Yellow Flag – This flag is displayed to signify a caution during the race.
BREAKING NEWS – SPEEDNEWS Charlotte, NC
Legendary World of Outlaws driver, Jimi Riley, killed in Knoxville crash. Son, Jameson Riley, air lifted and listed in critical condition.
Every news report had a shocking title. Every news reporter wanted the story. They hovered and watched our every movement. They were at the hospital. They were in the parking lot. They were at the airport. Back at the sprint car shop, they were there, too.
We had one option now. Keep going. It was the only way to honor their wishes.
Tommy, Willie, and me flew back to the sprint car shop in Mooresville. We had damage control to do. Aunt Alley came with us and she and Melissa, my dad’s business manager, fielded the media and answered the questions with as much vagueness as they could get away with.
Back at the shop, the crew guys had gathered along with most of my dad’s Cup team at JAR Racing.
The fact of the matter was that none of us wanted to admit what happened in Knoxville was anything more than an accident. It was hard when an accident happened because placing blame was easier than accepting the fact that it was an accident.
Now, looking at the two cars as they sat mangled in the middle of the shop undergoing investigation, something wasn’t adding up. Any way you looked at it, that roll cage on my dad’s car wouldn’t have held up in that crash regardless of something being altered.
But the way it crumbled was an eerie sight.
Tommy leaned inside the car and his hands took a firm hold on what was left of the roll cage and tugged. Looking over his shoulder, his brow rose. “This shouldn’t be loose.”
We all knew what that meant. After a closer look, we saw the partial welds where there should have been full welds. That was why the cage collapsed the way it did.
Looking at that car, the mangled mess of destruction, my blood ran cold as I thought of what he had done and whose lives he had put in danger.
Van and Clint stepped inside the shop, their shoes squeaked across the concrete shop from the rain. Van stopped near me and looked at Tommy.
“Did they finish the inspection?” Van asked.
I knew enough about Van to know he was asking that specific question for a reason as his eyes scanned the two cars.
I couldn’t look at either car any longer without wanting to vomit. My gut turned when I thought of my dad and holding his head as he fought for his life. Squeezing my eyes shut, tears fell again. I didn’t want to break down. I wanted to be strong like my dad, a man I’ve never seen cry before. But I couldn’t. I couldn’t be strong when my hero was fighting for his life.
Clint pushed against my shoulder and then wrapped his arm around me. “Hang in there, kid. We’ll get through this.”
I needed to hear that right then. I did.
Running my hands over my face, I cleared the disorientation. “What did you guys find?” I asked Van.
All of us expected something more happened to those cars. Immediately following the accident, the cars were covered and brought back to the shop where Tommy and Willie came back to inspect them with the help of two fabrication guys on my dad’s Cup team. Van and Clint did some investigating into the guy’s background who had been working on the cars prior to the race. Grady.
Clint squinted at the cars and moved to the side of me as Van stepped closer. “Let’s go someplace private.”
Van, Clint, Tommy, Willie and me stepped into my dad’s office. I did nothing but keep my eyes on Van knowing if I looked around and took in the memories of him healthy and happy or looked at any picture with Grandpa in it I would break down again.
“It seems Grady may have tampered with the car,” Van said, looking at Tommy. “That roll bar shouldn’t have been loose, should it?”
“No,” Tommy said immediately, anger rising in his voice. “Even with the accident, it shouldn’t have moved that much. There were partial welds done to the support bars on the roll cage.”
Pushing out the breath I was holding, I looked at Van again. “Who is he?”
Van closed his eyes visibly bothered by what he was about to say. Clint spoke for him. “His name is Grady Andrews... his mother was Leslie Andrews out of Kannapolis, North Carolina, but that shouldn’t be your question. It doesn’t matter who he is.”
“Why?” Willie asked standing near the door. His hand rested on the wall supporting his weight as he leaned into the door. “Shouldn’t it matter who he is? He’s the one who stole from Jameson, isn’t he?”
“Yes, he stole around two hundred thousand dollars in parts and sold them back in Kannapolis. But, like I said, who Grady is isn’t important. It’s who his dad is.”
“Who?” Tommy asked.
Van’s breathing increased and he moved shifting his weight. “His dad was Darrin Torres. I’m not sure if anyone knew he had a son. I didn’t. He may not have even known he had one either. His birth certificate doesn’t list his father’s name.”
“We haven’t said anything to Sway and it’s best that we don’t right now,” Clint said. “She has enough to worry about.”
“Is Darrin... alive?” Tommy asked.
“No,” Van replied, his expression completely unreadable. “But we don’t know why Grady came to work here. I can only guess for revenge.”
It didn’t matter to me now whether Grady did or didn’t tamper with the cars. He was about to have a bad day. I was sure of that. I was pissed. I was beyond pissed thinking that this, all of this, happened because someone had tampered with the roll cage and the fact that he was Darrin’s son and it went unnoticed by all of us for so long fueled my anger.
Van stayed with us but Clint left to return to Iowa.
With Willie, Van, and Tommy standing beside me, we approached Grady. One look at us and he knew that we knew.
“How could you?” I asked tears streaming down my face. I hated that I was crying over this but this wound was still open and this was like pouring salt in it. “How could you do this to him?”
“I’m sorry.” Grady choked clearly bothered by his decision. “I never touched Jimi’s car. I promise.”
“And you thought that would make it all right?” I shouted a few feet from him. “Because my dad is still alive... barely... and you thought you could live with yourself because you didn’t kill him?”
“Did you honestly think you could get away with it?” Willie asked him.
“I’m sorry!” Grady held his hands up in surrender when I shoved him against the wall. I didn’t intend on hitting him but when he said he was sorry again, I wanted to make him feel sorry for what he had done and I hit him. Shocked, his eyes went wide but he never tried to defend himself.
“I’M SORRY!” he shouted at me struggling to get away as if saying he was sorry would calm me down.
“You tell him that!” Tommy shot back grabbing him by his jacket and slamming him against the wall of the shop. “You tell Jameson you’re sorry! Not us.” He shook his head with heavy regret. “No, you don’t get to tell us. You get to tell him what you did.”
“I can’t.” Grady’s voice shook as he swiped the back of his hand over his lip glaring at me. I had no regret for punching him other than the fact that my hand now hurt. “He trusted me.”
Tommy focused on Grady. It was the first time I had ever seen him angry. “You’re a piece of shit, you know that. He fucking trusted you. We tried to tell him but he trusted you and you go and do something like this, fuck you! You get to tell him. You get to tell him and watch what you’ve done. You get to tell him you tried to kill him.” Tommy stepped closer. “And you’ll be lucky if he lets you walk away.”
There wasn’t any more to say to Grady. Our intent wasn’t to hurt him, though we wanted to, but he needed to know that we weren’t letting this go.
“You might want to stay in town Grady. And you should think about getting a lawyer. You’re going to need it.”
Grady’s eyes widened but he nodded. I think he knew then the extent of what he had done and what this meant for him. I was sure the documents he signed when he was employed here were now making sense to him. Everyone signed a confidentiality agreement, a non-disclosure agreement, and, more importantly, he signed a form that if anything came up missing, and he was the one who stole, legal actions would be taken against him. That should have been the least of his concern now. His concern needed to be what my dad would do when he found out about this.
We knew now wasn’t the time to bring this up to the rest of the family. For one I was sure that my uncles would kill Grady if they knew the truth and we also didn’t want to burden them with any more than they already had to deal with.
When Grady left, Tommy and Willie stayed with me in dad’s office. Van escorted Grady out.
“How did they not catch the partial welds in tech inspection?” Willie wondered.
“They know us there and know we have good equipment. The thought probably never crossed their mind to check under the wing for partial welds. Grady knew what he could get away with.”
With one problem solved, we headed back to Iowa to be with our family. No one had left and I could understand why. Lily came with me. It seemed wrong to be excited about the life inside my new bride but it was also a hope that we held onto. She went to the doctor the morning we left to head back to the hospital and they confirmed she was pregnant, eight weeks to be exact.
Back at the hospital, I was relieved to see that my dad was improving.
“When do you leave?” Spencer asked meeting us outside his room. We weren’t allowed in at the moment but the room had all glass walls so it was easy to watch from the outside.
“Tonight,” I sighed watching my parents. “I have to be in Eldora for a test session and then I leave the next day for Florida for the DIRTcar Nationals.”
Tommy brought his coffee cup to his lips and then let out the breath he’d been holding. “It feels wrong... doesn’t it?”
“It does.” I agreed with him, watching my mom lay in bed with my dad.
It did feel wrong but racing doesn’t wait or stop just because you’re injured. It does make it harder to go on without them. The entire organization couldn’t just stop because he was injured. Though it seemed like a good idea, respectful even, that wasn’t what he would have wanted. My dad had spent the last twenty years building his sprint car team to what it is today and now it was up to us to keep it going. And we would.
It had been a week since they’d taken dad off the coma-inducing medication. Some days he would open his eyes, other days he would mumble words we could barely understand and then some days he just slept. And then after a while, it was most of the time that he slept. The doctors assured us this was his brain’s way of healing.
There was no familiarity for him, or reasoning, he just came and went as time passed. The scans showed no permanent damage and that he should be fine. With all the broken bones, he would more than likely be out for the entire season. It was times like this that you force yourself blind and only see what you want. I saw what I wanted. I saw that with time, he’d be okay.
He was awake. His head lulled to the side, squinting at pain I assumed or maybe confusion. He seemed determined to focus.
His lips pressed to her forehead, his eyes closing, their hands locked together.
“Looks like he remembers,” I chuckled softly resting my back against the wall.
“You don’t forget a love like theirs,” Tommy replied turning his head when we saw that my mom had started crying.
If felt wrong watching such an intimate moment between them.
We left them alone and, to our surprise, dad stayed awake for a while.
When the doctors came by, we followed them inside to see how he was doing.
I wasn’t prepared for how he looked surrounded by monitors and tubes. It was evident that though he was now being listed in stable condition, he was still in need of machines to help him.
This wasn’t the first time I’d seen him since the accident. But now... I saw the bruises covering his face, the swollen purple and deep black around his eyes but I had yet to see his eyes open.
It wasn’t my dad.
At least it didn’t look like him. His eyes were cold and distant as if when he looked at you, he was looking past you.
They were blood red from hemorrhaging. But under the blood was the familiar mystic grass green. Just different. Maybe it was the medication but he didn’t look like my dad. After being out of it for two weeks I had expected this but to this extent made me angry again thinking of why this happened. I kept telling myself it was an accident because it was; however, the extent of his injuries could have been prevented.
Mom was so happy that he was awake that she didn’t care how he looked. She saw the concern for his appearance as well but after everything, she was just happy he was all right. We all were. The desolation of grandpa dying was real, we felt it, but I don’t think it had sunk in to everyone yet. We were holding out hope that at least one of them would make it. Now that one had, we prayed even harder that no complications came with it.
“His scans all look good.” The doctor motioned to them. I kept my eyes on dad, he watched carefully looking up at the screen above his bed that showed the scans; his eyes still empty and distant.
“We will continue to monitor the healing.”
“About how long will he be here?” Tommy asked.
“It depends how responsive he is to recovering. He will need to start physical therapy when he’s ready and then we can give you a better idea.”
“You can’t give us an estimate?” Mom asked.
“At least two months,” he finally said. “His rib cage was almost completely crushed. It’s going to hurt him just to breath, let alone speak. Jameson has a long recovery ahead of him. He needs specialized care and needs to be monitored carefully.”
“How long will the confusion last?” I asked.
“It’s hard to say. He took one heck of a knock. Then you add the coma, it’s... a waiting game. The CT scans show no signs of brain damage so it’s hopeful he can make a full recovery from this. But it’s not going to happen overnight. He’s going to be confused, there’ll be times when he’s not going to remember and he may react to situations completely different than he had before. With a traumatic brain injury to the temporal lobe, and with the severity that Jameson received, his speech will be affected, memory loss can happen and hearing changes. He might have difficulty recognizing people and putting their name with their face for a while and sometimes patients show increased aggressive behavior. We have to wait.”
“Great, you mean his temper could be worse than before?” Mom asked.
Dr. Howe laughed lightly. “You never know with these things.”
There was no response from dad as he was now staring out the window watching the snow.
Mom noticed. “Are you tired?”
He blinked at the sound of her voice, as though she brought him out of the trance he was in, and turned his head toward her. His body jerked at the onset of pain from the movement and he grunted.
“I’m sorry,” Mom’s eyes were wide with alarm. “I’ll get up.”
She tried to get up but his hand rose to grasp hers. “D... on’t …” fell slowly from his lips.
Their eyes met, the empty look swayed behind the cold eyes and I saw a glimpse of him in there when he looked at her; just a glimpse.
“I’ll let you rest man,” Tommy said to dad. “I’ll come see you after nationals.”
Dad blinked and looked in the direction of Tommy’s voice, but other than that he didn’t give a response.
Tommy left after that and Casten came in. I had yet to come within Dad’s line of sight so I wasn’t sure what I would say to him or if he would even recognize me.
Memory loss was a concern, but so far, he hadn’t said too much for us to test his memory.
“He’s awake?” Casten asked softly leaning into my side.
“Yeah,” I answered back still standing near the door with Casten. The doctor was explaining the last set of scans they did this morning as dad stared out the window.
After a moment, the doctor left, leaving the four of us alone. Arie would have been here but she left with Emma and Alley to get clothing and necessities from Mooresville. They were set to be back tonight before me and the sprint car guys left.
Justin and Tyler had missed the Outlaw Speedweeks, as did I. No one wanted to leave. But now, we had no choice but to be in Eldora and then Florida. Sponsors paid for exposure and we weren’t giving them much exposure if we were holed up in a hospital.
Casten moved to stand next to the bed when the doctor left.
“Hey, Dad,” he whispered softly coming into his view.
Dad’s eyes shifted toward his voice but he didn’t move his head. He seemed drowsy but it was probably the medication.
He didn’t respond to Casten but he did look at him and that seemed to be an improvement.
A few minutes passed and we were about to leave them alone again when dad spoke, we both turned back to him looking at us.
“Don’t ...” Grimacing, he swallowed as if speaking hurt, “... please... stay?”
I looked over at mom who then turned back to dad with tears in her eyes. “Baby, Axel has to leave for Eldora. Casten and I can stay with you though.”
He swallowed again grimacing in pain as he tried to speak. “W-h-h-here... D-d-dad?” his eyes drifted to me for the first time leaning against the door.
The emotions surfaced again and I saw myself trying to save their lives. I saw myself holding his head and him looking up at me with blood all over him, his eyes never more green that they were in that moment. And now, here he was, looking at me again. Only this time, there was nothing I could do to save him from the grief he was about to experience. Because if someone would have told me that my dad didn’t make it, I wasn’t so sure I could have handled that.