Racing the Rain Page 25

  The first dual meet was at home against Vero Beach, which always had a good, well-balanced team. Cassidy was especially nervous because Mr. San Romani insisted that they “run through” their early meets, so the day before they did a five-mile run. What with the warm-up and striders, it was an eight-mile day altogether, hardly a “rest” day before a meet.

  “How are you feeling?” Mr. Kamrad said, throwing his arm over Cassidy’s shoulders.

  “Good. Not exactly jumping up and down with energy, but not bad, considering,” said Cassidy.

  “This Jim Lee kid ran under 4:40 last year,” Mr. Kamrad said. “He’s their best. Ed has it tougher. They’ve got a 1:57 kid. He’s not in the mile, though. He runs the quarter when he doubles. So Lee is your guy. You and Lenny might want to work together, help each other out if you can. Jarvis . . . Well, give Jarvis some encouragement.”

  Lenny knew he didn’t have a chance to win, so he was running for points. He was saving it for the two-mile, but he offered to help with the early pace.

  “Thanks, Len,” Cassidy said. “But this Lee kid was pretty good last year. I bet he takes it right out himself.”

  It was a good guess. Lee ran the first lap in sixty-three seconds.

  Cassidy was fifteen yards back and worried. Mr. San Romani’s only advice had been exactly what he had always said about racing: “Run as evenly as possible, then kick like hell.” Simple advice. It had worked for Cassidy before.

  Cassidy had never run a mile all out before and was hoping to run 4:40 today, so he figured splits of seventy-one seconds would get him close enough to kick in a good final lap. But now just trying to stay close to Lee had brought him through the first lap in sixty-seven seconds, blowing up his whole plan. Lenny saw what was going on right away and dropped back to the second pack, saving himself for the two-mile.

  “Sixty-seven, stay loose,” Trapper said as he went by him before the first turn. Lee began dropping back immediately, and Cassidy realized that the guy’s first lap had simply been a mistake. Despite Lee’s PR, he was clearly not an experienced miler. Heck, I’m not either, thought Cassidy, but I know better than that.

  Cassidy had slowed, too, but despite that Lee came all the way back to him by the 220 post in the second lap. He came back so fast that Cassidy almost ran up his backside. Fortunately, he roused himself out of his midrace torpor in time to see what was going on and pulled out into the second lane to go around the poor guy. Lee looked over at him, surprised, and actually picked it up. He wasn’t going to let Cassidy pass!

  That was fine with Cassidy. He dropped back behind again and followed all the way through the turn. They came by the post as the timer read off: “Two eighteen, nineteen, two twenty . . .”

  “Right on track,” said Trapper as they went by.

  Cassidy did the math. He had slowed considerably but was still averaging seventy seconds a lap, a second faster than he had planned. Poor Lee, Cassidy calculated, had gone from sixty-three seconds to seventy-six. No wonder he came back to me so fast!

  But now Lee was flagging again, and this time when Cassidy went by him there was no fight. Cassidy concentrated on running smoothly and efficiently. And he noticed something for the first time. He didn’t feel particularly fatigued. It was a strained feeling, a feeling of effort, but the desperation of running close to his red line wasn’t there. It wasn’t exactly fun, but it wasn’t that hard, either. Most of their interval workouts were harder.

  Cassidy had no idea how far ahead he was at the three-quarter mark, but the timer read off: “Three thirty, thirty-one . . .” Then he went silent. The gun went off, causing Cassidy to jump despite himself. Cassidy listened . . . listened, and then he heard from a distance, “Three thirty-six . . .” and he knew he had at least twenty yards on the poor kid.

  He concentrated on his form. He was beginning to feel it now, but knowing it was the final lap made it easier to deal with.

  Running away with a race like this was a satisfying experience he had never before had in competition. His races had all been such struggles, such long-shot, come-from-behind desperation efforts that he just assumed all races were like that.

  It occurred to him that this was what all the training had been about. And this time it wasn’t just so he could fly up and down a basketball court; it was to win races. He was doing exactly what he had been training to do.

  Mr. Kamrad was at the 220 post, but he wasn’t reading out times. He just yelled as Cassidy went by: “Fifty yards! You’ve got him by fifty!”

  Cassidy stretched out and cruised the last 220, not kicking but keeping his stride fast, smooth, and efficient. Guys from other events were rushing to the edge of the track, excited by the size of the margin, urging him on. The handful of people in the concrete stands were making more noise than he would have thought possible as he came out of the turn and sprinted down the straightaway, opening up at last just for the fun of it.

  He was sure he had a lot more, but he was still blown out by the effort. He bent over, grabbed his knees, and just stood gasping for several seconds before he could even see straight again. His vision was all hazy. Mr. Kamrad ran up, holding his stopwatch in front of him.

  “Four thirty-seven flat! Your first race, Quenton, and you broke Neil Jenkins’s school record!”

  Cassidy tried to straighten up and smile. It felt more like a grimace. He went back to hands on knees, still sucking air.

  Jenkins had been some kind of wunderkind two years ago, a weird combination of nerd and jock, who played in the band and also happened to be the best miler in the county. Cassidy remembered seeing his 4:37.1 on the school record board and thinking, How can someone run that fast?

  Now he knew.

  CHAPTER 52

  * * *

  DUAL MEET BLUES

  Demski had cruised to a 2:02 and killed the 1:57 guy, who was not in shape yet. Lenny ran a 10:48 to win as well as to set a PR.

  Then they had an endless series of dual and three-way meets all through April, usually two a week. Cassidy managed to win most of his races, but only because the competition was weak. And he never felt as good as he had in that first meet. In fact, he began to feel pretty beaten up by the schedule.

  “I want to sleep all the time. I fell asleep at dinner the other night. Just nodded off with my fork in my hand. My mom called Mr. Kamrad,” Cassidy said.

  “I fell asleep on the b-bus this morning,” said Demski. “Do you know how hard that is to do?”

  San Romani eased up a little on the intervals but insisted on “running through” all the small meets.

  “I asked him again,” said Trapper, who drove his Jeep up to watch practice one Friday afternoon.

  “Who?” said Cassidy. They had just finished a five-miler and were getting ready to do striders.

  “Archie. I told him about your bitching.”

  “What’d he say?”

  “He laughed. He said everyone feels that way and that you’ll thank him in the end.”

  “I’ll thank him right now if he wants,” said Cassidy. “I just want to run a race without carrying an anvil.”

  “He says all of this is laying the groundwork for the big ones, for when it really counts.”

  “Ugh,” said Cassidy. “I have to run against Mizner in the distance medley relay tomorrow night in Orlando, and we just finished a pretty hard five-mile run. I feel like I’m sabotaging my own race.”

  Mr. Kamrad had just walked over and overheard them.

  “Don’t worry so much. Maybe Ed and Lenny can get you a little bit of a lead and take some of the pressure off,” he said.

  Cassidy looked dubious.

  He should have been. Mizner’s teammates handed him a ten-yard lead despite Demski’s great 2:00 flat half mile. Lenny just didn’t have the speed for a good three-quarter leg, and he lost Demski’s lead plus a little more.

  Cassidy took the stick and slowly worked on Mizner’s lead until he had caught up at the half-mile mark. But then Mizner just ran away from h
im. Though Cassidy’s split, 4:36.5, was a PR, his legs had been dead. He watched helplessly as Mizner pulled steadily away over the last quarter with his silky stride. His split was 4:29. To add insult to injury, a runner from Maynard Evans pulled even with Cassidy and then outleaned him at the tape. He found out later it was a kid named Jack Nubbins and he was only a freshman!

  “He’s a damn ninth grader, Ed. We don’t even have ninth grade in our school. Apparently they do out in the sticks,” said Cassidy.

  “Sorry,” said Demski, trying to sleep.

  It was a long, miserable bus ride back from Orlando.

  CHAPTER 53

  * * *

  ONE NIGHT OFF MANALAPAN

  “Dammit,” said Lucky Holzapfel, who stopped untying the little boat from the dock.

  “What is it, man?” Bobby was already nervous. He didn’t need any more problems.

  “Forgot something. Hang on a sec.” Lucky wrapped the line back around the dock post and jogged back over to his decrepit ’48 Chevy pickup.

  The drunken hubbub from the Crab Pot bar in the distance seemed surreal, as did the weird shadows cast in unlikely directions by the crazy bright summer moon.

  Full moon, Lucky thought. Didn’t think of that. How many other details had he not anticipated?

  A burst of laughter from the bar caused an outrageous surge of self-pity to well up from somewhere deep in Lucky’s chest. At this moment he wanted nothing more in the world than to be in that bar with the fishermen, barflies, beachcombers, and ne’er-do-wells, all the postwar flotsam and jetsam that flowed in a steady stream from the Republic proper down A1A until it got hung up in Florida’s tidal backwaters and mangrove roots.

  Lucky, a transplanted Hoosier, was at home among them. He would lean back on his elbows, the small of his back braced against the worn copper-topped counter, soaking up whatever attention was available at the moment. He was athletic, not bad looking, an ex-paratrooper war hero, sunburned from his outdoorsy life, and glib with tales of skin diving and fishing exploits. Wannabe sportsmen and ladies of various ages schooled around him like curious fish.

  Instead of having fun, he was out close to midnight in the steamy, rotten-crab-smelling funk with Bobby, plotting mayhem and sweating through his faded khaki Bermudas. He was so wet his salt-encrusted Docksiders made squishy sounds when he walked, and his dirty Walker’s Cay T-shirt was sopping.

  Where did I go wrong? he asked himself. I was Terre Haute’s Jim Thorpe.

  The driver’s-side door had a broken hinge and was hard to close once it was opened, so he leaned in painfully over the sill, feet coming off the ground, grunting as he crunched most of the wind out of his lungs, finally getting his fingertips on the oblong brown paper bag under the seat. Light-headed from the maneuver, he walked back unsteadily to the boat, this time ignoring the gaiety coming from the bar. Some crazy jogger went by up on the Blue Heron Bridge, causing Lucky to shake his head at the lunacy people get up to in the middle of the night.

  “Friggin’ joggers,” Lucky said. He had been a sprinter and a halfback.

  He handed the bottle down to Bobby Lincoln, who took it impatiently. If Lucky was an intimidating figure, Bobby was more so. He was a huge black man with a weight lifter’s build and an intimidating scowl.

  “What’s this?” Bobby said, tucking the bottle into the top of the equipment bag behind him.

  “Liquid courage,” Lucky said.

  “I heard that.” Bobby frowned. “Good idea.”

  Lucky loosened both dock lines and tossed them into the boat, hopping with surprising agility down into the little skiff and pushing it back from the pier. He sat behind the console and cranked the outboard as the boat drifted slowly in the black water. It was nothing doing.

  “Jesus damn Christ on a crutch,” Lucky said, turning off the key and sitting back in the seat.

  He pushed the yachting cap back off his perspiring forehead and looked at Bobby through the top of his eyeballs.

  “Cranked right up when the guy showed it to me. Then it started doing this shit after I paid him and it set awhile. Dollars to donuts he had it all warmed up before I got there so it would crank up pretty for me. Sumbitch!”

  “Well, you flooded now. May’s well give it a minute, let it dry out some,” said Bobby.

  “I know what to do,” Lucky said irritably.

  “How much ya pay for it anyway?”

  “Hunnert and twenty-five.”

  “He seen you comin’, all right.”

  “Great mind to take a baseball bat to his skull, little Jew bastard,” said Lucky.

  “Easy,” said Bobby.

  “Yeah, well, few more minutes drifting and we’ll be right in the lights from the Crab Pot, goddammit.”

  “Tha’s all right if it did.”

  “You want every sumbitch in Riviera Beach seeing us heading out into the intracoastal in the middle of the night?”

  “We got diving stuff. Just doin’ a little night dive.”

  “With no tanks and no lights?”

  “Can’t nobody see that. You got to relax, man. You gone bust a gasket,” Bobby said, standing up to relieve himself over the side. Then he retrieved a dirty hand towel from under the console and used it to wipe the sweat from his forehead.

  Lucky heaved a big sigh, sat up to the wheel, and tried the engine again. It caught and sputtered as Lucky goosed the throttle several times, then allowed it to idle raggedly. Blue smoke poured out of the exhaust and floated out across the surface of the warm water.

  “Okay, hand me over that bottle and set yourself down,” Lucky said.

  Bobby picked up the brown bag and pulled the fifth out, holding it up to admire the label in the light from the bridge.

  “My oh my, Cockspur,” he said, unscrewing the cap and upending the rum bottle, bubbling it several times before hauling it down and holding it up to study it again, smacking his lips with approval.

  “Hand it here, goddammit,” said Lucky, flicking the running lights on. He eased the throttle forward until the little boat got up on plane, then eased it back until they were making fifteen knots down the middle of the intracoastal.

  “Shore, boss, here you go. You don’t mind drinking after no Negro, do you, boss?”

  “Just don’t want no goddamn backwash, black or white,” said Lucky. But there was a tinge of humor in his voice, which Bobby took as a sign he was relaxing a little now that the engine was running. Lucky seemed good-natured on the surface, but that belied a vicious streak that had earned him a reputation up and down the coast as far as Titusville in one direction and Miami in the other. It had also earned him some stretches of county time and once almost a bus ride to Raiford, had it not been for a last-minute witness defection. He had been a juvenile delinquent in Indiana before going to war as a paratrooper. He had been decorated for bravery and had seen and done things that he struggled to keep out of his thoughts at night.

  Bobby was just as much of a bad boy, but without the surface charm. He owned a taxi company, but his real vocation involved moonshining, bolita, and freelance skullduggery. He was reputed to have killed three black men with a machete one night in Belle Glade, though no bodies were ever found—Lake Okeechobee is a large body of water and more or less full of alligators. If anyone ever had the temerity to ask him about it, Bobby would say that he didn’t do it, and if he did, it was in self-defense. But when he said it, it wasn’t like he was trying to be funny.

  Lucky took a long pull from the bottle and held it out in front of him admiringly while he made little geck-geck-geck noises, lips stretched tightly over his teeth in a macabre grimace of a smile. He took a small follow-up sip, then handed it back, wiping his mouth with the back of his forearm.

  Bobby stood easily beside the console, his knees absorbing the occasional jolt when they hit a small wave. They could see a few lights from buildings and cars on both sides of the intracoastal but heard no noise at all above the little outboard. Though it was a typical humid May evening, the b
right moon and passing breeze made it almost pleasant.

  “Where’d you get that?” Bobby pointed the bottle at Lucky’s new-looking yachtsman’s hat, the only clean article of clothing he had on.

  “Part of the plan, me hearty. Lemmee hold that bottle a secont and don’t worry about nothin’. White man got everything under control tonight.”

  “Tha’s what I do worry about.”

  * * *

  Judge Curtis Chillingworth walked barefoot into the small kitchen of his Manalapan beach house, noticing that the linoleum was still sandy from the last renters. He made a mental note to mention it to his wife as he poured two glasses of Johnnie Walker from the new bottle on the counter, one finger for Marge, two for himself. He fetched ice from the small rusty fridge, added a splash of water from the tap to her drink, none for his, and padded back to the bedroom, where she sat up in bed reading a paperback. She looked up and smiled when he handed her the drink, which she placed on a crocheted doily on the bedside table.

  The sound of ocean drifted through the curtains along with the pleasant sea breeze. They were just a few scant feet from the ocean at high tide.

  “Thank you, Jeeves,” she said.

  “Yes, ma’am. May I get you anything else?”

  Their little joke was to play upper-crust Palm Beachers, though it was hardly the case. Manalapan wasn’t Palm Beach, though with his circuit judge’s salary and some careful real estate investments, they had raised their three daughters comfortably and were secure in their middle years. Their little beach place made a steady income during the winter months when well-heeled but price-conscious snowbirds wanted a place on the ocean but did not want to pay Palm Beach prices just to be ignored by the Kennedys. It was rented most of the winter and spring, so it was always a treat in the summer when they were able to take a break from their stuffy home in West Palm Beach and steal away for a few nights of ocean breezes. They always brought a bottle of scotch and a couple of steaks for the grill, and treated it as a minivacation, though he had to drive downtown to the courthouse the next day, just like always.