Page 20 of The Legend
“They gotout of their cars and were pushing each other.”
“Oh, wellare they still doing that?”
“Why areyou so concerned with it?” he snapped. “Usually you don’t give a shit.”
I sighed.“I’m bored and missing everything. If they’re fighting and shit I wanna seeit.”
“Stay inyour car. The last thing we need is another fine.”
I did stayin the car but eventually after ten minutes of being red flagged, I voiced myconcern for my boredom again. “You would think with all this high techblinkyshit in these cars they’d let us have a TV.”
“Oh,yeah,” Kyle laughed, his joking mood returning. “NASCAR would definitely allowthat.”
We endedup restarting some five minutes later only to have the last lap end indisaster.
Runningtenth, I thought for sure I would be ahead of the mess when Brody and Nathangot sideways coming out of three it took us all out of being in the lead. Forlaps, you knew it was coming when the cars were literally floating around alljerking for position.
Cars werescattering everywhere and all I could do was let go of the wheel and hope forthe best. Most drivers let go of the wheel. When we knew the chance ofcorrecting it was slim, to avoid breaking our hands if the wheel jerked backthe other direction with a hit to the front wheels. It’s happened before.
When westart wrecking like that on a superspeedway, there’s nothing you can do. We areall bunched up so tightly that one loose car could take out a pack of twentyeasily and it did.
“Hang onto it bud, there you go.” Kyle urged. I tried to correct it only to be hit frombehind and then slammed into the wall.
“We’re init.” Aiden announced when Paul nailed us from behind and sent me sailing intothe side of Bobby and then Paul. Pretty soon I was handing out taps to ahandful of cars. It was as though I was playing ping pong and I never likedping pong when inside a race car.
Before Iknew it, I was being treated in the infield care center along with about tenother guys.
“Talkabout carnage out there.” Bobby joked holding his neck as a nurse looked overhim.
“I stilldon’t know what happened.” Paul joked slightly disoriented. “I think I hit youtwice before I ended up on the other side of the fence.”
“I’ve cometo the rescue.” Tate said with a shaded eye and beer in hand. He tossed one mydirection.
Swayapproached me from behind, her hands rose from my arms up to my shoulderholding the ice pack to my neck. “I hate watching wrecks like that.”
There wasno sense in smiling nor did I have the energy to smile. Hell I didn’t even havethe energy to open the beer in my hand. “I know.”
Once theycleared me to go, I handed the unopened beer to Paul, “Drink up.”
“Lookslike you took some licks out there.” Spencer said checking on me as I gotinside the golf cart. A few reporters stopped me outside the care center to askmy thoughts and see if I was okay.
I gaveSpencer a nod that I was all right and then turned in the seat to offer thereporter a quick interview.
“Jameson,how are you feeling? You took a nasty hit out there when Paul got into you.”
“I’m fine,sore, but fine. That’s the craziest finish I’ve ever seen here.”
Thereporter laughed. “Can you feel those big wrecks coming like that?”
“Oh yeah,you can feel it, see it, even sense that it’s coming. It’s just a matter ofwho’s gonna make it and who’s not.”
“Roughfines and rough race huh?” he asked bringing up the fines again. To reporters itdoesn’t matter whether you had a good race or a bad race. It doesn’t matter ifyou won or wrecked. They still wanted their story and focused on where thatwas. To them interviewing me, was about the fines issued this morning. Theywouldn’t forget.
“You know,there’s NASCAR’s theory on this and there’s mine and our teams. Somewhere inthe middle is the truth and that‘ll be decided by someone else.”
I left myremarks at that; I couldn’t offer them more.
Back atthe hauler, everything was loaded and ready to go within an hour as the crewslowly disappeared to board the team plane and my private jet waited for myfamily and me.
