The Legend (44 page)

He looked
back at me, his fingers moved toward mine over the blanket, searching. Quickly
I reached for him not wanting him to move too much. “Are you cold?”

He closed
his eyes again, sighing. Wincing once again, he let out a shaky breath.

“I-I-I
...
lo…
ve
...
you-u-u.”
He croaked; his voice raspy and rough, those
somnolent bloodshot eyes looked up at me.

“Oh god
Jameson
...
I love you too!” I felt a gush from the
slightest bit of hope that I had in days. He knew me.

Looking at
him now, I couldn’t help but think that it would be a long road to recovery for
him physically but emotionally, would he recover? I couldn’t help think about
what happened with Darrin and that took him nearly twenty years to come to terms
with. Would this be the same?

“Please
don’t blame yourself Jameson. It’s not your fault.” I told him stroking my
fingers gently over his hands. I noticed they were bruised so I lifted my
fingers.

I felt him
try to take in a deep breath but winced once more. He never responded to me,
just stared at me. His eyes were tired and I could tell he was minutes away
from falling asleep again.

But he
surprised me when he asked.
“
Wh
-h-at?”

“Do you
want to know what happened?”

He made a
slight nod with his head, just enough to indicate he wanted to know more.

“You and
Jimi were racing side-by-side for the lead when his tire blew. The axle and
bearings came apart. He cut down directly in front of you. They airlifted both
of you from Knoxville. You were conscious when you arrived but were in an out
and then you stopped breathing. They took you into surgery right away since he
had a lateral fracture to you skull.” I paused. He was looking out the window
again, the sun had just set. The colors reflected against the white snow. I
wondered if this was too much but he looked at me when I hadn’t spoken for a
moment. His eyes told me to continue.

“Jimi
showed no signs of response after the accident and wasn’t breathing. They
performed CPR at the track and for nearly an hour at the hospital but they
weren’t able to revive him. His spinal cord was severed at the base of his
neck.”

Jameson
tensed again, grunting at the onset of pain from his muscles tensing.

“They
tried everything to bring him back baby. I’m sorry.”

He made the
tiny nod again. “Co
...
m
...
e
...
clos-s-ser.”
His speech was hard to decipher but understood what he was asking.

I did,
carefully and laid my head next to his.

“W-w-as anyone?”
I could tell he was trying hard to speak but it was difficult for him and incredibly
painful.

“Was
anyone else hurt?”

He nodded
carefully, the motion caused him to gasp and then tense at the onset of
additional pain. I waited for him to relax before speaking.

“A few
guys were checked out at the track but it was just you and Jimi that were
airlifted.”

“Axe-l-l-l?”

“He’s
fine, baby. A little shaken up but he’s fine.” I saw another tear slip down his
cheek and brushed it away with my fingertips. “Please don’t blame yourself.
Your mom, your kids,
me
, the rest of your family needs you right now. We
can’t do this alone.”

His gaze
that was fixated on the window, shifted to me. The blood in his eyes seemed so
prominent now. The green, it was there but it was different. It could have been
the medication but I tended to think the latter and guessed it was a front. He
was trying not to feel anything, whether it be emotionally, or physically.

“I
...
k
...
now.” he
whispered softly before placing a tender kiss on my temple. “I
...
n-n-
eed
you guys
...
”

And he did.
He needed his family and our love more than ever now.

20.
          
Wheel Hop – Axel

Wheel Hop – A hopping action of the rear wheels during heavy
acceleration.
Traction is
lost and gained in rapid cycles after power is applied to the rear wheels.

“I’m
tempted to board that window up.”

“Don’t you
dare,” mom warned biting her nails. “It’s all he has right now.”

“Please
tell me that photo is out of your bra?” Emma asked mom leaning over to peak
down her shirt.

Mom
smacked at her trying to get away when Emma’s arms wrapped around her waist.
“Don’t look down my shirt!”

Alley
giggled beside them on the floor in the hallway outside my dad’s room as they
performed a CT scan. My grandma, bless her heart was watching them interact, a
soft smile drifted over her and then, for the first time in a week, she
laughed.

All of us
stopped and watched her and then broke out into laughter together. It felt good
to laugh. It felt good to be a family though we were missing pieces of it now.
My mom told me once, when our dog Rev died and I cried for two weeks, that
change was something that scares everyone. It comes and goes, like a track
changing from a tacky track to dry and slick, it’s drastic, tons of grip to no
grip. What once was a track that provided different grooves is now a tire-shredding
monster and you are forced into one line, one direction. You can try to ignore
the change, run the line you want, but you can’t discount the way your car
handles. Soon you have wheel hop and you’re forced up the track to the line
with the most grip.

You may
not want to run that line, so close to the wall that can reach out and bite you
any second but you deal with it. You hang on and hope the new line gets you to
where you wanted.

Smiling at
the memory of mom holding me tightly at eleven-years old, crying with me, she
did what she always did best for me. Explained the change in our lives they
only way I knew our family to explain anything, Racing terms.

I sat
there and watched all of us interacting together, finally breathing for the
first time in three weeks. Because so far, the praying was answered, the
waiting had stopped, he was breathing, he was speaking, kind of, but one was
saved.

It left a
mark, sure. We had something to be thankful for, my dad was awake.

Standing,
my mom, and grandma watched me closely as I looked at my dad lying still in his
bed, looking out the window as doctors spoke to him.

“I have to
leave,” I said regretfully. Mom stood and wrapped her arms around me. I noticed
then that she was losing weight, weight she didn’t have to lose. “Mom, you need
to eat something.”

“I know
baby. I will.” She said twisting from me. “When does Lily and Ami’s flight come
in?”

“They
landed about thirty minutes ago. Roger is waiting for me at the airport to take
me back to Mooresville.”

“Okay,”
she said checking her phone for the time. “How’s everything going there? Did
Sherry get all the flights scheduled for Justin and Tyler for SoCal Showdown?”

I nodded
trying not to give any details for what was going on back home. They didn’t
need to know that Grady had altered dad’s roll cage or that he was actually
Darrin’s son. No. They had enough to worry about.

Arie, who
sat next to grandma holding her hand, looked up at me hoping I didn’t say
anything. Our eyes met and she pleaded with me and I silently offered my
agreement to her.

I left
after that, had lunch with Lily and then I was heading back home to prepare for
three weeks on the road. I wanted to block the pain I was feeling, the everyday
aches of the change that occurred and racing was the only way. Dealing with it
the only way we knew.

When I
walked into the shop, I knew that dealing with it needed to have a little more
effort.

The
problem was that it didn’t matter, any way we looked at the situation, it felt
like things were falling apart without dad here to yell at us.

My other
surprise that night was the boys breaking out a case of beer after we got the
walk through done on the cars and loaded in the haulers. When Greg and Rusty
took off for Barberville, Tommy and Willie started drinking. Soon it was only
natural that I join them.

“It’s
quiet without him here yelling at us.” Willie said almost conversationally
looking around. All three of us laid on the concrete shop floor. “I keep
thinking he’s going to yell at us for sitting around.”

Tommy
giggled. “He saves that for Rosa.”

“By the
way, Tommy,” Willie propped himself up on his elbows. “How’s Rosa these days?”

“Tommy
giggled again taking a long pull from his beer. “She’s good.”

It’d been a
while since any of us drank, me included, probably because I wasn’t of legal
age, but we needed it that night.

Justin and
Tyler came by around ten that night and brought more beer. Soon they too were
lying on the floor with us, drinking. We reminisced and talked about jokes they
used to play on my dad and grandpa. They told me stories of my dad and uncle
Spencer cutting the locks to the haulers in the pits when they were kids and
then replacing them with new ones so that the morning of the race none of the
guys could get into their haulers. They told me stories of my parents growing
up together and ones of my dad’s first
season
in the
Nationwide series when he couldn’t make a pit stop to save his life and every
time got into the box sideways.

It was
what we all needed.

“We’re
doing a shitty job at this.” Justin said raising his beer in the air.

“I don’t
think we’re doing that bad.” Tommy defended but then looked around at the mess
of parts scattered everywhere and just about every box we had opened in the
last few weeks. It didn’t help that Charlie and Noah didn’t understand
organization either. “Okay…maybe we have some work to do.”

The side
door opened drawing our hazy attention. It was Arie.

“What are
you guys doing? Get up.” Arie kicked Willie in the thigh.

“We’re
stressed out?” Tommy asked holding the beer in the air. “We drink!”

“What are
you doing here?” I asked Arie rolling onto my stomach.

Her eyes
shifted around the shop. “I was looking for Easton. Have you seen him?”

“Now
...
” Tommy’s tone took on a curious but amused
timbre. “
...
why would
you
be looking for Easton?”

“None of
your business fire crotch.” Arie smiled kicking his side.

Tommy
doubled over laughing. “Oh jeez, like mother like daughter.”

“Arie!”
Willie
called out when she walked to the office.

“What?”
she looked over her shoulder trying to hide her amusement.

“Can you
get me another beer?”

“No, get
it yourself!”

The door
slammed behind her and Willie looked at Tommy. “She’s so much like Sway.”

Before we
knew it, Speedweeks had started and the NASCAR schedule was tight. With Daytona
starting, Easton did what he could but the fans wanted to see Jameson in the
number nine and they didn’t stand in line for hours to meet Easton Levi. I will
say that Easton gained a tremendous amount of fans that week in Daytona. He was
smiling and represented Simplex Shocks and
Springs
in
a manner they appreciated. But it wasn’t the same. I snuck off to Daytona for a
day trying to help Kyle and Mason in any way I could and I quickly realized the
void that was there.

  
Kyle was never a guy that was known for speaking his feelings.
At least not to me.
When I walked inside the hauler, he was
there going through his meticulous notes. He looked up when I entered and the
eye contact with him somehow made the emotional divulgence, though he never
spoke, more difficult.

“Hey kid,”
he finally said, his eyes falling back to his notebook. Though dad was stable
now, the clarity of that night was still heavy on my mind, and Kyle knew that.

“Hey,” I
took a seat next to him. We spoke about Barberville and how the testing went
last week with Easton. That’s when he asked about dad.

“I heard
Jameson’s doing better and communicating a little.”

The
mention of his name made me feel sick to my stomach. “Yeah, he’s slowly coming
around.”

“You’ll
never forget that shit kid.” He said slowly understanding my feelings around
the accident. “There are memories that will forever be with you and
unfortunately, that’s one of them.”