The Front Runner (7 page)

I turned back to him as the poker-faced Marine, having crushed my rush of feeling successfully. Then I saw something that made me forget about sex. He had fine muscle tremors in those beautiful thighs of his. He was really tired.

"You have trouble with cramps?" I asked.

"Sometimes." He was bending, busy, not looking at me.

"At night?"

"Yeah, sometimes at night too."

"You must not be getting enough calcium and magnesium," I said. I was liking less and less what I saw.

That magnificent body of his was on the edge of exhaustion. "And you've had a lot of injuries."

"Stress fractures," he said. "I was red-shirted all last year. One in the shin, one in the metatarsals. I try to drink a lot of milk, but I seem to have these brittle bones." He was shivering, standing straight now, looking at me with something like an appeal in his eyes.

"Get those sweats on," I said.

"Yeah, right," he said, and pulled them on.

"Well," he said, "I don't know what you're going to think about my program. I was doing what Lindquist told me to. But obviously we were doing something wrong."

"Why?"

"Because I should be improving, and I'm not. I mean, I've been putting in a lot of work, and no results. My best events are the 5,000 and the 10,000. I know there's a sub-28-minute 10,000 inside of me there. But I can't get down to it."

I stood looking at him thoughtfully, sex forgotten now. This was naked ambition. Breaking 28 in the 10,000 meter is a big deal, like breaking 4 in the mile, and only about 15 runners had ever done it.

"Well, we'll study your program carefully," I said slowly.

"That's one major reason I came here. I feel I need a good coach. I suppose I could have tried to cut it alone, training myself. I could forget about collegiate running, I guess, and just go into open. But I don't know enough yet about training to find the right way. I feel totally confused and stymied. So maybe you can figure it out."

He was zipping up the jacket of his sweats. Then he was polishing his glasses, which had a little moisture condensed on them. For a moment those spooky, clear eyes of his met mine without the glasses in between, and I noted his thick, chestnut eyelashes.

"I'm thinking about the Olympics," he said.

I was dubious. Vince and Jacques were clear Olympic prospects, but I didn't want to get Billy's hopes up.

"I
want to double in the 5,000 and 10,000 in Montreal," he said.

The 5,000 meter and the 10,000 meter are the classic long-distance runs on the track and are equivalent to nearly three and six miles.

"That's a big order," I said. "You'll have to be breaking 28 in the 10,000 and 13:35 in the 5,000 by next fall. To win, you'd probably have to run anywhere between 27:30 and 27:35 in the 10,000, and around 13:10 or 15 in the 5,000. You haven't had any international experience, so we'd have to get you out there a time or two beforehand. That's why Steve Prefon-taine lost the 5,000 at Munich—he didn't know how tough those European babies are."

I didn't add that Americans had won only two Olympic 5,000s and one 10,000 in history, and that only now were American distance runners becoming a serious challenge to European power in these two great events. Billy knew that.

"I worry that maybe I'm too young for this Olympics," said Billy.

"It isn't how young you are. It's how good you are."

"Okay," Billy grinned, "I'll take your word for it."

"Get your ass into the shower," I said. "I want to see all three of you at my house tonight. Seven sharp. We have team open house there every Monday and Thursday. Training films, consciousness-raising, and stuff."

"Okay,
Mr.
Brown," he said.

"No sarcasm," I barked. "And I mean that."

He looked at me strangely. "Sure, Mr. Brown," he said in a low voice and walked off.

That evening at seven, my house slowly filled with runners.

I lived in what had once been the head gardener's cottage. It was a pleasant rambling stucco place, with a wisteria-covered veranda in front. It stood on the warm south side of several big spruces and pines, near the greenhouses. (The greenhouses had once housed Joe's famed orchid collection—now they sheltered a clutter of exotic botany and ecological experiments.) From my front window, I could look across the field to the track

and the bleachers. Joe Prescott must have known what balm that little house, and that view, would be to my wounded soul.

The runners came in tracking mud. The big living room had windowseats and windows on three sides. Now the red chintz curtains were pulled. The fire in the fieldstone fireplace threw a pleasant glow on the dark old board floor, on the threadbare Afghan rag before the hearth. I had bought the wing chairs and sofa and coffee table at the local thrift shop.

The decor fit my needs exactly. Nothing fancy, so the boys could flop all over it. Easy to clean, since my ex-wife was still soaking me and I couldn't afford a cleaning lady. On the pine-paneled walls, I had photos of runners and a few fly-spotted old sporting prints.

On either side of the fireplace were two doors. The one on the right led into a small sunny kitchen, with old-fashioned cupboards painted so many times you could hardly close the doors. I did as little cooking as possible, preferring to eat with the students in the college dining room.

The door on the left led into the paneled bedroom. The hideous burled-walnut Victorian bed and dresser had come from the local Salvation Army warehouse. The big windows looked out into the spruce trees, but now the curtains were pulled. By the bed, another creaky door led into an ice-cold old-fashioned tile bathroom with a rusty shower and a cranky old toilet.

Four of the cross-country team were already there. I had two of them bringing in more wood from the tarp-covered pile behind the house, and the other two in the kitchen slicing carrots to make carrot sticks.

The Oregon three came at five after seven, just to establish their independence. They shucked their jackets and looked around.

"Carrot sticks," said Vince with disgust, leaning in the kitchen doorway.

"No junk food served on this campus," I said. "No potato chips, no hot dogs, none of that crap. Runners are what they eat."

Jacques came into the kitchen and started cutting

carrots with exquisite precision. He was a biology major, and had probably gotten his skill
dissecting specimens in the lab.

Shortly" they were all there. Joe Prescott came too, and settled into a wing chair (I had made a track nut out of him, and he came to the open house as often as he could). After initial awkwardness, they were all talking nicely, and my team discovered that the three newcomers were human beings. I showed a film of the recent national cross-country championship. We had a discussion, and all munched carrot sticks and cracked nuts and drank tea.

It was a pleasant evening, and when the rest moved off at about 8:30,
I
motioned Joe and the Oregon three to stay.

The five of us sat on alone by the fire, Joe and I in the wing chairs, and the three boys sitting on the rug. I said a few things that had been on my mind.

"You know," I said, "I took you guys on the team in a weak moment. I don't regret it. But the more I think about what's ahead, the more I realize what a hassle it's going to be."

They were all silent.

"First of all, we've got to keep your being gay under wraps for as long as possible. I don't want you coming out on campus, joining the gay lib group or anything like that. Sooner or later, the rumor is going to get around, and we'll deal with it when it does. But let's buy ourselves as much peace and quiet as possible, for now. Is that agreeable?"

They all nodded.

"Another problem. When that rumor gets around, invariably people are going to remember what happened to me at Penn State. Did Billy's father tell you about that?"

"Yeah, he told us the whole story," said Vince.

"Okay," I said. "So I never touched the kid. But the fact is, the suspicion was planted in people's minds. Now, because of John Sive, you kids have become privy to information about me that very few people have. On this campus, for instance, only Joe and Marian know that I'm gay. Not even the other gays know

that I'm gay. So I'm going to keep your secret, and you're going to keep mine. Agreed?"

They nodded. "Agreed," said Jacques softly.

"Because when you kids get forced out in the open, in all likelihood I'm going to be forced out too. That's going to be a painful moment. It might mean the end of my career for good."

There was total comprehension in their young eyes. Joe was lighting a cigarette, and there was comprehension in his eyes too.

"And that's just the human angle of the problem," I said. "Second, we have the athletic angle. I'm sure you know by now that there are conservative people in track who hate runners and coaches that don't conform. It doesn't much matter
how
they don't conform. The littlest misstep, and whammo."

The boys' eyes met mine squarely as I looked at each of them in turn. They knew what I was talking about, but I knew more than they did.

In amateur atheletics, officialdom has an almost medieval power over the athletes. By "officialdom" I mean the various bodies that govern U. S. athletics. My three boys were presently under control of the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA), which runs college sports. When they graduated, they would pass to the control of the Amateur Athletic Union (AAU), which directs most noncollegiate competition. There are other, smaller bodies, but the AAU is the giant, and controls access to international competition. Finally, there is the 300-member U. S. Olympic Committee, which cooperates with the AAU in selecting and preparing the American Olympic team every four years. These three powerful organizations were going to be the focus of our struggle.

Officialdom does not hesitate to use its power if it feels that an athlete or a coach has stepped out of line. The all-time example is the way the AAU treated Jesse Owens after he won four gold medals for the U.S. in the 1936 Olympics. The AAU wanted to show Owens off in post-Olympic meets in Europe, but Owens said he wanted to go home and see his wife and children— he was overtrained and exhausted. The AAU's reaction

to this human situation was to punish the great athlete by revoking his amateur status, thus barring him from all further competition.

Today, forty years after the Owens tragedy, the power of officialdom is still that strong. In recent years, amateur athletes have started to fight this power, and to talk a lot about what they call "athletes' rights." They feel that too many officials were too interested in controlling and punishing athletes, and not interested enough in benefiting them and in recognizing their real human needs. They are forcing officials to rethink old attitudes, to liberalize old and irksome rules.

As a former runner, and as a fledgling liberal, I was strongly inclined to side with the athletes. There are, of course, some fine fair-minded people in all three of these organizations, who give unstintingly of their time and energy for the sport, and who join with the athletes in fighting for change. But all three organizations still harbor too many fanatic and/or senile men and women who form a dangerous power bloc. As in Owens's day, they feel that athletes should be wind-tip dolls who run record times and don't talk back, and they are fighting the athletes' rights movement every step of the way.

"For instance," I said, "when people hassled Marty Liquori because he partied and had a beer or two. It didn't matter to them that Marty could beat Jim Ryun every time the two of them met. They were ready to throw Marty's best performances in the garbage can because he didn't fit their old-fashioned idea of what a runner is."

The three boys were nodding.

"And as far as the personal morality of athletes goes," I said, "these old men, their idea of total degeneracy was when those two guys on the New York Yankees swapped wives."

We all laughed a little, grimly.

"So," I said, "now we're going to have a gay coach with three gay runners. We are going to be out in full view, with 'gay is beautiful' written across our foreheads in letters of fire. And the conservative element in track is not going to like that at all."

They were silent again. Joe was smoking a cigarette, gazing into the Ire. Joe and I had already had this same discussion, and I knew he wasn't afraid.

My Irish setter, Jim, came wagging into the room and curled up among the three boys, licking Vince's hand.

"I also think that they will avoid talking about homosexuality, if possible," I said. "It just scares them too much. So what they will do is try to trip us up with the rule book. If you put an extra spike on your shoes, and they catch you, you're disqualified, whether you're gay or straight. Do you follow me?"

They were all nodding. I tossed them three copies of the AAU handbook.

"If you've read it before, read it again. Learn it by heart. Some of the rules are good, and some of them are stupid, but this is what they'll hit us with, if they can."

They flipped through the books, very soberly.

I was talking bluntly now, jabbing the air with my finger. "At all times, we are going to conduct ourselves with dignity. We are not going to give them any
extra
grounds for criticism. Like, Vince, the time you got disqualified for warming up during the national anthem. I agree that it's stupid to make an athlete stand around and get cold during the anthem, but the fact is —they can use things like that to hurt you. Let's not have any irrelevant provocations."

"Yeah, right," said Vince in a low voice.

"I want no doping. No taking under-the-table money. If any of you are hard up for money, come to me and we'll find money. I want you clean on money, so they can't use that against you." I paused a moment. "Have any of you taken money?"

"I've been offered money, but I never took it," said Jacques. "I didn't need it, so why take it?"

"Nobody ever offered me any," said Billy. "Anyway, I wouldn't..."

"How about you, Vince?" I said.