The Front Runner (41 page)

I am an animal now, Billy the animal. I am running all out, the way Billy taught me can be done. I am not afraid to hang out my soul and my blood and my veins and my lungs and my balls. I kill off the third man, then the second.

Then I surge past the first man, and I'm out in front. I'm free.

About a hundred yards to go. We are practically sprinting. I can hear the other two kickers hauling me down. I have control enough that I don't turn my head to look, but I feel them hooked on me. I'm in oxygen debt. I'm hurting. My shoulders are heavy. My body and soul hurt. I am putting out everything, Billy Sive in Montreal in the last seconds of the 5,000. If you have to die, it's a good moment, when you're at that blazing peak of existence.

One kicker is tightening up and he lets go. The oth-er is at my shoulder. We peel out of the last turn. The Garden is going wild, The tape is dimly visible off down the straight. I am dead. I have reached bottom. But the other kicker is dead too. He stays on my shoulder and can't pass me. I am dead but alive. Nobody is going to kill me.

My fainting body manages to continue hurtling down the straight. My legs are still making giant strides, but I have the feeling that they're folding under me. The roaring in my ears is both the crowd and the dizziness. I am tightening up and sick. My eyes are blurring. The two of us are plunging at the tape, diving into it as if it were water.

With a last effort—I don't know from where I bring it up—I lean forward, flinging up my arms. The tape breaks across my breast.

It takes a minute to recover. That last quarter was 59.3 seconds. The time is 4:03, just off the record of 4:02.5.

I walk around in circles and gag a little, and finally I feel human again. My students are jumping up and down. A few gays and a few of my team have jumped down onto the track. A strange gay hugs me and gets my sweat stained on his expensive suede. I wonder if they will disqualify me. Miracle of miracles, they disqualify one of the other guys.

With some of my team jogging around me, I take a victory lap, waving at the crowd with both hands. Maybe it's my imagination, but the whole place seems  to

be applauding. There's a lump in my throat. It all comes so many years late, but it's good anyway.

Finally I'm back in my warmups, off the track, surrounded by people. Jacques pounds me happily on the back. Vince makes his way through the crowd and embraces me. He and Jacques look at each other and smile for the past.

I still have this lump in my throat.

The CBS-TV sports interviewer shoves his microphone at me. The camera crews are there. "How does it feel to come so close to an American record at your age, Harlan?"

"It feels good," I say. "I have to thank the others. They nearly handed it to me with that early pace. Maybe next time I'll break it."

"Do you think there's going to be a sub-four-minute masters mile one of these days?"

"I think so. I don't know who, but somebody will go under. The kids, meanwhile, are going to be breaking 3:50, so ..."

"You think you can break 4?"

"Who knows? Anyway, I can only compete and train as much as my obligations to my own team permit. We'll see. Let's say that I'm back on the track with a lot of motivation, and that I plan to stay around as long as my legs are in one piece."

With the interview over, Betsy comes up quietly and puts the baby in my arms. He wiggles against my chest, a mite of life but amazingly strong, now five months old. With his small fists clenched, he gazes around at the athletes, the bright lights, the smoky arena, with his wise, dopey Virgo eyes. He is unafraid, dignified.

As I look down at him, I think that he already knows what kind of race he's in. He knows that it is going to take everything he has to stay up in front, to run free.

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