Camden by Shey Stahl
You didn’t think the story would end with a wedding, did you?
Maybe you did because you’re disappointed we didn’t share the wedding night, and you’ve stopped reading because, let’s face it, this has been an absolute shit show at times. But if you did stop reading, you’d miss out on the best part.
Ready for the happy yet unconventional ending? Here it is.
If you take a splash of craziness, dash of adrenaline and pinch of what the fuck, you get a day with the Sawyer brothers. But I’ll tell you something else.
I have a real family for the first time in my life, and brothers who need me.
And a wife who insists on making me have a heart attack. I was not, am not, never will be okay with River racing the Baja 1000 with me. Do you think I have a say in it?
Ha. That’s funny. Do you know her?
This is River Savage Sawyer we’re talking about and when has she ever listened to me?
The answer to that would be never, if you haven’t guessed.
Baja is dangerous. Racers die there. Her grandfather she never met died here. He didn’t die from a crash, but it just proves how dangerous off-road racing is. With Baja, you start out in the middle of a city surrounded by locals and much of the race is run hundreds of miles from everyone else, and extremely unpredictable. In Baja, sadly, safety doesn’t come first. The rules are subjectively followed and loosely based on interpretation.
We’ve spent three weeks prerunning the course that consists of sixteen hundred miles between Ensenada and La Paz. You have to. You absolutely have to memorize every mile so you know what to expect when you come into sharp turns with barbed wire fences on one side and cattle guards on the other. It’s like the Wild West down here and not a place I want my wife.
“Why are you doing this?” I ask her, cornering her inside the hotel room the morning of the race. We take off tonight after the sun goes down and to say I’m riddled with anxiety is an understatement of a lifetime. I can’t focus on anything but River racing the Baja 1000. And me. “What if something goes wrong? Cullen can’t lose both of us.”
River touches her hands to my cheeks as we lay in bed together. “He won’t lose us.”
Speaking of Cullen, you’re probably wondering where that little dude is and what he’s like now that he’s three years old. Do you see the smile on my face just thinking of him?
Okay, probably not because my wife is naked on top of me and I’m not thinking about Cullen in this exact moment. I’ll get back to you on that one.
While you’re at it, you can look for a minute, but do you see those two people in bed?
Her back arches, giving me a beautiful view of her body. “I love you,” she pants, collapsing against my chest.
I hold on, tighter, never wanting to let go. “I love you,” I whisper in her ear.
I do, always, forever, but it doesn’t change the nerves. I’m terrified.
Just before midnight, River hands Cullen over to me. We’ve kept Cullen out of the spotlight since we arrived in Mexico a week ago, and away from the locals. In fact, we both weren’t wild about having him in Mexico at all, but he’s spent his life on the road and in a different country every other week.
Do you see the little guy there? He’s the spitting image of me and River combined. He’s got her eyes, my chin and smile. He’s got Tiller’s temper, and my tenderness from time to time. He’ll knock you in the face, but apologize a minute later. And he’s the coolest little dude I’ve ever known. I spend hours staring at him sometimes, in complete disbelief that River and I created something so beautiful together. I’ve never raised my voice, or hand at him, and never will. He won’t know what it’s like to fear his father, or disappear when he can’t make decisions because he wasn’t raised to know how.
This little guy, the one with chubby cheeks and a habit of saying “shit” anytime he drops something, he’s the difference I talked about. Sure, he doesn’t know Jerad, he’s met him twice, but he knows Tiller. Turns out, the Wild Cat has a soft spot for a three-foot maniac who calls him Papa.
Look at him there, keeping watch anytime Cullen’s in the prying eyes of the media. It’s like he’s ready to lunge forward to protect his grandson.
I know the feeling. Being a parent does that to you.
Cullen clings to my chest, squeezing his chubby arms about my neck. “Daddy do good?”
“I’m gonna try to,” I tell him, setting him on the seat of my bike.
Roan stands beside me and winks at Cullen. “Tell your daddy to eat sand and ride.” It’s what Ricky always tells us when we’re riding in the desert.
Cullen grins, his dark eyes glowing under the lights. I can’t believe he’s wide-away at midnight. I sweep his hair from his eyes and hold his precious face between my palms. “Eats san and ride,” he says, squirming around and trying not to lose the toy dirt bike in his hand.
He reaches for me and I pick him up. “Take care of mama for me, okay?”
He nods. “Okay.”
I draw River closer when Tiller takes Cullen from us. She takes my face in her hands like I’d done with our son. “Don’t think about anything but riding. Get to that place inside your head when you’re free.”
I want to get there, I do, but I don’t know if it will happen.
I don’t say much else to her before I turn toward my bike. There’s too much commotion around us. I do see a hint of fear in her eyes, but she rearranges it easily and forces a smile.
Drawing in a deep breath, I throw my leg over the bike. I’m running the first two hundred miles and then handing the bike off to Roan, then Tiller, and River will finish the race for us. I wanted her riding in the daylight, so the only option is to have her finish. When riding a factory-sponsored race, like we are with Honda, it’s one bike per team, relay-style, covering roughly 883 miles. I have two concerns here. One, the weight of the bike for River. With fuel and gear, the bike weighs around 250 pounds. Double her weight and then some. And, again, my wife racing in the desert. It ate at me to the point where I tried a few times to back out of it.
Even now, I’m still holding out hope. But do you see her in the streets watching Cullen? She deserves this. She’s put her career on hold for me, for him, and this is the least I can give her. I didn’t have room to be selfish just because I was scared of losing her.
When the green flag drops, I take off into the city, two minutes ahead of the rest of the riders. I’m thankful for the second starting spot because the course is dangerous enough without worrying about the snowstorm of dust I knew I’d be facing if I got a horrible start.
I’ve raced enduros most of the last year and spent another year racing desert rides. So the race itself is exactly what I expect. Like any desert riding, you have to stay alert. Especially in Baja. And it’s a fucking experience, I’ll tell you that much. I race across the desert, the beach, mountains, trees, riverbeds. Hell, I even go through a village with hundred-year-old churches that make me wish I could savor the history.
I swap the lead with KTM six times in the first two hundred miles but manage to get us a three-minute lead even after dodging a fucking engine, yes, I said engine, buried in the sand. The locals think it’s fucking funny to set booby traps on the course, which is why pre-riding is necessary. I pass through another town with drunk people standing shoulder to shoulder blowing up fireworks and lighting bonfires. It’s like a scene out of Mad Max. Crazy shit.
A few miles before the checkpoint, as I watch the sun come up on the horizon. I’m focused, my mind’s clear, barely fatigued, no arm pump. No cramping. I haven’t felt this good on a bike in over a year. That is until I dodge a fucking horse that decides to take me out and eat a face full of sand. A freakin’ horse. I have no idea where it came from, or why is does what it does next, but it lays on me.
“Get off, ya dick,” I yell, hitting it with a rock. I know, animal cruelty, but dude, I can’t fucking breathe.
Luckily it leaps up and runs away, but I sit there for a minute wondering what the fuck just happened. I laugh, thinking of Cullen telling me to eat sand. Then I pick myself up and get back on the bike. It cuts my three-minute lead to one.
I hand the bike off to Roan. During his two hundred miles, he goes down in the whoops section and separates his shoulder. It doesn’t stop him. He continues on being the king of desert riding and enduros and gets us to a four-minute lead.
Tiller, he struggles, but ends up in the closest battle of any other Baja in history and swaps the lead with KTM and Kawasaki fifteen times in one hour. His riding and aggressive style is talked about for hours, and probably years to come.
When River takes over for Tiller, my heart is in my fucking throat. I can’t sit, I can’t stand. I pace, I bite my nails, I curse out the tracking system when it goes down. I’m nervous, anxious, and everything in between. I yell at Tiller for not giving her enough of a cushion, at Roan for asking me to do this, and in turn, sparking River’s interest to compete.
After the first hour she’s on the bike, I start to worry about the trucks catching up with her. In Baja, the bikes take off eight to ten hours before the trucks. After the first twelve hours, you start to worry about them catching you. It’s usually impossible, but not unheard of. Roan iron-manned it last year and experienced it firsthand.
I do everything I can not to think about her getting hurt, but the thoughts fester and infect my every thought for the hours that she’s on the bike.
Once it’s up working again, I obsessively check the GPS on River. I stare at it. Incessantly. The red blinking light not enough to calm my nerves.
“She’s okay,” Tiller tells me, sitting next to me, nursing a busted-up lip. I tossed a Yeti cup over my shoulder earlier and it hit him right in the mouth. I didn’t even say sorry, he just smiled, as if to say, I deserved that. His knee bounces as he leans forward, his face in his hands. He hasn’t been able to do anything but watch it too, but he’s calmer than me. Maybe because he’s used to this. He’s had years of watching her race and knowing nothing stops River when she’s determined.
“We don’t know that. Anything can happen out there,” I say, barely able to keep my voice even.
He nods. “I know.”
I stare at him and for some reason, I think back to the day I married River. Tiller never gave a speech. He’s not one for public affirmation. But he did give me some words of wisdom. “You can tell a lot about someone in what they chose to see in you.”
When he first said it to me at the wedding, I didn’t know what he meant. It was days later, years maybe, when I realized what it meant.
Despite the shitty things he’s done over the years, I chose to see the side I wanted from him. The one that regardless of his inability to show human emotion at times, he has my back. Or he’ll be the first to stab me in it. Who knows with him.
Blowing out a breath, I watch the GPS tracker again. I don’t relax the entire time until we make our way into La Paz.
Hours after the sun has risen high over the dry desert and the sun glows orange, River Savage Sawyer comes across the finish line two minutes and six seconds ahead of KTM. With the deduction and penalties, S3 wins the Baja 1000 by a thirteen second difference.
I know, you’re thinking, no fucking way. That’s a fairytale in the making and things like that don’t just happen.
They do though. Look at the girl on the podium who spent the last three years working her ass off to get back to where she was before she had our son and tell me otherwise. I don’t regret having Cullen so young, and neither does River, but he fueled the fire. He gave her the courage to go after her dreams and say damn it, I fucking want it.
And she did.
I cry, and Tiller, he says he has sand in his eyes, but that wild motherfucker is crying. Don’t let him fool you.
I scoop River up into my arms, twirl her tired body around like a lunatic. “I’m so goddamn proud of you!” I pepper her face with kisses. “Fuck, I love you so much.”
She cries, her tears a mixture of exhaustion and happiness. “I think I’m in shock,” she teases. “Where am I? Did this really just happen?”
I set her on her feet, hundreds of people swarming us but in that second, it’s me and her, forever. “You’re not dreaming, Riv. You did it. We won Baja!”
She bursts into tears again and I don’t know that I’ll ever fully grasp what this meant to her, but I think back to that Erzberg Rodeo win and the seconds after when I proposed.
I get it. I do. This, this is what greatness feels like.
We end up at La Guerrerense, a tradition since coming down here to Baja. We’re tired, Cullen is sound asleep on Tiller and Wyatt is outside pissing off a scorpion.
“That’s going to sting her,” Amberly frets, leaving the table to get the devil child from being stung. She’s ten now and still every bit as feisty as she had been when she carved fuck you on the tailgate of my truck.
I look over at Roan, who’s across from me, deep in conversation with River over the win. They’re talking about the iron man and my anxiety is already peaking. Last year Roan iron-manned the Baja 1000. Now that River’s had a taste of what it’s like, she’s addicted. I can see the spark in her eyes. It’s kinda like the first time I kissed her. I know, it wasn’t the first kiss that got the spark there in the first place, but it was then I knew she wanted more. It’s a hunger you can’t describe until you’ve experienced yourself. This was my first Baja experience too, and I gotta say, it was pretty cool. I thought being on that mountain in Austria gave me a sense of pride, but imagine what iron-manning Baja would be like?
Unfortunately for me, I think my wife might beat me to that particular goal.
Beside me, Scarlet grumbles at Shade. “I can’t believe you.”
“Listen,” Shade leans forward, his drink spilling in the process. His cheeks are flushed, his eyes half-lidded and fading. I’m amazed his sitting up straight at this point. “If drunk me said or did something, you gotta take it up with drunk me. Don’t come at sober me. We weren’t there. We don’t know what went down.”
“It’s not what drunk you said, asshole, it’s what drunk you did.”
He lifts his sunglasses, his bloodshot eyes focusing on her. “Fine. What did drunk me do?”
Her blue eyes narrow in. “Knocked me up again.”
He says absolutely nothing in reply.
Tiller starts laughing. “Can you even have babies still? I thought you were like, going through menopause by now.”
Tiller’s now wearing the beer he had been drinking. “I’m thirty-nine, dick face.”
Thankfully my son isn’t covered in beer because he was nice enough to hand him over to River just before the beer bath happened.
River shifts Cullen to her other shoulder where his face rests. I lean in and kiss his forehead. He doesn’t budge.
That’s when River stares at me, her cheeks red, eyes bloodshot and her lip swollen. She got smacked in the face with a rock, but that had been the extent of her injuries through the race.
“Thank you,” she whispers.
“For what?” I ask, leaning in.
“For letting me do this.”
“If I ever tell you no, when it comes to your career, I give you permission to say fuck you and do it anyways. This isn’t just about me.”
“I know, but a lot of men wouldn’t have been okay with this.”
I laugh. “I wasn’t okay with it, but I still didn’t think it was fair to tell you no. You deserve this just as much as I do.”
Her eyes are heavy but the spark is still there. “It was the best three hours of my life.”
I raise an eyebrow. “The best?”
“Well, okay,” she pauses, laughing. “The best three hours on a bike.”
“I was gonna say,” I tease. “I may not last three hours, but three minutes, I’ll rock your world.”
That earns me another laugh before Cullen wakes up from the commotion around us. Shade and Scarlet are still arguing about her being pregnant again and Tiller egging them on. I know you’re not surprised one bit by that.
Cullen reaches for me and stares intently at my face as he takes in his surroundings. It’s been a crazy couple of weeks for him. Up at all hours of the night, surrounded by people he doesn’t know, but still, he adapts. Smiling at me, he touches his hand to the bruises on my collarbone. “Owie?”
“It’s okay.”
He looks at River, sees her split lip and his bottom lip jets out. “Mama?”
“I’m okay too, buddy,” she assures him.
I wonder what he’s thinking in that moment. That his parents are crazy? He probably already knows that.
Cullen’s distracted with Wyatt, who did in fact kill the scorpion and stuck it in Tiller’s water cup, when I scoot River closer to me. “Maybe we should make another baby?” I whisper in her ear, thankful our love is no longer constricted to the shadows. Now it’s wide-open and usually redlined.
She smiles but holds her ground. “I told you, one and done.”
She’s been saying that for years, but one of these days I’m going to convince her otherwise.
Do you see her watching Cullen? The love she has for him? The motherly instincts she’s perfected from the scared eighteen-year-old mother-to-be to the one who’d do anything for him. That girl, and that boy, was the best thing that could have happened to me.
And that’s where this story ends for you. I know, I know, you want more. You want to know if Scarlet has the baby and what Shade thinks about being a dad again. You want details on how Cullen grows up and if I convince River to have another baby.
You want to know if she iron-mans the Baja 1000, don’t you?
Those are answers I can’t give you yet, so this is where we’re gonna part ways and maybe I’ll give you an update someday.
I will leave you with this last piece of advice though.
Don’t run from your mistakes.
Make forever more than a word.
Make tomorrow something to look forward to.
It’s something my mom said to me two days before she died when I was six, or seven, but I didn’t understand the depths of until she was in heaven.
If only I had listened to her sooner, but then I think, I couldn’t, until I had him. The difference. The break in the cycle of never feeling good enough.
For him, for her, for me, I’m enough.
