Once a Runner (3 page)

It can be appreciated that Cassidy's table companions made for lively dining. He and Mizner, still damp from the shower, finished filling their trays and sat across from Mobley, who gave the impression of eating with both hands.

"Heard you guys were scalding dogs this morning," Mobley said, without halting the intake.

"Now just why the details of a morning workout would be of interest to a member of the gorilla corps is certainly beyond me," said Mizner, who well knew that Mobley reacted to no brash comments. The giant, all 6-6, 265 pounds of him scarcely stopped chewing. He looked up with an expression that didn't quite rise to the level of annoyance.

"Just be sure to keep those little shits in line, please Captain," he told the miler, shoveling in half a pancake. He gulped. "We've got a chance to win some big brass at conference this year and your pond birds are gonna have to come through for some points."

"Pond birds is it?" said Mizner, pounding his spoon like an impatient child. "Pond birds? I have a good mind to pump up for a couple of months and take your young ass on." The imagery evoked by such a notion caused considerable merriment around the room.

4. Cross Country

Cassidy's year, a runner's year, was divided into three parts. Fall was cross country, a season of six-mile races that stretched from the heat of Indian Summer to the frozen slushiness of November. Winter was the indoor season, a time of exciting races on the little banked wooden tracks in the large cities of the northeast. Spring and early summer were for what Denton called "real track." During the bleak expanse of fall and winter, however, "real track" was too far off to think about.

Cassidy did not like cross country; the distance was too long for a miler, he disliked not being able to "feel" the finish line during the race. Six miles seemed interminable to a runner accustomed to the blissful unyielding symmetry of four quarter miles run in nearly 60 seconds each (in his own specialty he never felt the first lap, the second and third were pure hell but still quick, and the last went by in the giddy excitement of the sprint and the locked-up zombie gait of total oxygen debt).

"What's wrong with cross country?" Denton asked. Warmdown time was slow luxury, an easy mile of deep, aching satisfaction.

"Some weird people like it, I know that. I'm very aware of that," Cassidy said. A muted glance passed between Denton and Mizner. They had heard this before.

"Six miles ... 10,000 meters," Cassidy said disgustedly, "over hill and dale out in the middle of nowhere. Spit freezing on your godamn chin. Five hundred complete wild men in the mud, running up on your heels with long spikes. Oh, I love cross country all right. I also like being flayed alive with a rusty straight razor."

"Why, Quenton, you were
county champion
in high school. I saw it in your scrap book. You had a clipping from the morning paper and a clipping from the evening paper. Don't you remember?" Denton asked seriously. Mizner bit his lip.

"Sticking my tongue in a light socket, that's a lot of fun too," Cassidy said moodily. "But you
did
win the ..."

"Yes, and for your information it was my
mother
who cut out those clippings, you can tell by how neatly they are trimmed. I don't operate that way."

"Quenton Cassidy,
cross-country champion ..."

"It was a two-point-five-mile race and the competition was fierce, lads. Several local entries could have been real trouble if the race had only been two and a quarter miles shorter. They were the kind of guys who yell and scream for the first hundred yards, you know, like they are having a good time and all..."

"But they couldn't hold the pace, eh?"

"It kills me when they yell and scream like that, or talk back and forth to each other real nonchalant like it's not bothering them at all," Cassidy looked genuinely puzzled.

"But tough cookies nonetheless?" Denton wouldn't let him off the hook.

"To a man," Cassidy grinned at Mizner. "I leaned at the tape and nipped second place by about half a mile. Maybe they sent the wrestling team by accident. Anyway, Palm Beach County is not noted for its cross-country strength."

"Half a mile is what Mize usually gets you by, isn't it?"

Cassidy feigned hurt. "You don't need to rub it in. I
told
you I don't like it. You distance animals can have it. Milers are too fine tuned to enjoy that pastoral crap."

"So are road runners, race walkers, orienteering nuts and a bunch of other folks looking to avoid real confrontation," Denton said.

"Right," Mizner said. He liked watching Cassidy having to take it for awhile.

"Real confrontation is four laps and a cloud of... Tartan dust," Cassidy said. "That's clever." "Tartan dust?" Mizner asked.

"Oh yes, that's really clever," Denton shook his head. "You guys can just blow it out your ..." "Steady big fellow," Denton said in his mock deep voice, the Lone Ranger calming old Silver down after a hard day of chasing desperadoes. Cassidy laughed and threw a halfhearted elbow at Denton, who dodged and rolled his eyes.

Coach Benjamin Cornwall was getting into his car when he saw the three of them jostling each other at the door of the field house. Weary from his own work, he never could figure out what it was about a 20-mile day that made some people so playful.

"Three more?" Cassidy asked. "At least."

He and Mizner did 100-yard striders in the grass, trying to build up some lactic acid resistance and get the systems moving. They wanted to be well into what some people call "the second wind" before the race started. The runners usually referred to it by the physiologists' term, "homeostasis." Whatever it is called, it entails a good hard warmup. They had already run three miles at an easy pace.

Dual meets were not at all hectic and Cassidy didn't really mind this miniature version of cross country. A single team would not usually have enough talent to present much of a challenge, even to Cassidy. Neither he nor Mizner considered this particular Saturday important enough to slack off their training in the slightest. They had both run 16 miles the day before, a gambit known as "running through" a meet. When you are beaten by an athlete running through, it means you are owned by him body and soul. The Fixed Order will have been established in a most definitive way, to be altered only by some kind of felonious conduct, possibly involving Claymore mines.

Bruce Denton ran up from behind them and fell in with their strides. Even at this quick pace his legs moved with a ghostly lack of effort. Runners from the other team stole glances at him. Cassidy thought: the little sons of bitches are experiencing true awe.

"You doing your morning?" Mizner asked.

"Yep. Thought I'd come over and watch the fun."

"I hate racing in the morning like this," Cassidy offered.

"There's not a whole lot about this deal you
do
like, is there sport?"

Denton smiled at him.

"Not much, I guess," Cassidy admitted gloomily. "My gut goes crazy ..."

"Do these guys have any horses?" Denton asked.

"The redheaded fellow," said Mizner, gesturing. "The one so very obviously not looking at us. That's Eammon O'Rork his own self, a genuine imported Irishman. Guess they couldn't afford themselves an African." Mizner was unconsciously mimicking Cassidy.

"Gave you a scare last year indoors, didn't he, sport?" Denton turned to Cassidy.

"Scare isn't the word. It was the Mason-Dixon Games in Louisville. The score was, the Kid: four oh three point two; the Irish Upstart: four oh three point two. But it was closer than it sounds."

Denton laughed as they started another strider. O'Rork's freckled face was clouded with concentration as he did his own warmup. He glanced constantly at his watch, timing it to . the minute. They had about eight minutes before assembling for the starting instructions.

O'Rork was older than the rest of his team; older and far more mature. His talent and courage had delivered him from the rigors of life in Northern Ireland and he went at distance running with the uncomplicated ardor of the truly hungry. Denton appraised the Irishman's stride as he went by and thought: there is always something, isn't there fellow? With us and prizefighters, the wounded and the fleet...

O'Rork was thinking about Cassidy's cloth-thin victory the previous season. It still rankled him. The American was all right, he supposed, but perhaps just too blithe a spirit for his own good. A few weeks after the Louisville meet O'Rork had picked up an intestinal flu and was all but incapacitated during the outdoor season. It had been a bad December: a telegram (hanging in a serious looking plastic envelope on his dormitory room door) brought the bad news from home. He had sat quietly for five minutes looking at the sad little yellow message, then he pulled on his training shoes and went out to run himself into a blubbering mush in the hills surrounding his Tennessee campus. Then he was in bed for two weeks and really wouldn't have minded dying. Cold Decembers, he thought, watching the carefree American. I have known too many of them.

They were less than a half mile from the finish; Cassidy ran slightly behind O'Rork off his left shoulder, eyes fixed on the freckled neck. He was drafting without malice or humor. If O'Rork minded being used in this manner he gave no sign.

Somewhere up ahead of them Jerry Mizner sauntered into the finish chute with the more tolerable fatigue of victory on his face. He had employed the simple expedient of running away from everyone. Similarly isolated from the rest of the runners, the two milers bruised each other in the tensionless grind of those who struggle for second place.

Cassidy was
in extremis.
They had gone through the first mile in 4:37 and Cassidy thought with alarm:
godamighty that hurt.
The heavy training of the past several weeks had sapped him; when he reached down for an extra surge just to hold pace, he found only a searing strained feeling with which he was intimately familiar: red line city. He was not enjoying his weekend.

Hanging onto O'Rork these past two miles had been possible through a dreary combination of will power and wishful thinking. Coast, you bastard, Cassidy told himself. Then he put his mind into neutral, locked onto the freckled shoulder and obtained his mental abstracts: gliding, floating, covering ground. He balked unashamedly at the remarkable discomfort he was living through at the moment. He even thought of tossing it in, not an unusual sentiment, but knew it wouldn't happen. He also kept telling himself that they wouldn't all be this bad because if they were he surely couldn't •/ live with it. He didn't consider himself particularly brave.

A long path led up the hill through Beta Woods and onto the track for the finish. The hill was steep; it numbed the legs and discouraged fast finishes. O'Rork intentionally worked Cassidy hard on this hill, surgically removing the sting from a kick he remembered very distinctly. Pumping hard, he pulled away. With, great distress, Cassidy reeled him back in. This isn't so bad, Cassidy thought, I'm just dying is all. But ang on asshole and maybe you can be a hero at the end. The self-loathing was genuine and when he thought about it later it always mystified him.

Every stride now caused him the most profound regret. Spitting fluffy wads of congealed saliva, his thinking soon came only in staccato bursts: 200 yards ... keep him near ... keep him near ...

Within sight of the finish he could vaguely see Mizner doing a silly bounce and yelling something as Cassidy began to lock up. Andrea would be there somewhere but he didn't see her. A white haze—a normal phenomenon—clouded everything, like looking through the dirty window of a long-abandoned house. Funny how your mind works at the end like this, he thought. The excitement was all outside as he watched quietly from inside his raging skull.

A hundred yards to go he thought
oh christ
and threw the remainder of what was left into it; now
that
really cost him.

O'Rork burst away from him quickly and won by ten yards.

Cassidy was bent over at the waist, hands on knees, doing a little circle stagger that in other circumstances might have passed for amusing. The other runners were noisily starting to come in. Mizner stood with his arm around Cassidy's waist, providing balance. "Easy, easy," he said in quiet empathetic tones. Cassidy could not speak; his eyes bulged insanely, breaths came in greedy rasps and his face was a splotchy violet color. "Yack!" he said, trying to straighten up. It was too soon; back to the hands-on-knees death grip, fetal rest of the totally blown-out runner. The white haze had thickened into a heavy fog; he felt faint but knew his conditioning held all horrors at bay except in extreme heat. These were the worst few seconds and he understood better than anything else that like the tail fin, the Nehru jacket and the republic itself, they too would pass. The drained elation, special property and reward of those who have been to the edge and back, would come later. But for now he had a while longer to hurt.

Andrea, who had never seen such things, stood close by, almost afraid to touch him, hands fluttering around each other and over to his wet singlet. The rasping, dripping, violet-shaded runner studied intently the moist earth between his spiked toes and seemed unaware of her presence. Was he all right?

"Sure hell, he's all right," Mizner said, surprised by her question. "He's just run himself a race is all." Seeing that Cassidy had his own balance, Mizner went off gaily to check the team scores. Finally straightening up enough to stumble for a few steps, the runner looked at her and said again: "Yack." But this time there was something that could almost have passed for a smile on his hot face. To her he looked near death—not a mysterious wan passing, but a demise culminating in hot bouts of fever and hallucination, fearful and soul-wrenching. The smile brought her considerable cheer. "Yack?" she smiled back.