Lights Out – The lights go out when the starter is ready to display a green flag.
After our honeymoon in Hawaii, it was back to real life and time for racing once again. Personally, I was looking forward to it. I enjoyed the time with Lily but I was ready to get back in the car.
This year all the talk was about Frost Nationals in Knoxville in just a week. I could hardly focus on anything but that once we returned. That was until Lily pulled me aside the night before we left for Iowa.
She sat there in front of me, chewing on her lip as though she was scared.
I kissed along her tanned skin hoping this might ease any troubling thoughts she had but still, her mood didn’t change.
Lily had something to say, I just knew it but she seemed... confused?
Standing over her, I moved my legs in between hers. “Lil, what’s going on with you?” My hands rested on the back of the couch trapping her.
“I, uh... need to talk to you.” She looked up at me.
“Okay,” sitting down next to her, I pulled her across the couch wrapping my arms around her. “What’s up?”
Another few minutes of silence, she sighed and closed her eyes. Her long lashes seemed to flutter for a second before opening. “I’m pregnant.”
I didn’t say anything for close to five minutes. This was not what I was expecting to hear. I was thinking something along the lines of, “Let’s get a bigger house,” or “Can I get a new car?” Not, “I’m pregnant.”
“Wow, that wasn’t what I was expecting you to say,” I finally said breaking the uncomfortable silence hanging between us.
“Oh,” her face fell slightly at my confession, her eyes dropping from mine.
“I didn’t mean it like that, Lil... I’m just surprised.”
She nodded; her eyes glassy with threatening tears. “Are you happy?”
“How could I not be?” I reached for her, my arms wrapping around her tiny shoulders. “I love you, Lil.”
I wasn’t exactly sure what to think about her being pregnant. I wasn’t mad, no, that wasn’t it, but I also wasn’t as excited as I hoped I’d be. Was that a bad thing? Wasn’t I supposed to be happy?
I wanted kids, eventually, but right now just didn’t seem like the time. I would be starting my second season that year and wanted that championship. I was afraid my focus wouldn’t be there now.
Lily wasn’t coming with us to Knoxville. She was staying with her mom for the week since she had just had surgery on her back.
I guess now would be my time to adjust to everything.
The morning we left, everyone met at the shop and we decided who was coming and who had other plans. We ended up taking a variety of crew members and a few guys from CST Engines.
Lane, Cole and Logan were flying out with me and Tommy. Everyone else was already there, including my dad. Casten decided to stay home that weekend with the girls, something about a date with a girl but I later found out he was grounded again.
Racing in the winter generally wasn’t done anywhere other than Tulsa for the Chili Bowl, Irwindale for Turkey Night, or Australia. Usually, it was too damn cold.
But this year Knoxville Raceway was doing an event called Frost Nationals that was a three-day event to kick off Speedweeks before Daytona and the opening of the World of Outlaws in Barberville. Each night would have main events. From a driver’s point of view, this was ideal.
The next night, it started all over. That was ideal because it didn’t matter if you fucked up and got a bad spot on Thursday. On Friday, it was a clean slate so to speak.
No points, just money … a million dollars to be exact. None of us did it for the money though, we all just wanted to race. The joke was, since my dad was going that “Million Dollar Maybe” they called him, would win it. They called him that because anytime someone asked him if he would win, he said maybe. Anytime he said maybe, he won.
Dad was, of course, set to race along with Justin, Cody, Rager and Tyler. It would be a stacked field for sure.
I didn’t know grandpa was racing until we were standing outside the registration booth.
“Holy shit, dude!” Shane reached for the entry list, his eyes wide. “Jimi’s racing tonight?”
Huh?
I ripped the sheet from his hands and looked back at my dad who was signing the waiver. “Did you know about this?”
He smirked handing the clipboard toward Justin on the other side of him. “Who do you think got his car ready?”
It wasn’t that I didn’t want grandpa racing. I wanted to race against the best but he wasn’t exactly in the best shape these days. At sixty-five, he was getting old; not that he was the oldest guy to race sprint cars these days.
Bucky Miers, after ten years in retirement, climbed in a USAC Silver Crown car last year to prove a point that, at seventy-six, he still had it.
Age never mattered in racing but physical condition did. With hip surgery, a recent heart valve replacement, and more concussions than any brain needed, his physical condition wasn’t great.
“Does Grandma know your old ass it racing?” Lane asked nudging grandpa in the ribs as he pulled his racing suit over his broad shoulders getting ready for hot laps.
“Boy,” he drawled out slowly with a smirk I hadn’t seen in a while, “your Grandma would never question why I wanted to get back in the car.”
“She doesn’t get scared?” I asked standing next to them, my dad followed behind me.
“Women who marry racers love them for who they are and never question why they get behind the wheel. And when it all falls apart, they are right there, putting the pieces together again.”
I didn’t like the way he said “falls apart.” Even dad, who stood next to him, glanced up when he said that and then walked away shaking his head.
Lane laughed and walked toward Cole and Logan who were trying to wrestle my dad to the ground when I blurted out the first thing on my mind.
“Lily’s pregnant.” I don’t know why I said it right then, it just came out. Maybe because I was scared and I thought if I told someone maybe I wouldn’t feel so scared.
“No shit?” Grandpa said nodding his head in approval.
“Uh-huh.” I gave him this half smile, half scared shitless look that made him chuckle.
“You excited?”
“I guess so.” There wasn’t much I could say about it. She didn’t even know how far along she was just that she had a positive test and we would be parents in nine months or so. That literally scared the shit out of me.
“Didn’t take you long,” he laughed leaning against the hauler behind him crossing his feet over one another when Tommy walked up.
“Didn’t take long for what?”
“Axel knocked his wife up,” Grandpa blurted out to my complete horror.
“Grandpa,” I looked at him with wide eyes, “I told you that in private!”
“Well, shit kid ...” he nudged my shoulder nearly knocking me over. “You should have said that to begin with.”
Right
Tommy jetted off to tell the entire pit, I assumed, leaving us alone again. “Sorry, kid.”
“Don’t worry about it.” I shrugged it off and looked over at my dad who was laughing at something Justin had just said.
“Have you ever second-guessed yourself?” Grandpa asked, leaning against the hauler again, his eyes focused on my dad now signing autographs off in the distance.
I thought for a moment, watching dad, and then looked up at him.
“At times,” I couldn’t lie. Anytime I pulled myself inside the car, I questioned whether or not I could do it.
“Your dad doesn’t, ever. Even when he was young; I think around eleven when he first ran a full size sprint, he was as confident as he’s always been.”
He was right. My dad had more confidence in his ability than anyone I’d ever seen. His combination of speed, grace and poised aggression mixed in with all-out ease on the track, put him in a class by himself, no one could touch him. Not even Jimi Riley—the King of the Outlaws—had anything on him.
Not many racers, okay none, could shift focus from each different series and still be competitive like he could. He could race in a truck race, move to a Nationwide car the next day, a Cup car the following, and then hop inside a sprint car and pull away with a victory in all four in the same weekend. I’ve seen him do it countless times like it was nothing. His trick was to feel the car and feel the track. He claimed it had nothing to do with him, he was just steering. It was bullshit but he was being humble.
Never had I seen another driver be able to feel grip the way he did. It took me years to really understand his talent and even longer to realize I had the potential.
“I’ve never seen another driver like him before ...” Grandpa paused and smiled, “until you.”
“What about you?”
“Like I said... I’ve never seen a driver like him before. I can’t do what he does.” He waved his arm around. “Sure, I can push a sprint car to its limits but look at him. He’s got it all. Stock cars are an entirely different mentality and he can do it without hesitation. He’s legendary.”
We watched as dad joked around with Justin and Tyler while more fans crowded around them.
“Don’t live too fast kid,” he wrapped his arm around my shoulder. “Before you know it, you’re heading toward seventy and wondering where the hell all the time went.”
In reality, I knew the feeling. It felt like just yesterday I was racing USAC and now here I was racing with my dad and grandpa and apparently soon to be a dad.
Thinking of that again made me think of Lily so I sent her a text.
Thinking of you. Just wanted to say I love you.
She replied instantly. I love you, too. Good luck tonight.
I sat there in the back of the hauler watching the fans lingering in the pits looking for autographs and examining the sprint cars. Many would stick their heads in the hauler, take pictures and occasionally ask for an autograph, while others just wandered around taking in everything.
Lane strolled past at one point. “Do you think this fog will clear up?”
“I don’t know,” I said looking out at the track. “I’m not sure we can get the race in if it doesn’t.”
The night felt strange to me. A low cloud cover had come in and a thick layer of fog had settled in turn two. We’d never raced in the winter here; usually the ground was too frozen to do so.
Tonight was different though. It could have been the cool temperature that felt freezing. Maybe that was why everything felt strange to me.
The moon was full, shining through the fog with silver streaks of hovering light. A thick ring formed reflecting the light.
“What are you looking at?” Tommy asked as the gravel crunched beneath his feet.
“Nothing,” I looked over at him sighing to myself. I didn’t get up though. Instead I stayed there sitting on the loading ramp.
“Crazy kid,” Tommy smiled. “Let’s go. You got a race to win and I got a hundred bucks ridin’ on it.”
Heat laps were done and now it was time, for the first time in years, to roll onto a track with the legends of our time.