Once a Runner (8 page)

"My lord in heaven," she said, her eyes glistening. But she smiled as she said it, a slight woman's smile that said perhaps now here was something after all, and even though it was an admission against interest, she had to consider the possibility that there was something here a little... out of the ordinary. Later in her life, she always counted that as the moment when she truly fell in love with Quenton Cassidy, a madman who claimed to be both vexed and enchanted by ethereal barriers she did not understand, fell in love with him even as he sat, tired from his performance, absently drawing figure eights in the spilled beer.

They were all a tad drunk.

"That was nice," Cassidy said. Three days later they were walking back to Doobey in the dark, hand in hand. Though it was November, it was still pleasantly warm out.

"I don't know. It was a little eerie at first. But it was nice to look at the stars," Andrea said.

"People used to do it watching the stars all the time until Alexander Graham Bell invented the motel," he said. "But I told you no one would bother us. Very few people know that practice pit is out there. The main one gets a lot of use. I sometimes wonder what people used to do back in the old days when the jumpers landed in sawdust."

"Making love in a pole vault pit." she sighed, "If my mother only knew. She'd be sure to come up with something about 'passion pits' or some such."

"Mothers like those kinds of lines. As if there was automatic wisdom in corn pone."

"I suppose."

They walked as slowly as they could without the whole thing getting silly, both of them having an instinctive sense about preserving good moments.

As they neared Doobey Hall, he heard the commotion in back.

"C'mon," he grabbed her hand. "If this is what I think it is, it might be fun."

In the back of the house was a large garage building that had been turned into a recreation and storage area. There was a battered ping-pong table, a very old juke box, and some Sidecar Doobey-vintage furniture. Cassidy led Andrea through the door and they stood in the back of the small crowd. A space had been cleared out on the sandy concrete floor to make room for a miniature high-jump arena. Andrea was puzzled.

"What are they ..." But Cassidy shushed her. Ron "Spider" Gordon was standing at the edge of the open space to their left, his eyes focused on the ridiculous makeshift standards. They had taken two large coat racks and taped coat hangers to hold the horizontal bar, which was an old cane fishing pole. A pile of mattresses made up a comfy looking landing pit. Cassidy thought of the pole-vault pit, looked down at Andrea with a loud sigh and was prompdy shushed himself. Gordon was going into his routine now, in the manner of all jumpers, clenching and unclenching his fists, mumbling to himself, bending over at the waist and wiggling his hands like gloves with no fingers in them, in general doing the field man's Dance of High Anxiety. Except now it was overtly histrionic, for he was also doing his own voice-over,
sotto voce
like a golf match commentator:

"...and so ladies and gentlemen the pressure is really on the famous Italian high jumper, Ron Don
Giordante,
here in the Olympic finals in this beautiful new stadium in Rome, Italy, in front of thousands of hopeful countrymen ..."

Andrea did not understand what was going on. The makeshift bar was far over the head of the 6-1 jumper, and she knew he didn't have enough room to take more than two or three steps. She got on tiptoes and whispered to Cassidy, who was watching with a big grin on his face.

"Quenton, what's he going to ..."

Cassidy shushed her again and just nodded at thejumper. "Just watch," he told her.

It was a startling thing to see, even though most of them had seen it before. Gordon finished his commentary, leaving off with:"...it looks like he's ready... yes, there he goes now ..." Thejumper loped in with three casual strides and simply floated over the bar, clearing it easily by several inches. Gordon was one of the last to use the western roll, which Cassidy thought far more aesthetically pleasing than the flop, and it was a beautiful thing to watch. Cassidy estimated the bar at 6-5, though one side was lower than the other due to the instability of one of the old coat racks. Though it was nearly a foot under Gordon's best jump, seen from up close and in such casual circumstances, it was mildly shocking. The crowd was still applauding good-naturedly as Gordon wallowed around on the mattresses, paralyzed with laughter.

Stoned to the gills, Cassidy thought. Jim Beale, another jumper, took his place and began going through the antics. Gordon, barely able to control himself, very considerately crawled from the "pit" and began to give the commentary for his colleague. Everyone seemed to be having a wonderful time. Cassidy and Andrea slipped out of the back.

"Isn't that something?" he said, shaking his head.

"Weird like everything else around here. I don't think I get it."

"I didn't either, for a while. I've seen the hurdlers, the shot and disc guys doing stuff like that. Never made sense. Then I figured it out. What they're doing is they're
playing
track."

"Playing?"

"Right. See, when you're doing the actual thing itself, it's so competitive and serious, I don't think anybody really has much fun at it. Rarely in practice or
never
in meets. Oh, they like the
idea
of it all right, they like going to competitions, and they like being on a team and the general hullabaloo of being a jock. But when you get right down to it, while you're doing the thing itself, it's not a lot of grins. I can't remember a mile race in my life that was even mildly amusing."

"So what was all that back there about?"

"Well, sometimes Spider or one of the others will be sitting around here and suddenly realize that he
likes
doing what he does. He may have turned it into a compulsion or a job, but it was once something he did as a kid just for the neat sensation it gave him. So Spider will have a few tokes and suddenly realize he
loves
sailing through the air without having to hand someone a boarding pass. I've seen Mobley drink three pitchers and go out and heave his godamn shot around a playground by moonlight all night.
Weird
stuff like that..."

"But they do this every afternoon. I don't see why he would want to go out in some garage ..."

"It's very simple. Though it looked pretty remarkable to us, for him jumping 6-5 is like strolling around the block. He could do it in his sleep. So, for him to make it play, all he had to do is drop back several notches off his true capabilities; he puts on a pair of cut-offs, rigs up a stupid cane pole for a bar, and he does ...
what he does.
It would be like me going out and running a 4:20 mile. I don't know how else to explain it. They do it all the time. Everybody likes to watch, particularly when the high jumpers do it. They make up these fantastic situations, give themselves glamorous foreign names, pretend it's some great vendetta in the Olympics or something..."

"I didn't understand that stuff about the foreign names..."

"One of the half-milers, Benny Vaughn, started that. Everyone on the team now has some foreignized version of his own name. It's a kind of fantasy they seem to get a kick out of."

"Do you have one?"

"Of course. Made it up myself. I am Quintus Cassadamius, the famous Greek miler. I'm also somewhat renowned on an imaginary pro bowling tour, but that's another story."

"How about Jerry, does he have a funny name?"

"Sure. Mizerelli, another famous Italian athlete. I was responsible for that one, I guess."

"And how about Bruce Denton?"

"That, my dear, shows how much you know. Bruce Denton is Bruce Denton, the famous American clock cleaner."

11. A Fan's Notes

The tremors woke Andrea. She blinked, starded by the unfamiliar surroundings. The tremors continued, rhythmically, far-off, yet deep and powerful, shaking the whole bed. She peered around in the thin yellow dawn light, alarmed but still drowsy, trying to figure out where she was and whether she was in danger. Her hand fell on something warm. It was Quenton Cassidy; she was in his room.

But what was going on? Did they have earthquakes up here in north Florida? She stayed very still, scared, trying to make her sleepy mind work.

Then she figured it out and got really scared. "Quenton," she shook him gently, groggily. He didn't stir. "Quenton." "Hmmmff?"

"Is there something wrong? Baby, wake up, please Quenton, your heartbeat is shaking the bed ..."

One bluish-green eye opened and studied her carefully. This was his morning to sleep late. The team would be driving to Jacksonville to catch a plane; the morning run would be just a token.

"Shhh," he murmured softly, "go back to sleep." She did. The little tremors continued rhythmically; steady liquid drumbeats at precisely 47 to the minute.

They did indeed shake the bed.

Now that some of the questionable benefits of the lifestyle were inuring to her, Andrea was far from pleased. She wasn't crazy about the idea of staying home on a Saturday night, Mary Tyler Moore or no Mary Tyler Moore.

The team had left at noon and would be gone for days. The USTFF meet was Monday at Perm State, the AAU championships the following Saturday in Chicago. She fietted around her room like a cat on diet pills.

Some or her dateless sorority sisters came by, full of good will, not at all unhappy with their plight, and made a pitch for pizza and some tentative prowling around. Andrea demurred as pleasantly as she could.

She was actually pretty miserable, but what really annoyed her was that she didn't know exactly why. She got out a pair of scissors and some old jeans and began to make cut-offs, but tired after one leg and threw the stuff in a corner in a heap. This wasn't like her; not at all. If this was what it was all about, she wanted no part of it.

She cast about her room, distastefully taking in the cute pastel artifacts that had always been her joy. The giant stuffed Snoopy seemed pretty stupid when she thought about it. She felt like giving it a swift kick right in its smiling kisser. Why hadn't she gone with the girls? She knew why. It would have been worse.

Finally she wandered down the hall to the drink machine, came back with a Fresca, sat down at her neat white desk and took out a legal pad. She had never liked normal girl-type stationary; perhaps because she wrote prolific, rambling, philosophical letters rather than bright, quick, newsy ones, and it was embarrassing to stuff 20 or 30 of the little sheets into a small envelope.

In her flowery, nearly illegible handwriting, she wrote:

Dear Alicia,

How are things at horny old Randolph Macon? If you get this during the middle of the week and don't like to be reminded that the nearest boys are 35 miles away, sorry about that. But don'tfeel too deprived because here it is Saturday night and little Andrea is sitting in her room at the university voted by Playboy magazine last year as the number one party school in the country, drinking a Fresca, barely able to hear several nearby live bands and feeling like (excuse the expression) crap.

And would you like to know where the sports hero is? Okay, but I'm going to tell you anyway because you've probably already figured out this letter is a bitch session. Well, right now he is at the Nittany Lion Inn at Penn State probably trying to charm some Yankee girl With his ridiculous fake Southern accent. Whoever heard of a West Palm Beach drawl? Well, he's got one, but he only trots it out every now and then. He says he got it during the summers at his grandparents in North Carolina. Oh well, he tells me there is really not much fooling around on these trips and why would I have reason to doubt anything said with such sincerity?

He also told me he hated cross-country meets like a plague of boils, but you've never SEEN such a happy traveler packing for a sojourn. Singing whistling trying to decide which of those strange little spiked shoes he will take (he has about 50 pairs of them and they all have little stories). Oh yes, he was really upset about leaving all right.

Leece, what's wrong with me? I've never acted like this before, have I? I wish you were here now. Why did we ever decide to go to different schools?

When he's around I'm not really even conscious of being particularly happy. It just seems kind of normal. But when he has to go off somewhere it's like I cease to do anything but exist until he's back. And it's not like we see each other all that much during the week, either. We're both taking a lot of hours this semester and we agreed a while back that it could really get silly if we let it. So we usually study apart. Still, there's just something about knowing he's not far away.

He says it is going to be worse during the indoor season. He could be gone every weekend if he's running well. And right now he is.

I can't figure it out. It's not that he's beautiful. Sometimes he looks so thin it seems he must be sick or something. And if I say anything, he comes out with these smart ass comments, like "It's the lean wolf that leads the pack, baby." Honestly, he can be so condescending I want to just slap him. But then I look in his eyes, and Leece he's always so tired, so
frail
looking, it just breaks my heart. Sometimes he catches me looking at him and says, "What?" I say, "Nothing, just thinking."