Once a Runner (5 page)

True to form, Denton powered across the finish line in the 5000 meters and simply jogged past the cameras over to his sweats and departed the stadium. Everyone had ignored him for so long, it seemed to Cassidy a delicious gesture.

Now, two years after that Olympiad, though they had survived the Trial of Miles and knew his "Secret," and though they were championship collegiate runners, Cassidy and Mizner knew better than anyone that Denton played the game on an entirely different level. He was unencumbered by such things as team standings, dual meets, conference titles; as a graduate student he ran for himself (nominally for the Southeastern University "Track Club," of which he was the sole member). His fare was paid to large meets all over the country by promoters who wanted his name for their posters. During the indoor season he would likely be found in nearly any large city in the country on a given weekend, running either a two-mile (which he called a "deuce") or a three-mile race.

He knew or had run against most of the top runners in the world; he had raced Ron Clarke on the grass in Australia (winning with a big kick), he had suffered through a high-altitude two-mile against the smiling, fierce Kip Keino (losing to a big kick). He had spent several weeks in Eugene with
The Pre,
listening thoughtfully to the Bowerman/Dellinger school of thought (tempering his awe with miler Roscoe Divine's confession that he snuck out and ran extra workouts because the assigned ones were too easy). He had listened to Gerry Lindgren say
"bad berries"
about three thousand times during a hot 20-miler outside Spokane. He had had a long, pleasant argument with Kenny Moore as to the real value of the Mileage Ethic as opposed to the hard/easy theory, which ended when he told the great marathoner: "You may not
believe
in mileage, but you sure as
hell
run mileage."

There was little wonder Bruce Denton had more quiet confidence than Cassidy or Mizner in the distance runner's little rigid hierarchy of black and white numerics, and little wonder why they held him in awe. In his apartment there was an overburdened second bedroom used as a combination Study and trophy room. In the corner was an ancient filing cabinet with locking drawers. In the bottom drawer, the only one that still locked, was a flat oblong leather box. In that box was an Olympic gold medal.

7. Andrea

I'm in love with her I tell you," Cassidy said. "You don't even know her." "I don't care. If I knew her it might spoil it. Did you see her little forehead, how it was all wrinkled and sweaty?" "Come on ..."

"She was concentrating on her
pace
fer chrissakes ..." "Awww..."

This was how it all began, back at the very start of the school year. The scrap of red yarn she carelessly tied her hair up with might have had something to do with it. Or perhaps it was the
very
sincere look on her face as they trundled by her on the warmup course that day. Even Mizner commented on how pretty she was.

Southeastern University sported, like many southern schools, any number of mind-numbing pharmacists' daughters with hard little asses, dairy maid complexions, and the general instincts of a wounded animal in the forest.

Cassidy had no idea what made her seem so different, but he sensed that she had survived 20 years as an attractive female in the republic without having had her mind reamed out by teevee, Gloria Steinem, or Helen Gurley Brown.

Several days later on the three mile warmup they saw her again.

"Try to smooth it out a little," Cassidy suggested as they passed. He demonstrated with an exaggerated version of the classical running stride (a stride that he did not use himself when the chips were down).

She looked up, her damp forehead wrinkled with concentration, and stared at Cassidy as if he were some aquatic parasite that had attached itself to her ankle while she was wading in a creek. Cassidy nearly swooned.

"You're crazy," Mizner told him.

"She appreciated the advice," Cassidy decided.

"She thinks you're crazy, too."

"How do you figure?"

"What would you do if some guy out of the blue just up and starts critiquing your stride?" "Challenge him to a race."

"If his t-shirt said 'Pittsburgh Holy Rollers' and he started prancing around like this ... you'd think he was crazy, too. And you'd be right."

"Mize, the girl was deeply moved. She appreciated the advice," Cassidy repeated, troubled.

"The
girl"
Mizner was annoyed, "has a gimpy leg. I saw it yesterday when she was stretching up at the track. She probably not only didn't appreciate the advice, she probably thinks you're an asshole."

"Oh."

But giving up quickly was not one of Quenton Cassidy's foibles. A week later he saw her in his haunt, the Gay Nineties (a rather unfortunately named and remarkably heterosexual tavern). Her blond hair was down, but there was no mistaking her. The sight of her made his heart hurt. He waited around until her two girl friends got up to play foosball, then he made his slew-footed entrance. She saw him coming.

"Well, well. The coach," she said. It was only faintly sarcastic. She even smiled a little, he thought.

"Ah yes, well I..." He spilled a trickle of beer as he started to make some expansive gesture. Idiotically, he began licking foam off his wrist.

"Don't do that," she said.

"Right. Uh, look, I'm sorry if I..."

"That's all right. I was a little annoyed, but then I figured you might have taken a class or something and maybe even knew what you were talking about."

"Not really," he said happily, sliding into the booth across from her, "but I know a bunch of guys who are real good." "Are you on the track team or something?" "Yes indeed," he said, feeling slightly looney watching her green flame eyes in the pale tavern light.

"Don't stare like that. What event do you do?" "Decathlon," he said.

"Really?" she asked. "How far do you throw it?"

They drifted. Dappled by the hard cyprus shadows, out into the burning September sun, they drifted. In one of those pleasant cool eddies life provides the young in fall or spring, they drifted, quite unaware of the not-so-far-off rattle of bones...

"I didn't ask to see the movie," she said. "I thought the book was sophomoric. Baroque and sophomoric. The movie was your idea."

"It was my fault. But your friends wanted to know ..."

"My friends think Low
Story
is the finest literature to come down the pike since ...
The Prophet.
You should have eased up on them. Some day they will be producing babies and not causing anyone any trouble at all."

"All I said was such cornpone has a way of co-opting real life. I mean it's fun to talk snazzy and run around and play in the snow with
yur girl
for chrissakes, but I don't know if I'll ever be able to do that now without seeing myself as an out-take from some godawful movie ..."

"Tear ducts raped. 'I resent having my tear ducts raped' I believe is just about how you put it."

"And were following up with something about the teensy weensy sexual members of dope-crazed screenwriters or something..."

"Well..."

"Mary Ellen Conastee was close to having a stroke. She's a harmless girl, Quenton. You're going to have to break in a little slower with some people."

He looked over and gave her what he thought of as his pixie grin.

"Don't give me that pixie grin crap," she told him.

They drifted. Cassidy was plopped without grace in his innertube, his white bottom now thoroughly chilled by the icy waters of the Ichnetucknee River. Andrea somehow accomplished a similar position without the same loss of dignity: on her it looked sultry. When she leaned back to take the sun he looked carefully at the two brown legs draped over the edge of her tube, but could hardly detect the difference between them that would forever put a little catch in her walk.

Of course there would be something like that; he lacked interest in the perfect item. Quenton Cassidy, unmoved by kittens, sonnets, and sunsets, was nonetheless given to tragic flaws.

In order to arrange this day of perfect drifting, an entirely traditional local pastime, he and Mizner (now floating up ahead with his date) had arisen at 7:30 and run no less than 17 miles. It was the only way they could spend their day in the sweet haze of Boone's Farm Apple Wine and still appease the great white Calendar God whose slighted or empty squares would surely turn up someday to torment the guilt-ridden runner. They went through such contortions occasionally to prove to themselves that their lives weren't really so abnormal, but the procedure merely accentuated the fact. There were several ways it could be done. If they were going to the beach, they might put it off and run when they got there, but contrary to popular opinion, beach running is only jolly fun for the first five miles or so. After that, the cute little waves become redundant, the sand reflects the sun up blindingly, seeming to focus it on the upper lip, grains of sand slip annoyingly into the heel of the shoe or flip up on the back of the leg. Fifteen hot miles on a long, flat beach is considered good sport only by those who haven't tried it. The ocean is too infinite; the run seems as if it will never end.

They could always put training off until they got back in the evening, but that just made things worse. No beer! None of the sticky wine! Their friends would slyly try to tempt them, see if they really took all that training stuff seriously. It was too much to ask. Better to get it all over with and then be able to drink beer like any other citizen.

Though he hated running in the morning worse than anything he could think of at the moment, at this moment Cassidy was glad to have it over. The oversized tubes floated along on the gin-clear river, meandering slowly under the spooky cyprus stands and pleasantly out into the sun. Even though it was Florida, it was north Florida and as winter approached, this kind of activity would become a fond memory.

Cassidy paddled over awkwardly to Andrea's tube and invited her to double up. Flirting with disaster for several seconds, she finally accomplished the difficult maneuver.

"Next time you do the transfer at sea, please," she said. Her warmth beside him was searing; she smelled of summer, youth, Sea and Ski, and moist, slightly sweet sex. Clearly edible. His head spun from the wine and sun. Muscles along the top of his thighs trembled from his morning exertion. In a month or so he knew they would carry him screaming around the track. He had the power.

"Ouch!" she said. "What's that all about?"

8. Dick Doobey

The head football coach pushed the sweaty baseball cap back on his brisdy crewcut head, leaned way back in his $1,495 Execu-Kliner, plopped his rippled-soled coaching shoes up on his gigantic gleaming desk and wondered what in the world was becoming of him. With mournful pride he surveyed the wide expanse of lush maroon and silver carpeting that displayed in the very center a custom-woven and very savage looking Daryl the Swamp Dawg; the office was so large as to invite speculation as to which indoor sports might or might not be accommodated.

The Rotarians had been most unkind that morning. Whereas several years ago he would have been treated with the unbridled respect and admiration due a United States senator or even a big money media evangelist, this day's luncheon had been laced with a certain ill-concealed nastiness that now knitted Dick Doobey's brow like a ten-dollar pot holder.

L.T. Doaches, owner of the Fat Boy's Pit Barbecue on Interstate 75, had posed the question: Since Doobey's first three years had allegedly been "rebuilding" years for the ol* Swamp Dawgs, and keeping in mind certain early and somewhat rash predictions, in retrospect how did the coach view this past season's 4-6 record? As L.T. put it: "I mean, are we gonna start rebuilding again without seein' what it was we got ourseffs built the last time?"

It was a mouthful of a question, L.T. having obviously practiced it some, but he delivered it without a flaw and, to the affirmative grumbles and guffaws of the group, replaced his pear-shaped bottom on the Holiday Inn folding chair, Dick Doobey meanwhile discerning all he wanted to know about the general mood of the brotherhood.

A litde surprised by the brewing hostility, he babbled something about some real fine junior college transfers, some redshirts who would be "a real great help to us out there next year," and a few other favorite mouthworn Doobey maxims. Kernsville cynics suspected that the NCAA held yearly seminars for the purpose of allowing football coaches to swap these fluffs of wisdom back and forth. Doobey's favorite was: "In order to win you've got to avoid losing first." Things like that.

The same material that at one time would have at least won nodding approval now netted him a few muffled coughs. He was dying up there with a live mike and a glass of watery iced tea. He tried to tell some funny anecdotes, generally racially tinged, mangled one-liners uttered by one of "the boys," the punchline of which inevitably began: "Well gosh coach..."

As a last resort he told some of his My Daddy Used To Say chestnuts that always won chuckles of nostalgia for the old man if not admiration for his fumbling offspring. Nothing worked. Finally, one sports writer, a short Jewish fellow Doobey disliked intensely, asked Doobey's opinion of the "Dump Dick Doobey" bumper stickers that were showing up on cars in and around Kernsville.

Doobey cleared his throat. "Well, now, there has always been dissident elements, you see, in our American System, and while these people may think they are doing the right thing, and while they are certainly entitled to their opinion, you see, such disloyalty to the program can only ..."