Once a Runner Page 14

  It was probably the love he generated among his athletes that did Brady in; everyone knew that Dick Doobey had told him his contract would not be renewed in order to bring in Zip Simmons, a sycophantic dolt Doobey knew from the army, whom he liked having around because he was one of the few grown-ups Doobey had ever been around who didn’t make him feel at least a little dim-witted.

  Like many men who found competence puzzling, Doobey did not like to have much of it around him at any one time.

  Brady was nearly a caricature of himself. Short and round, he always had a cold stump of a cigar in his mouth (there was speculation he bought them that way from some furtive supplier). He had short wavy black hair flecked with gray; he gave the impression not so much of age as of having been around. He moved around the training room gracefully on the balls of his feet like the old boxer he was. Had he been in the service, he would have been the tough old top sergeant who everyone would admit, when cross-eyed drunk, was a pretty good son of a bitch.

  Brady had seen them all. Hotshot all-American quarterbacks, hostile giant linemen, seven-foot basketball freaks, flashy tennis stars, future pro golfers—some of whom would make millions with their incredible legs, hands, and eyes. All of these were mixed in with the myriad ranks of steady performers, who were (though they didn’t realize it at all) at the pinnacle of a life destined to peak so early that the rest of their lives would be a wistful reminiscence of days when poetic deeds were the order of the day.

  Brady ministered to them all with the same gruff efficiency. They would come to him, at times when they were physically quite well, tapping on the glass partition of his fishbowl office in the training room, usually in the morning when there was no taping going on and the place was a cool, tiled retreat.

  “Uh, Brade,” they would say, a little hangdog, “Brade, you gotta secont?”

  “Gotta secont? Gotta secont? Now what else would I have better to do than sit around here jawboning with one of you jacklegs all mornin’?” The door would close and he would take it on. He was an uncle, priest, medical advisor, psychiatrist. They came to him with things they couldn’t discuss with their closest friends. The married ones, cut off from the rough intimacy of the athletic bachelorhood, came in to talk about problems of the hearth: children, sex, fidelity, money. He took them all, listened to them with the stub of cigar going round and round, still gruff and impatient, but with a look in his eyes that clearly intimated a deep understanding, forgiving and nonjudgmental, a look of someone who could not be shocked, who had his own agonies and wasn’t ashamed. When he heard enough he cut them off and told them whatever it was he had to offer. Sometimes he picked up a phone and in a very few words enlisted a medical specialist. Many times his counsel was no more complicated than: “Hey, Jimbo, you got to stop mewing and stand on your hind legs to her. Don’t you think she expects that? Why else would she be workin’ so hard at it?” Or he might simply listen and console, offering only the comfort of one who saw life in all perspectives at once, the pigeon droppings as well as the statue, and who could make others see it too. They almost always left feeling better, not infrequently laughing, glad to have found solace in someone so wise, so knowing, a man who also found humor in the leavings of incontinent wildlife.

  Cassidy had been in the main training room the day Jolie Benson came in, a brilliant athlete from south Florida who could play very nearly any skill position on the football field; Jolie, who had in his junior year in high school walked into his father’s study to find the old man in his leather chair, .38 in hand and a lap full of gristle that Jolie could never quite forget and which now reduced his voice to a moist stutter, a problem so debilitating at times he could not communicate at all.

  Brady had been taping yet another anonymous ankle, muttering as usual to himself, when Jolie burst in and commenced with his routine: “Bray…Bray…Bray…Bray-dee, I…I…I…” Brady watched for a few seconds, fingering a roll of tape, his great sad eyes studying Jolie intently. Then finally he snapped:

  “Jolie! Cut it out! What the hell do you want?” And Jolie just jumped back in shock and suddenly started talking almost normally, telling Brady whatever it was he had come in to say. This was no screenwriter’s permanent cure, of course, and Brady did not for a moment believe he could work such miracles. He knew the soul could sustain far deeper wounds than he could reach with his ultrasound machines, his muscle balm, ice packs, and gruff humanity. But Brady could, by God, get a man to talk straight to him, even one whose teenage eyes had beheld infinite sorrows; that was the way you talked to him. You weren’t allowed to hide behind your own illusions because Brady did not hide behind his. It was little wonder that generations of athletes departed Southeastern with such a wry and honest love for Brady Grapehouse.

  One day when Danny Ingram wandered into the main training room to get some tape for the track team, he saw Brady stalking briskly to the water fountain. Jolie Benson was sitting inside the glass enclosure, staring at the far wall, desolate tears falling unnoticed onto his incredible hands. Danny stopped his fiddling to ask Brady what was wrong and only then saw (he would swear) large tears also rolling down the round impish cheeks of the head trainer.

  “What the hell do you want?” Brady croaked.

  “Nothin’, Brade,” Danny mumbled, grabbing the tube of tape rolls and scrambling for the door.

  Brady was not exactly transparent, but most people figured him out sooner or later.

  IT SEEMED LIKE THE NATURAL THING to do after wandering aimlessly around the campus all afternoon, but by the time he got to the training room, it was three o’clock and the basketball team was straggling in for their taping. Cassidy was still in shock. How could they do this? He was a star. He was captain of his team. Like the death of a close friend, this was a shock his mind wouldn’t accept.

  Brady and two of his adoring student assistants were holding forth, working quickly, efficiently, tearing the white strips with quick little rips. Normally it would have been a boisterous time, but since they were again bitterly discussing Brady’s imminent departure, there was only pious anger. Jim Quillain, a six-six starting forward who was generally unemotional and soft-spoken, demanded that someone come up with a plan to fight Brady’s unjust dismissal. The others were in general agreement. Yeah, Brade, why don’t you do something?

  Cassidy, realizing he had hit the rush hour, leaned in the doorway and watched. Some of the players nodded or gave a little wave, but most were engrossed in the discussion.

  Finally, Brady stopped and stepped back from the ankle he was working on, hands on hips, cold cigar stump going round and round.

  “Hey,” he said impatiently, “let me tell you birds something. I mean someday you’re going to be leaving this place and you’ll have to go out there into that big shooting gallery your own selves. And you’re gonna find there’s a big…monster waiting for you. You’re gonna find wonderful little surprises like this waiting for you all the time. It ain’t all gettin’ patted on the ass and ‘hey, nice game, Jimbo fella’ and ‘hey, you look so pretty in your jock, let us give you a free ride.’ No siree. That ain’t the way she goes at all. But if you want to spend all your time fretting and sputtering about it, then that’s what you’ll do. But you won’t get a hell of a lot else done, dollars to doughnuts. You better pay attention to that, boys, ’cause it’s the straight scooby-doo. Old Brady’s gonna do all right, but there ain’t no law says you ain’t gonna get a royal screwing ’stead of a round of applause, so if you want to bellyache, you can bellyache, but you could put your efforts into somethin’ a lot more productive, like sendin’ Care packages to the Rockefellers or somethin’.”

  “But Brade, they promised you…” Quillain’s young, sincere face clearly showed the strain of trying to deal with something so patently unjust he couldn’t accept it. No one promised you there would be universal justice, you know, Cassidy thought.

  “Promises,” Brady scoffed, taking his cigar out. “With a basketful of promises and your right ha
nd you could probably jerk off, Quillain. But then, you’re a lefty, aren’t you?” They all roared, even Quillain, though he colored quickly. It was Brady at his finest, even here in his own pot of stew, trying to give them something that would work, something that—no matter how hard to face—was at least real and useful as opposed to the embroidered half-baked platitudes peddled elsewhere on campus. The straight scooby-doo was all they carried in Brady’s training room, whether a brisk pronouncement that you were out for the season or a simple observation that life is sometimes a bitch; and nothing, not even the demise of Brady’s own reign, was going to change that.

  Brady had seen Cassidy standing by the door and knew exactly why he was there. He had heard two assistant football coaches talking about it at the Farley training table. He hoped the miler would stay around until he was through with the basketball team, but as the group was laughing at his last remark, he saw Cassidy turn with a smile and leave. Then he heard him chuckling down the hall. Maybe he will come back, Brady thought, at least I hope he does. He’s one of the foxes and I’d like to see him uncaught until he hits his stride.

  When Cassidy got to the field house, Denton was already dressing. Some of the others were there early and they quickly gathered around his locker, all talking at once.

  “All right, all right.” He raised his hands, asking for room. “There’s nothing we can do about it now, so let’s just leave it. I gotta get my run in. But I appreciate it, guys, really. I do appreciate it.” They went reluctantly back to their routines. Gotta get my run in? he thought.

  Cecil, the equipment room man, hobbled over and started mumbling something about how equipment privileges were to be shut off that day and locker privileges at the end of the week.

  “Cecil.” Cassidy was exasperated. “What kind of equipment do you think a distance man needs? I get from you every day a fresh towel and a pair of shorts. I don’t even trouble you for a jock, for chrissakes. And the shoes are mine, the gift of a generous manufacturer. I got a spare towel and shorts, though they aren’t real clean. They can take their goddamn equipment and…” He took a deep breath, as Cecil stood there wide-eyed, staring up at the miler. It wasn’t Cecil’s fault, Cassidy knew, so he just waved his hand at the old man and smiled wearily. It was apology enough and Cecil limped sadly back to the equipment cage, back to his niche among the hanging gloves, the spiked and cleated shoes, the balls and bats, vaulting poles, racket-stringing post, busted hurdles; back to the brassy clean male smell of sweat-stained leather from generations of boys who had long since played their games in the spring sunshine.

  Denton watched the whole thing silently, already dressed, arms crossed on his bare chest.

  “Let’s run,” he said.

  DENTON SELECTED, for some reason, an obnoxious in-town course. Zip-zip they eclipsed spatters of neon clutter that is franchised America. Krispy Kreme, What a Burger, Pizza Hut, Pizza Inn, Pizza ’n Brew, Pic ’n’ Save, Pic ’n Pay, Pic ’n Scratch; and close at hand, always, the noxious spewing fuming chrome-and-rust serpent of the roaring two-laned variety that is America at quittin’ time. This country at times stinks in the nostrils of the runner, Cassidy thought.

  They had already passed their cul-de-sac, their sliver of serenity in the middle of town, an old part of Kernsville, a taste of a slower, bygone era, a small park area known as the Duck Pond. As they passed, Chief City Engineer Homer Windenberry had ceremoniously given the signal to his foreman, who pulled the lever, and with an inch and a quarter of high-grade Type S-1 molten asphalt, paved over a mama and seven itty-bitty ducklings.

  Make no mistake about it, Kernsville was on the go.

  “I AM SPEAKING of countrified air,” Denton was saying, “where the body is not rattled apart by the insane pounding of heel against concrete. I am speaking of connective tissue given a fair shot—”

  “I don’t want—”

  “A change, basically, of pace is what I’m getting at…”

  “I don’t want to sound like a crybaby, but I honestly never thought those clowns would actually go so far as to—”

  “Cut their own throats? Don’t kid yourself, Cass, they don’t give a flying you-know-what about spring sports, just so long as they’re respectable. The pigskin is the only thing that cuts any ice down here in grit country. Do you know in Europe I get people coming up to me on the street? You think that kind of thing happens around here? No, Doobey may not be right, but this is his ballpark and he knows it.”

  “But old man Prigman—”

  “Was the fire marshal on the Hindenburg.”

  Cassidy giggled.

  “He and Doobey were joint lookouts at Pearl Harbor. Architects of the Walls of Jericho. Night watch on the Titanic…”

  “Stop, I can’t run.” Cassidy was trying to run slightly bent over, making his little peacock noises. Finally he calmed down and they ran along in silence for a few moments.

  “Rodent control officers during the Black Plague,” said Denton, and they nearly had to stop altogether.

  By the time they got back to the track Cassidy had not the slightest idea about what to do with his sorry life. But they had blown out the tubes on a 1:15 thirteen-miler and if the truth were known, he felt fine. Just fine.

  23.

  More Horse Than Rider

  THE SAME SCHEDULE that didn’t allow much time for fretting about trivia likewise had no room for major catastrophes; Cassidy was content to follow the routine numbly. It was painful to no longer have a girl in his life, and soon he wouldn’t have his teammates either.

  Bruce Denton, who now saw himself as a man with a mission, came by to run very early. The varsity wasn’t even moving around yet, so it was well short of 6:30 A.M.

  The sun was nowhere near dawning and a thick fog was hung up in the rolling hills around Kernsville, turning it into a damp and quiet void inhabited by milkmen and sleepy policemen, where the whir and click of stoplights seemed inordinately loud in the chilled air. Soon Denton and Cassidy were outside the city limits, sliding quietly by acres of quiet pastures, occasionally leaving the fog below as they crested a hill. There was no sign of daylight yet and had they been less familiar with the course they would have had the impression they had already come a very long way, a notion that they suppressed neatly and automatically. Little tricks of the mind were important to them. They knew that it was psychologically easier to run a familiar course than a new one, so contrary to the advice in the magazines and jogger manuals, they seldom went exploring for changes of scenery. Because they were covering a good deal of ground at uniform, reasonably efficient traveling speeds, on any given training run they might run into and out of rainstorms, into or out of cities or counties, and into one geographically unique area and out of an altogether different one. To them the sensation was not unlike riding on some kind of very minimalist vehicle, one that traveled at a steady though unspectacular pace, and that would take them, they felt, just about anywhere they wanted to go. It was that feeling, perhaps, that inspired members of certain subspecies of their breed to embark on cross-continent excursions, hundred-mile trail runs, and other such madness.

  Though the toil was arduous, they rarely spoke of the discomfort of training or racing in terms of pain; they knew that what gave pain its truly fearful dimension was a certain lack of familiarity. And these were sensations they knew very well.

  That morning Denton was not talkative so Cassidy locked into a steady pace, allowing his mind to slip into the pleasant half-conscious neutral state that all runners develop; he was soon lost in the cool gray isolation of the fog.

  The rumbling brought him out of it. He was tensing for the shock of big cold drops when he looked up and saw a herd of horses and ponies charging toward the fence in a pasture across from them. Denton said nothing.

  The herd reached the fence, turned sharply to the right, and proceeded parallel to the runners at the same pace, looking straight ahead and running at a slow gallop with what appeared to be considerable pleasure. When they re
ached the corner of their pasture, they turned again and galloped off in a straight line directly away from the runners, disappearing as quickly as they had come. In a few seconds even the pounding of the hooves was gone.

  Cassidy tottered. Could he have seen that?

  “Was that an actual occurrence?” he asked.

  “Damned if I know,” said Denton.

  “Do you suppose it was a coincidence?”

  “Not a chance. Happens every time I run this course early. They always match my pace exactly. They were running with us.”

  “Riderless horses in the fog,” Cassidy said mysteriously. “Do you suppose it’s an omen of some kind?”

  “Mountless riders in the mist,” Denton said just as mysteriously. “That’s what we are to them. Do you suppose we are omens?”

  Cassidy sucked on his lower lip and said nothing. There are times, he thought, when you can’t get away with anything.

  DENTON DROVE OUT State Road 26 toward Newberry. It was a beautiful day, a crystal day with a shocking blue sky; a day for mock heroics and knowing smiles.

  “I can’t wait to hear the plan,” Cassidy said.

  “And I can’t wait to tell you. Meanwhile, let’s not look to horsies and moo-cows for auguries. Let us, as they say, keep our eye on the ball.”

  “Okay.”

  “And I have a little story to tell you”—he gave a little Uncle Remus kind of chuckle—“that I think you will find real entertaining.” Cassidy clapped his hands stiffly, childlike.

  “But first, I’d like to know some things. Like, has anyone around campus called to offer help of any kind?”