The Runner

by Cynthia Voigt

  “Oh wow, can I watch?” Jackson cried.

  “Not on your life, you pervert,” Cheryl said. “Besides, I’m saving myself for Ted Bayson, the body beautiful. I don’t know if Lou would be willing . . .”

  “Cheryl,” Lou protested softly.

  But Cheryl’s attention had moved on. “I wonder about Meredith—she’s a friend of yours, isn’t she, Lou? What is she thinking of?”

  “Obviously,” Tommy assured her, “she’s given up thinking.”

  “Who’s Meredith?” Bullet asked.

  They all rounded on him, enjoying themselves. “This year’s Bayson girl,” Jackson told him. “Don’t you pay attention to anything, Bullet?” Tommy asked.

  “Nope,” Bullet answered. Tommy chuckled, approving and admiring. Even Tommy, who could have figured it out if he’d done any thinking about it, couldn’t figure out what had happened to Bullet, to make him so distant. Bullet knew what had happened—he’d grown up. They talked about being grown up and realistic, but they didn’t have the first idea about what was really involved in it, so they saw Bullet as some kind of mystery man.

  “I never had a student teacher,” Lou said.

  “Do you think he’s dodging the draft?” Tommy asked Bullet.

  “He’s pretty young,” Cheryl answered. “He’s about the right age.”

  “What’s his name?” Tommy asked.

  “You should have heard McIntyre’s introduction of him,” Cheryl went on. “‘Boys and girls,’” she imitated the wheezy voice, “‘we will be privileged this semester to see all the newest methods in education.’ I ask you, how can anybody be such a jerk?”

  “He probably practices at home,” Jackson suggested. “He probably worked for hours on that introduction, making sure it was perfectly jerky. In front of the mirror. What do you think?”

  “Oh, I hope not,” Cheryl answered. “No wonder he’s in a perpetual depression.”

  “That’s stupor,” Tommy corrected her, “as in drunken.”

  “Walker,” Bullet said. They looked at him, surprised. “His name’s Walker, the student teacher’s.”

  “Besides, if he’s dodging the draft, he’s got my support,” Jackson said.

  “My guess is he flunked the physical—have you seen him? He looks sickly,” Cheryl told them. “He’s probably 4-F.”

  “Nobody’s 4-F anymore,” Tommy told her. “They’re only using one classification, the typewriters in Washington are jammed and they just keep turning out 1-A’s.”

  “I’ll be in Canada before they get a chance at me,” Jackson said.

  “They don’t want you in Canada, swelling the rosters on dole,” Cheryl told him.

  “If I were a boy—” Lou began, but Tommy interrupted her.

  “I’ll tell you what it’s like,” he said. He leaned forward a little, the way he always had when he had an idea that he was excited about. “I’ve been thinking about this for an editorial. It’s like dredging for crabs, the draft. They hang the dredge down off the back of the war machine, right? And they sink it into the mud. Steel teeth grind closed.” He demonstrated with his hands. They paid close attention, Bullet saw. “And we’re all caught in it, just like the crabs. Scrabbling around in the steel-toothed cage. Dump it out onboard and watch the cannon fodder scrabble around. Get them into baskets and get those lids on tight. That’s just what it is. Ship us out in bushel baskets, ship us back in coffins—what’s the difference? We can’t do any more about it than the crabs can.”

  He waited for a minute, looking from face to face. “What do you think?” he asked, his eyes coming to rest on Bullet’s face.

  Bullet shrugged, thinking it was okay, as far as it went, thinking it would make a pretty good editorial.

  “They’ll never let you print it,” Cheryl announced. “You know that. But it’s not a bad metaphor.”

  “I think it’s excellent,” Lou said. “I think it’s a really good metaphor for the draft.”

  “On the nose, bossman,” Jackson added.

  They were all, Bullet knew, frightened. Fear sat behind their eyes as they looked at one another. Fear for themselves, fear for one another. They really didn’t know, Bullet thought; and maybe you had to grow up in a family like his to know what was really worth being afraid of. They said they argued from moral conviction, labeled it an oppressive war, a dirty war, an imperialistic war, a war for the big corporations—but he knew fear when he smelled it. The way he figured it, you were going to die anyway, so why let fear of that box you in when you couldn’t do anything about it.

  “Bullet?” Lou’s eyes caught his again. He wished she wouldn’t do that. “What do you think?”

  Bullet shrugged and crumpled up the brown bag with the wax paper he’d wrapped his sandwiches in.

  “Bullet doesn’t think, you know that,” Cheryl announced. “He’s a big champion jock. He’s our token jock.”

  Bullet fixed her with a look, and she shut her mouth. “Doing things, or not doing them, because you’re afraid,” Bullet said. “That strikes me as a mistake.”

  It took them a minute to figure out what he meant. Then Jackson snapped, “Yeah, but you’re the original Fearless Fosdick.”

  “Bullet does think,” Tommy said. “He just doesn’t want anyone to find out about it.”

  “‘We have nothing to fear but fear itself,’” Cheryl quoted, her eyes studying Bullet’s face.

  “Just for once, shut up—or speak for yourself,” Jackson said.

  “God knows I am scared,” Tommy said to Bullet. “But there’s a lot more than that involved, and you know it.”

  Bullet shrugged. He didn’t know that.

  “Whatever you say.” Tommy’s voice got sullen.

  “Hey, I didn’t say anything,” Bullet pointed out.

  “And it’s worth being afraid of, anyway,” Cheryl said. “It’s unrealistic not to be.”

  “But he wasn’t talking about being afraid. He was talking about what you do about being afraid,” Lou defended Bullet. He didn’t know why she did that—he wasn’t looking to win any argument.

  “Besides, the draft’s unconstitutional,” Tommy said. The other three gathered around the argument. Bullet watched them, all leaning toward one another, four heads of long hair, all four of them convinced they could get rid of this problem by talking about it. “Or if not the draft, the war itself. The Constitution lays out the only way that war can be declared.”

  “You forget that war hasn’t been declared,” Jackson pointed out.

  “Then we’re sending in mercenaries. Right? Foreign troops paid to fight somebody else’s battles. Besides, the case is that soldiers are fighting. For which our government is paying them. If troops are sent into combat, isn’t that war?”

  “What’re you going to do, sue the army?” Jackson asked.

  “Why not? A class action suit—there’s a possibility there. At least you could drag it out for years and keep away from the draft.”

  “Why not just go to law school?” Lou suggested. “The war can’t last forever.”

  “Do you know how long the French were fighting before they pulled out?” Cheryl asked her. “A long time,” she answered herself.

  “Or the navy,” Lou said. “Law school and then the navy.”

  “I’m willing to consider anything,” Tommy said.

  “Marriage and procreation,” Cheryl suggested. “A couple of babies, fast. Or bigamy?”

  “Talk about a fate worse than death,” Jackson said.

  “I think it’s terrible what they’re doing to us,” Lou said. “To all of us. It really is.”

  “War is hell,” Cheryl said. Bullet watched them react to that.

  “What do you know about it?” Jackson demanded. “They don’t draft women. They don’t even let women into the combat zones, not even near them. You want equality? As far as I’m concerned, you can have it. You can get out there and take your chances with the rest of us. It’ll improve the odds for me at least.”

&nbs
p; “I don’t know—the experience might help you grow up,” Cheryl snapped.

  “I’m worried about living long enough to grow old,” Jackson told her. “Growing up will have to take care of itself.”

  Bullet stood up abruptly. Jerks. He’d had enough of their conversation for a day. When they talked like that—and they most often did—it was so stupid he felt like taking a big needle and sewing their lips together. They just didn’t know what they were doing, they didn’t even know what they wanted to do, if they could do what they wanted. “See you,” they said, to his back.

  Algebra slid by, and shop. Bullet raised his head from the carburetor he was taking apart, inhaling the odors of oil and sawdust and metal, looking over the long room. Voices mingled with the clinking of metal; the diagrams were drawn out on a movable chalkboard. One of the heads at another table was raised just then, to look at him. The big head nodded, one big hand went up to scratch at the edge of the rolled-up T-shirt in a nervous gesture. Bullet held the eyes but did not respond, and the guy went back to whatever he was doing. This year’s test case, and that Bullet could figure out what they were doing didn’t make it any less irritating. It had been going on for years. It started the year he stayed back, sixth graders coming after him, seventh graders too. “Rub your nose in the dirt,” they’d said, “you dummy.” He hadn’t minded, and if he hadn’t won all of the fights, especially not at first, he’d never been the one to call quits. Two years of it, and it had taken him about that long to figure out what their problem was with him. He wasn’t acting the way kids who flunked were supposed to act. After a while, there wasn’t anybody who’d come back for a second fight, and then Patrice had asked if he was having the fights he wanted to have or the ones they wanted to have. Things got down to about once a year, then, test cases. That was how he’d met Ted Bayson, who thought he could pound Bullet into going out for football, who wouldn’t believe that Bullet just wasn’t interested.

  This year, it was this vocational track guy from shop. He’d started in right away, the first day of school, pushing at Bullet, looking for a fight. “What do we have here? One of the college preppies come slumming? You come slumming, little boy?” He was big, oxlike, and used to scaring people. Bullet gave him time, gave him nothing to go on. His friends tried to shut him up, but the guy had to show off, wouldn’t listen to them. He wasn’t too swift. He kept pushing, and when the Negroes on the other side of the big room nudged each other, grinning and murmuring “Go Whitey,” he didn’t even know they were goading him on. “You with the hair. You and your fag friend, Tommy Hill. Heap big editor. You eggheads make me want to puke.”

  Bullet just looked at him and waited. It’s up to you, he thought. I’m not interested in you. You can dig your own grave if that’s what you want.

  “Hey, man, take it easy, that’s Tillerman,” one of the ox-guy’s friends said, pulling back at the thick arm.

  “Tiller-man? You gotta be kidding. Looks like Tiller-girl to me. With all that pretty hair.” His friends didn’t know whether to laugh like they were supposed to, or what.

  Bullet waited, letting his anger boil slow: when people were this stupid and wouldn’t listen because they didn’t listen to anybody . . . and wouldn’t leave him alone. . . . It burned him, the way people thought because he was built small they could take him on, or walk all over people just because they were over six foot and heavy; they thought they could run him scared. Jerks.

  “I’ll see you in the parking lot after school, Tiller-girl,” the big jerk said. Bullet had shrugged, had met him and had blacked both of his eyes before he let him go bleed on his friends for comfort. He’d figured out before he got there behind the pickups what the guy should get. Two black eyes, to mark him for a week and get the message out clear for this year. A couple of punches to the diaphragm so he’d drop his guard, then wham! The guy had been knocked to his knees by the first real punch Bullet delivered. Bullet had to wait for him to get up before he could black the left eye.

  “Hey,” the guy had said, surprise making his voice high, starting to back away, “I didn’t—”

  Bullet got at him again, diaphragm, eye. I know you didn’t and what you didn’t. Didn’t think I’d show up, did you? Didn’t think I’d be able to touch you. And now you want to back out, but it’s your fight. You wanted it, now you’ve got it, and let’s finish it.

  When Bullet had finished it he walked away, to wash off the blood on his hand from the guy’s nose and get on down to practice. Ever since, the guy had tried to be friendly, sort of nodding and keeping a respectful distance. He even tried apologizing, “Hey, man, I’m sorry, I didn’t know—”

  “You didn’t put up much of a fight,” Bullet cut him off, the only time he’d spoken to him. People like that—bullies who stepped on other people just because their feet were big enough—they should be put down. Like runts. They were as bad as the fear-run people they stepped on, who toadied around them. Bullet didn’t want to have anything to do with any of them. Every year one of them would try him out, somehow. Every year he’d have to show whoever that he wasn’t to be messed around with, then they’d all leave him alone. He didn’t know what their problem was with him, although he could guess—some kind of King of the Mountain game. One thing he could say about the Negroes, they never tried him out; they seemed to know he had nothing to do with them.

  CHAPTER 4

  After school, Bullet jogged down to the field, without changing. He ran in sneakers, and in hot weather he just wore a pair of shorts to school under his jeans. Bullet didn’t mind practice. The coach left him pretty much alone. The coach was a big guy, over two hundred pounds, but in good shape for all of his fifty-odd years. He’d played baseball good enough for collegiate championships in his day. He coached baseball in the spring, track in the fall and filled in with gym classes during the winter. Summers he worked as a lifeguard for a pool up in Delaware. He’d always known enough to leave Bullet alone, ever since Bullet showed up in the fall of ninth grade. The track team wasn’t much, mostly guys who couldn’t make the football team but were too serious about sports to want to take gym. The coach worked them, keeping track of them all, sprinters and milers, high and long jumpers, hurdlers, pole vaulters, javelin throwers and the cross-country too. They each had to enter three events, he told them, because the school had to have four people in each event to hold a meet against another school. Bullet did javelin throw and high jump, with cross-country. Once the coach had asked him to do the fifteen hundred meter run, or hurdles, because he was fast, but Bullet wouldn’t. The first year he was on the track team, he’d run the relay, but after that he picked his own events. His run was cross-country, and he didn’t want to use up energy on any other running event. He usually came in somewhere between second and fifth in high jump and javelin, depending on the competition. He’d never lost a cross-country race, never even come close to losing. The team was always invited to the state championships, but the school never placed because the rest of the team wasn’t good enough. You got ten points for a first, but only five, three, two for the other places. Only Bullet could collect the ten.

  He didn’t mind, he’d been state champion for two years. The coach minded some, but Bullet couldn’t help him with that. If you didn’t have the talent to put on the field, you just didn’t have it. Bullet’s accumulated points over the season got them into the championship trials and that was all he could do for them.

  The first part of practice Bullet spent warming up with a few jumps and throws. He took it easy. If he jumped over six-and-a-half he started landing wrong, pulling muscles or bruising joints he needed in good working order for cross-country. He could get up as high as he wanted, higher than any of the other jumpers, but he took it easy against the risk of spraining or breaking something when he came down. “You land like some rag doll, Tillerman,” the Coach said. “You’ve got to roll with it, use your shoulders.”

  Bullet shrugged. He could get high enough.

  A two-mile cros
s-country trail had been laid out behind the field, so familiar that Bullet could run it without thinking—which wasn’t much use to him. That day, early in September, the coach stopped Bullet as he went over to start the runners: “That new guy, see him?” Bullet nodded, his eyes on the tall Negro with heavy, muscular legs, long thighs and short calves, who stood away from the other two cross-country entrants, both white. “He might be okay for cross-country. He’s a hurdler, pretty good.”

  “Okay,” Bullet said. He knew what the coach was going to say next, he always knew. See how he goes, he predicted.

  “See how he goes.”

  And don’t try to run him out this first time.

  “And don’t try to run him out this first time.”

  Bullet didn’t say anything. He stood in the sunlight, waiting to be given the nod to go. The coach nodded to him.

  The Negro approached Bullet, near the start. He held his hand out. Bullet didn’t take it to shake. The Negro acted as if nothing had happened. “Name’s Tamer, Tamer Shipps. He tells me I should run cross-country.”

  Bullet didn’t say anything. This Tamer looked older than most high school students, he looked about twenty—but Negroes tended to look older; they aged differently too, something to do with the skin, he figured. The old Negroes around town had white-gray hair, but their skin didn’t look dried-out and papery. The other two runners were a tenth and eleventh grader. Neither had the musculature of this Tamer, or Bullet either. Tamer had close-cropped black hair and deep brown skin, broad nose and full lips, and, under heavy eyebrows, eyes that looked awake.

  “Okay,” he said now. “I read you, Whitey. Just tell me what to do.”

  “Run,” Bullet said. “Run as fast as you can and keep running.”

  “You sho’ does make it sound fun, massa,” Tamer said. His mouth didn’t move, but his eyes looked amused.

  Beats picking cotton.

  Tamer had a broad, stubborn jaw, and it looked like he needed a shave. They stared at each other for a few seconds. Bullet shrugged. Tamer’s big shoulders straightened. They moved apart, going separately and at different rates to the starting point, where a broad dirt path entered a stand of pines. The two other runners came to join Bullet. “Hey,” they said without eagerness. “Hey, Bullet.” He nodded at them, raised one arm and then let it fall abruptly to start them off.