The Front Runner (36 page)

Through my glasses, I watched that distant pale figure, stretched out in full flight, with his long hanging slow stride. His sweaty face was as calm as if he were swinging along a trail in the woods. Mike was yelling hoarsely and jumping half out of his seat. Betsy was shrieking on the other side of me.

They came streaking down the straight and into the final lap. The bell clanged. Their long legs were devouring the track. Armas was now fifteen yards behind Billy. Billy had forced him to start his kick early, but still ... I started wondering. It was possible that we had gambled wrong, and that Billy should have tried a runaway after all. He possibly was going to kill himself with this last blazing lap, and fade near the finish, letting Armas gun him down.

Billy turned his head quickly and saw Armas hauling him down. Incredibly he accelerated again. Everyone around us seemed to be going berserk.

Vince and Mike weren't yelling any more, just sitting and staring.

"This last lap," said Vince, "is going to be murder. They're
sprinting."

"Yeah," I said numbly, "it looks like it's going to be under 50 seconds. The last mile is going to be under 4."

I thought distractedly of the rare occasions when a last lap like this was run. Juha Vaatainen in the Helsinki Games 10,000 meter in 1971. Marty Liquori and Jim Ryun in the Martin Luther King Games.

The two of them swept into the first turn of the last lap. In the infield, the high jumpers had knocked off because they couldn't concentrate. For a few moments, all I could see through my glasses were the two men's

sweat-soaked backs. Annas' hair flopped wetly, and ahead, Billy's curls lifted moistly.

Then, as they rounded the turn, their profiles came into view. They were both hurting now, and both blocking that hurt. Armas' face was twisted into a grimace. Billy's face was still smooth, but the pain was in his eyes, in his open mouth with the teeth showing slightly, in the slight rhythmic jerk of his head.

They stormed into the backstraight, Armas now five yards behind.

I felt that deep prickling rise of my hackles, as always on the few occasions when Billy really awed me. Actually, they both awed me. We were watching some elemental force of nature, a storm at sea, a volcano erupting, an earthquake.

So much history, so many lives, went into each of their strides. From centuries of genes and family affairs to the last red corpuscle crammed in at high altitude. In Billy's case, I knew the factors more intimately: the clash about his training, the hills on the Prescott trails, the kiss in the movie theater, my efforts to shield his peace of mind, right down to the tender loving and the massage last night. Even the people who'd hassled him had helped forge his stubbornness. It was all being put together now.

As his great strides gulped up the backstraight, I could see him again on the Prescott track that first morning, reeling out those beautiful 60-second quarters. I could hear him saying, "I'm thinking of the Olympics," and myself saying, "That's a big order."

As they went into the last turn, I stood dead silent, with chills running up and down me. They were both splendid as the sun, terrible as an army with banners. There was no doubt in the mind of anybody in that stadium that this was going to be one of the great runs, and a record at the end of it that would stand for a long time.

As they had peeled out of the last turn, Armas had pulled up to Billy's shoulder. They both looked sick now, both deeply in oxygen debt, both dizzy and calling on the last bit of glycogen. They were both running like animals.

Armas hung at Billy's shoulder for about ten strides. And then, almost in mid-stride, he cracked. Billy had broken him. With whatever his final fatal edge was, gay desperation or maybe just Vitamin E pills, he had broken the iron Finn.

Still in control, though dying himself, Billy pulled away. He was a yard ahead, then two yards, as Armas came apart at the seams.

I felt my muscles go limp with relief. Vince grabbed my arm and shook me with silent joyous delirium.

The two were halfway down the straight to the finish line, with those two yards between them and Armas staggering, when it happened.

Later on, in the videotape, I would see it in slow motion. Billy seemed to falter a little, and his head snapped a little to the left. Then his legs gave way under him, just as if somebody had flicked the switch powering his legs to "off." Still burning forward, yet falling at the same time, he slumped slowly, gracefully to the track.

As he hit the red tartan, the jolt snapped through his

body. He slid a little on his left side, his right leg

sliding forward as if to take one last stride. His head

struck heavily against the low board rim on the inside

-of the track.

Actually, it happened so fast that the crowd didn't burst its lungs with a huge scream until it was over.

On the videotape, you could see Armas, dazed, glancing down at Billy as he passed him. "I thought it was luck," Armas would say later. Then he gathered himself and ran heavily on, easing the pace sharply because he didn't have to worry about anybody catch-ing him. When he hit the tape, he was staggering.

Back up the straight, Billy lay sprawled by the board, in lane 1. He didn't move. The other runners were skirting him, looking at him, running on.

I was horrified, not even thinking of the lost medal. What could have happened? All kinds of crazy possibilities ran through my mind. At the least, a terrible muscle pull. A concussion as his head hit the board. A massive leg cramp. A heart attack.

Beyond the finish line, Armas was on his hands and

knees, looking more like a spent decathlete. Officials were running toward Billy. I also saw the U.S. team doctor and distance coach Taplinger running toward him. The stadium was a sea of babbling and comment. Many people were applauding Armas' victory, but just as many were standing, their eyes fixed on Billy.

He did not move.

I was already scrambling down to the track, pushing and shoving blindly. Vince and Mike were behind me.

We were on the track. Several officials tried to stop us. I shouldered one out of the way. Vince punched one. Three of them caught Mike and held him.

Vince and I ran up the track.

A number of people were already bending around Billy. Tay Parker was kneeling by his head, and motioning them back. "Give him air," he said. "Get away."

Billy lay on his left side, with his left arm flung forward on the track, the gold ring glinting on it. His face was turned down and his hair fell forward, hiding it. He had fallen with such force that his glasses had been jolted off. They lay just ahead of him, shattered. The only motion in him was the sweat trickling earthward on his limbs. It seemed incredible that this body, which seconds ago had been moving as fast as a distance-running man is capable, could be so still.

"He may have hit his head on the board there," Tay Parker was saying.

Then we saw a little pool of blood spreading from under his hair. It was the darkish blood of a runner deep in oxygen debt. I told myself that I didn't see it.

"Christ," said Parker. "He couldn't have hit himself
that
hard."

The officials, bug-eyed, were crowding around. Parker motioned them away again. Vince was kneeling by Billy's feet.

Gently Parker turned Billy over. Then we saw what his hair had hid. The whole left temple and part of his forehead was gone. In their place was a pink and white bleeding crater. Bits of bone, blood and brain had ex-

ploded down his face and into his hair. Pieces of bone, with hair attached, came away in Parker's hands.

I told myself that I did not see this.

Parker was shaking his head, dazed. He was feeling in Billy's hair on the other side of his head.

"I can't believe this," he said. "It's a bullet wound."

"A bullet wound?" I repeated stupidly.

"I was a medic in Nam, I've seen plenty of them," said Parker. "Look, here's where it went in." He showed us the small, dark red hole, parting Billy's hair so that the sunlight hit it.

I was kneeling there clutching Billy's warm, limp hand as he lay there with his head on Parker's knees. It was beginning to occur to me that that hand would never squeeze mine again.

I looked dumbly up at all their faces. They were all silent, stunned, not reacting yet. Gus Lindquist had just come up and shouldered through the group, and was getting his first look at Billy's bloody head. Our eyes met. At that minute, I think, Lindquist began to understand the tragedy that he had participated in.

It was Vince who cried the unutterable cry for me. He bent down over Billy's feet, his head almost touching them, and he gave a sound like an animal being crushed to death in a press. He stayed there like that, holding Billy's spiked feet, and sobbing in that suffocated way, as if there were no air in his lungs.

Slowly I let Billy's hand go. I picked up his broken glasses and my fingers closed around them so hard that the glass crackled. On the track where he had lain, there was a wet imprint of sweat from his limbs. It was already drying. I looked at his eyes. They were half-open, gazing softly, so clear, so empty now. The left eye had a film of blood over it.

Some of the runners had come jogging back up the track to see what the trouble was. Armas, somewhat recovered now, was with them. He bent beside me, looked at Billy, muttered something in Finnish, and put one hand over his eyes. His shoulders started to shake. Someone pulled him to his feet and led him away.

Someone put his arms across my shoulders. I looked blankly up, into Mike Stella's face. He was dead white, and the tears had run clear down to his jaws. Tay Parker 'was kneeling there with Billy's head on his knees, crying. More and more people were coming across the infield. A photographer shouldered his way through the group and flashed a picture. Then another one.

It began to occur to me that it was strange—all these tears, but none in my own eyes. I was clenching the broken glasses so hard that my hand was cut.

Suddenly the voice of the announcer cut through everything.

"Ladies and gentlemen, Billy Sive is badly hurt . . . the information reaching us from the track is garbled ... a correction, we regret to announce . . ." The announcer's voice was breaking. "We regret . . . Billy Sive is dead . . ."

A wave of gasps and screams went through that huge place. Even in my benumbed state I felt it.

"... Dead ... apparently shot from the stands ..."

Screams of panic at the thought of a gunman loose in the crowd.

". . . Ladies and gentlemen, please, no panic . . . the police have arrested the gunman as . . . trying to leave the stadium..."

The voice was cutting through my head.

"Billy Sive is dead . . ." The announcer himself breaking up, trying to control his voice.

The high jumpers and officials beginning to run across the infield, abandoning their event.

Somebody was prying my hand open, taking away from me the broken glasses, mopping my hand with a handkerchief. I was helping Tay to carry Billy. He was so warm and limp, and his shattered head rolled against my breast. They had killed him, right there on the track where we'd thought he was safest.

". . . Dead . . . shocking . . . tragic . . . keep calm ... the athletes are..."

In the first-aid room, Tay was picking the glass out of my hand and taking a few stitches. Billy was on a stretcher, covered with a sheet. Someone was jabbing

a sedative shot into Vince's shoulder to quiet him down.

My eyes were dry. They were almost unblinking. The" times were still up there on the huge scoreboard.

ARMAS  SEPPONAN  FINLAND   13:04.5 FRANCOIS   GEFFROY  FRANCE   13:10.1 JOHN  FELTS  AUSTRALIA   13:10.9 VITALIY   KOSTENKO   USSR   13:11.4 BOB   BELLINGER  USA   13:11.6 It was not until later that I was able to reflect on the irony. Only death could force my front-runner to give away a world record, like the one he gave to Armas.

It was not until later that I was able to reflect on it as history. At Munich and Mexico City they had slaughtered the innocents out of sight, behind the scenes. Here they had slaughtered the innocent in full sight of the crowd, at the peak of his life.

NINETEEN

SLOWLY, in the next couple of days, as Canadian police questioned Billy's killer, the story came out.

How he became increasingly disturbed at our existence, how his latent, repressed homosexuality made him fear, love, and hate Billy. How he became obsessed with the idea of killing Billy on the track, how he finally decided there was no better place to do it than the Olympics.

How Richard Mech traveled to Canada weeks before the games. How he posed as a workman, smuggled his weapon into the stadium and concealed it, foreseeing that security would be tight because of all the rumors. How he was not able to carry out his plan during the 10,000 meter, and had to wait till the following Sunday. How he stood in one of the exits off the stands, holding the rifle under his coat. How he snatched it out quickly as Billy and Armas rounded the last turn and no one paid any attention because they were screaming and yelling. How he held his fire because he didn't want to hit Armas by mistake. How he fired as Billy pulled away in his finishing sprint.

Like me, Mech was a military man and a marksman. Like me, he loved the Bible. But in his fear he saw himself as God's avenging angel, sent to wipe Billy from the earth with the ardor of his own personal fire and brimstone. Insane though he was, I understood him.

That was the terrible thing. In spite of my grief, I understood just what had gone on in Mech's mind. He and I had branched from the same American root.

We took Billy's body back to New York on a special jet supplied by the Canadian government.

The whole group was still together. John had collapsed in the stands when he saw it happen, but he was able to walk off the plane unaided at Kennedy, white and unspeaking. Even the Angel had seemed to understand that his nonthreatening acquaintance had been killed, and he cried against Steve's shoulder.

I was still experiencing things without reacting to them. It seemed to me that I had become a camera, that recorded images in a mechanical way.