Once a Runner (7 page)

Cassidy pondered. He looked at the ceiling and sphincterized his lips. Then his face lit up: inspiration!

"I think what I would do would be to hang right with him, »see..."

"Yeah, well..."

"Check him out
real
close, like for a couple of laps. Make
him
take the initiative, see, make
him
run
my
race, see ... Denton was leaning against his locker, biting on a towel.

"But
John Walton,
I mean, when he...

"Then going into the last lap, I'll be right on his tail, see, all the way into the last turn ..."

"But they say his kick..."

"Then I'll take a short cut across the infield, sprint down the pole vault runway and lean at the tape. Works every time."

The assemblage dispersed in what might be called a good mood, but there was an eeriness in the air. Some names were Uttered with reverence in that tiled sanctum and John Walton's was one of them. Surely Bruce Denton's name was ccorded similar respect in other locker rooms around the world, but there was always something even more mysterious and exotic about those far-off heroes, rarely seen in person, whose feats were frozen for all time in irrefutable black and white numerals. Walton's aura, being the first human being to run the mile under 3:50, was that of almost total invincibility. To the public he may have been just one more in a long line of champions, but to those whose own numerals gave credentials of insight, Walton's name brought with it an unpleasant chill. A 3:55 miler would understand it better than a 4:05 miler. Walton was the best there was, but he was only an image to most of them. And now that he was to be viewed in person—take the form of flesh and blood-no one knew quite what to think. Bruce Denton was an Olympian. He was accustomed to unstable atmospheres where heady names such as Walton's were bandied about like so many harmless acquaintances, but these undergraduates clearly were not, despite their best efforts to act nonchalant.

"Aw, he pulls on his shorts the same way we do," said one of the freshmen. But it didn't dispel Walton's ghost in the least.

"That's right," Denton chuckled, "except he pulls
his
shorts up over legs that can run a mile in three minutes and forty nine seconds."

Some of them laughed as they finished dressing, but there was no further discussion. Cassidy still sat on the bench, towel draped across his middle, too weary even to clothe himself. He looked up at Denton and smiled. His 660 workout didn't seem like such hot stuff anymore.

An awesome creature—up until recently more a myth than anything else—was to assume human form and cross oceans to perform his magic right on the same track that held their sweat. In doing so he would necessarily devastate those who sought to test his power. That this force would be inexorably brought to bear on one they all knew, one they had come to respect for his own prowess, made everyone at the same time uneasy and strangely elated. They had rarely seen Quenton Cassidy lose a mile race, did not
want
to see him lose, yet the inevitability of the prospect was somehow exciting, in the manner of an execution.

Their lion was to be devoured by a greater lion.

10. Demons

It's demons, you see," Cassidy said seriously. He was on the floor doing his stretching. Andrea was propped on one elbow on his bed, looking up from her organic chemistry book, suppressing amusement, something she often seemed to do. She pushed a wisp of hair back from her glasses and looked entirely scholarly. "Do they whisper moral imperatives in your ear?" "Lovely. I try to explain the dark forces at work within me, and you amuse yourself."

"Oh, I'm sorry, please do go on. And on. And on." He caught her by an ankle, the good one, and flipped her neatly onto the floor beside him. The back of her neck smelled like a parakeet's tummy, sweet hay and fluff.

"Yes indeed," he said, lost in the pale corn silk of her hair. She muddled simple thought patterns; he had difficulty studying when she was about. Colors muted and he lunged for her with neither premeditation nor guilt. He adored her and told her so.

She on the other hand had no handle on Quenton Cassidy. He said things occasionally that brought her up short. She would shake her head and say, queer duck. He acted not at all like the many boys who had sought her attentions. This one wore a great weariness about the eyes, yet ironically with an incredible well of silly energy bubbling just beneath the surface, barely contained by secret locks. He rambled at times, talking in streaks of lucid prose; then lapsed into deep silences from which he could not be retrieved without great effort. He cavorted. He played with her mind.

She had watched him race four times now. He tried to pass off much of this activity as trivial, but during those times especially he was lost to her. She wondered where he went, leaving her excluded, lonely and (could she admit this?) jealous.

She wondered what provinces she was not privy to and repeatedly asked him to explain what he was talking about.

This she knew: There were times when she drew only polite responses; she could have been for all the world a distant cousin come to visit.

"What do your demons make you do?" she said softly, holding his head and making curls absently with his ragged blond hair. He sighed.

"About sixteen, eighteen miles a day."

"Urn," she started to push him away, perturbed at not being taken seriously.

"But sometimes when it is all going good, I mean when it's early-May warm and there's cut grass in the air and you've made it through winter okay, not bad sick or anything, then sometimes you can take a deep breath and feel your own heart jumping—
that's right don't look at me like that-you
can feel your own heart in there jumping around like a godamn bobcat or something; that's when you've just got to get yourself out somewhere and let them loose." Her head cocked at this; she watched him closely.

"Don't try to make me feel funny about this," he said. "You were the one who wanted to know. Besides, you've never been in four-minute shape, not that many people have, so if you think this is all just a crock..."

"No," she said quickly, "go on. I want to hear it. Please go on..."

"About the demons?"

"Yes, what..."

"They make you want to run through the jungle, baby," he said happily, "cover countryside at a clip, slide by in the night like a scuttling cloud." His eyes had the faraway cast, but his voice quavered in mock solemnity like a Southern tent 'evangelist. Sensing genuine interest, he picked up the tempo.

"They make you bolt awake in the middle of the night with an involuntary shot of your own true adrenaline, ready to run a hundred miles; we're talking when you're there, now, really there, four-minute shape or better. They make you jittery with the smell of forest, ready to hurdle fallen trees, run down game, leave gore in the bushes ..."

Her eyes widened.

"And then when you get them all reigned in," he looked at her fiercely, "they make you lay back in the pack, coasting three laps on an old melody ... and then they make you wail out of the final turn and blow down the last godamn straightaway like
the midnight train to hell!"

Although he said it humorously in his mock religious voice, in his eyes nevertheless she could see but not quite penetrate limpid ethers of a far-away Elysium, where the unworldly citizens were without exception vessels of nearly pure spirit: heavyweight prize fighters, rare-air mountain climbers, soon-to-be-martyred saints, and other quiet, sadly ironic purveyors of The Difficult Task.

"You are of course quite mad," she said softly.

"Come," he said, intentionally breaking the spell, "we have to meet Mize at the Nineties."

"We are speaking of human endeavor and delusional systems," Cassidy said, punctuating with a steady cracking of pistachio nuts. Their second pitcher was almost gone; Thursday night foosball and pinball background noise nearly precluded conversation altogether.

"Everyone likes to think they have their own little corner, it can be anything; needlepoint, lawn bowling, whatever. Some guy may gratify himself by thinking he's the best godamned fruit and vegetable manager the A&P ever had. Which is fine. It gives people a sense of worth in a crowded world where everyone feels like part of the scenery. But then mostly they are spared any harrowing glimpses into their own mediocrity. Pillsbury Bake-Off notwithstanding, we'll never really know who makes the best artichoke souffle in the world, will we?"

"Gotcha. Don't filibuster, tell me Demons," she said.

"Right. The thing is that in track we are painfully and constantly aware of how we stack up, not just with our contemporaries but with our historical counterparts as well. In that regard it's different even from other sports. A basketball player can go out and have a great day and tell himself he's the greatest rebounding forward to ever hit the hardwood, but he'll never really be troubled by the actual truth, will he? Maybe he's just in a weak league. Maybe Jerry Lucas would have eaten him alive 30 years ago. But he'll never know. He'll just have to leave such judgments in the sorry hands of the sports writers, many of whom it has been pointed out can be bought with a steak." Mizner nodded vigorously from behind a pile of popcorn.

"In track it's all there in black and white. Lot of people can't take that kind of pressure; the ego withers in the face of the evidence. We all carry our little credentials around with us; that's why the numbers are so important to us, why we're always talking about them, I am, for instance, four flat point three. The numerals might as well be etched on my forehead. This gentleman here, perhaps you'd like to meet him, is 27:42, also known as 13:21,1 believe."

Mizner bowed graciously, half rising. He seemed to be enjoying this immensely.

"A knowledgeable observer might ask yards or meters and it is most assuredly yards," Mizner said, "I'll not puff."

"What?"

"Never mind," Cassidy interrupted, "the point is that we know not only whether we are good, bad, or mediocre, but whether we're first, third or a hundred and ninety seventh at any given point.
Track and Field Nezos
tells us whether we want to know or not."

"Assuming we make the lists," Mizner put in.

"That's right. Sometimes it is possible, despite your best efforts and a hundred godamn miles a week,
not to even exist"

"That bothers you, does it?"

"That, my dear, breaks my heart."

"But you can beat most of the people around, we know that, right? Isn't that good, isn't that what you want?"

"Well, sure. But in my own mind, I know that I'm what a newspaper sports person would call a 'steady performer.' And it really doesn't matter a whit how many races I win. I haven't even broken four minutes yet. Roger Bannister did that back in 1954. I've spent seven years of my life hard at this thing and so far I'm ... average. It happens to others, concert pianists maybe, actors, and the like. But they aren't subject to the cold cruel numbers like we are.

"Let's put it this way," he continued, "There is a fellow right now in New Haven, one in Boston, one somewhere in Minnesota of all places and two—Mize is now indicating three—in Oregon who might very reasonably request that I launder their jocks for them. And that's just the United States. There happens to be a young man down in New Zealand right now by the name of John Walton who breathes actual air and eats human food and the son of a bitch has run one mile faster than any human being in the history of the world, 3:49.1 to be exact. I don't believe ol'John'd
let me
wash his jock, do you think, Mize?"

The other runner shook his head solemnly.

"Is there some kind of final point to all this?" Andrea was determined to get to the bottom of it all.

"Depends on what you call a point. It's a simple choice: We can all be good boys and wear our letter sweaters around and get our little degrees and find some nice girl to settle, you know, down, with ... take up what a friend of ours calls the hearty challenges of lawn care..." Mizner was snickering, but Andrea was solemn. Cassidy stared into his beer.

"Or what? What is the alternative?" She leaned over the table, trying to get him back on the track. He looked at her surprised; his eyes lit up as they had earlier and his voice shook again with deep excitement.

"Or we can blaze! Become legends in our own time, strike fear in the heart of mediocre talent everywhere! We can scald dogs, put records out of reach! Make the stands gasp as we blow into an unearthly kick from three hundred yards out! We can become God's own messengers delivering the dreaded scrolls! We can race dark Satan himself till he wheezes fiery cinders down the back straightaway!" He was full into it now.

"They'll speak our names in hushed tones, 'Those guys are animals' they'll say! We can lay it on the line, bust a gut, show them a clean pair of heels. We can sprint the turn on a spring breeze and feel the winter leave our feet!"

Andrea leaned back in the booth, wide-eyed, and swallowed.

"We can, by God, let our demons loose and
just wail on!"
He threw his head back and let loose a low, eerie cry. Foosball, billiards, and pinballs all stilled suddenly. Mizner, unaware of the sudden quiet, pounded the table in animated agreement.

"Yes, yes, godamn, that's it!
Wuhail OwzowvnnnnU"
When he had finished the cry he looked around at the silent blank faces of the various confused fraternity jocks and winced.