by Shey Stahl
All of these memories of him were so overwhelming but tied to the one person I had shut out completely.
Axel.
Mom let me go when Cassie, my sister in-law, came into the garage holding Jacen. “This little guy is ready to go.”
I smiled at Jacen who reached for me then carried him to the car. It only reminded me of carrying Jack this very same way.
Jonah reached down and touched my swollen stomach. “Baby?”
“Yes, buddy, baby.”
I hadn’t specifically told the boys I was pregnant. Instead, as my stomach grew, I dressed in looser clothing. At this point, they knew, and I’d begged them not to tell their daddy, explaining that I would when mommy saw him. Not knowing any better, they had kept the secret so far. I felt absolutely awful they were excited to have a baby in the family, yet they couldn’t share that information with their dad.
I knew the day was fast approaching where they were either going to say something, or I would be forced to deal with reality.
For me, I was healing. And I say healing because I was sure that I would always be that way. I would never be healed.
It happened one day at a time. Just one day, I felt normal. I felt like maybe I could go on. Like I was finally going to make it. But then a memory would hit me, a song, watching the clouds, and I would miss him so much that it buried me for days. I wouldn’t eat, sleep, could barely hold a conversation with anyone, let alone function.
WHEN WE GOT BACK from the lake that afternoon, my dad wanted to talk to me. And I knew why. It was now late September and the baby was due November thirteenth. Yet here I was, holed up at my parent’s house.
I just couldn’t face Axel and the longer I waited, the harder it was. With the Outlaw schedule winding down, Axel hadn’t seen the boys since Jack’s birthday.
But the longer I waited to talk to him, the harder it was to say anything.
“Why haven’t you told him about the baby?” Dad asked immediately when we were alone. “I saw him last week and he knows nothing about it.”
Panic shot through me and my hand automatically fell to my stomach as we walked about their property through the thick trees lining the back half. “Did you tell him?”
“No…but haven’t you said anything?”
Sighing, I stared at my swollen feet with tan lines from my flip-flops. “I don’t know how to say anything. Have you ever waited so long to say something that after a while, you don’t even know how to start the conversation?”
Dad tipped his head back and forth, understanding, but not satisfied with the answer.
“You could have this baby early and you haven’t even told your husband. Lily, I have to drop the boys off to him and every time it kills me that I can’t tell him or see the pain in his eyes over this. It’s not fair to him, and it’s not fair to the boys.”
“I know, Dad. I just don’t know what to say.”
Dad stopped walking, his arms on my shoulders. “Just tell him. Axel is incredibly understanding, but you haven’t given him the chance to be understanding. You’ve assumed for him that he won’t be a part of any of this.” And then he waited for my eyes to meet his. “You still love him, right?”
Did I?
Absolutely. I did with all my heart and the longer I was away, the stronger that feeling was. Okay, as a harsh reality, my dad had made a very good point. Axel was my husband, mostly because he refused to sign the papers. When I found out I was pregnant, I stopped sending them.
“Yes. I do...still love him.”
Dad smiled and winked at me. “Then you need to tell him or I am.”
“Dad!” I shoved him, lightly. “Why would you do that?”
“Because…he needs to know. I’ve let you string him and the boys along for months. Do the right thing here and tell him.”
“I will. I have a doctor’s appointment soon in Charlotte.”
“WHAT BOTHERS YOU more, the racing, or the fear of that speed?” Dr. Stein asked. It was the same questions she asked each week, and surprisingly, some weeks, I had different answers. Once a week, I saw a therapist now. It was needed to maintain my healing status.
“Neither. It’s the fear that it could take him away from me, like it did Jack.”
“So if Jack had been killed in your driveway or walking to school by a car, would you feel that way about cars on the street?”
She had a point and said this to me nearly every week. Would I? Would I think we needed to quit driving all together?
No. I wouldn’t.
“Why do you really think you asked Axel to quit?
“I was scared.” My voice shook, from both my nerves and the reality that just talking about this made me cry. I had good days, and then I had bad ones. And then the really bad ones, where I had the darker thoughts. “I lost my son at a track. I didn’t know what else to do or how to process the fear I was having. As the season approached, I had this anxiety in the pit of my stomach and I couldn’t…I just didn’t want him there. I didn’t want to see a sprint car or another dirt track.”
“What you have to remember, Lily, is that it’s not racing that took your son. It was an accident.”
When Dr. Stein first said that to me, the second time I was in her office, it pissed me off. Made me feel like I should just let it go, right? It was an accident. Forget about it.
The thing was, I would never forget this and I didn’t feel I needed to.
“So it’s not about racing?”
She was urging me to finally say it.
“No,” I admitted. “It’s about the reminder that he’s gone because he loved racing. At a dirt track was where he wanted to be.”
“And that’s what you have to remember. That’s where he wanted to be. That made him happy. It makes Axel happy. None of this is strictly about racing in general. It’s about the loss of your son and I’m sorry. I am because it’s an unimaginable loss that you will spend the rest of your life wondering how you could have prevented it. But until you deal with that, and see that it’s only about that, and stop blaming everyone else, it’s not going to get any better. It’s going to continue to hurt just as bad.”
Dr. Stein was right. I hadn’t accepted the fact that it was an accident and not Axel’s fault.
But I did now.
I hadn’t accepted that in an act of grieving, I turned to someone else.
I never meant to hurt Axel. The last thing I wanted was to hurt him in that way. Being numb to the world could make you do and say things you wouldn’t ordinarily do. It wasn’t an excuse. It was the truth.
What I needed to do was accept all of that, and talk to him. I also had to prepare myself that maybe too much damage had already been done.
Axel
Un-lap - A driver down one lap passes the leader to regain their position on the lead lap.
IT WAS A LAZY, HOT AFTERNOON as we sat around the pits at Port Royal Speedway. Almost everything was ready to go. Rager was on a rear tire, phone in hand, occasionally looking up and lost in thought. Tommy was staring at the water truck, on his tenth pass over the saturated clay.
“So you’re not in jail?” I asked Willie, laughing as I approached him sitting in the pits with an ice pack on his head.
I was feeling pretty good. Mostly because if I won, I’d wrap up the championship before the World Finals in Charlotte in two weeks.
Willie wasn’t feeling so well. We lost him and Dave on our trip from Ohio to Pennsylvania. It wasn’t unheard of for us to lose either one of them, but Dave hadn’t returned.
“I’m standing here, aren’t I?” He looked around. “But I might be when I find Dave. That motherfucker crossed the line.”
Casten, who came out of his hauler with no shirt on, could barely stand – he was laughing so hard at Dave. Rager stepped out too, helmet in hand, and set it inside his car. Since his concussion, it was his first race back. Dad made him take a month off and put Caden in his car. Worked out good for Caden, since Dad was now contemplating adding another
car next year, with him in it.
I sat down beside him in a chair and kicked my legs up on the cooler. “What did Dave do this time?”
Willie didn’t understand why that mattered as he searched the pits. He never actually stood in his chair, or removed his ice pack, but his searching consisted of using binoculars. “Dared me to cut down a cactus.”
“How did you get arrested for that?” I asked, scratching the side of my head. “And where did you find a cactus? We left you in Ohio.”
“It’s illegal in Arizona,” he pointed out, as if we all should have known this. “He knew that.”
“Wait,”—Casten held up his hand—“how did the police even find out you cut down the cactus? It’s not like they have security tags on the fuckin’ things.”
Willie removed the ice pack and leveled us with a serious look. “This fucker told the police.”
“So he went to jail too?”
“Yeah…but not for the cactus. He was driving the gateway car.”
“It still doesn’t explain where you found a cactus in Ohio,” Casten pointed out, for good reason.
“What’s going on?” Dad asked, coming out of his hauler, kicking my feet off the cooler to retrieve a water bottle. Then he looked around. “Where’s Dave?”
Casten grinned. “Dave was arrested for drunk driving.”
Willie shook his head. “I was with him. He was drunk, yeah, but I wouldn’t call that driving.”
Clearly not caring, Dad rolled his eyes and rubbed the side of his head as if he was in pain. “What’s wrong?” I asked, wondering if he was okay.
“My head hurts.” He looked around the pits, his eyes squinting at the water truck and then landing on me. He smiled but it looked forced.
“Tommy probably has some pain meds for you,” Casten teased.
Dad’s brows knitted together. “I’m not taking shit from him.”
Last Christmas, Dad had a headache and got some pain pills from Tommy. They turned out to be Viagra. In turn, Dad doesn’t take medication from anyone. Turning around, he went back inside the hauler and closed the door.
“So where did you find the cactus?” Casten asked Willie, wanting to understand how all this happened.
“We actually flew to Vegas after Freemont,” Willie admitted.
We didn’t need details. It was fairly self-explanatory at that point.
Dave ended up showing up right after the heats and Willie wasn’t happy with him. “You’re an awful friend.”
“I’m only friends with you because I can’t stop watching the train wreck.” The worst part was Dave was serious.
Willie looked offended, which if you knew him, seemed impossible. “That’s not fair. You’re the reason I’m divorced.”
Tommy wrapped his arm around Dave, teasingly. “Oh, leave him alone. He’s got his own dreams that won’t come true.”
Everyone in the pit laughed, lightening the mood when Dave shook his head, almost violently.
“I am not.” Dave tried to defend himself. “It’s not like I slept with your wife.” The boys went quiet and Dave looked at me. I just shrugged it off. Nothing was getting to me today. “Sorry, Axel, but I just mean, I taped them having sex. It wasn’t like I was there with her.”
He had a point. “True,” I agreed with him. I reached for my helmet when I heard them call for the Dash qualifiers.
“Sometimes I wonder when someone is going to have the balls to punch Dave in the face,” Tommy noted after adjusting my car. I hopped on the four-wheel outside my pit, still laughing at the boys, but trying to focus. It wasn’t easy, but like I said, I was thankful for this because it was keeping me relaxed, considering what tonight was.
“Someone will.” Willie nodded and handed Casten his beer. “Like me.”
Then he stood, dusted off his jeans, walked over to Dave and punched him right in the face. Well, in the cheek. Willie had shitty aim.
A RACE CAR DRIVER has a natural inclination for speed, competition, and tact. We had a desire, a need to push ourselves beyond our comfort zone. We took risks and strove to be the best. It was in our nature. In February, I made the decision that I was going to do this. I was going to win this championship and put everything I had into it. In my mind, I had nothing left but this, and for myself, I had to do it. I fussed over car set-ups and did everything I could to get just that fraction of an inch that could have landed me the win. All that had landed me with forty feature wins, and almost every race being in the top five cars or top ten. It paid off because I found myself in the lead and ready to tie up the championship a week ahead of time.
“When you get on that track, give your heart,” Dad said to me in Port Royal. “Race like you’re trying to lay down a fast lap. And do that thirty-nine more times. Give it everything you have and if you do that, it doesn’t matter if you’re first, or last, or if you win. Inside you win because you know you gave that race everything you had to give.”
I started on Rager’s outside and got the lead on the start. I worked the outside but within a lap, Rager had caught me, challenging me every chance he had.
As we battled, Dad worked his way to third and in contention for the win, as well. He found an opening with ten laps to go, clearing Rager in turns one and two to take over second.
That was when I started to sweat.
When my dad was behind me, I always became nervous. I couldn’t see him, but I could hear him back there and knew he was coming for me. There was no way he was letting me win this easily.
He’d set his sights on me and I knew with two laps, he’d easily get by me if he challenged for the lead.
The only caution flag flew right then for a car slowed on the backstretch. When it returned to green, the battle continued. Dad got a run on me and we drag raced down the front stretch. As we dove into one, he cleared me.
No way was I losing the championship like this.
I slid through turns one and two the very next lap and got the lead back. We found ourselves in traffic and Rager caught us, but couldn’t make the pass on me.
On that last lap, I felt like nothing was going to take that win from me. When I saw the checkered flag, I had this strange pressure in my gut that I couldn’t explain. There was a sweet spot between too soon and too late in racing. One mistake and you’d lose the lead. I had found my sweet spot.
I smiled knowing Jack was there. I could feel him with me. I could feel him so strongly that I thought for sure, had I turned my head, I would have seen him next to me.
I would have never thought I could have wrapped up that championship even before the World Finals began. Never.
When I put my mind to it, that I was going to win a championship, I think Jack was with me, giving me the strength I needed. He knew that for myself, I needed this and he was there guiding me. He was helping me find something to believe in when my faith was shaken.
Anybody who had ever won anything could tell you winning was everything. That feeling you got was worth it.
It mattered that you showed up. And you kept showing up. You put that helmet on and you got on that track. It mattered that you did what you were born to do.
“This one is for you, buddy.”
For so long after he passed away, I believed I wouldn’t feel anything but pain. I believed that was all I deserved to feel. I felt responsible for what happened in more ways than one. And for the first time, I didn’t feel that tonight. I felt the happiness that he wanted me to feel when I took that checkered flag and my family was celebrating with me.
It was luck that I’d made it this far in the season and won so much. And in a lot of ways, I believed that Jack gave me his luck.
There were no words to describe the pain of losing a child. Never would be. It was an emotion I’d never be able to define in a word. There were accidents in life. And then there were tragedies. Events, that no matter what, you weren’t walking away from them. At least nothing like you were before. I knew without a doubt, I would never be the same man I w
as before losing my son, but this man, the one holding the trophy high above his head, he was stronger than I gave him credit for.
Lily
Lap of Honor - A non-competitive lap taken before or after the race by a driver in celebration. Sometimes this lap is dedicated to a passing member of the racing community.
I DIDN’T UNDERSTAND why kids died, why any kid died, but especially why Jack.
I just wanted him back. I wanted those baby blue eyes and that bright smile. I wanted his laughter and that cute little smirk when he knew he was in trouble.
All of it, damn it.
I couldn’t blame Axel for it. In reality, it could have happened while I was there. And like Dr. Stein said, it could have happened walking down the road. Sure, racing had its risks, but so did everything else. He could have caught the flu and died. Life was fragile and I felt like I was now grieving my son to the point that I had forgotten there was a world around me. One where my boys needed me, one where my husband needed me.
But would he forgive me after the heartache I’d caused him?
I left the boys with my mom that day and made the drive back to Mooresville. The entire way there, I tried to talk my way out of it. Tell myself that I shouldn’t do this.
Only I needed to.
I had to.
For Jack.
For Axel.
For Jonah and Jacen, and for this precious little girl we’d created. She needed to know what an amazing father she had.
I never considered Axel’s feelings throughout any of it. What I thought about was my pain, my suffering. How I felt. How depressed I was. How this had changed me.