“Before we leave Durham today, you mean?”
“I know a great place for a lunch that will help Jannie nutritionally recover from that workout,” McDonald said. “My treat?”
I glanced at Bree and Nana Mama, shrugged, said, “Sure. Why not.”
“Great, I’ll find you in the parking lot,” he said. He smiled and handed me a card that read Ted McDonald, Extreme Performance Systems. Austin, Toronto, Palo Alto.
McDonald shook my hand, went back up into the bleachers, and put his hood up. I didn’t know what to make of it, so I started to Google him and his company. Before I could get the names typed in on my phone, up came Coach Greene and the older woman in sweats, Duke’s head coach, Andrea Fall.
After introductions and handshakes, Coach Fall said, “I was skeptical after the invitational and more so after Coach Greene’s descriptions of Jannie’s running in the two-hundred, but now I’m a believer. How are her grades?”
“Outstanding,” Nana Mama said. “She’s a worker.”
“That makes things a lot easier,” Coach Fall said. “I’d like to formally offer your daughter a full-ride scholarship to Duke when she’s ready to attend.”
“What?” I said, dumbfounded.
“Jannie can’t officially answer my offer until February of her senior year, but I wanted it on the table as the first of what I assume will be many offers,” Coach Fall said.
“She’s that good?” Bree asked in wonder.
“I can count on one hand in thirty years of coaching the number of athletes I’ve seen who have Jannie’s potential,” she replied. “Barring injury, the sky is the limit.”
“This is just mind-boggling,” I said.
“I imagine so,” Coach Fall said. “So anytime you or Jannie are confused or want to talk about her training or how things are going, feel free to call me. Whatever she chooses to do and whatever college she chooses in the long run is beside the point. Okay?”
“Okay,” I said, and I shook her hand.
“Take care of her,” Coach Fall said. “She’s a thoroughbred.”
“What kind of bread is thor-oh?” Ali asked afterward.
“A thoroughbred is a racehorse,” Nana Mama said.
“Jannie’s a horse?”
“She runs like one,” Bree said, and she squeezed my hand.
I squeezed back, full of pride but also anxiety. I felt like I was in way over my head when it came to making decisions about Jannie’s future.
“You going to tell Jannie?” Nana Mama asked. “About the offer?”
“I have to,” I said. “But I’ll wait for somewhere quieter.”
When Jannie came up into the stands smiling, Ali said, “You got an offer.”
“What?”
“I’ll tell you later,” I said, and hugged her. “We’re very proud of you.”
She beamed, said, “Who knew?”
“God did,” Nana Mama said. “You’ve got something only God can give.”
We walked out into the parking lot and found Ted McDonald waiting. He shook Jannie’s hand, told her what he’d told me, and led us to a nearby café that offered organic sandwiches and the like.
We ordered, and he asked who would be making decisions about Jannie’s future training. I said I hadn’t even begun to think about that process.
McDonald said, “Then I’m very glad I happened to be here.”
He filled us in on his impressive background, including his PhD in exercise physiology from McGill University and his stints as a top coach with the Canadian and French national track federations. McDonald currently served as an independent training consultant to athletes at a number of U.S. universities, including Rice, Texas, Texas A&M, UCLA, USC, and Georgetown.
He said, “I’m also a scout for—”
Our lunch arrived. McDonald had ordered a salad for Jannie—vegetables, broiled chicken, and hard-boiled eggs—and a smoothie made from Brazilian acai berries that she said was delicious. I tried a sip and ordered my own.
While we ate, McDonald peppered Jannie with questions. How many pull-ups could she do without stopping? How many push-ups? What was her best standing broad jump? Her vertical leap? Flexibility? Endurance? Her mile time? Fastest recorded quarter?
Jannie didn’t know the exact answer to some questions, but others she knew right off the top of her head.
The questions went on. Had she ever long-jumped? High-jumped? Pole-vaulted? Hurdled?
Jannie shook her head.
“No matter,” he said. “Tell me what happens when you run. I mean, what’s the experience like for you?”
Jannie thought about that, said, “I sort of go off in my own world and everything gets kind of slow.”
“Nerves before you race?”
“Not really, no.”
“Not even today?”
“No. Why?”
“The girls you finished with in that last run were all-Americans.”
“Really?” Jannie said, surprised.
“Really.”
She grinned. “I think I could have beat them.”
“I bet you could have,” he said, then he grabbed a napkin, pulled out a pen, and scribbled for a minute or two.
He pushed the napkin across the table to me and Jannie. It read:
WHPT:
2018—USNC
2020—OGT5
2021—WCPOD
2022—WC
2024—OGGM
“What’s it mean?” I asked.
He told me, and it felt like everything in our lives changed.
Chapter
77
Later that afternoon, I was still struggling with what Ted McDonald had written on the napkin at lunch.
Was that possible? Should you even begin with that end in mind?
“He said we didn’t have to give him an answer right away,” Bree said from the driver’s seat of a rental car we’d picked up in Winston-Salem.
“I know,” I said. “But it’s just a lot to take in.”
“You don’t think she should try?”
“She’s only fifteen,” I said. “Is this when they start thinking like that?”
“Other kids in other sports sure do,” she said as we drove past the Welcome to Starksville sign.
I stared again at the napkin and wrestled with its meaning.
Women’s Heptathlon
2018—U.S. National Champion
2020—Olympic Games Top Five
2021—World Championships Podium
2022—World Champion
2024—Olympic Games Gold Medalist
Was any of this possible? McDonald said it was. He said Jannie might win any of the titles he’d listed as a pure runner, but he’d seen such athleticism in my daughter that he thought she’d be better suited to the grueling multi-skill heptathlon event.
“The heptathlon decides the best female athlete in the world,” McDonald said. “You interested in being that athlete, Jannie? The one who can do anything? Superwoman?”
You could see it in my daughter’s face, how in the very instant he’d thrown out that spark, Jannie had caught fire.
“What would it take?” she asked.
“Your heart, your soul, and years of hard work,” he said. “You up to that?”
She’d glanced at me and then back at him, and nodded. I got chills.
McDonald said that if Jannie consented, he’d visit her regularly in Washington, DC, during the year to teach her the various events within the heptathlon. She’d compete as a runner until he was satisfied with her skills. If we were all happy after the first year, he’d arrange a scholarship at a private school in Austin, where she could work with him on a more consistent basis.
“The school’s excellent. They’ll challenge her academically so she’s ready for wherever she decides to go to college,” he said.
Bree said, “How much is this going to cost us?”
“Zero,” the coach said.
“What?” I said. “How’s that possible?�
��
McDonald said he was funded by several athletic-shoe and -apparel companies and charged with finding and nurturing track talent. If Jannie became the kind of athlete he thought she was, she’d be in line for endorsements that would make her life easier in the long run.
Free education. A career as a professional athlete. Olympic—
“They’re heading home, Alex,” Bree said, breaking into my thoughts.
Nana Mama, Ali, and Jannie were in Pinkie’s pickup in front of us. Pinkie reached his massive four-finger hand out the window crossing the railroad tracks and waved to us.
I waved back as Bree put on the blinker and pulled into the old Piggly Wiggly parking lot. I folded the napkin, put it in my shirt pocket.
“Think she can do it?” Bree asked as we headed toward that line of trees on that short bluff above the tracks.
“I’m beginning to think she’s like you,” I said. “Capable of anything and everything.”
She smiled, poked me in the ribs, said, “When’d you get so sweet?”
“Day I met you.”
“Good answer.”
“I have my moments.”
When we reached the trees, Bree led me to a big beech tree that overlooked the tracks. There were steel steps screwed into the tree. She said bow hunters used them, and she’d bought them at the local army-navy.
She climbed up around ten feet to another recent purchase. The Bushnell night-vision trail camera was designed to take pictures of whatever came by. Hunters used them to pattern deer. There seemed to be a commercial for them every eight minutes on the Outdoor Channel.
“Even Jim Shockey uses them,” Bree said. “So I thought, Why not? We’ll take pictures of every train that comes through Starksville.”
Bree had put up this camera and another one three hundred yards west. She’d checked the memory cards once after twenty-four hours and found pictures of riders heading north on the train late Thursday afternoon, just about the time we’d seen riders the previous Thursday as we drove into town.
Now she traded memory cards on both cameras and reactivated them. We took the cards back to the rental car and looked at them on her computer. It took us a while to scroll through them, but we saw pictures of more riders taken the night before at ten, roughly the same time Bree saw Finn Davis giving that three-finger salute on Wednesday night.
Davis was not in any of the new photographs, but Bree’s patterns had been established. Riders at ten o’clock every other night. Riders at five on alternate afternoons.
It was half past four by then. Someone should ride by within the hour. Despite the heat, we decided to return to the trees to see if the pattern would hold. As we sweated and waited, bugs whined all around us, and I had the creepy feeling there were ticks crawling up my legs.
My phone rang. Naomi.
“Stefan’s been beaten again,” she said. “Some jail inmates got to him.”
I sighed, said, “It’s like that in every prison with child killers and abusers.”
“Except Stefan didn’t do it, Uncle Alex,” Naomi said forcefully.
“Right. Where is he?”
“In Starksville Memorial under guard,” she said.
The train signal at the crossing to our right a hundred yards ahead started to ring.
“I’ll try to stop by to—” I began before noticing a train coming slowly out of the south. Twenty cars back, I could make out a lone rider. “Got to go, Naomi.”
“Just one rider,” Bree said as I pocketed the phone.
“Better than none,” I said.
“How do you want to handle this?” she asked as the train engine groaned by at less than fifteen miles an hour.
“Get the car and parallel me heading north,” I said. “I’ll call you.”
“Where are you going?”
“On that train,” I said as the lone rider, a young white guy wearing a baseball cap, sunglasses, and a long black T-shirt, went past. He was sitting with his legs off the front of the freight car, looking straight ahead.
When I turned, Bree was already gone.
I waited until another fifteen cars had gone by before I left the trees, jumped off the bluff, and started to sprint.
Chapter
78
Cutting at an angle to the train, I timed it so a steel ladder welded into one of the boxcars was coming right by me before I sped up one last time, stabbed out my hand, and caught one of the rungs at head height. Before it could jerk me off my feet, I jumped and got my shoes on the lowest rung.
I hung there for six or seven breaths, then the dinging of the train-crossing bell reminded me I was about to be seen by all the cars waiting on my side of the tracks. I clambered up.
Car horns honked as my boxcar passed through the crossing. I didn’t look over my shoulder and didn’t go up on top until we were well beyond it and the train was starting to pick up speed.
I peeked over the edge of the container car to check on the rider, make sure he was still looking forward, before I crawled up onto the roof. I laid flat, holding on to one of the flanges until I had enough breath and strength to get up. James Bond makes it look easy, but standing on top of a slow-moving train is tough. Stalking forward on a jolting, swaying, accelerating train takes superhuman balance that I do not possess. I couldn’t stand up straight at all and settled for a wide-footed crouch, taking one tentative step after another.
Jumping to the next car made me nauseated, but I did it and kept on, staring at the rooftop right in front of me, then the rider, then the track far beyond with the irrational fear that I was going to miss an oncoming tunnel and be swatted off the train.
It took a solid fifteen minutes to go eighteen cars forward. I was trying to be ninja-like when I jumped to the nineteenth car, the one right behind the container car upon which the rider was perched.
I must have made some kind of sound, or maybe it was just time for him to look around. When I landed, he was staring right at me.
He swung his right arm from his chest, revealing a pistol equipped with a sound suppressor. I threw myself flat just before he shot. The round pinged off the steel rooftop about two feet to my right.
The rocking of the train had thrown off his aim. Or he was a lousy shot. Or maybe a combination of the two. In any case, I dug down, came up with my little Ruger nine-millimeter just before he pulled the trigger again.
His bullet clanged off a flange six inches from my head. I shot at him and missed. But it was enough to change the dynamics of things. He wasn’t holding ground anymore. He was getting out of Dodge, jumping to the next car as I struggled to my feet.
He was leaping to an oval-shaped tanker car when I jumped onto the container car behind him. I landed fine but I didn’t see the rider anymore. Then I realized he’d slipped when he’d landed on the tanker and done a face-plant.
He was slow to move, dazed by the hit, and I was able to close much of the gap between us. When he finally regained his feet, I saw he was no longer carrying the suppressed pistol. Had he dropped it?
“Stop!” I yelled. “I just want to talk to you.”
But he kept moving forward.
“Stop, or I’ll shoot!”
He didn’t slow.
I aimed to his left, sent a bullet by his ear. That caused him to cringe and turn toward me with his hands up.
That’s better, I thought. Now we’re getting somewhere.
Ahead, I could see we were approaching a train trestle. I cautiously jumped to the tanker and got another ten feet closer to the rider. We were less than twenty feet apart. He crouched, holding on to a wheel on top of the tanker.
“I just want to talk,” I said again.
“’Bout what, man?” he asked, trying to act tough but looking scared.
I held up my hand, showed him the three-finger salute, said, “I want to talk about this. And Finn Davis. And Marvin Bell. And you riding this train.”
He looked at me like I’d grown horns and shook his head. “No way, man.”<
br />
“We know you’re protecting something on this train. What is it?”
He looked away from me, shook his head again. “No way. Can’t.”
“We can protect you.”
“No, you can’t,” he said. “Ain’t no one can protect anyone from Grandfather and the company.”
“Grandfather and the company?” I said as the train started across the trestle high above a deep, narrow canyon thick with woods. “Who’s Grandfather? What’s the company?”
Looking at me with a stricken expression, he said, “Death of me.”
He let go of the wheel, launched out of the crouch, and dove off the tanker, off the trestle, screaming and waving his arms and trying to fly as he took the long fall to the treetops, crashed down through them, and vanished.
Chapter
79
I couldn’t believe it, and I twisted around, looking back and down into the canyon and the forest that had swallowed that young man whole. The only creatures I could see were crows circling lazily above the canopy, all of which disappeared from my view when the train rounded a curve.
The tunnel on the other side appeared so fast I had to throw myself down on top of the tanker and hold tight until we exited the other side into deep woods. I tried to call Bree but got no signal. There was no chance for me to get off the train for ten miles.
By the time it slowed and then stopped, night had fallen and the moon had risen. I’d come a long ways down in elevation. In the dim light I could see agricultural fields to either side of the tracks. I peered ahead, looking for a road crossing. Why were we stopped? I was about to climb off when—
“Let’s do this, man,” a male voice called from down the embankment.
I startled and then realized he was talking to me.
“What are we doing?” I asked.
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