Running Loose (11 page)

Coach Madison had one more trick all right. He really didn’t want to go to the school board because he didn’t want to put Norm on the spot. Norm wouldn’t have cared; in fact, he’d probably have enjoyed it, but Madison didn’t know him.

What he did was call Fred Sanders to see if there was a possibility that what Jasper and Lednecky were doing was illegal—like making some kid cut his hair or something. I couldn’t believe it when he caught me between sixth and seventh periods to tell me what he’d done.

“You mean, take it to court?”

He nodded. “Sure, why not? A principal is allowed only so much power, just like anyone else. As near as I can tell, Jasper’s taking way too much. And Lednecky
shouldn’t have any.”

I was pretty willing to go along with anything. What could I lose? I suppose Lednecky could have flunked me in government, but that would look pretty fishy since I still had a strong C going in there. Besides, that would mean they’d have me back next year, and I had a feeling they were as tired of me as I was of them. “What did he say?” I asked.

“Said he’d look into it and get back to me,” Madison said.

I just shook my head. I’ve never seen a teacher stand up to the principal before. Over anything. I was trying to imagine how Madison would look wandering the halls without a head.

“You have to draw the line somewhere,” he said. “A man’s position only allows him so much room. After he uses it all and grabs for more, it has to be brought to someone’s attention. Jasper’s like the rest of us. He has to face up to his responsibilities, too.” His face was flushed. There was a lot more riding on all this than just me running.

The bell rang. “Go to class,” he said. “I’ll see you after school.”

Kathy Collins came into my last-period journalism workshop with a note that said I was to report to the
office when the bell rang. I immediately abandoned an article on the drill team’s bake sale, so I could concentrate on worrying. By the time the bell did ring I was sure those two bastards were going to tie me to Jasper’s desk and beat the bottoms of my feet with hot spoons.

When I got there, Madison motioned me inside. Jasper and Lednecky looked like they hadn’t moved since lunch. Jasper nodded. Madison stood in front of his desk.

“I had a phone call you two might be interested in,” Jasper said. “From Fred Sanders.”

I looked at the floor. Madison stared directly at Jasper.

“He said he had a long talk with you after Becky’s funeral, Louie, and you two had ironed everything out.”

“I guess so,” I said, completely confused. “What does this have to do with me running track?”

“Nothing,” he said, “except that he also said he thought you were aware of any mistakes you’ve made in the last year and felt it might do you a lot of good to get back into the mainstream of things. He asked if we could do anything along those lines.”

Madison said, “Can you?”

“I see it this way,” Jasper said. “If he can forgive
Louie for that outburst at the funeral, we might at least be able to make a compromise.” Boy, sometimes that man’s logic amazes me. “Coach Lednecky and I have talked it over at length and have decided we’ll let Louie run under the provisions you set down this noon. He doesn’t practice with the team, and he has to get to meets some way other than on the team bus.”

“He can ride with Floyd,” Madison said. That’s Floyd Fowler. He used to throw the discus and run the low hurdles, kind of a legend around Trout. Now he sort of acts as trainer at meets. He likes track, and it gives him a chance to get out of town once in a while. He has a hauling business, so he can pretty much call his hours.

“I don’t care how you work it out,” Jasper said, “but I’ll hold you to it. Louie does this all on his own.” He looked at me. “Is that agreeable with you, Banks?”

I nodded. “Yes, sir.”

He pointed his finger at me and said in a low voice, “Mess this up once, and it’s all over.” Then he turned to Lednecky. “Anything to add, Coach?”

Lednecky shook his head. “Only that it’s a lot farther than I’d have gone, but you already know that.”

Jasper stood up. “Okay, that’s it then.” He paused. “You know, the thought crossed my mind that you two
had something to do with this, with Fred calling. He swears you didn’t, and I’m pretty sure you didn’t have time. If I find out different—”

Madison raised his hands. “Would never have thought of it,” he said. “Besides, I was in chem and basic math.”

“Okay,” Jasper said. “One other thing: There’ll be an article in this week’s school paper explaining why we’re letting you turn out, Louie. We want it very clear that this is an exception to the rule. I thought you should know that before it happens. I like to treat people fair, let them know where they stand.”

I nodded. “Okay, thanks.” Boy, those guys were covering themselves every step of the way, but I wasn’t about to argue. One thing I was starting to learn is that you zero in on what you need, and if you have to eat a little dark brown one to get it, open wide. You got to take care of yourself.

Out in the hall, Madison slapped me on the back. “We did it!” he whispered. “Damn it, we did it! Forget all that crap about the team and the newspaper. We went in there to get you running, and you’re running.” He put his arm across my shoulder. “Fred played it just right. I could kiss that guy! If we’d have done it my way, we’d have spent the rest of the season getting it solved. We’re
in the clear!” He punched me. “Head out to the gym. I’ll be out in a minute to check you out some gear.”

“Okay.” I started down the stairs, feeling the best I’d felt since the weekend at the cabin.

Actually track season didn’t start officially for another week, but the distance runners were already working out. You can’t run two miles on talent alone, which I haven’t got even if you could. You have to train. And train. And train. I didn’t know it then, but I was up for anything.

I sat down in Madison’s office, which is across the stage from Lednecky’s, and waited. Within a few minutes he was there rummaging through the boxes of sweats. He decided to give me two sets, one medium and one extra-large. That way if we got more snow—or just cold—I could put one set over the other and go. He said we couldn’t let anything slow me down, that we didn’t have that much time.

All of a sudden a horrible thought struck me. “Coach,” I said, “what if I can’t do it? I mean, what if I’m not any good?” I felt like I owed him.

He was ahead of me. “Don’t worry,” he said. “I’m not expecting anything but for you to go out and run the best two-mile you want to. That’s it.”

“Sounds fair,” I said, relieved, and continued digging through the used jocks and socks. “I’m not used to that kind of coaching.”

“I’m not used to coaching that way either,” he said, “but here’s the way I figure it. You got into shape for football by yourself. No coaching, just desire. If you have the same desire for this, I won’t have to coach you at all, just sit around waiting for you to make me look good. I want you to forget about the Cougars and school records and points and all that and just concentrate on pushing yourself.

“Look,” he said, pulling an old discolored magazine article from his clipboard. It was from a
Sports Illustrated
clear back in the middle sixties. “I was really young then, but this guy was my hero.” There were pictures of a guy from Kenya, Africa, named Kip Keino, training for the 1500 meters, which was considered a distance then. “The writer asked him how far he ran every day, and he just smiled and shrugged. No idea. You know what he did? He just hauled across the countryside until he couldn’t run anymore. That’s when he figured he’d gone far enough. Trained alone.” Madison turned the page. “And look at these other pictures. This maniac is smiling. He loves it!” Sure enough, there was
Keino striding over the crest of a long, steep hill with a great big grin on his face.

Madison slapped the article down on the taping table. “That’s what athletics is all about. This guy was a world record holder.” He boosted himself up onto the table. “I remember when Keino was at his peak; it was during the time when good Americans everywhere said that Negroes were great at sprints but they’d never take the whites in anything over a four-forty. Too lazy.”

I said, “Someone ought to tell Henry Rono that.”

“They probably did. That’s why he’s so fast.”

“You going to run your whole track program that way?” I asked.

He shook his head. “You kidding? I’m going to run their butts off. Some of that desire is lacking in the general population. You got shoes?”

“Unh-unh,” I said. “Not here. Got an old pair of high tops at home.”

“What size?”

“Nine.”

He dug through some boxes and tossed me one. “Don’t say I never gave you anything.”

“Adidas!” I said. I love Adidas.

“They’re top of the line,” he said. “Treat ’em good.
They cost the taxpayers fifty bucks, and that’s at a discount. Go ahead and get dressed. Since Lednecky and Jasper don’t want you mixing with the team, you’ll have to use this room and the coaches’ shower, though I wouldn’t recommend you shower while Lednecky’s around.”

I stripped and stuffed my clothes into Madison’s locker.

“Here’s the setup,” he said. “I’ve laid out three courses for you to start with.” He handed me three mimeographed maps. “The first two are about four miles apiece, and the third is seven, in case you want to keep track. You don’t have to run those if you don’t want to; you can run anywhere you’d like. But remember this: In this sport you get back
exactly
what you put in. If you’re in good shape, you’ll hit good times. If not, every race will be a miserable SOB.”

Before I left, Madison said he didn’t want me to run for time except in meets because he didn’t want me creating psychological barriers for myself. Just run the way you feel, is what he told me; find the outer limit and push against it as long as I could. “Remember,” he said, “you can always take one more step.”

Boy, was I psyched. I spread analgesic on my chest
and legs—it was about thirty-five or forty degrees out—and headed up toward the four-mile course that ran alongside the lake. On the way I stopped outside Mr. Sanders’s office downtown. He was on the phone, so I just knocked on the window and pointed to the Cougar on my sweatshirt. He got a big grin on his face and gave me the okay sign. Then I headed on up.

About halfway through the course the first time I stopped and threw up. I hadn’t done a lot of working out since football, except for cross-country skiing, and everything hurt. But throwing up doesn’t mean a heck of a lot. Mostly it makes you feel better, so you can keep going and make yourself feel worse. I finished the course and ran it again. When I stopped, my head hammered with pain, and both sweat suits were soaked completely through. I jogged back to school, took salt, vitamin C, and about a half hour’s worth of hot water.

The next couple of days were worse because it took the first mile and a half to work the soreness out, and I felt drained all the time. Madison said just to stay with it, and by Friday I began to get strength back and was even able to add a little mileage, proving I wasn’t in as bad shape as I thought.

By the end of the second week I didn’t run any of the mapped courses anymore. I’d just pick a direction and
start running. Madison never asked how far I ran or got on me about anything. He just asked if I was satisfied with my workouts and gave me tips on how to relax my upper body when I ran and how to lengthen my stride.

Some days I’d go into the woods, where there was still lots of snow on the ground, and run through drifts and heavy brush and across meadows, never stopping for fear of freezing my legs. I wore old shoes on those days so I wouldn’t wreck my Adidas. Other days I’d go down to the station and ride out into the valley with Norm, who was back to delivering stove oil and diesel in my absence, and run back.

One day I even went down to the bridge where Becky was killed. I started running upstream from where her car went in and ran all the way back to the spillway. Then I turned around and ran back to the bridge. When I finished, the sun was setting behind West Mountain, and the bridge was silhouetted against the sky from where I stood below it. I wanted to talk to her, tell her how I was doing. I wanted somehow to go back, to be standing there as her car plunged into the water, so I could stop it. Or save her. Or go with her. But the river just ran quietly under the bridge, and the sun sank lower and lower behind the mountain, and I got cold. So I jogged back home.

I stuck to Madison’s plan of not running against the clock except in meets and won my first three races going away. I ran both distances—mile and two-mile—but I concentrated on the two. Eight laps didn’t seem like all that much after all the miles I’d put in getting ready, and there wasn’t a whole lot of competition because no one around the league was training the way I was. It felt good. I paid very little attention to time. That wasn’t hard because I didn’t know a good time from a hot rock. Madison was still convinced that I’d never run into those seemingly unbreakable barriers if I didn’t know what they were.

I didn’t get a chance to compete in Trout for the first month because there are never any home meets scheduled for the beginning of the season on account of the snow.
Regular track workouts were still being held on the back roads. Two of our shot-putters were swallowed up by jelly rolls and never heard from again. At least that’s what Carter said.

I wasn’t all that anxious to perform at home anyway because the final count wasn’t in on who thought I was just a mixed-up kid and who hated my guts, and I didn’t think too much of the possibility of running my best two-mile only to be booed by the few people watching.

I rode to the meets with Floyd just as we’d planned, much to the envy of most of the team, but I was never really alienated at meets. At the first one, in Riordon, I found an empty spot on the infield; but Carter came over, plopped his spikes down on the ground beside me, and said, “Hell with Jasper. Word has it we’re going to have to think for ourselves when we get out of here.”

Pretty soon about half the team was there, and things were a lot like old times. Even Boomer came over. He didn’t say much, but at least he’d given up the idea of cramming a banana down my throat and then reaching down there to peel it. Since the funeral he’s given me a little room. I guess there was something in my agony that rang a bell in his own life. I wouldn’t push it, but it feels like the extreme danger may be over.

The fourth meet of the season was scheduled to be run here, and a streak of luck and good warm weather teamed up to melt all the snow off the track. It wouldn’t be fast, but at least we wouldn’t have to wade around it. Madison borrowed a pickup and brought extra dirt in to fill in the potholes and raked and dragged it every night after workout until he had it looking pretty good. The meet was a league invitational, involving all eight teams. Actually all the meets are league invitationals—I mean, they call it an invitational, but everyone gets invited—so by this time I’d run against the same guys three times and beaten them three times. Trout had by far the best team. Lednecky scares all the football players into coming out, so we have a lot more depth. Besides, four of the schools that don’t have as much snow as we do have baseball, so that cuts considerably into their track personnel. Anyway, we were scheduled to win all the meets. We couldn’t take the sprints or the long jump, though, because Washington had those events covered like a blanket. He’d grab a big lead in the first ten yards, then pull away. Carter had never been shut out so many times in a row, and they ran all the same events. And that put Boomer third. Naturally it
just served as proof of what he’d said all along: Niggers are fast and therefore stupid and yellow and will knife your old man in service station rest rooms.

The Friday morning of the meet I stopped to pick up Carter on the way to school. Through the year we shared that little bit of tradition, and sometimes I think I’d never have gotten through without it. He’s one of the most constant things in my life. Doesn’t always back my position, but he never tries to take it away from me either. It’s one thing to have adults helping you out and giving you direction, but it’s another to have someone like Carter who’s going through a lot of the same things you are and holding it together with some style.

As you might imagine, Carter doesn’t get too hyped up about track meets. About all track does for him, besides give him a pain in the butt, is keep him in condition, but he was really jacked up about my distance running. In the first three meets he was more excited than I was when I won, and that’s pretty excited. After each race he’d come screaming and jumping up to me, pounding on my back and being completely obnoxious. I loved it. At Tamarack Falls he even ran over and dragged the reporter for the Tamarack
Times
back over to get some pictures of me standing with my hands on
my knees, gasping for air. He really helped me get back into the groove, back to the way things had always been.

We parked the pickup in front of the school and went to English. Nobody gets as excited about track as they do football or basketball, so Friday mornings are like most others, but this one was different. Jasper’s voice came over the intercom and took me by complete surprise. “All students will meet on the front lawn in ten minutes for a special dedication ceremony in honor of Becky Sanders.”

I just froze. Carter scribbled a note. They were planting a tree in Becky’s memory and setting a bronze plaque in concrete beside it. The reason I didn’t know anything about it was that it was planned during the week I was hauling into Stibnite, and they were just waiting for Jasper to come up with the wording for the plaque and have it made.

The tree sounded like a good idea. The plaque sounded like a bad idea if Jasper was supposed to come up with the wording. And I could already hear his dedication speech banging around in my head, so I decided not to go. Besides, I didn’t want to cry and make a big dummy out of myself.

When the bell rang, I headed for the gym, and met Madison in the hall. “Muscle spasm in my leg,” I said.
“Okay if I put some heat on it?”

Madison was no dummy. He said, “Sure, want some company?”

“Naw, it’s okay.”

I went on out to the gym and up into the training room, to find Carter sitting on the table. “Let’s have a look at that leg,” he said with a big grin.

I dropped my pants and lay down on my stomach, while he felt my gastroc. “Um-hmm,” he said. “Muscle spasm. Better put a little heat on it.”

“You turdburger, you heard me.”

“Heard what? Quiet. This is a delicate procedure.”

He rubbed a little analgesic on the leg, covered it with cotton, and wrapped it with an Ace bandage. “In case someone wants proof,” he said.

I sat up on the table. “Thanks, Doc,” I said. “You’re right, I shouldn’t be alone.”

“No lie,” he said. “Doctor’s orders.”

“I wish they wouldn’t do that.”

“Doctors?” he said. “Issue orders?”

“No, peckerwood. I wish they wouldn’t keep trying to remember Becky the way I know they’re going to. It always seems like they miss the point.”

“What was the point, Louie?”

“I don’t know, but it wasn’t that she was going to be
valedictorian or that she was a cheerleader or in Honor Society or any of that.”

“It was for them,” he said. “Buddy, I hate to tell you this, but it’s not up to you to say what Becky Sanders stood for.” He sounded like Norm or Dakota. Bastard’s smart.

“Yeah,” I said. “I guess you’re right. But Jasper just uses that kind of stuff. He’ll make it sound like she stood for all the things he stands for, and I
know
that’s not right.”

“Can’t argue with you there,” he said. “I wouldn’t be surprised if the plaque says, ‘Becky Sanders builds young men.’”

I laughed.

“But it’s not important,” he said, “and the best thing you can do is forget it.”

Carter was right, of course. It wasn’t important. But it sure bugged the hell out of me. When I went home for lunch, I purposely avoided the plaque because I didn’t even want to know what it said. I forgot about it completely during the afternoon, while I was getting ready for my races, and afterward, when guys were slapping me on the back and shaking my hand and giving me five because I won the two-mile by more than two hundred yards. I was close to qualifying for regionals, according
to Carter, who already had my entry forms filled out for the Olympics.

But I remembered it again as I sat in the training room, waiting for the rest of the guys to clear out of the locker so I could shower without contaminating them. Lednecky was in his office, working on some plays for next year, so I couldn’t use the coaches’ shower.

When everyone was gone, I went down and soaked myself for a long time. I turned on three of the nozzles and lay down with my butt covering the drain so the bottom would fill up. You get little square hickies on your butt from the drain suction when you do that, but it really feels good to let all that hot water pound down on you. ’Course then you have to stand up and wash off really good to keep those strange and exotic fungi that grow between people’s toes from cropping up in your armpits or someplace.

I dressed and walked through the deserted school building and out across the lawn to the pickup. Usually Carter waits for me, but he had to go do something for his mom. I saw the tree, a dinky little thing with very few leaves. It will grow. The plaque caught the sun and flashed in the corner of my eye as I was about to get in, so I went over to see it.

BECKY SANDERS 1964–1982

THS 1–2–3–4 Cheerleader 2–3–4 Student Council 2–3–4 Class
President 2 Honor Society 2–3–4 Band 1–2–3–4 Cougarettes 1–2–3–4
Girls’ State 3 Carnival Queen 3 Class Play 4 Valedictorian 4

“A shining and joyous example of all that
Trout High School aspires to be”

Anthony Jasper
Superintendent/Principal
Trout High School 1982

Now I didn’t mind having her yearbook stats there at all, and if you could forget what Jasper aspires Trout High School to be, the quote was even tolerable. But that egomaniac had the au-freaking-dacity to sign it. His name was there
in his handwriting
! I’m sorry, but that was a little much for me. I mean, Becky didn’t even hate him. She felt sorry for him.

I went home. Norm and Brenda congratulated me on my victory, fed me, and we sat around shooting the bull until Norm dozed off and Brenda went into the kitchen to knit and listen to the radio. Then I picked Norm’s keys off the dining room table, hopped into the pickup, and drove down to the station, where I got the
sledgehammer we use to repair tire trucks. It was about eleven. I drove to a spot about a block away from the school, parked the pickup, and walked the rest of the way, swinging the hammer around to the side and over my head. It’s possible I was whistling “John Henry.” When I got to the schoolyard, I went over to the plaque and swung four or five times as hard as I could, blasting it loose from the concrete. Then I picked it up, jogged back to the pickup, and drove out to the bridge, where I chucked it into the river. As I whipped a tight U-turn and headed home, I could almost hear Becky laughing.