Once a Runner Page 15

  “Oh, sure, I guess so. Hosford said there have been calls from a bunch of student government honchos, Father Gannon at the Catholic Student Center, the ACLU guy in town, Feldman. And, of course, all the guys want to march, boycott, demonstrate, et cetera, et cetera. Hell, for all I know, they’re getting up another petition.”

  “Well, at least they’re on your side.”

  “Hell, everyone seems to be on my side. Even old Doobey said he was doing it for my own good. I get a few more people on my side and my side is going to sink.”

  Denton said nothing.

  “And the worst is not even out yet. They have this statement—Prigman and Doobey—I mean, that they are releasing to the press this afternoon. It accuses certain spring sports athletes, of which I am singled out as the quote ringleader unquote, of fomenting a veritable rebellion among the various athletes and of infecting the football team with radical-type thinking. They claim this process has been going on right under their unsuspecting noses since the football season and they casually mention those close games with Tennessee and Auburn right there at the end of the season. Jesus!”

  Denton rolled his window all the way down, letting the air blast in, forcing him to talk above the roar.

  “Well, let me tell you my little story before you get all worked up. We had a black half-miler at my college in Ohio, a very talented kid who managed to run 1:47.5 as a junior. And that looked like he was just warming up. Beautiful runner. This kid was a writer also; took it seriously and all, and actually he wasn’t too bad. I read some of his stuff in the school quarterly—don’t give me that look; I know what you think of my literary judgment. Anyway, this guy had a story in the magazine that had the word ‘fuck’ in it. It wasn’t a particularly dirty story. Matter of fact, it was about some athletes and the word was used in some locker-room dialogue. It wasn’t even his best story. But anyway, the administration got a collective heart flutter; they confiscated all the issues of the thing right off the presses and fired everybody they could think of who didn’t have their asses covered. As you can gather, our school was not exactly a bastion of libertarian thinking.

  “Our 880 man was a whale of a celebrity,” Denton continued. “A suit was filed and some federal judge informed the administration that as far as he knew the First Amendment was still on the books. It was a fine day for the good guys.”

  They rode in silence for a while. Cassidy turned to Denton.

  “And?”

  “And the kid ran 1:56 that year and then disappeared altogether.”

  THE LITTLE A-FRAME CABIN was back up in a thicket of tall straight pines and waist-thick live oak and looked like it belonged. There were stacks of paneling and other wood lying around inside along with other signs of ongoing construction; the whole place had the clean, chewing-gum-sweet smell of cut wood. Cassidy kicked and poked around, trying to act like a man who knew his way around a construction site.

  “It’s great,” Cassidy said, taking the mug of coffee Denton held out. “Whose is it?”

  “It’s mine.”

  “Yours?”

  “Right. Come on over here and sit down where it’s not so dusty. I guess this will be a day of revelations, in a manner of speaking, and I’m telling you right now, it’s all in the strictest of confidence. Also, I don’t want you to go drawing any conclusions or moralizing on me until you have heard me out.”

  “All right,” Cassidy said. What next? he wondered.

  “The place is mine, along with fifteen acres, lock, stock, and septic tank. I’ve had my brother-in-law working on it for nearly a year, but now he’s gone back to school in Boston. We’ve done it all ourselves. It’s still a little rough around the edges, but when I finish my doctorate, I plan to move Jeannie and myself out here and grow some of the goddamnedest exotic plants you have ever laid eyes on. There are two greenhouses in skeletal stages in the back right now…”

  “Yes, but—”

  “Let me tell you and then you can handle it any way you want to. This is partly about money, as you probably guessed. I don’t know how much you know about this kind of thing, but here it is: I was paid $25,000 in cash to wear blank brand of track shoes in the Olympic 5000-meter final. I have no personal knowledge, but I suspect that everyone in that race had some kind of deal. Myself, I had a signed and witnessed contract that probably would have stood up in a court of law, though I would have never run again as an amateur if it had ever gone that far.”

  “They gave you $25,000…”

  “Cashier’s check. Negotiated in a bank in Luxembourg.”

  “But what if—”

  “They found out? They don’t want to know. I suppose if they had their noses rubbed in it, they would go huffing and puffing around and start suspending people. But, if you haven’t figured it out yet, the guys that run sports are lightweights; old jocks that didn’t make it or couldn’t leave it behind. They don’t want any trouble, they just want their blazer patches and their freebie trips. And see, all the shoe contracts have a clause guaranteeing a legal defense against any attack on an athlete’s amateur status caused by the payment. But like I say, the federations don’t want to know about it. The communist-bloc countries have been supporting their athletes completely; the Europeans have blatantly been getting paid for years; even the American sprinters have been raking it in when they go over there. Only in the past few years have our distance runners been, uh, taken care of.”

  “Twenty-five grand…”

  “Oh, that’s not all, of course. There were bonus clauses built in for various highly unlikely potentialities, such as my winning the race or setting a world record. The amounts reflected the startling odds against me, of course, and big numbers are just so much fun for businessmen to throw around when they’re just so many paper zeroes.”

  Denton looked at Cassidy, who seemed a little shocked.

  “So, I don’t want to bore you with the details, but to make a long story short, I find myself quite pleasantly, uh, situated. Remember, now, this is still in the strictest of confidence.”

  Cassidy nodded, solemn.

  “And something else, Quenton, this is not to be considered the view from the top of the mountain either. I am not trying to get you pumped up for that great bonanza waiting behind door number three…”

  “What is this to be considered, Bruce?”

  “In the first place, I don’t appreciate that tone. But I guess it is probably to be expected, at least until you get used to the idea. But let us just call this a modest proposal. I want you to understand a little bit of what it’s all about out there, I suppose, before you go making any big decisions about your future. In a way, what has happened to you is a part of what it’s like out there.”

  Denton stretched his legs out on a stack of paneling, leaned back against the wall, and gestured to Cassidy to make himself comfortable.

  “I was pretty much like you at one time—and I’m going to do my best to avoid melodramatics here—I busted my hump for six years for a chance to stand on that platform and have some old fart in a blazer and straw hat put that medal around my neck. That’s really all I was up to, Quenton. I wanted to stand up there and let a little tear roll down my cheek while they played the Mouseketeer Club song and the old glad rag climbed the pole. I wanted to look into the camera while old Howard interviewed me and say: Hey, Ma! Look at me! I’m the King Bee!”

  “And?”

  “And that’s what I did. It was just great, Quenton, greatest experience of my life, no question about it. But then I found out that everything in the land of the free is not exactly free, but negotiable. Which doesn’t mean much really, unless you let it.”

  “I’m not sure that I follow.”

  “Oh, it’s an all-weather loony bin out there, Quenton, you know that. They’re up to their assholes in fried chicken and nondairy creamer; they’re running around selling each other life insurance and trading wives at Tupperware parties. Their children are slack-jawed and aspire to drive stereophonic vans,
and everyone expects their stars—of whatever category—to be modest and well paid.”

  “I don’t believe I am as naïve as—”

  “And before they got around to finding out I was a star, I couldn’t get myself a bus ticket to the Kansas Relays, much less make a fortune for running a race. Would you like to know how I got to the Drake Relays that first year when I ran that 27:22?”

  “They didn’t invite you?”

  “Hell no, they didn’t invite me. Cornwall called them and said he had a graduate runner doing twenty-eight minutes in time trials and they laughed and asked him did he time the guy with an alarm clock. So I called them back myself and asked if they would enter me if I got there on my own. They said sure. Good old American business, right? Never turn down the freebie. So I went out and borrowed enough from a small loan company for a one-way ticket. This is how your basic free enterprise system develops its Olympic champions of tomorrow.”

  “One way?”

  “And Frank Shorter sent me an unused portion of a ticket he had from San Francisco to Atlanta; I had it changed and got back on that.”

  “Shorter did that? So you could go out and run against him?”

  “Not for that. He just wanted me to have a chance. He had been through the same thing himself. Right after he got out of Yale and was just bumming around, training and trying to get into meets, he lived on the floor of my dorm room. This was before Jeannie and I got married. Frank and I trained, slept, cooked on a hot plate, and dreamed about becoming stars. I tell you, I would have done well in that race if I had had to crawl across the finish line on my hands and knees. So that’s it. Beforehand I had these people more or less laughing at me. But after that race, it was, oh Bruce this and gosh Bruce that. I told Shorter I couldn’t believe it. He just laughed; he knew. He had been through it all himself.”

  “I recall a song about too many TV dinners, about how everyone loves a winner…”

  Denton smiled. “You’re getting the picture.” He stood, stretched mightily, sat again.

  “But more to the point,” Denton said. “What I’m getting at is, I’m advising that you practice a certain amount of discretion. I am advising regrouping, getting some country air, thumping some soft trails…”

  “Out here?” Cassidy looked around. “What about school, the athletic department thing. What about girls, for crying out—”

  “The vertical smile? Well, the prospects are limited. Also graduate-level bull sessions, extended beer swilling, elaborate practical, uh, jokes of a legal nature. All limited.”

  “I see your point.”

  “For a long time I didn’t believe you could make it, Quenton. I still don’t know, really. You seemed to have almost too much going for you. It’s a very intangible thing. A boxing champion from the ghetto expresses his anger and frustration with a lightning left cross. Other than that, he’s inarticulate. You’ve never been at a loss for words, Quenton. And you’ve never seemed hungry enough, frankly.”

  Denton stood, walked back to the kitchen to refill his coffee mug.

  “To be brutally honest with you, Quenton,” he said, “I always figured that once you did four minutes, that would have been about it for you.” He said this very quietly, almost sadly.

  It was deadly quiet in the little house. Cassidy swallowed. Denton just looked at him, waiting for some kind of response. But all Cassidy could think was, My God, you’re right, you’re right! How could I have not known?

  Finally, Cassidy said very softly: “I seem to have solved that problem. I don’t exactly have anything going for me now. They’ve taken away—”

  Denton slammed his mug down. “They have taken away nothing! THEY are irrelevant! That’s what I want you to understand!”

  “I must be slow or something…”

  “Move out here, Quenton, and train. Train your guts out. Drop out of school, forget that mess for a while, it’s nothing but trouble. They are all a bunch of small men with weak minds and tiny little goals for themselves; they’ll cause you nothing but grief. There are great trails out here and a little grassy field for intervals. You can run barefoot on it the way you like to. It’d be ideal, a runner’s paradise.”

  “Drop out of school?”

  “You’re a bright boy, you can do that diploma business anytime. But I’ve been watching you since last year, Quenton, watching you very closely. Ever since you ran that four flat—”

  “Four flat point three.”

  “All right, four flat point three. I’ve been watching you, your training, the way you handled breakdowns, everything. I’ve been watching, Quenton, and I can tell you that physically you are getting close. Very close. Do you know what I mean?” He didn’t wait for an answer, but strode to the big picture window that took up most of the front of the structure.

  “People conceptualize conditioning in different ways,” he said. “Some think it’s a ladder straight up. Others see plateaus, blockages, ceilings. I see it as a geometric spiraling upward, with each spin of the circle taking you a different distance upward. Some spins may even take you downward, just gathering momentum for the next upswing. Sometimes you will work your fanny off and see very little gain; other times you will amaze yourself and not really know why. Training is training, it all seems to blend together after a while. What is going on inside is just a big puzzle. But my little spiral theory kind of gives it a perspective, don’t you think?”

  “Yes, but I don’t see—”

  “You’ve been in that momentum-gathering phase, Cass, is what I’m telling you. You’ve been in it for quite a while now and I think that—physically again—you’re due. That four flat in San Diego was only the tip of the iceberg…”

  “Four flat point one.”

  “All right, four flat point one. But your sights have been too low, Cass. You’ve always wanted to break four minutes so you could be a respected college miler. You wanted the other guys to look at you and say, hey, there goes Cassidy, the guy from Southeastern that runs four minutes.”

  “I’m not so sure that’s such a—”

  “Hell, forget about all that. Go for it, Quenton, is what I’m telling you, go for the big time, right now, at this precise point of your life, make up your mind to do it and do it. Take your shot.”

  “But dropping out of school, Bruce. I’d feel like a quitter, like I was running away…”

  For the second time this morning Cassidy thought Denton looked really irritated, impatient with him.

  “Let me tell you something about winners and losers and quitters and other mythical fauna in these parts,” Denton said. “That quarter-mile oval may be one of the few places in the world where the bastards can’t screw you over, Quenton. That’s because there’s no place to hide out there. No way to fake it or charm your way through, no deals to be made. You know all about that stuff. You’ve talked about it. It’s why you became a miler. The question now is whether you are prepared to live by it or whether it was just a bunch of words.”

  Quenton Cassidy thought about it a few moments, and then very quietly asked Denton exactly what his personal stake was in the whole affair.

  “Let’s say I am chronically attached to the underdog…”

  “Bruce…”

  “Let’s say I am an ardent fan of that classical footrace, the mile run, that I have never had enough speed myself to—”

  “Bruce…”

  “Let’s say I’m angling for a percentage of the take and—”

  “Naw.” Cassidy waved that off as well.

  Denton sat beside Cassidy, removed his shoes and socks, and sat looking at his bony feet. Then he took a deep breath, and leaned over and pressed into the swollen skin of his bulbous red heels with his thumb. The surface remained indented, as if in modeling clay.

  “They’re full of lymph!”

  “Yeah. They aren’t as bad today as usual. Doc Stavius says the Achilles’ sheath will become involved shortly and then it will be just a matter of time…”

  “Bruce
, I’m real sorry, I—”

  “The hell with it. I would have liked another couple of seasons, I suppose, before hanging ’em up for good, but the hell with it. Connective tissue, Quenton, that’s what gets everybody in the end. Pound around asphalt America long enough and you’re going to wear something out for real. We can mold the muscles, you see…” He looked down at his knees sadly.

  “We can strengthen the mind, temper the spirit, make the heart a goddamn turbine. But then a strand of gristle goes pop and presto you’re a pedestrian.”

  “Can’t they do anything?”

  “Oh, you know how those things go. With a football player you can drill a hole in a bone and tie the goddamn things all over the place; but a distance runner gets so much as a stone bruise, he limps a thousand miles…”

  “Bruce?”

  “I’ll probably hang around at meets…”

  “Bruce?”

  “…wearing my old USA sweats, pretending to be warming up for a deuce or a 5000. What?”

  “You tell me win one for the Gipper, I quit immediately.”

  24.

  Moving Out

  THERE WAS NOTHING SPECIAL about the room, but they say even a prisoner in the Bastille would wax sentimental over leaving his cell after languishing in it many years. Leaving the third floor of Doobey Hall filled Quenton Cassidy with both nostalgia and foreboding.

  Mike Mobley came by and watched for a while, occupying nearly the whole door frame sadly as Cassidy puttered around with cardboard boxes and suitcases. Finally the weight man took a deep breath and held out his huge paw.

  “Well, Captain Cassidy,” he said. “I want you to know, I’ve always appreciated your…I mean, it’s always been great the way you…” His big shoulders slumped wearily.

  “Yes, indeed, Captain Mobley. I appreciate it, really I do. You take good care of that heaving arm, you hear?”

  Mobley lumbered out shaking his head. Cassidy smiled. He would miss the harmless rituals. Soon others began dropping by and finally it got so distracting Cassidy closed the door and put up the little sign that said: THE KING IS NOT RECEIVING. No one really had anything to say anyway, they just sat around sighing and trying to make small talk.