Page 3 of The Legend
“How couldI forget?” I rolled my eyes and nearly stumbled down the stairs.
I wasn’tpleased about being interrupted nor was I comfortable for obvious reasons. Thisjust meant I was holding her to a night in our room.
Since Axelwas born, we’d lived in the same house on Lake Norman and it was time for a newone now that the kids were growing up. We’d been looking at land for a whileand decided to build on a piece of property about ten miles from the sprint carshop in Mooresville that we purchased a few years back after I won the MonsterMillion.
TheMonster Million was an All-Star race held at the Monster Mile in Dover Delawarethe last few years, which consisted of twenty-five drivers randomly chosen byfans. I really enjoyed that race because it was held on a Saturday night andinvolved no points. It was probably the most destructive race but entertaining.
I won lastyear which helped my salary quite a bit.
Theproperty we purchased was a 230-acre plot with sweeping hills, trees and a lakethat got the name ‘Shark Lake’ after Tommy thought it’d be funny to put a smallshark in there. The shark died naturally from unsalted waters but not beforeSpencer had a close encounter.
With thehelp of family, friends, and a handful of construction workers who I paidentirely too much, we had the house completed by the end of the year and Emmadecorating it for us the very next week. Sway never got into decorating thatmuch. My annoyingly helpful sister Emma was all about decorating so that’s whatshe did.
With thatmuch land, we pieced off sections and gave them to Emma and Aiden, Alley andSpencer, and my parents who were now all in the process of building their ownhomes. It was my way of showing them my appreciation for them all these years.I even gave Tommy, my partner in my sprint car team, a piece to build on. He inturn decided to put a doublewide mobile home on it. Not judging here, butreally? A mobile home when you can build any home you want. Again, I’mnot judging.
Okay, wellit may have had something to do with my wife and her basically saying it wasthe right thing to do to keep the family close.
It wasn’tthat I didn’t want them close. I loved all my family but I didn’t like any ofthem. Those that were around my siblings and me together understand that weclashed on most occasions.
Having atractor now, I busied myself for close to three hours around the property andthe new dirt track we’d built before Sway called and summoned me back to thehouse where Spencer and Alley were pulling in the driveway.
Did Imention I had a tractor?
All mylife I had wanted a John Deer tractor. Not sure why, but I did. Now I had oneand made use of it by playing jokes on Spencer and Aiden, mostly Aiden.
Aiden wasobsessed with his lawn. Most of the property we had was still being developedbut Aiden’s lawn looked like a fucking golf course you’d see in the Hamptons.Crazy bastard had these set schedules of watering it, fertilization, and if Iwas honest with you, I think he talked to it too.
Me beingthe instigating shit I could be, fucked with him and his lawn. Weekly, I dumpeda scoop full of fresh North Carolina dirt in the middle of his lawn. Hewondered for weeks where it came from. When he caught onto that, I had to thinkof better ways to ruin it for him. When you live your life in the fast lane,it’s nice to relax every now and then and just fuck with people.
My familytook the brunt of that. Spencer soon got in on it too when he figured out whatI was doing and each week after our team meeting at the shop on Tuesdaymorning, we had a secret meeting and decided on what we’d do to Aiden’s lawnthat week.
BeforeSpencer showed up, I dumped a gallon of bleach around Aiden’s lawn and thensnuck back over to our house just in time to see Spencer getting out of histruck.
“Where’dyou get that truck?” I asked Spencer looking over his newly polished set ofwheels. Once a year he bought himself a car. This year it seemed to be a newtruck that looked as though he was trying to prove his manhood. “What happenedto the F350 I gave you?”
For theeighteen years I’d been racing in the NASCAR Cup series, I’ve raced Fords.Because of this Ford offered me a new vehicle of my choice every year. BecauseI never needed them, I gave them away as presents to family and friends.
“Oh,well,” he looked over his shoulder, his black wavy hair swept into his eyeswhen the wind picked up. “I gave that to Lane to use for a few weeks. This isactually Alley’s.”
“Nice.Where’s Lane?”
“He hadpractice and then didn’t feel like going anywhere.” Lane, my oldest nephew wasracing dirt bikes these days. Unlike the rest of our family, he chose twowheels instead of four.
Spencerchuckled looking at my jeans. “Where’d the spots come from?”
Lookingdown I noticed my mistake. Some of the bleach had gotten on my jeans. “Uh,nowhere,”
He shovedmy shoulder. “Dude, wait for me next time. I had this great idea that we couldhide his lawn care tools. He would go ballistic.”
“Yeah,” Inodded with a chuckle thinking of the time we took his wash bucket he used towash his 1954 GMC. Then, when he walked inside the house to look for it,Spencer and I replaced it in the garage and hid in the bushes to see him findit an hour later right where he always put it. From then on, he was convincedhe was losing his memory. Even went to the doctor a couple times to rule outthe early onset of Alzheimer’s disease. Spencer and I used this to ouradvantage and would tell him things that never happened followed up with thestatement of, “Oh, you must have forgotten.”
He hatedthat.
Spencerand I looked over the truck for a few minutes when Casten, the youngest of mythree kids, appeared at the end of the driveway in a pair of board shorts.
“Does heever wear clothing?” Alley laughed reaching inside the back of the truck forwhat appeared to be a salad that she had made.
Colejumped down from the overly large truck and smiled at me before saying. “Henever wears clothes. Why start now?”
