Once a Runner (18 page)

Cassidy had been in the main training room the day Jolie Benson came in, a brilliant athlete from south Florida who could play very nearly any position on the football field; Jolie, who had in his junior year in high school walked into his father's study to find the old man in his leather chair, thirty-eight in hand and a lap full of gristle that Jolie could never quite forget and which now reduced his voice to a most horrible stutter, a problem so debilitating at times he could not communicate.

Brady had been taping yet another anonymous ankle, muttering as usual to himself, when Jolie burst in and commenced with his roudne: "Bray... Bray... Bray... Bray-dee, I...I...I..." and so on. Brady watched for a few seconds, fingering a roll of tape, his great sad eyes studying Jolie intently. Then finally he snapped:

"Jolie! Cut it out! What the hell do you want?" And Jolie just jumped back in shock and suddenly started talking almost normally, telling Brady whatever it was he had come in to say. This was no screenwriter's permanent cure, of course, and Brady did not for a moment believe he could work such miracles. He knew the soul could sustain far deeper wounds than he could reach with his ultra-sound machines, his muscle balm, ice-packs, and gruff humanity. But Brady could, by god, get a man to talk straight to him, even one whose teenage eyes had beheld the infinite sorrow of sudden resignation from the human race; that was the way you talked to him. You weren't allowed to hide behind your own illusions because Brady did not hide behind his. It was little wonder that generations of athletes departed Southeastern with such a wry and honest love for Brady Grapehouse.

One day when Danny Ingram wandered into the main training room to get some tape for the track team, he saw Brady stalking briskly to the water fountain. Jolie Benson was sitting inside the glass enclosure, staring at the far wall, desolate tears falling unnoticed onto his incredible hands. Danny stopped his fiddling to ask Brady what was wrong and only then saw (he would swear) large tears also rolling down the round impish cheeks of the head trainer.

"What the hell do you want?" Brady croaked.

"Nothin' Brade," Danny mumbled, grabbing the tube of tape rolls and scrambling for the door.

Brady was not exactly transparent, but most people figured him out sooner or later. That is probably why Brady was Brady.

It seemed like the natural thing to do after wandering aimlessly around the campus all afternoon, but by the time he got to the training room, it was three o'clock and the basketball team was straggling in for their taping. Cassidy was sdll in shock. How could they do this? He was a star. He was captain of his team. Like the death of a close friend, this was a shock his mind wouldn't accept.

Brady and two of his adoring student assistants were holding forth, working quickly, efficiently, tearing the white strips with quick litde rips. Normally it would have been a boisterous time, but since they were again bitterly discussing Brady's imminent departure, there was only pious anger. Jim Quillain, a 6-6 starting forward who was generally unemotional and soft spoken, demanded that someone come up with a plan to fight Brady's unjust dismissal. The others were in general agreement. Yeah, Brade, why don't you do something?

Cassidy, realizing he had hit the rush hour, leaned in the doorway and watched. Some of the players nodded or |aye a little wave, but most were engrossed in the discussion.

Finally, Brady stopped and stepped back from the ankle he was working on, hands on hips, cold cigar stump going round and round.

"Hey," he said impatiently, "let me tell you birds something. I mean some day you're going to be leaving this place and you'll have to go out there in that big shooting gallery your own selves. And you're gonna find there's a big ...
monster
waiting for you. You're gonna find wonderful little surprises like this waiting for you all the time. It ain't all gettin' patted on the ass and 'hey nice game Jimbo fella' and 'hey, you look so pretty in your jock, let us give you a free ride.' No siree. That ain't the way she goes at all. But if you want to spend all your time fretting and sputtering about it, then that's what you'll do. But you won't get a hell of a lot else done, dollars to donuts. You better pay attention to that, boys, cause it's the straight scooby-doo. Old Brady's gonna do all right, but there ain't no law says you ain't gonna get a royal screwing 'stead of a round of applause, so if you want to bellyache, you can bellyache, but you could put your efforts into somethin' lot more productive, like sendin' Care packages to the Rockefellers or somethin'."

"But Brade, they promised you ..." Quillain's young, sincere face clearly showed the strain of trying to deal with something so patently unjust he couldn't accept it.
No one promised you there would be universal justice, you know,
Cassidy thought.

"Promises," Brady scoffed, taking his cigar out, "With a basketful of promises and your right hand you could probably jerk off, Quillain. But then, you're a lefty, aren't you?" They all roared, even Quillain, though he colored quickly. It was Brady at his finest, even here in his own pot of stew, trying to give them something that would work, something that—no matter how hard to face—was at least real and useful as opposed to the embroidered half-baked platitudes peddled elsewhere on campus. The straight scooby-doo was all they carried in Brady's training room whether a brisk pronouncement that you were out for the season or a simple observation that life is sometimes a bitch; and nothing, not even the demise of Brady's own reign, was going to change that.

Brady had seen Cassidy standing by the door and knew exactly why he was there. He had heard two assistant football coaches talking about it at the Farley training table. He hoped the miler would stay around until he was through with the basketball team, but as the group was laughing at his last remark, he saw Cassidy turn with a smile and leave. Then he heard him chuckling down the hall. Maybe he will come back, Brady thought, as least I hope he does. He's one of the foxes and I'd like to see him uncaught until he hits his stride.

When he got to the field house, Denton was already dressing. Some of the others were there early and they quickly gathered around his locker, all talking at once.

"All right, all right," he raised his hands, asking for room. "There's nothing we can do about it now, so let's just leave it. I gotta get my run in. But I appreciate it, guys, really. I do appreciate it." They went reluctantly back to their routines.
Gotta get my run int
he thought.

Cecil, the equipment room man, hobbled over and started mumbling something about how equipment privileges were to be shut off that day and locker privileges at the end of the week.

"Cecil," Cassidy was exasperated. "What kind of equipment do you think a distance man needs? I get from you every day a fresh towel and a pair of shorts. I don't even trouble you for a jock, for Chrissakes. And the shoes are mine, the gift of a generous manufacturer. I got a spare towel and shorts, though they aren't real clean. They can take their godamn equipment and..." He took a deep breath, as Cecil stood there wide-eyed, staring up at the miler. It wasn't Cecil's fault, Cassidy knew, so he just waved his hand at the old man and smiled wearily. It was apology enough and Cecil limped sadly back to the equipment cage, back to his niche among the hanging gloves, the spiked and cleated shoes, the balls and bats, vaulting poles, racket stringing post, busted hurdles; back to the brassy clean male smell of sweat-stained leather from several generations of boys who played with such earnestness and abandon in the spring sunshine.

Denton watched the whole thing quietly, already dressed, arms crossed on his bare chest.

"Let's run," he said.

Denton selected, for some reason, an obnoxious in-town course. Zip zip they eclipsed spatters of neon clutter that is franchised America. Krispy Kreme, What-A-Burger, Pizza Hut, Pizza Inn, Pizza 'n Brew, Pic 'n Save, Pic 'n Pay, Pic 'n Scratch; and close at hand, always, the noxious spewing fuming chrome and rust serpent of the roaring two-laned variety that is America at quittin' time. This country at times sdnks in the nostrils of the runner.

They had already passed their cul-de-sac, their sliver of serenity in the middle of town, an old part of Kernsville, a taste of a slower, bygone era, a small park area known as the Duck Pond. As they passed, Chief City Engineer Homer Windenberry had ceremoniously given the signal to his foreman, who pulled the lever and with an inch and a quarter of high grade Type S-l molten asphalt, paved over a mama and seven itty bitty ducklings.

Make no mistake about it, Kernsville was on the go.

"I am speaking of countrified air," Denton was saying, "where the body is not rattled apart by the insane pounding of heel against concrete. I am speaking of connective tissue given a fair shot...

"I don't want..."

"A change, basically, of pace is what I am actually getting at..."

"I don't want to sound like a crybaby, but I honestly never thought those clowns would actually go so far as to ..."

"Cut their own throats? Don't kid yourself, Cass, they don't give a flying you know what about spring sports, just so long as they're respectable. The pigskin is the only thing that cuts any ice down here in grit country. Do you know in Europe I get people coming up to me on the street? You think that kind of thing happens around here? No, Doobey may not be right, but this is his ball park and he knows it."

"But old man Prigman ..."

"Was the fire marshall on the Hindenburg."

Cassidy giggled.

"He and Doobey were joint lookouts at Pearl Harbor. Architects of the Walls of Jericho. Night watch on the Titanic..."

"Stop, I can't run." Cassidy was trying to run slightly bent over, making his little peacock noises. Finally he calmed down and they ran along in silence for a few moments.

"Rodent control officers during the Black Plague," said Denton and they nearly had to stop altogether.

By the time they got back to the track Cassidy had not the slightest idea about what to do with his sorry life. But they had blown out the tubes on a 1:15 13-miler and if the truth were known, he felt fine. Just fine.

23. More Horse than Rider

The same schedule that didn't allow much time for fretting about trivia likewise had no room for major catastrophes; Cassidy was content to follow the routine numbly. It was painful to no longer have a woman in his life, and soon he wouldn't have his team, either. Bruce Denton, who now saw himself as a man with a mission, came by to run
very
early. The varsity wasn't even moving around yet and they started at 6:30 a.m.

The sun was nowhere near dawning and a thick fog was hung up in the rolling hills around Kernsville, turning it into a damp and quiet void inhabited by milkmen and sleepy policemen, where the whir and click of stoplights seemed inordinately loud in the chilled air. Soon Denton and Cassidy were outside the city limits, sliding quietly by acres of quiet pastures, occasionally leaving the fog below as they crested a hill. There was no sign of daylight yet and had they been less familiar with the course they would have had the impression they had already come a very long way, a notion that they suppressed neatly and automatically. Little tricks of the mind were important to them. They knew, for instance, that it was psychologically easier to run a familiar course than a new one, so contrary to the advice in the magazines and jogger manuals, they seldom went exploring for changes of scenery. Because they were covering a good deal of ground at uniform, reasonably efficient traveling speeds, on any given training run they might run into and out of rainstorms, into or out of cities or counties, and into one geographically unique area and out of an altogether different one. To them the sensation was not unlike riding on some kind of very minimalist vehicle, one that traveled at a steady though unspectacular pace, and that would take them, they felt, just about anywhere they wanted to go. It was that feeling, perhaps, that inspired members of certain subspecies of their breed to embark on cross-continent excursions, 100-mile trail runs, and other such madness.

Though the toil was arduous, they rarely spoke of the discomfort of training or racing in terms of pain; they knew that what gave pain its truly fearful dimension was a certain lack of familiarity. And these were sensations they were intimately familiar with.

That morning Denton was not talkative so Cassidy locked into a steady pace, allowing his mind to slip into the pleasant half-conscious neutral state that all runners develop; he was soon lost in the cool gray isolation of the fog.

The rumbling brought him out of it. He was tensing for the shock of big cold drops when he saw them and realized this was not a storm at all but a herd of horses and ponies charging towards the fence in a pasture across from them. Denton said nothing.

The herd reached the fence, turned sharply to the right and proceeded parallel to the runners at the same pace, looking straight ahead and running at a slow gallop with what appeared to be considerable pleasure. When they reached the corner of their pasture, they turned again and galloped off in a straight line directly away from the runners, disappearing as quickly as they had come. In a few seconds even the pounding of the hooves was gone.

Cassidy tottered. Could he have seen that?

"Was that an actual occurrence?" he asked.

"Damned if I know," said Denton.

"Do you suppose it was a coincidence?"

"Not a chance. Happens every time I run this course early. They always match my pace exactly. They were running with us."