“What are you talking about?” I asked him. “This isn’t about gangbanging, Twig.”
“Yo, Darius, you’re talking some good stuff, but at the same time you got me confused, man,” Twig said. “You’re always laying it out that the reason we’re pushed around—that we’re picked on—is that we stand out. You stand out a lot because you’re friggin’ smart, and I’m standing out because I can run. So you want to push standing out, and yet you don’t want to be out. You getting what I mean?”
“If the world was different—”
“It ain’t,” Twig said quickly. “It’s just the way you always run it. If we stand out, it’s cool. But we got to pay a price for standing out and we don’t have any guarantees we’re going to get over.”
“You get a scholarship, you can go away to college,” I reminded him. “Get away from the streets and find your own world. Maybe even make your own world.”
“No, not get away, Darius,” Twig said. “You mean run away. We’re talking about leaving our families here and looking for a new life. Maybe get rich and shit and marry white girls like the Yankees do. You want that?”
“The girls?”
“Okay, I can deal with the girls.” Twig smiled. “But you want to be away from your people?”
“I don’t know,” I said. It was a question I hadn’t wanted to deal with but one that was eating at me something fierce.
“Darius?” Twig, waiting for an answer.
“Twig, I think I do want to be away from here,” I said. “Maybe I can come back and help, or something. I don’t know. When I think about living a good life—you know, daydreaming and stuff—it’s never about being around here.”
“Amen to that, bro, but I don’t want to be no Jesus or nothing like that,” Twig said. “I just want to be me, man. I’m thinking I go down to Delaware just for me, to see what I can do. Then I walk away from everything. And you know something? You know what I know?”
“What?”
“I know if I walk away, then they’ll forget me so fast it’ll be like I never was,” Twig said. “If I can’t help them get over, then they don’t need me.”
“And Midnight and Tall Boy can say that they knew you weren’t all that good in the first place,” I added. “You want that?”
“What’s gonna be is what’s gonna be,” Twig said softly. “But I don’t care anymore. It’s all getting too hard.”
“When you going to Delaware?”
“Thursday night,” Twig said. “Coach Day said he can get you out of school and pay your way down, too. You coming with me?”
“He’s going to pay my way, too?” I asked. “Why?”
“I think somebody else is footing the bill,” Twig said. “Somebody—maybe that college scout—thinks we got something he can sell.”
“That’s what’s scaring you?”
“I don’t know what’s scaring my ass,” Twig said. “But I know I’m scared. What you think?”
“It could be something good,” I said. “We should probably check it out.”
“You going with me?” Twig asked. “If I’m going to run as hard as I can, I’m going to need somebody in my corner.”
“Your folks can’t go?”
“I need somebody who knows what I’m feeling,” Twig said. “I need to look up in the sky and see Fury.”
“We’ll be there,” I said.
chapter twenty-one
The trip down to Delaware took about two hours from Penn Station on 34th Street. It was me; Twig; Willie DeWitt, a sprinter and a running back; Willie’s mom, who was pretty hot; Coach Day; and a short, kind of weird guy named Herb. Coach Day said that Herb was “connected” with a number of colleges.
“Willie, what you need to do is hit 10:02 just one time in the trials, or in the finals,” Herb was saying. The Amtrak train had already pulled out of the station and was going to Newark, New Jersey. “So what the colleges can see is that you’ve got the moves for a halfback, but you also have the breakaway speed they’re looking for.”
“You think I can get a scholarship as a sprinter?” Willie asked.
“Too hard, too many guys fighting over less than five tenths of a second,” Herb said. “I’m not saying it’s not possible, but every day you have some kid coming up with a 10:01, a 10 flat, or a 9.9. But as a running back, especially someone with your size, you got a lot of potential.”
“Willie can run,” his mom said confidently. “Even when he was little, he could run fast.”
“And Fernandez, what I want from you is even simpler. . . .” Herb leaned back in his seat.
“What you want from me?” Twig looked toward Coach Day.
“Let me put it this way,” Herb said. “What would be best for you is for you to make the finals in either the 1500 or the 3000 and hit a fourth. That doesn’t sound like a lot, but that puts you on record. When all the coaches across the country read the results, they’re looking for young talent. Everybody knows everybody in these races. There aren’t any secrets anymore.
“But half the guys running tomorrow are either college guys who don’t have a consistency record, or they’re past college and still hanging on to a dream. Either way, nobody is looking for them. What they’re looking for is young guys. Guys like you and Willie. You show up fourth in the finals of either race, and they’re going to see a high school kid they can reach out and grab.”
“How come you want him to run?” I asked Herb.
“Because it’s a chance for him to get a scholarship!” Coach Day said. “That’s not rocket science, Austin.”
“That’s not what he’s asking,” Herb said. He took out a cigar and put it in his mouth.
“I don’t think you can smoke on the train,” Willie said.
“I’m not smoking it, just holding it in my mouth,” Herb said. “What my man here is saying is, what’s in it for me? That’s right, isn’t it?”
“Something like that,” I said.
“He’s working for Fernandez!” Coach Day came in again, this time sounding irritated.
“No, I’m working for both these kids, but I’m also building up my reputation as a person who can spot young talent. If Willie comes through, the football coaches are going to say, ‘Oh, yeah, this is the young stud that Herb told us about. He was right.’ And when they want somebody to fly to California or Red Neck, Georgia, or Perugia, Italy, they’re going to call me and ask me to go for them and scout the kid they’ve heard about because they’ll trust my judgment.
“And if Fernandez comes through, they’ll call me up and ask me if he’s really as good as that and I’ll say—‘Hey, he was running against the best young guys in the country and he did okay.’ What more do they want? And they got to respect my judgment.”
“You get paid?” Willie’s mom asked.
“I’m glad I’m riding with some savvy people,” Herb said.
chapter twenty-two
We got to Delaware and took a cab to the Holiday Inn. Me and Twig were in one room; Herb and Coach Day were in another room; Willie and a kid from Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, who was already there were in another room. Willie’s mom had her own room. Herb gave us each twenty dollars to eat with.
“You can eat out or bring food back to your room,” he said. “But don’t order nothing from room service.”
We checked out the room, and it was cool. There was a cabinet that had sodas and liquor, but that was locked. We turned on the television and ran through the channels until we found one we liked.
“Maybe this won’t be so bad,” Twig said.
I told myself three times not to ask Twig how he thought he was going to do in the morning.
Then I asked him.
“Herb told me I had to try harder in the 3000 than in the 1500, which sucks. He said I could run trials for the 1500, but he thinks I have a better chance in the 3000 open because the field is light. Sixteen guys running on a 400-meter track. That’s not bad.”
“And?”
“He still want
s me to finish fourth,” Twig said. “Don’t take any chances. Just make sure I know where I am so I can work fourth place. The first four guys are listed in the reports they send to colleges. He thinks he can work a deal if I make fourth.”
“You going to go for more?” I asked. “I don’t see a risk.”
“If I go for too much, I could get tired and fade bad at the end,” Twig said. “I have to see how the race feels and what the pace is. What do you think?”
“If you come in fourth, then people like Herb take out their watches and notebooks to decide just how good you are, right?”
“Yeah.”
“You want that?”
“My head is in a fight with my heart, man,” Twig said. “My head is talking about being cool and doing what the man says. My heart is saying, ‘Bust a move!’ What you think I should do?”
“Could something else happen?” I asked. “Like, if you’re cruising in fourth and some guy makes a move on you? Or, like, if everybody has somebody like Herb telling them to hang back for fourth?”
“And the guys out front are kicking it for one-two-three and the rest of them need to jump bad at the end for fourth?”
“Yeah, you could find yourself sweating for fourth.”
“You know what else I was thinking? Maybe it’s not even about me, man. Maybe all he wants to do is to show off Willie,” Twig said. “And he’s dancing around Coach by bringing me along.”
“Let’s go get Willie and find something to eat,” I said.
We called Willie’s room, but there was no answer. Then Twig and I went downstairs, found a 7-Eleven, and bought fruit and cookies and stuff to eat. We went back to the hotel and saw Willie in the lobby with the other guy.
“What’s going on?” Willie asked.
“Just copped some fruit,” I said.
“What do you run?” Twig asked the other guy.
“Sean,” the guy answered. “Hurdles.”
“Oh.” Twig looked away as he nodded. “You play football, too?”
“Linebacker,” Sean said.
Willie and Sean were on the fifth floor and me and Twig got off on the third. I asked Twig what he thought about Willie.
“I could smell the shit on him,” he said.
“Yeah, me too,” I said. “I don’t know how he can run if he spends the night smoking weed.”
“It’s only a hundred yards,” Twig answered. “You can do that on two breaths. Bam! Bam! Maybe even one breath. But I don’t think he’s serious enough to win anything. You don’t go out looking for weed the night before you compete. And check this, his mom is sitting downstairs in the bar with Herb.”
“Whatever.”
chapter twenty-three
Morning. Coach Day was rubbing the tops of Willie’s shoulders, and Herb was standing in front of him telling him what a great opportunity this was.
“You hit 10:02 and we can go to all the coaches in the country and lay it down the way they want to hear it,” he said. “The only thing you got going against you is that your school didn’t play in a tough football league.”
“The games seemed tough to me,” Willie said.
“They got a list of all the school districts in the country,” Herb said. “Anything from the Deep South is going to be ahead of New York and New Jersey. Believe me. They figure they got two kinds of black dudes. One from the North and one from football country. Figure it out for yourselves.”
Me and Twig had to leave the field for the start of the dash semis. We called to Willie to show them something.
The first two starts were false, with one kid, a short, wild-eyed dude, getting disqualified.
The next start was good and Willie came in second. Herb looked at his stopwatch and shook his head.
“10:03,” he announced. “Got to pick ’em up and put ’em down, Willie.”
While Willie was resting, Coach went over and talked to him. I didn’t see how that was going to make him run any faster.
The first six guys from Willie’s heat and the first five from the second heat ran in the boys’ final. Willie was second again, but he hit 10:01 and Herb was jumping up and down. Willie had this huge grin on his face when he put on his sweat suit and jacket.
“I want you to do the same thing Willie did,” Willie’s mom said to Twig. Her face was all big smiles and gooey warm. “Just get on the track and run your little heart out!”
“Yes, ma’am,” Twig answered.
Me, Twig, and Coach Day had to catch one of the shuttle buses to go over to where the distance races were being held. Willie, his mom, and Herb started back toward the hotel.
“How come Herb isn’t going with us to see Twig run?” I asked Coach.
“Distance running is glory,” Coach said. “Football is money.”
When we got to the track, Coach went over to the officials and talked to them. They checked a roster and I saw Coach nodding.
“How you feeling?” I asked Twig.
“Butterflies,” Twig said. “Good stuff.”
Coach came back and told Twig that he was only entered in the 3000, not the 1500. “Herb thought you had a better chance in the longer race,” he said. “And you don’t want to take a chance getting hurt in the 1500.”
“You don’t get hurt in the 1500,” Twig said, looking away. There was a hint of anger in his voice.
We were in time to watch the 1500, and we settled in the area of the field set aside for athletes. Coach told us to look to see who the press was talking to. “That’ll be the favorite,” he said.
We watched. Numbers 325 and 301 had all the reporters around them.
“They’re both graduates of the University of Portland,” Coach said. “They’ve got a great distance program out there and about five times as many races as they have on the East Coast.”
“Where’s Portland?” Twig asked.
“Oregon.” Coach looked at Twig. “That’s north of California, almost near Canada.”
“That’s a state?”
Coach Day looked at Twig and didn’t answer.
“Portland’s a city in Oregon,” I said.
Number 325 was a dude named LeFebre, and 301 was a skinny black guy who looked African. There were two other Africans in the field of twelve.
At the start of the 1500, the Africans, running together, took the lead. I wondered if they had a plan to work together to win the race. At the end of the first lap, they were still leading and the two guys from Portland were right behind them.
The second lap saw the distance between the first five runners and the rest of the field widen a bit.
“The time is fast,” Coach Day said. “I heard LeFebre has a good kick.”
On the third lap one of the Africans dropped back and the two guys from Portland moved into third and fourth place. Twig kept checking the scoreboard for the lap times, and he banged my leg with his fist at the beginning of the fourth and final lap.
“It’s fast enough to keep the guys from Portland honest,” Twig said. “If the black guys can keep it going, it’s going to come down to the last two hundred yards.”
LeFebre started picking up the pace and caught the African running second on the straightaway. He passed him easily, but then the guy, realizing he had been passed, picked up his pace and was on LeFebre’s tail.
It was the first African, who had led most of the way, who faded badly on the turn. He had looked good all the way but fell back to the middle of the trailing pack in a few seconds. The African who LeFebre had passed now gained some ground, and it looked like he might catch him.
“He moved out legal!” Twig said.
“What?”
“LeFebre changed lanes, and the black guy has to move outside or take a chance running late,” Coach Day said. “Now there’s no place to go inside—he’s got to move outside, but he’s taking too long.”
I watched as LeFebre pumped his arms over the last fifteen yards and won by six feet. The other guy from Portland had moved easily into third place and t
he two guys embraced just past the finish line.
“What was the move about?” I asked Twig.
“He moved just enough to make the black guy change path,” Twig said. “He was clear when he did it, but that messes with your momentum. You have to wait until he makes his move, gets a new path, and that takes a few seconds off the clock.”
“He’s an experienced runner,” Coach Day said.
It was an hour and thirty minutes before the 3000. Coach and I had hamburgers, and Twig had a half container of yogurt. Then Twig stretched as we watched some huge high school shot-putters do their thing in the infield.
When the officials called for the runners of the 3000, I was stupid scared.
“Run your little heart out, man,” I said.
“Watch the pace,” Coach said. “Keep his ass honest.”
“Who?” Twig asked.
“Both of the guys from Portland are in this race and two of the Africans,” Coach said. “Expect them to do better, too. Blacks like the longer distances.”
“They did the 1500 in 3:58,” Twig said. “That ain’t walking.”
“This won’t be walking, either,” Coach said.
Twig went over to the starting line, leaned over with his hands on his knees, then stood up and came over to me. He looked distracted, pale.
“I think I’m going to throw up!” he said. “I don’t think this race is for me, Darius.”
“No, Twig, look at me, friend. Look at me!” I took him by the shoulders and we were face-to-face. “You’re never going to reach a point when you don’t give a fuck! You will always give a fuck, Twig. Just care now, just care today. That’s all I’m asking. That’s all you got to ask of yourself.”
“You in this race, boy?” A thin, bright-eyed official.
“Yeah,” Twig said. “I’m in it!”
Darius & Twig Page 8