by Tom McNab
Tom McNab was born in Glasgow in 1933. He held the Scottish national triple jump record for six years, and from 1966 to 1977 was a National Athletics Coach. In 1980 he became the first coach to have served on both summer and winter Olympic teams when he was appointed to coach the British Olympic bobsleigh team at Lake Placid. He worked as script consultant and technical advisor on the Oscar winning film, Chariots of Fire, and on Greystoke and on The First Olympics. In 1982 he was Scottish Novelist of the Year and in 1990 British Coach of the Year.
FLANAGAN’S RUN
TOM McNAB
This edition published in Great Britain
and the USA in 2014 by
Sandstone Press Ltd
PO Box 5725
One High Street
Dingwall
Ross-shire
IV15 9WJ
Scotland.
www.sandstonepress.com
All rights reserved.
No part of this publication may be reproduced,
stored or transmitted in any form without the express
written permission of the publisher.
Commissioning Editor: Robert Davidson
© Tom McNab 1982
© Aufbau Verlag GmbH & Co. KG, Berlin 2008 and 2011
The moral right of Tom McNab to be recognised as the
author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the
Copyright, Design and Patent Act, 1988.
First published in Great Britain in 1982 by Hodder and Stoughton,
a division of Hodder Headline PLC
The publisher acknowledges support from
Creative Scotland towards publication of this volume.
ISBN: 978-1-908737-71-7
ISBNe: 978-1-908737-72-4
Cover design by Two Associates, London
Ebook Typeset by Iolaire Typesetting, Newtonmore.
To Jenny
Contents
1. Los Angeles
2. Flanagan meets the Press
3. The Broo Park
4. The Press meets Doc Cole
5. The Start
6. The Girl from Minsky’s
7. Morgan’s Story
8. Across the Mojave
9. Into the Devil’s Playground
10. Cross-Country to Las Vegas
11. The Meadow with Many Streams
12. The Picnic Games
13. Moment of Truth
14. Across the Rockies
15. Denver: A Thousand Miles On
16. King of the Wharf
17. The Gamble
18. Doc in Trouble
19. St Louis: Man versus Horse
20. The Big Fight
21. Showdown with Toffler
22. Meeting Mr Capone
23. End of the Road
24. Marathon
Postscript
1
Los Angeles
Hugh McPhail dropped his trousers, stuffed them into his knapsack and started to run.
As his feet settled into a rhythm he saw ahead of him the train clicking away into the distance, its smoke whorling black behind it. The old “Superchief” had carried him half way across America. It had been the first time he had ever ridden boxcar carrying a ticket free of fear, and it had given him a sense of security. Just before leaving the train he had tossed his ticket to the old man who had sat unseeing in the corner for the whole thousand-mile journey. “Save yourself a beating, old timer,” he had said. Then he had jumped.
Above him the road sign read: LOS ANGELES SIX MILES. That meant forty minutes. McPhail ran easily, on his heels, with low frugal strides, his feet hardly leaving the ground. He wore a knapsack with thick padded straps to protect his shoulders, and a flat tartan cap. His upper body was not that of a runner, for he was heavily muscled, particularly in the shoulders and back, but months of distance training had scoured his body of every scrap of fat. As he ran, trickles of sweat started to roll like tears down his brown cheeks, and joined with others to form streams on his back and chest. The salt sweat seeped into his eyes and made them smart. He brushed it away with the back of his hand and looked up at the sun. Midday: a bad time for running.
For a mile there was nothing but the soft dirt road, spun out before him across the brown plain, like a ribbon casually cast off by a child. The surface was pock-marked with holes, destroying his rhythm but nevertheless keeping his mind in focus.
This was rich country, its earth quite unlike that of the sour bleak land from which he had come: in the north, moor and heather, in the centre, coal and shipbuilding, in the south, moor again. But here everything had hot, vital life, and the land seethed with movement. It was strange, but generous too, and McPhail felt no fear of the many miles he would soon have to trek across its surface.
His eyes took in the cultivated groves on either side. After a moment’s thought he grinned. He had never thought of oranges actually growing: they were simply something which arrived at the grocery store at the end of the street, and he had never considered what their source might be. But here they were, planted in row after neat row, stretching all about him far into the heat-haze. The plant life and the heat gave the air a taste, and McPhail drank in its perfume through his lungs, while his ears absorbed the steady purr and buzz of insects. Old men in blue dungarees rested on their hoes as he ran past, chewing on straws, their eyes unblinking in brown, lined faces. They showed no emotion, as if it were for them a daily occurrence to see a man in tartan shorts striding past their homes. Perhaps McPhail was not the first; perhaps they had already seen a steady stream of runners from “C. C. Flanagan’s Great Trans-America Race”, men striding in from all over the world, soon to become part of a two thousand-man surge across the state of California.
McPhail, fed by the glossy dreams of Glasgow’s Electric Picture Palace, had thought that all Americans lived in ease and luxury. These people inhabited mean wooden shacks, fronted by small fenced-in vegetable patches. No ease or luxury here. But somehow their poverty was softened by the heat and the richness of the land. True, the children ran barefoot, but they ran on warm ground, their bodies massaged by sun, not on the frozen lunar landscapes of a winter Glasgow.
As he ran through the shanty town mongrel dogs snapped for a moment at his heels before being shouted off by the men seated on the sidewalks. They were replaced by children who accompanied him, prancing with knees kept high in a grotesque parody of his running action. The men of the town looked on benignly, smiling as the children surrounded McPhail. “Hup! Two-three-four!” they screamed.
McPhail looked around him and again he grinned. These children were no different from those he had encountered six thousand miles away. Somehow the lone runner always had to be a figure of fun. He was an intruder, a man whose lonely and inexorable rhythms destroyed the daily patterns of those around him, whether they were those of the street life of Glasgow tenements or of a shanty town in Southern California. The runner must always be challenged – challenged and harried. It was harmless fun, but McPhail always felt behind it a note of menace. Every runner, whatever his abilities, was making a personal statement every time he ran. Here I am, he was saying. This is what I do. I run. This is what makes me different.
He was beginning to flow now as muscles, stiff from days on the hard floor of the swaying train, began to drink in the oxygen from the rich blood flowing through them. The sun was a welcome lubricant, although McPhail knew that in the long run it was also his enemy. However, there were no dangers in a short stint of six miles, and he relished the loose, fluid feeling which the heat lent to his limbs.
At the crossroads he was suddenly joined by another runner, coming in sharply from the south. He was a small brown man, running fully clothed and with a bulging cardboard suitcase strapped to his back. He mad
e a sharp left turn and joined McPhail without speaking, running on his left side. The little man was wearing white flannel trousers which stopped abruptly about six inches from the ground, and heavy black leather boots, but no socks. His upper body was covered by a formal black pin-striped jacket, while on his head he wore a military-style cap. McPhail noticed that he had a thin black moustache below his nose, and could only be in his late teens.
There were only three miles to Los Angeles. McPhail moved the pace up slightly to test the little man, who showed no sign of recognizing the increase in speed, and stayed pinned to his left shoulder. McPhail injected more speed and moved up to six-minute mile pace, but his companion did not flag, moving in a high trotting pony style in complete contrast to McPhail’s low, economic scuttle. With a mile to go the Scot pressed again, but still he could feel his companion on his left side, still hear his light unhurried breathing. They ran for another half-mile, locked in silent struggle.
The little man looked over his right shoulder at McPhail. “Martinez,” he said, lifting his cap. “Juan Martinez, Mexico.”
Then he spurted. McPhail was shocked by the suddenness of the acceleration. The little Mexican pranced off down the dusty road and was soon over twenty yards away, dust spurting behind him. McPhail let him go. He had come to America to race, but not just yet. Soon all he could see was Martinez’s little cap bobbing in the distance.
A Model T Ford chugged towards him, spluttering and groaning. He remembered that he should always run on the left, facing the traffic, and switched to the other side of the road. The driver stopped and looked out of his window. It was a young farmer. “Buddy,” he said, grinning. “You’re losing real bad. Saw a little feller, legs going like a fiddler’s elbow, way up that a-way.”
McPhail smiled and nodded. The road had changed from a thin dirt-track to two lanes of hard road, and cars threw up clouds of dust as they passed. He was coming into the outskirts of Los Angeles and now the houses too were of a different character: white adobe walls, palms, close-cropped lawns, gardeners. To McPhail, the houses of Los Angeles looked more Spanish than American.
About a hundred yards ahead was a banner straddling the road: LOS ANGELES WELCOMES THE TRANS-AMERICA RUNNERS. Just beyond it on the left side of the road was a small booth. TAKE COCA-COLA ACROSS AMERICA, said the notice above it.
McPhail pulled up and fumbled in his haversack.
“Have a Coca-Cola, buddy?” asked the white-coated attendant.
“Free?” the Scotsman asked.
“If you’re in the Trans-America.”
Without thinking, McPhail pushed the lip of the bottle to his lips and gulped it down. The drink was cold and sweet. He had forgotten that, in America, warm drinks did not exist. He coughed, wiped the tears and sweat from his eyes and sipped the rest.
“Must be a thousand men here already,” said the attendant. “From all over. Japs, Turks, Injuns. Even saw a feller in a skirt.” He eyed McPhail’s tartan shorts with interest. “lf some of them guys are runners then I’m Alice Craig McAllister.”
The evangelist’s name meant nothing to McPhail. He sipped the last of his drink, then placed the empty bottle back on the stand. “Thanks. Where do we report?”
“Five hotels close by: the Grand, the Imperial, the Ambassador, the Gateway and the Eldorado. C. C. Flanagan has sure done you fellers proud.”
McPhail trotted on into central Los Angeles, the drink slopping about in his stomach as he ran. The town was indeed packed. Runners of all nationalities strode the sidewalks in small groups, chatting and gesticulating ferociously. Some jogged in packs in the broad main street, and were narrowly missed by honking cars. Others sat in deckchairs, outside cafes, while their bodies were pummelled and massaged by their managers. The town fairly seethed with runners.
Hugh had felt a stranger in America for three thousand miles by rail, and even during the six miles into town, but no longer: this was a runner’s town. For the moment Los Angeles was the Trans-America, the Trans-America Los Angeles. Even the streetcars, clanging and clacketing along the streets, stopped to allow the passage of the runners who pattered between them. Beefy policemen ignored traffic signals to allow athletes to run unchecked. Runners stood signing autographs for children or elderly matrons before trotting off to continue their solitary preparations.
He felt a familiar sick feeling at the pit of his stomach. Did he really have a place here, in Los Angeles, now swarming with the greatest long-distance runners in the world? Perhaps in a handful of miles he would be revealed for what he was, a gambler, with little enough chance of even finishing the race, let alone winning it. He thought back to the little Mexican in his white flannel trousers, scurrying on ahead of him.
What he experienced now was the same feeling that he had felt each winter before the beginning of an athletics season – a lack of belief in his body, in its powers of development, in its ability to return each summer not only as good as before, but even better. It was the uncertainty of a farmer who has planted his seed, and stood before it, unsure of the harvest. It was the doubt he had always faced, and, so far at least, always beaten.
True, they were the greatest runners in the world, but no one in history had run three thousand miles, fifty miles a day, day in, day out. There was no means of knowing what that daily pounding would do even to a well-trained body. The Trans-America was a lottery.
He decided to make for the Grand, a white pillar-fronted hotel which had seen better days. Outside on the road was a row of wooden trestle-tables, behind which were women taking details from lines of men in front of them.
“Your name, mister?” asked an attractive blonde girl, looking up at him from a table with a placard saying, “Miss Dixie Williams”. She looked in her late teens, and had a skin of a stretched, full quality that was the bounty of the sun. Her hair was in the classic bobbed Mary Pickford style, her full lips sharply etched in bright lipstick.
She sensed his attention.
“Your name?” she said again.
“Hugh McPhail.”
“Country?”
“Scotland.”
Miss Williams glanced at his tartan shorts and his strong, lean legs.
“You’ve sure come a long way.”
“Yes. Six thousand miles.”
She smiled. “Is it cold in Scotland?”
“Freezing.”
The pressure of the men behind him in the line was building up.
The girl handed him a number on a white card. “Well, here’s your racing number and your room number.” She handed him two cloth patches and eight safety-pins. “You have to be numbered back and front at all times during the race. Mr Flanagan will explain all the rules at six o’clock this evening here at the Grand. Meantime, report to the dining room for lunch. Here’s your lunch ticket and room number. And good luck.”
McPhail walked slowly up the steps into the hotel lobby. It was chock full with runners and their trainers. On his left was a row of telephones, into which journalists were babbling in myriad tongues.
“Yes, Doc Cole’s here,” said one. “Just try keeping him away. Yes, in great shape, giving a press conference in a couple of days. The Germans? Just arrived. What the Sam Hill are Nazis? Sure, that’s what they call themselves, Nazis . . .” McPhail stopped still, intrigued. “Lord who? Oh, Thurleigh. If he’s here it’ll make a great story. Good pictures, too. How the hell do I know if he wears a monocle? No, no word yet of a Mexican. M-A-R-T-I-N-E-Z. Okay, I’ll check it out. Yes, I’ll get a quote from Flanagan – never any problem there . . .” The journalist stopped to scribble something in his notebook before setting off again.
“Morgan? Mike Morgan. Involved in some union trouble in Pennsylvania? Yep, there’s a Mike Morgan entered. Don’t know if it’s the same man, but again l’ll check it out. No news of Paavo Nurmi. But Hugo Quist, his manager, he’s out here. Calls himself a ‘technical advisor’, but no sign of Nurmi himself. Make a great story if he comes!”
McPhail felt he had
heard enough and sauntered idly on. To his right was the hotel reception counter where an elderly and bespectacled female receptionist was being besieged by athletes. Straight ahead was the restaurant. He was just deciding to go in when the decision was taken out of his hands by a rush of runners who swept him up and into the room.
Inside was Babel. Not far from the entrance sat a group dressed in immaculate blue silk tracksuits with stars-and-stripes badges. This was the first time McPhail had ever seen a tracksuit, and at first he thought they were pyjamas. On the backs of each suit were emblazoned the words “Williams’ All-Americans”. At the end of the table stood their team leader, a burly bronzed man with a crew-cut, who had both hands on the table and was bellowing. In one corner of the room a man was running on the spot on a table. In another a sunburnt old man appeared to be selling a patent medicine, babbling as he did so. Yet another table featured a man who was displaying his brown leathery feet to an admiring audience. But everywhere, above all things, men were eating. Most devoured rather than ate their food, shovelling it in with mouths close to their plates, pausing only to gulp down great mugfuls of coffee.
Perspiring waitresses in black uniforms shuttled endlessly back and forward, slamming down the food in front of the runners, who set to immediately, some consuming helping after helping. Hugh sat down eagerly, and in a moment found a full plate in front of him. It was better than anything that he had eaten for months – great fat hamburgers and beans, followed by a wedge of apple pie and as much coffee as he could drink. Hugh had taken a liking to hamburgers. The Scottish equivalent was mince, but he had never eaten it in the form of hamburgers till his arrival in America. He ate slowly, his pulse throbbing from the effects of the run, sweat still trickling down his cheeks and neck. What a place!
There were at least two hundred athletes in the dining room, and just two basic activities, talking and eating. Most did one or the other but some, mouths bulging, attempted both, spraying hamburger and apple pie in every direction. McPhail glanced over at the little bald man in the corner, who was holding aloft a bottle of what appeared to be medicine, declaiming all the while to an audience of about a dozen, most of whom were Chinese. McPhail could not hear what he was saying, but the word “Chickamauga” recurred. The little man seemed undeterred by the lack of response from his audience. He ranted on, his gestures becoming progressively wilder and wilder. He ended by pouring the medicine down his throat and standing on his hands. The Chinese applauded politely.