Hometown Hero

by Anders, Robyn

  “I’d be happy to, Russell. Good luck with the race.”

  “Thanks.”

  Wonderful. Russ had been able to make nice with Heather, the person who’d actually stolen his dog. It was only Cynthia whom he couldn’t seem to forgive.

  She forced herself to relax. He’d thrown her out without giving her a chance to tell him what had really happened. He was the jerk, not her. She resolved never to let him get under her skin again.

  Once she’d defeated him, Cynthia figured he wouldn’t be quite so cocky. And she would defeat him. All that muscle built into his arms and chest might be pretty, but when it came to distance running, it was just more weight for his body to lug around.

  She kept her eyes forward, pretending a fascination with the opening section of the course—a route she’d probably traveled a thousand times since she’d started running during college, tried not to think about Russ standing there only a few yards from her, ignoring her.

  Fortunately, the mayor fired the starting gun on schedule, and the runners headed out.

  Fifteen kilometers is a good distance—more than nine miles. In general, Cynthia would have been happy with any time under an hour. But today, she wanted to do something extra. She didn’t blame Russ for being mad, but he should at least have listened to her explanations. Payback was in order.

  Generally, a longer-distance race starts out cautiously, with runners jockeying for position, looking at the established favorites to see who is going to make a move. Instead, Russ started hard, setting a super-aggressive sub-five-minute-mile pace.

  He wouldn’t be able to keep it up, of course. But the other runners didn’t know that. They lengthened their own strides, trying to keep the race bunched, unwilling to let a runner whose strengths they didn’t know take a serious lead.

  She fell in behind him, breathing easily, searching for the peace that she usually found when she ran long distance.

  They left behind the Sunday runners, people just out for some exercise and the after-run beer-tasting, almost at once. At around the four-kilometer mark, though, Russ’s pace began to shatter even the group of about thirty hardcore runners who had maintained his fast pace until then.

  The cross-country team cracked first. This combination of distance and cadence were out of their range. Unlike sprints, distance runs were generally won by people in their late twenties or even thirties. It takes time to build up the toughness it takes to suffer through the pain. She’d taken that time. The high school kids hadn’t, and she didn’t think Russ had, either.

  One by one, though, the other runners peeled back, choosing to run their own race rather than let the madman make them spend all of their energies chasing, leaving them nothing to hold off a late surge from a better-rested runner.

  Cynthia told herself to do the same. Russ was setting a faster pace than she was used to running. But then she looked at Russ, ground her teeth together, and sucked it up. She wasn’t going to give him even the moral victory of dropping her in the middle of the race.

  Another runner, a woman who had beaten her in the last three races they’d run together, shook her head and dropped back. Now it was just the two of them.

  Cynthia pulled even with Russ, matching him stride for stride.

  Despite the chill air of early spring, sweat beaded on his forehead and dampened the t-shirt he wore instead of the more serious running clothes she and the other regular runners chose. He didn’t look like a distance runner, but so far, he’d left most of the serious contenders in his dust.

  Well, he wasn’t going to leave her.

  She bit into a sweet pack of jell, sucking down the carbohydrate load earlier than she’d planned. Like Russ, sweat streaked down her face. This was going to be a hard race.

  He glanced at her, then put his attention back to the trail, dismissing her as insignificant to his world.

  “You know you’re going to kill yourself if you try to keep up this cadence.” She was proud of the way her voice stayed calm, as if she wasn’t gasping for every breath her lungs could hold.

  “You think? Good thing I left Gomer well cared for, isn’t it?”

  “I already apologized for my part in the Gomer dognapping fiasco.”

  “Great. Now that you've apologized, we won’t have to talk about it any more.”

  They pounded along for another kilometer, side by side, matching footfalls, matching breaths.

  A couple of times, Russ put on a bit of speed, tried to leave her behind him as he had left everyone else in the race, but Cynthia wasn’t thinking strategically. She was going to match Russ’s pace until he cracked, until she could run him into the dust.

  * * *

  Russ hurt.

  His lungs ached as he sucked in huge gasps of the chill March air. Every step pounded his full hundred and ninety pound weight into the cartilage of his knees and the tendons of his ankles. His arms felt like lead plates dragging down at his sides.

  And Cynthia ran comfortably next to him, a slight smile on her face, her concentration focused on the trail ahead, her deceptively long legs eating up the kilometers as easily as if she was just out for a jog in the park.

  He knew she was working. Sweat had cut thin trails down her cheeks, falling in fat drops to the ground or sliding down her neck into the perspiration-dampened fabric of her running top. But unlike him, it didn’t seem to bother her at all.

  He ordered himself to look forward, not at Cynthia. Running clothes like Cynthia's should be banned anyway. Her black top barely covered her breasts, leaving an expanse of toned abdomen exposed for anyone to look at. Each drop of her sweat molded the fabric more tightly to her slim torso, delineated the smooth curve of her breasts. And her shorts were cut high in the thighs, flashing a revealing glimpse of a well-muscled bottom with every step.

  He almost groaned at the memory of that bottom in his hands only two nights before. Cynthia’s trick with Gomer and her plot with Heather told him everything he needed to know about her, but that was just his brain. His body wanted to explore for more—much more. And if he didn’t get his thoughts out of the gutter, he was going to find running a lot more awkward.

  “You really have been training, haven’t you?”

  Just what he needed. She wanted to have a conversation when he was struggling to breathe.

  “I got serious as part of my rehab.” There. He’d answered in one exhale. Hardly increased his oxygen debt at all.

  “We’re already at the seven kilometer mark and you’re setting a really fast pace.”

  “Stop running and I’ll slow down.”

  Her laughter swelled around him. “Oh, Russ. You know that isn’t going to happen.”

  He clenched his teeth and pushed forward.

  A watering station sat at the eight-kilometer mark. Seven kilometers to go. Russ grabbed a cup of water at the start and dumped it over his head, then grabbed another and drank it down.

  He didn’t need to do the metric conversions. His time in the military had trained him to think in kilometers as naturally as he’d once thought in miles. Seven kilometers was a long way.

  He stumbled, almost stopped when he realized that he could only know that the military worked in metric measurements if some part of his memory had re-activated.

  He tuned out the small crowd cheering at the water station, the beautiful woman running next to him, the green corn pushing itself through black soil of the Missouri River floodplain, and let his mind concentrate on the act of running, of putting one foot in front of the other.

  Evidently he’d accidentally lied to Cynthia about when he'd started running. He’d started before rehab, in the military, back when he’d been stuck in the desert with little to do but stay alive.

  The mental picture was as vivid as anything Kodak had ever delivered.

  The sun bore down on them like a blast furnace, pushing temperatures into the hundred-teens. Rocks, old tank-tracks, and the charred remains of buildings and vehicles littered the landscape. He was running
with two buddies near their base in the Middle East.

  He remembered their names. Billy Mondrake and Paul Adams. They’d been from Shermann too, had been members of the local National Guard unit that had been activated and shipped overseas.

  He strained his mind to remember whether he’d seen them since he’d been back. Could they still be in the Middle East after all this time?

  “You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

  Cynthia looked concerned, as if she actually cared about him.

  “Maybe I did.” Or maybe he’d seen several ghosts. There was another reason why he might not have seen Billy and Paul around. He knew there had been other men with him when he’d been wounded. Compared to hundreds of others, he'd paid a small price for his part in the war. Maybe his memory was all that remained of his friends.

  “I just had a memory come back.”

  “Oh.” Cynthia looked away from him, pretended that the relatively flat section of trail required her full concentration.

  “Just a flash, really. I remembered Billy Mondrake and Paul Adams. Did you know them?”

  She nodded. “I'm sorry, Russ. They didn’t make it.”

  “Damn.” In that hypnotic moment of running, his two fellow soldiers, fellow runners, had been so real, so alive. But now, they were merely statistics.

  “I wish I hadn't had to tell you that. What a terrible thing to have as the first of your returning memories.”

  “I only remember one moment. The three of us running across the desert. It hasn’t made any difference in who I am, though. I’m still Russ, not Russell.”

  “Pity. Russell could be a bit pompous sometimes, but he was never an absolute jerk.”

  As if she were the victim here. People’s ability to deceive themselves seemed without limit.

  “Don’t worry," he said. "The doctors said that once the memories started coming, it would be like breaking a logjam. The brief life of Russ Lyons is definitely coming to an end.”

  She gave him a funny look and accelerated.

  * * *

  Cynthia risked a quick glance behind her. Although they’d slowed from Russ’s initial pace, they were still flying down the trail, setting a pace that wasn’t going to threaten the world record, but that would certainly be a personal best for her. Unless she keeled over in the last two kilometers.

  Russ was breathing deeply now, clearly feeling the muscle he carried in his upper body that served as nothing but deadweight to a distance runner. He had to be exhausted, sucking every last hint of energy from his depleted body. Still, he hadn’t slowed much.

  She’d gained a few meters on him around the ten kilometer mark, but he’d fought back to even with her a minute or so before they’d hit twelve. They’d left the rest of the field well behind them. But Cynthia had an uneasy feeling she might be seeing some of them again. Several of the runners were famous for their strong finishes, and Cynthia certainly didn’t have anything left to meet a serious challenge with.

  “You’re going to have to give it a go soon,” Russ told her. “If we’re even at a hundred meters, I’ll beat you. You know I can outsprint you.”

  Well, yeah. She did know that. She also knew that if she jumped too soon, he’d let her run herself out and then pass her.

  Instead, she slowly increased her pace, lengthening her strides just enough to make Russ work still harder, suck deeper into his depleted stores of energy. She just had to hope that she was tiring him out more than she was exhausting herself. Considering how she felt, that was a big question mark.

  His footstep faltered and she glanced over at him in concern. She didn’t think he was being fair about the Gomer incident, and she certainly intended to beat him in the race, but that didn’t mean she wanted him seriously injured.

  “Another memory,” he admitted. “We used to run every day. First thing in the morning. One time, we got shot at and after that, we’d run in our body-armor. Weighed a ton.”

  That could explain how he was able to keep up this killing pace.

  She didn’t know how to feel about the return of his memory. He’d made his feelings painfully clear—he wanted nothing to do with her. If his memories returned, at least he could go back to Heather and the two of them could have beautiful, rich babies together. Still, each returning memory was one more wave washing over the magic that they’d so briefly shared.

  Despite the desire she felt for him and her certainty that they could never be together, Cynthia wanted Russ to be happy, wanted him to achieve whatever was important to him. She’d gotten to know Russ lately and she'd lied to him just then. He might be being a jerk, but that didn’t mean that there was a lot more to Russ than there had been to the old Russell.

  But she didn’t want him to be happy because he’d beat her.

  At the one-kilometer mark, members of the Future Farmers and their families started populating the side of the trail shouting words of encouragement and calling out their times.

  She’d known they wouldn’t be able to sustain the sub-five-minute mile pace they’d started with, but they weren’t too far off, either. If she didn’t collapse, she’d finish in about fifty minutes. Which would break her old personal best by more than five minutes—a huge improvement, an impossible improvement.

  She thought about saying something to Russ, warning him that she was about to go, but told herself not to be silly. He was her opponent. He didn’t deserve any more consideration than she’d give any other runner out there. Less, in fact. None of the other runners had done anything to her.

  Instead of talking, she put on a burst of speed.

  Her muscles screamed at her, wanting nothing but to quit, to stop this ferocious assault. She ignored them. If Russ could suck it up, she could too.

  Russ had apparently been lost in another of his returning memories. He shook his head when she blew by him and responded, but not instantly. His momentary distraction, hesitation, had gained her a lead of maybe twenty meters.

  Which should have been plenty, if she hadn’t been running on empty.

  The Future Farmers had stretched a tape across the trail and were cheering like crazy as she pounded out the last few hundred meters.

  Behind her, she heard the sharp slap of Russ’s running shoes as he clawed his way back, each of his long strides gaining precious inches on her. Further back, the crowd seemed energized as other runners broke the last turn and came into the final kilometer, gaining quickly now that both she and Russ had run themselves dry.

  With five meters to go, Russ pulled even with her. After everything she'd done, he was going to beat her.

  She dug for that extra bit of energy—and came up with nothing. She’d given everything and her body had nothing left, could barely keep up the pace she’d already set.

  Seemingly in the kind of slow motion that she’d always imagined was limited to nightmares, she watched as Russ inched ahead, taking advantage of his longer stride. His upper body strength, which had been a drag on him for the first nine miles, finally became an advantage as he pumped his arms to add to his speed.

  She drove forward, then her foot caught on something and she fell.

  Her outstretched hands, reaching for the ground, snagged on the ribbon, yanked it down.

  It hadn’t been fair, but somehow, despite everything, she’d won.

  Russ leapt over her, barely avoiding falling on top of her, then joined with the mayor in lifting her off the trail before the next batch of runners pounded through the finish line.

  “Are you all right?" Russ asked, his face etched with concern. "You look really pale. Does anyone have a blanket? I think she’s going to faint.”

  Russ had run as far as she had, and carried more mass, but he seemed to be fine while she was drained of everything.

  She tried to tug away from his grasp but he held on.

  “Try to keep your balance. Just walk around and we’ll get you something to keep you from chilling and get you rehydrated.”

  She tugged away from him
again. She didn’t need Russ to hold her up like she was some helpless movie starlet who could only run if the hero held her hand.

  She opened her mouth to explain that to him—and promptly got sick.

  Russ jumped back--almost in time.

  * * *

  He’d underestimated her.

  Russ had been sure Cynthia would give up when he pushed her, certain she wouldn’t be a match for the tough training regimen he’d put himself through during rehab and since.

  Despite himself, he was also impressed that she’d taken advantage of his temporary distraction to make her move. He’d been so tired when she’d finally broken away from him, and had been so engrossed in the vivid memory pictures, that he had waited too long to respond.

  Cynthia insisted on accepting the trophy in person, but he absolutely drew the line when she announced that she was going to drive back to Shermann.

  “You were just sick and almost fainted. You’d be a hazard on the road. If you’re not thinking about yourself, think about all those Future Farmers out there.”

  She shivered beneath the glistening space blanket someone had found for her, but stuck her chin up. “Hey, newsflash. You’re not my daddy. You don’t have to take care of me.”

  “Well someone had better.”

  That went over about as well as an Easter Bunny delivering rotten eggs.

  “You told me to get out of your life yesterday. Well, turnaround is fair play. Get out of mine now.”

  “That was then.”

  She started to walk away, then sank gracefully to the ground as one of her calves cramped up.

  “Let me handle that.”

  “Don’t touch—ouch.”

  Rather than let her lie there and suffer, he grasped her leg, yanked off her running shoe, and stretched the leg and foot to relieve the cramp.

  “Ouch, ouch, oh. That’s better.”

  He realized he was standing between her legs, one of her legs resting against his hip as he stretched it out. It was a perfectly innocent position, but it reminded him of their lovemaking only two nights earlier. Of the way Cynthia’s body had responded to him.