said I wanted to date her. I’m just looking for a little fun. You stick around her so I’m assuming she’s a good time.”
It’s no surprise to anyone who knows me that I had a short fuse. I knocked the beer from his hand and punched him square in the mouth before he finished the words “good time.”
Like I said, our friendship ended that night.
Walking back to the hauler, Sway caught up with me and pulled me aside.
“What’s wrong with you? I heard you punched Dunn?”
“I did,” was my only answer. My eyes focused on her lips.
“Why?”
This was another time, I reacted without using my brain, leaning forward to kiss her forehead.
“Because,” I mumbled avoiding her questioning glance. I couldn’t even look her in the eyes. “You deserve better than him and all he wanted was a one night thing,” I told her placing another kiss against her forehead before walking back toward my car.
That night, laying in the hotel I watched Sway sleep again. We could only afford one room so Alley and Spencer were in one bed while Sway and Emma slept in the other—I slept on the couch next to the bed.
I knew I had feelings for Sway but, for the life of me, I couldn’t decipher what they meant to me. I wanted her but did it go beyond that?
Her body was amazing. I’ve always found Sway attractive but now, as she matured, Jesus Christ. There wasn’t a man alive who wouldn’t wish she was in his bed every night, including me.
The following weekend in Lernerville, Dunn and I still weren’t on speaking terms. It wasn’t uncommon for pit lizards to be hanging around our pit these days and the more races I ran, the more it occurred. It seemed there was at least a few hanging around at all times.
Before our heat races, one brave girl made her way through the crowd gathered around while we made some adjustments to my car.
Sway was scraping tires off to the side of the trailer with a handheld grinder but I could see her out of the corner of my eye from my spot on the ground under the car.
“Are you Jameson Riley?” Beside me, I could see Sway roll her eyes.
Squinting into the bright sun, I made out her silhouette, tall, curvy, sexy, I guess. It’d been a while since I’d had sex, so naturally I looked.
What man wouldn’t?
Tommy, being Tommy, made his way over before I could say anything.
“Hey, there, what brings you over here?”
The girl laughed, twirling her hair on her fingertip. Rolling my eyes at Tommy and his flirting antics, I continued to change out my shocks. You’d think him and his orange hair wouldn’t catch the attention of girls, but he could. I think they were all stunned at the bright hair or maybe felt bad for him.
“I’m Lindsey,” she chimed, “I was hoping to meet Jameson.” She crouched down beside me. Out of the corner of my eye, I examined her long tanned legs. Her jean shorts appeared painted on and her shirt looked like it belonged on a toddler, still, I couldn’t avert my eyes. I imagined how her legs would look wrapped around my waist or thrown over my shoulders.
Shit. Stop it, you idiot.
Sway snorted and threw the grinder down beside her, walking away.
I sighed running my hand through my hair. I had no idea what was wrong with Sway these days, but lately, she’d become exceptionally annoyed at the pit lizards.
To be fair, they were annoying.
“Did you want an autograph or something?”
I didn’t have time for this.
“Well...” Lindsey bit down on her lip. “I was hoping for something a little more personal.”
I knew what she wanted, as did Tommy who let out a low whistle. I’d moved from under my car and leaned up against the right rear tire glaring in Tommy’s direction.
Lindsey being the standard pit lizard you’d find in the pits before a race, took no time at all to straddle my lap and whisper in my ear while slipping her number inside the front of my racing suit. “Come find me after the race, darling.”
“Lindsey is it?” she nodded as I pulled her to stand up. “I’m sure you’re a nice girl but I have to be in Grand Rapids tomorrow night. I don’t have time.”
I turned away so she didn’t try again. I prided myself that I was starting to get the hang of this rejecting thing. With time, maybe I could ignore myself, myself being the asshole who couldn’t stop thinking about his best friend being naked.
Lindsey left with Tommy after that, not sure where to and could care less. Since he and his girlfriend broke up, he and his orange hair were having a good time on the road.
After finishing up the adjustments on the car, Scooter and I walked the track like I usually did, checking the surface. For the most part, he was mostly quiet and understood that I was thinking. I liked to check the ruts and the coloring of the track. I knew if it was darkening, I would need to make air pressure and spring adjustments.
Kicking clay around, I glanced over at the pit bleachers to see Sway and Dunn talking.
Scooter laughed when I glared in their direction. It was becoming pretty evident that I was protective of Sway and everyone, I mean everyone, mistook this as me having romantic feelings toward her. It wasn’t that. I wanted her with someone who deserved her. None of these assholes did.
“Careful there, you don’t want to confuse the pit lizards,” Scooter remarked on our way back to the pits.
“Shut up,” I shot back defensively throwing my helmet at him.
The race couldn’t have gone any worse. My car was horrible and didn’t improve one bit throughout the seventy-five lap main event. I took my frustrations out on Dunn in front of me and, with one lap to go, I bumped him a little too hard and sent him into the marbles; he lost control and flipped his car a few times on the backstretch. I did not feel this was entirely my fault. He was the one who lost control, right?
After roughing up Dunn on the track, Sway came to find me.
“You’re being an asshole!” she told me while I opened my second beer.
I heard this a lot so it really didn’t mean anything any longer. It was just a fucking word.
TOWARD THE END of October, the schedule for USAC was clear until the Perris Auto Week the first week in November. This left us running sprint cars and late models at local tracks whenever we found one. I was tired having run four nights a week for the past four months but I also knew I needed seat time in anything.
Emma had heard from a group of guys about a sprint car invitational taking place at a track outside of Republic, Washington, called Eagle Racetrack. It is a 3/8-mile dirt track out in the middle of nowhere.
After getting lost for a good hour we almost turned around when we spotted a track on the side of the mountain. It was literally on the side of the mountain. There were no signs for the track at all. You came around the bend in the road and there it was.
It appeared they decided while logging trees, “Hey, let’s build a track.”
And, so they did.
I’d never seen something like this before. It was crazy.
There were no bleachers, just rusty metal pieced together. The flag stand was about eight pieces of plywood strung together in odd directions and the track, well, it looked as though they mowed through the brush to create something resembling a track and then added clay.
Did I mention there were no guardrails, just trees?
I wasn’t positive this would end well.
After getting registered, Tommy and I walked the track with Ryder, Justin, and Cody. The dirt was dry, nearly sand, combined with rocks, maybe even boulders and there was a fucking ditch about two feet wide on the backstretch.
I was not impressed.
Dallas, an official I assumed by his black shirt that read, “Official” across the chest, walked up to us. He was an old worn out man with teeth just as worn.
We made small talk for a moment before he commented on my previous wins.
I’d never met anyone quite like Dallas and that was apparent when he said, “I hear you’re good,” in my direction, his toothless smile caused Spencer to take a step back and Sway to lean into my shoulder.
I didn’t answer right away and then he was off in the other direction.
“Where’d he go to school?” Sway whispered when he strolled away. “West Virginia?”
“Nah, I don’t think they have schools where he came from,” I replied.
Somewhere between the hillbilly announcer singing the national anthem and the eighty-year-old trophy girl making ogle eyes at me, I was beginning to understand why it was invitation only.
Emma refused to get out of the truck and spent the remainder of the night in there with the window up and doors locked.
They had no setup for the night and it seemed like they were flying by the seat of their pants when Alley stepped in and asked if she could help them.
This got the night moving along because I couldn’t wait to get the fuck out of here.
“Nice trailer,” Tommy snorted in the direction of a homemade trailer pulling into what they called the pits. This was just another field of ditches and boulders.
Walking up to me with a basket of fries, Tommy laughed. I glanced over my shoulder after stealing a few. It looked like something out of Sanford and Son out here.
Not knowing what else to do, we made our way over to the pit bleachers.
Sway dropped down beside us to watch the modified heat races.
After glaring in Tommy’s direction, she kicked her feet up on the wooden step in front of her. Sighing, she took a long look behind us at the pits.
“This is insane,” she finally said turning back around to look over at me. “Did you see that ditch on the back stretch? You could bury a body out there.” She glared at Tommy again.
They still weren’t seeing eye-to-eye after the staple incident.
I followed her gaze across the pits. Between the homemade haulers, roughed up drivers, and junky cars, it was apparent we were smack dab in the middle of Deliverance.
“No, shit,” I muttered scraping my hand across the makeshift bleachers. A rusty nail snagged my index finger, tearing the skin open. “You had a tetanus shot lately?”
Sway nodded and looked down at my finger pricked with blood. “Have you?”
We sat up there for another twenty minutes as Dallas attempted to water the track with buckets.
“Where are you going?” I asked when Sway stood.
“To get beer. I’ll be fine.” She sighed when I stood beside her. “I don’t need a chaperone.”
“Oh, yes, you do,” I challenged. “There are some ... questionable people around here.”
“All right fine,” she motioned for me to turn around. “You’re carrying me then.”
After getting a beer for Sway, I was tempted to take one for myself but I never drank prior to a race, so tonight wouldn’t be any different regardless of my sanity to get out there on the track.
Ryder and I decided to take some hot laps prior to qualifying. Once on the track, I was convinced this was a horrible idea and was ready to pack up and leave.
Not only was there a ditch on the backstretch but some dumb fucker decided to put a knoll out there in front of it like it was some Supercross race.
That jump launched you a good two feet off the ground before you hit turn three. Being airborne in a sprint car was not something I enjoyed because it usually means I’m wrecking.
I was okay with the pebbles smacking my visor but when Ryder kicked up a few bowling ball-sized rocks that his right rear unearthed, I began to wonder if I would die here tonight.
After ten laps, I had enough of the whoops and decided to park my car.
Since we arrived, Justin, Ryder, and I had attracted most everyone in the pits to come check out our cars. Judging by the appearance of their cars, I was sure they’d never seen any as nice as ours.
Two older men, Holden and Kenny, had migrated over to us and asked if they could pit for us.
Sway thought this would be entertaining, so we agreed.
“Aren’t you supposed to swarm over here and change my tire?” I teased Holden when I pulled up to my hauler after the hot laps.
“Boy, you’d been watchin’ too much NASCAR,” Holden laughed. “We old boys ain’t move that fast. Christ, Kenny could break a hip!”
Holden walked away laughing. Kenny stood beside me smiling as he had the entire afternoon. Kenny was just that happy. Why wouldn’t he be? He had all his teeth in a town most didn’t. It’s like he was royalty or something.
Sway walked past us toward the concession, my eyes followed her until Kenny chuckled beside me.
“Oh, I get it,” he said spitting into his beer. “That your girl?”
“No, it’s not like that.” I looked down to see spit on my shoe where he’d missed his cup. I almost gagged. I hated anything on my skin and spit on my shoe seemed to be something else that made me want to burn them.
“Yeah, but you wish.”
I smiled despite my urge to remove my shoes.
Out of nowhere, he slapped the side of my head.
“Watch your speed out there, when there’s a cloud of smoke, stick to your line.” It was as though he was giving me the Days of Thunder speech.
I laughed gesturing to my car. “You wanna drive?”
“Fuck no,” he said, “those guys look crazy.”
They were crazy, that was noticeable when the heat races came around and they combined classes. Putting a group of sprint cars on a track with hobby stocks was something similar to running a bicycle next to a Formula One car.
During the feature, I passed a road grader on the backstretch—an actual road grader. The worst part, they never threw the caution. Even after a flock of chickens came onto turn two and sat there, still no caution flag.
It soon became a game between Justin and me to see how many chickens we could hit when we slid into the corners.
I have to say it was by far the worst track I’d ever been to, but it was also some of the most entertaining racing I’d ever done.
Ryder came up to me after the feature—if you could call it the feature—that he won. Something about the chickens in turn two made me think it wasn’t a real race.
I plucked some feathers from my helmet. He laughed pulling some from his.
“Once you get used to the bump, it’s kind of fun.”
I laughed. “Yeah, sure.”
Now that we weren’t out there in that madness, yeah, it could be considered fun.
Holden and Kenny were a good time that night. Old men were always entertaining to me and, despite their age, they knew how to have a good time.
Sway and Tommy convinced Kenny that he should ask this girl out that was hanging around our pit. I knew what she was looking for but I wasn’t in the mood tonight. That was a lie, I was but I didn’t feel the need to be with anyone other than Sway. She was sitting on my lap when Kenny walked up to me looking a little humiliated.
“I saw that going differently in my head,” he said sitting down beside me on a tire.
“Not like you planned, huh?”
“Not at all,” he let out a nervous chuckle.
“Come on, Kenny, let’s show you a good time.” I threw my arm around him, tossing him and Sway another beer. “Nothing ever goes the way you plan with women.”
Dallas turned out to be quite the party animal, as did Kenny and Holden.
This town may have had one strange setup for a track but they all seemed to know how to have a good time. The coolest part was, they didn’t make us leave after the race, you could camp in the pits.
I was fairly shitfaced by the time I made it to our tents to sleep that night and saw Holden fall over in front of his more than once.
“What happened to you?” I asked Holden who was now laying on his back in the gravel.
“Hell, I don’t know.” He examined his shoes before standing up. “I adjusted my feet and fell down.”
“Come on, old timer, let’s get some sleep.”
“Who you callin’ old timer, son?” he slurred brushing dirt from his overalls.
He passed out within minutes of hitting his sleeping bag.
When the chickens from turn two woke us up at four that morning with only two hours sleep, we decided to make our way down to California for the final week of USAC racing.
We ended up choosing to stop off at a hotel to get some sleep but we had to find the hotel first. It seemed getting here wasn’t half the battle, finding our way back to the hotel was.
“What are you doing? I just want to get to the hotel,” I told Sway when she pulled over alongside the road in a questionable mobile home park. She was driving my truck because Alley and Spencer were fighting in the back seat.
Above their bickering, she yelled, “I have to pee.”
“Where are you going to go pee at? That person’s house?” I gestured the mobile home with a blue tarp on their roof and a sign on the door that said trespassers will be executed.
“Fuck you. I have to pee.”
“Fuck me?”
“Yes... fuck you,” she nodded and then ran for the woods to pee.
Concerned for her safety, I followed her.
She was pulling up her pants when I found her. “Don’t run off in the woods like that.”
“Oh, stop being so protective,” she said itching her arm. “I’m fine by the way.”
“Why are you itching and did you step in your pee?” I asked helping her over a log as we made our way back to the truck.
“I don’t know... my arm itches. I don’t think I stepped in my pee, why?”
“You’re not getting inside my truck with pee on your shoes.” I stated stopping short of the truck.
“Well, how am I going to know if I stepped in it? It’s wet out there.” She reached for the handle. “What’s the matter with you?”
“Take your shoes off.”
“No, I won’t,” she huffed. “Get in the goddamn truck, Jameson.”
We were all tired by that point but the thought of pee in my truck was not all right with me.
“Take off your shoes and throw them in the back.”
“Fuck you, Jameson!” she yelled and jumped inside.
Eventually I got in but I was still angry that she didn’t care enough to take her shoes off.
“That was rude.” I slammed my door shut wishing I didn’t have a suspended driver’s license.
“Really,” she drew out putting the keys in the ignition. “We have been sleeping in this truck for months. Alley and Spencer have fucked in that back seat more times than I can count and you’re worried about pee on my shoe?”
My head spun around toward Spencer in the backseat who was suddenly not so vocal arguing with Alley any longer.
“Are you fucking kidding me?” I lost it.
One thing was certain and that was that I would be selling this truck when we got back to civilization.
They all got a good laugh out of it. When we got to the hotel, I made them all sleep in the damn truck while I enjoyed the freedom of the hotel room all to myself for them being assholes.
I WAS IN one of those moods where nothing was going to make me happy. I just wanted to be left alone. I was tired, and not only tired, but I wanted to sleep in my own bed and not have to get up in the morning. I also wanted a vacation away from my brother and sister. I was literally ready to kill Spencer and Emma.
By the time Perris Auto week rolled around, I was in my last week of the USAC title chase. I was thankful when the week flew by. I finished third the first night and then won the other two of the three-day event.
We wouldn’t know who won the Triple Crown until after the final USAC sprint race in Hanford the following week but I was hopeful. With those two wins in both the midget and sprint races I slid into the lead with just an eight point lead. Justin was behind me with six hundred and seventy nine points with Ryder right behind him with six hundred and seventy eight points.
It was the closest Triple Crown battle USAC had ever seen and I was right in the middle of it. Even though I wanted to win badly I enjoyed the points being as close as they were. It meant that I was battling with guys who could compete with me. If it had been an all-out wash where no one stood a chance much like the past championships I’d won at the tracks on the West coast, it wouldn’t mean as much to win.
Now that I had competition, when I won, I knew it was because of my talent not because I had the cars with money. You see, in the divisions like USAC and NASCAR, the cars are all similar and the drivers racing in them had money. When you go to local tracks, there is a huge difference between cars because of lack of money. When you start racing in the divisions with money, you see what you’re made of and how other talent stacks up.
I snuck off to World Finals for the World of Outlaws in Charlotte prior to the race in Hanford. One more weekend in sprint cars was exactly what I needed.
Sway, Alley, Emma, and Tommy stayed in California with my mom while Justin, Ryder, and I flew back to North Carolina to race. It was fun to hang out with my dad and friends that weekend but I rarely got to see him besides the few times during the drivers’ meeting and the pill draw for the trophy dashes.
I enjoyed hanging out with Justin and Ryder that weekend too even though we were so close in the championship points together. We had become good friends this season and I hadn’t realized how refreshing that was. Sway was different from my guy friends. They were fun to bullshit with and talk trash about other drivers and setups whereas Sway was mentally what I needed.
It took me until the third night to realize why I felt so abnormal these last few days. Sway wasn’t there.
Our relationship lately was still the same though, after that night where I attacked the poor girl in my hauler, I had left her alone.
I stopped with the innocent touching and kissing and whatever else my dick decided it wanted to do because nothing about it was fucking innocent. I couldn’t take any more chances. That night prior to the race, I had been moments away from ripping our clothes off and fucking her against the wall in my hauler. She didn’t deserve that and I knew her well enough to know if she thought that wasn’t what I wanted or needed, she would have let me. I wouldn’t have been any different than that douche Dylan Grady.
How could I have even risked that?
I was beyond upset with myself after that night but it didn’t change anything for her. She was still Sway. Still the same caring, witty and supportive Sway. No matter what I did to fuck things up, she just blew it off and continued to be my roll cage.
I’ll never understand why she did it but, again, I was glad she did.
MY DAD ENDED up winning his twelfth championship that weekend. I caught up with him after the trophy presentation.
“Another one, huh?” I motioned to his trophy. “Do you even have room for that?”
He glanced down at it smiling.
“You know as well as I do, it’s not about the trophy.”
I nodded looking down at my feet. He slung his arm around my shoulder as we walked back to the haulers.
“Let’s go get that Triple Crown.”
“Sounds good to me,” I told him with a grin.
The following Wednesday was the last point race of the season and marked the end of the USAC schedule. After this race at Giant Chevrolet Speedway, we would know the winner.
Even though this was the last race, my nightly routine was pretty simple and hadn’t changed much besides maybe a few interviews on my thoughts about the title chase.
We were all at the track by two that day. The race was under the lights, for the effect, I could only assume.
Our entire family was there and many of my brother’s friends had shown up along with a few of mine. The pressure to win was there but I also wanted to win badly to show everyone that I had done it.
Part of me, and this was a very small fraction, wanted Chelsea there to see it. After her harsh remarks, I wanted to say, “See, I told you I would make it.”
Sway and I walked up to the pit entrance together with my arm thrown over her shoulder. I handed over my credentials which consisted of my suspended driver’s license, my USAC license, and my insurance card. I also had to sign the liability waiver and list all the crewmembers we had with us that night.
Two people I thought I’d never see again showed up, Kenny and Holden, from the dreadful race in Republic.
I laughed when they walked up behind us.
“Do you got room on that crew of yours?” Kenny asked.
I smiled, as did Sway who reached up to hug the old roughed up boys from Republic.
“Sure,” I motioned for them to come with us.
When Tommy saw help coming, he was all smiles. He was another one who could use a break.
These days we were hauling around a grill to make our own food so my mom and Sway began cooking burgers and hot dogs for everyone. I was so worked up over this race and it being the end of the most grueling season that I was hardly myself.
I barely spoke to anyone. I stayed away from Sway, and the two women who threw themselves at me when I walked toward the bathrooms probably thought I was the world’s biggest asshole when I told them to get away from me. I just wasn’t in the mood. I wasn’t in the mood for anything, only for this to be over with.
After we ate, the pit steward came around and had us draw pills to see what group we ran with for the hot laps.
When hot laps were underway, it was a battle with adjustments trying to prepare the car for the race.
That night we were in a USAC sprint car, which was non-winged. The setups were completely different because once you take away that wing all your down-force is gone. You struggle to find grip anywhere you can which means an entirely different spring and shock setup as well as stagger and air pressure adjustments.
I made an appearance in the hospitality tent for Bowman Oil and Sound Logistics, a sponsor I had recently picked up that manufactures exhaust systems.
Between those two sponsors and Bucky, I was able to run the remainder of the USAC season with a full sponsorship that helped considerably since I’d torn up more sprint cars this year than I cared to admit.
Time trials started after that and Sway handed me a bottle of water before I got inside the car but took off in another direction when a girl came up and asked for my autograph.
She was polite, so I said yes, but I couldn’t help but wonder why Sway was reacting the way she was. These last two months she disappeared instantly when another woman would come near me.
Time trials set the field for the feature events. There was still last chance qualifiers in the sense that if you placed in the top two of your feature you could advance to the next. Tonight they had 3-Feature events. If you were the top two in the C-Feature, you advanced to the B-Feature. The A-Feature was fielded by the top nineteen qualifiers with four transfer spots available. The top four from the B-Feature started in the rear of the A-Feature. Each track was different but this was how most of them operated.
Dad caught me before the main when I was lined up on the front stretch. He ran out there and stuck his head inside the car. “You got this kid. Don’t think, drive!” he yelled over the idling engine.
I only nodded, there was no way he’d hear me even if I did say anything.
I wouldn’t say I was nervous but I was tense. The entire season came down to one night.
It had come down to forty laps. Anything could happen in those forty laps. Tires shred, engines blow, drivers misjudge and it’s the luck of the draw.
With Ryder and Justin voraciously behind me, I needed to focus so, once again, while inside the confines of the cramped cockpit, I was one with the car.
Giant Speedway is a 3/8-mile clay oval and by the main that night, the surface was glazed over, slick and full of ruts.
It was a night Jimi would say, “Stand up and drive.”
I did.
Ryder was all over me. I wasn’t sure if maybe he was sizing me up or if he was actually struggling to pass. He took a look at passing me each lap but that wasn’t all he ever got, just a look. I led the entire feature. I wasn’t sure where Justin finished so I had no idea if I won the title until I pulled into my pit and saw my family jumping up and down.
Sway was the first, always the first, to congratulate me. She leaned inside of the car before I was able to pull myself out and kissed me. I froze since my entire family was watching but she pulled away and I realized it was her excitement for me.
“I knew you would do it!”
“Thanks, honey,” I said, hoisting myself from the seat to stand through the top roll bars. Everyone was screaming and throwing beer and champagne at me. It wasn’t just the thrill of the victory that night it was finally being able to take a breath. There was an end in sight.
Ryder had become one of the best drivers in the USAC divisions that year. To beat him at tracks like Eldora and Knoxville and then to come back and beat him when track conditions couldn’t have been any worse; that was something I was proud of. I gave those Beasts from the East a run for their money this season and proved to them that a kid from the Northwest could pull it off.
I may have been considered Jimi Riley’s son but, that night, I was known as Jameson Riley, the eighteen-year-old kid that just won the USAC Triple Crown.
I stayed at that track celebrating with my family, friends and fans until the lights were turned off. Right after the race, I started signing autographs before loading the truck. This was something I learned from Jimi.
You rarely got him to sign anything for you during a race night, but afterward that was about the fans who had just devoted their entire evening to watching him race. So did I... I stayed until I signed everything they wanted because, without them, I wouldn’t be racing at these levels because there wouldn’t be these levels of racing without them coming out and watching.
After standing there for three hours signing for people, the last kid said what pretty much summed up the season for me and made me understand, once again, why I risk it all.
He couldn’t have been much older than ten, maybe eleven. He was all smiles as he handed me a program to sign. I asked his name, he said it was Jake. I’d seen him before but I couldn’t place him but then I’d seen a lot of kids these days. Just as he was about to leave with his autograph he stopped and smiled back at me pushing his golden blonde curls away from his face.
“Jameson?” he asked politely.
“Yeah?”
“Do you think maybe I could get a picture of you and me?” his voice was soft and timid.
“Of course, buddy.”
Sway took our picture and I gave him my address and told him I expected a copy of it when he got it developed.
He eagerly agreed and then said, “I can’t wait to hang it up in my room!” he ran off to his mother after that when his dad approached me.
Right then I realized why I recognized him. It was Shey Evans’ grandson.
Shey’s son-in-law, Greg, laughed leaning into my shoulder. “All my kid talks about is this Jameson Riley kid who is supposedly his hero.”
I smiled placing the cap back on the black Sharpie I was holding.
“Is that so ...?”
“It is,” Sean put his hand on my back. “He started racing quarter midgets this last year and tells everyone he’s going to be like Jameson Riley someday.”
I risked everything to become Jameson Riley and that night I did. Now was the time to cast who I would become as a racer. People in the racing community were starting to see me as me.
I will say starting to because the following morning when I picked up the newspaper it was packed with articles saying:
RILEY’S KID MAKING A NAME FOR HIMSELF
JIMI RILEY’S SON SNAGS USAC TRIPLE CROWN TITLE
I had some work to do but still, I won the title.
It’s what I set out to do this season and I did. Next season I’d work on making these reporters aware that I had my own name.