Once a Runner (2 page)

Wearing only the weightless nylon shot ts he slept in, he ambled stiffly to the dawn-lit window and stood moment ai ily, drowsily enjoying the pale orange-yellow glow that suffused the blackjack oaks outside his room. A slight breeze was chilly enough to raise goose bumps on sleep-warm flesh. He did not much like this early-morning business, but the idea of foregoing the ritual, even for one morning, never crossed his mind.

Quenton Cassidy was 6-2, his meager 167 pounds stretched across his frame in a manner dictated by the searing daily necessities of his special task. Beneath the tight skin, a smooth musculature glided with fluid ease, giving the impression of elastic, lightweight power; a featherless view of a young falcon.

There were no inefficient corners or bulges; the form was sharply chiseled as if from sand worn driftwood, fluted with oblique angles and long, tapering ridges, thin products of his care. Even now, standing perfectly still in the early morning glow, inverted teardrop thighs and high bunched calves suggested only motion: smooth effortless speed.

Stretching with a lovely kind of pain, he turned from the window and sat again on the edge of the rumpled bed to put on his worn Adidas Gazelle training shoes. His face was ruddy, even in the soft light, with a Scandinavian nose and sharp cheekbones; its attractiveness was debatable. Ragged brownish hair, bleached by hours of sun, tumbled in no particular pattern as he double-knotted his shoes. He washed his hands in the sink (the shoelaces, repository of ancient sweat, smelled like something that had died behind the refrigerator) and, with a grunt he was out the door and gone.

Quenton Cassidy was a miler.

Out in the early morning streets, the small group of runners made its way down University Avenue and turned north on tt Street; they would traverse a large seven-mile square known interchangeably as "The Morning Loop," "The Seven-Mile Course," or "The Bacon Strip" (for a series of undulating hills). Cassidy ran in the back of the pack with a loose stride that approached awkwardness. For a miler the 6:30 pace was a stumble, but with his accumulated fatigue he wanted nothing more stimulating. He conversed quietly with Jerry Mizner, a thinner and darker runner who had the look of a true distance man. He and Cassidy had been through what they now called the Trial of Miles. As with shipwreck survivors, hostages and others in dire circumstances, duress fosters familiarity, sometimes love. At times Cassidy and Mizner seemed to be able to read each others' minds.

"I don't think it can be done, really," Mizner said.

"It's absolutely true. I can sleep for at least the first half mile. I'm sure of it. They say soldiers can march when ..."

"Nan..."

"Well, it
feels
like I'm sleeping, that's good enough for me."

"Feeling and doing are different. Plato said that. Or Hugh Hefner. One of the philosophers anyway."

For Cassidy there was no joy in this morning ritual. He slept hard and woke slowly. The easy wakers who found the morning workout a lark annoyed him to distraction. But the gentle conversation made it easier, a social occasion of sorts, for just as rank has its privileges so indeed does the barely comprehensible conditioning of good distance runners. They gab like magpies.

At paces that might stun and dismay the religious jogger, the runners easily kept up all manner of chatter and horseplay. When they occasionally blew by a huffing fattie or an aging road runner, they automatically toned down the banter to avoid overwhelming, to preclude the appearance of showboating (not that they slowed in the slightest). They in fact respected these distant cousins of the spirit, who, among all people, had some modicum of insight into their own days and ways. But the runners resembled them only in the sense that a puma resembles a pussy cat. It is the difference between stretching lazily on the carpet and prowling the jungle for fresh red meat.

"Suppose we'll soon know who's nice and rested from the weekend," Cassidy said. They were nearing the halfway point.

"Three guesses," said Mizner.

Despite the standing prohibition against racing during overdistance runs, a practice that rapidly got out of hand, occasionally a younger runner would cultivate a wild hair and light out for faint glory.

"Get a load," Cassidy said a few minutes later. Mizner looked up ahead and gave Cassidy an I'll-be-fucked shrug.

"Monday Morning Scalders," he said simply. Reference Jack Nubbins, 20 yards ahead of the group and still pressing. A freshman from the scrub pine territory around Orlando, he had been courted by a number of schools until his transcript revealed another example of functional illiteracy being turned loose by the republic's secondary educational facilities. When Nubbins arrived at Southeastern on special probationary status, he proceeded to inform his other first year colleagues at Doobey Hall: "Nubbins is the name and I cut the mile in 4:12.3 but I ride a horse better'n that 'n in the fall I hunt wild hog with my grandaddy, sometimes employin' a whepon, sometimes not. Nice ta meetcha."

The others, albeit distance runners and accustomed to certain amounts of weirdness, quickly pronounced him looney as a gull and accorded him temporary legend-in-his-own-time honors. Cassidy liked him okay, but figured he laughed too loud and tried to get too much mileage out of idioms like "hog-tied" and "gut-shot." Additionally, he appeared to lack a certain ...
respect.

"I don't think he is going to be able to restrain himself this morning," Cassidy muttered irritably. Some of the other runners were trying to pick up the pace and the group was starting to string out. The unspoken rule against racing had a sanction: those who persisted would be privileged to take on either Cassidy or Mizner (or both, if they couldn't decide who felt worse).

"You did 27 yesterday, didn't you?" Cassidy asked. "Yup."

"You wouldn't want to come along anyway, would you? Just for grins?"

"Nope."

"That's what I thought. See ya." "See ya."

A runner develops after a time a deep and powerful sense of pride. There was no question that Nubbins had been a prodigy of sorts; he had run the mile in 4:12 and had very nearly broken 9:00 for two miles. These were impressive accomplishments for a high schooler and gave Nubbins a certain automatic status among his young peers. A strong runner such as he, unfettered by a sense of unity and left unrestrained, would quickly destroy a team effort by simply pummeling his teammates day after day. Soon he would represent to them the pinnacle, the ultimate competitor; he would forever be the ceiling of their accomplishment. If his were a certain kind of personality (as Nubbins' was), he would accept this responsibility with love and great modesty. As long as he was indisputedly their vanquisher, he would laugh and joke with them and pound their backs in ribald camaraderie; then daily on the trails or roads or Tartan he would cruelly stomp them into submission. Mizner called it the Top Dog Syndrome. Everyone was subject to it to a certain extent (being bested in a daily workout by one's teammates did not portend well for the time when one went out to meet the rest of the world). But Cassidy had a genuine desire to bring the younger runners along without resort to humbling daily comparisons. He was stronger than they were; he wanted them to know it, but not to dwell on it. There is time, he would tell them; time and time and time. He wanted to impart some of the truths Bruce Denton had taught him, that you don't become a runner by winning a morning workout. The only true way is to marshal the ferocity of your ambition over the course of many days, weeks, months, and (if you could finally come to accept it) years. The Trial of Miles; Miles of Trials. How could he make them understand?

Nubbins was nowhere near a slouch. He was fast and courageous and mentally tough. Like all good runners, he gave away nothing. Cassidy knew he took winning for granted. He was accustomed to looking over at an opponent with a kind of detached pity before surging off with great style.

The gradual sinking despair of hitting what Nubbins figured to be a pretty damned hot pace and still finding a non-negotiable shadow on his shoulder was an altogether new and discomfiting experience for the young runner. Quenton Cassidy (his t-shirt read: GAUNT IS BEAUTIFUL) just looked over at Nubbins and smiled back pleasantly.

"You feeling pretty good, Jack?" Cassidy asked on the exhale.

"Not too bad, I reckon." Nubbins tried to grin. "Good," Cassidy said. "Real good," as he kicked the pace down about 10 seconds. A minute later, just as Nubbins was getting accustomed to the alarming speed, Cassidy threw in a 32-second 220 to blow out the tubes and see what would happen. Nubbins' face was both blank and concerned. He looked like a man with a problem.

They flew along the early morning sidewalks of Kernsville at sub-five-minute pace, quite fast enough to startle pedestrians. They blew into the last mile, came upon and passed on either side of a sleepy coed bound for first period class: reams of biology notes filled the air.

Mizner trotted up to the front porch steps of Doobey Hall where Cassidy sagged in repose.

"Another convert to the no-race policy?" he asked.

"Hell if I know. Jeez, he's getting tough. Next time he's all yours. Did you see him back there anywhere?"

"Yeah, passed him half a mile back. Said he only turned off because he had to go lift weights at the field house. That what he told you?"

"No, all he said to me was: 'aaack.'"

"Aaack?"

"Aaack. And then he bent over, grabbed his knees, and commenced serious air sucking."

In the world of the runner, as in the ocean, there is a hierarchy of ferocity. The swift blue runner is eaten by the slashing barracuda, which is eaten by the awesome mako shark. In track, such relative positions are fixed more or less in black and white and are altered only at great and telling expense. Pride necessarily sprouts and grows; a pride that can only come from relentless kneading of unwilling flesh, painful ages of grinding and burning away all that is heavy, all that is strength-sapping and useless to the body as a projectile. The runner becomes, alas, haughty. He looks to those stronger with respect and fear, to those slower with sympathy or tolerance (they trod ground he has long since covered). The jettisoning of but a single second is announced like the birth of a first born.

Quenton Cassidy had run one mile in 4:00.3 and despite the studied indifference of the sporting world, four-minute milers are still very nearly as rare a breed as, say, successful heart transplant patients. The name "Cassidy" appeared in the school record books eight separate times counting the various relays. Though Jack Nubbins was extremely talented, Quenton Cassidy had viewed the Specter; when he reached down through the familiar layers of gloom and fatigue he generally found more there than a nameless and transient desire to acquire plastic trophies. He and Nubbins were not even in the same ball park.

"Good morning Captain Cassidy," called Roger Mobley, the All American shot putter. He surrounded his table as if it were a toy.

"Good morning Captain Mobley," Cassidy called back. "Join you in just a moment." Cassidy had probably started this exaggerated politeness among the tri-captains. He had a helpless affinity for harmless traditions.

The dining room at Doobey Hall was suggestive of what might happen if a cargo plane full of raw sirloin were to crash in Lion Country Safari. Several dozen athletes screamed, laughed, cajoled and punched each other in the easy fond intimacy that sports give to young men in groups and that they would consciously or subconsciously miss during the rest of their lives.

The good-humored pandemonium was considerable as they consumed the daily caloric requirements of several small nations. The relatively thin distance runners ate more than you would expect (Cassidy loaded his tray with three scrambled eggs, two pancakes, sausage, nearly a quart of milk, and two donuts for later). A colossus like Mobley, however, simply ate with a vengeance. With unswerving deliberation and concentration, he sat and
consumed.

"Got to keep up my strength, right?" he would say. "Otherwise you gotta go to anabolic steroids and I don't want my little 'ol nuts to shrivel up like withered peanuts, right? Be fairly disappointin' to a number a' young ladies I'm acquainted with." He laughed like a bass drum.

The weight men were cocky, masculine and gentle; they never needed to bully, such was their looming physical presence. These specimens made their particular way in the world by heaving 16-pound iron balls great distances, tossing fiberglass plates out of vision, whipping shaipened aluminum shafts to the horizon. They were the most direct throwbacks to ancient times when such arts were cultivated to bash and puncture the armor of one's enemies; to spill blood from a distance. The confidence of those who do such things well is enormous and needs no bravado for support. They feared only each other.

The distance runners were serene messengers. Gliding along wooded trails and mountain paths, their spiritual an cestors kept their own solitary counsel for long hours while carrying some message the import of which was only one corner of their considerable speculation. They lived within themselves; long ago they did so, and they do today.

There was great unspoken respect between the weight men and the distance runners that was understood but never examined closely. They all dealt in one way or another with the absolute limits of the human body and spirit, but the runners and weight men seemed to somehow share a special understanding.

The sprinters and jumpers were quite another story. Their art revolved around a single explosive instant during which all was gained or lost. They were, perhaps, the spiritual descendants of the assault troops who leaped trenches and scaled barricades to lead the attack. They were nervous, high strung; either giddy with success or mired in swamp funk. They were the manic depressives of the track world. The/ constantly puffed themselves up with bravado, either to bolster their own flagging courage or to intimidate their opponents. The intensity of their competition was ferocious, almost cruel. A high jumper is in the air less than a second and a half. A sprinter's race takes ten seconds. A pole vaulter stands with fiberglass catapult in hand and contemplates his task far longer than the three seconds he struggles in the aspic of space. Cassidy pitied them the intensity of their contests, but at the same time was envious. One would grunt with the enormous effort, elastic muscles responding from years of weight training and explosive exercise, soaring up, up, and turning on an axis of perfect technique (so quick you would miss the beauty of it if you did not know what to look for), an awful moment of hate-filled glaring at the dread black and white bar—a fragile, shame-bearing obstruction, loathsome to the touch—and then a free fall (throwing your fist with joy and relief) back to earthly cares. Yes, there was something to that, Cassidy would think, particularly on a hot spring day when he had to run 15 or 20 quarter miles on a sticky track shimmering with heat.