Flanagan's Run

by Tom McNab

  From the brow of the hill they could see laid out on the dry, broken plain the vast tented camp that Flanagan had built for the race: twenty separate dwellings, each capable of holding one hundred runners, and in the centre a giant food marquee. Doc and Morgan trotted down the hill, happy to come in half a minute or so behind the two leaders.

  Doc checked his wrist-watch as they passed the finish. “I reckon we made around five hours,” he said, easing down as he approached the rows of notice boards which detailed the accommodation arrangements. Doc and Morgan together scanned the boards and finally located their tent.

  “Looks as though we’re bunking down together,” said Doc.

  Together they walked through the rows of tents, finally picking out the one allocated them. Beside it, in a separate tent, the washing facilities were primitive. There were only a dozen buckets of cold water and a number of rough blue towels. However, Doc had earlier noticed a river a few hundred yards beyond the camp.

  “Looks like there’s a creek nearby,” he said to Morgan, picking up his towel. Morgan nodded, and a moment later had joined Doc on the walk across the rocky plain towards the creek. Once there, Doc sat down on a rock, put his towel round his neck and let the water splash over his feet. He put out his hand to Morgan. “Name’s Alexander Cole,” he said formally, then added: “Most folks call me Doc.”

  Morgan responded with a firm grip. “Mike Morgan,” he said, kneeling down and cupping the clear water in his hands and lapping it like a dog.

  Their bodies streamed with sweat, and the taste of the water from the stream came as a pleasant shock.

  “You run long distances before?” asked Doc.

  “Not much.”

  “Me, I been running most of my life, one way or t’other,” said Doc. He took hold of one of his feet, rotating it so that the sole was upwards. “Reckon these feet have done one hundred thousand miles.”

  They sat in silence, relishing the cool water flowing over their feet and legs. Then they walked back from the creek together, their towels draped over their shoulders. The elder man felt uneasy in Morgan’s company. Morgan was not exactly unfriendly, yet he made no positive response. Doc always felt uncomfortable during silences, feeling obliged to fill them with speech, however inconsequential.

  He looked up the hill, now dotted with runners descending on the camp.

  “Poor devils,” he said. “First day, last day, for most of ’em.”

  As the two men came nearer to the camp centre they were able to view more closely the condition of the latest arrivals. Some, the trained athletes, had experienced no problems and mostly stood drinking and chatting at the Maxwell House Coffee Pot, the sweat steaming from their lean bodies. Others sat on the ground, propped on their hands and knees, gasping, while others lay on all fours, like dying animals, groaning and sobbing. Some were carried off on stretchers by the waiting medical staff. Others simply limped off to their tents.

  “Like Bull Run,” said Doc. Indeed, the scene was much like a battleground. Runners continued to trickle from the hill above, but these were no longer competitors, no longer even runners. They either walked, limped or staggered. Some came in by truck or car, to be immediately disqualified.

  “One thousand eight hundred and twenty-three,” boomed ­Flanagan through his megaphone. “One hundred and eighty-nine to come!”

  Flanagan’s bellowed instructions continued to fill the evening air. The area beyond the bannered finish was now littered with men and women, the broken remnants of the first thirty miles of C. C. Flanagan’s Trans-America. Doc threaded his way between the sobbing casualties towards the tent marked “Fizz”, the name of the root beer company which had supplied it.

  On reaching it he pointed towards a roped-off area fronted by a placard bearing a list of names. He squinted at the list.

  “Cole, Morgan – that’s us. McPhail, Martinez, Lord Thur­leigh,” he read. He paused, bringing his face closer to the paper. “Jesus, what in God’s name’s a Lord Thurleigh?”

  From inside the tent an arm rose languidly from a bed. “Peter Thurleigh. I don’t believe we’ve been formally introduced.”

  A man in silk shorts and vest rose and proffered his hand. He was blonde and tanned and had piercing blue eyes.

  “Alexander Augustus Cole,” said Doc, introducing himself yet again.

  Thurleigh’s grip was weak. He did not shake hands, rather he allowed his hand to be shaken. He ignored Morgan altogether and resumed his seat, laying back with his head pillowed in his hands.

  “You spoke last week to the press,” he said. “Aren’t you some sort of doctor?”

  Doc nodded sourly. “Some sort of.”

  “Good,” drawled Thurleigh. “Might come in handy later.”

  The British runner turned over in his bed with his back to Doc, the interview over. Doc shook his head and moved on to his bunk, a rough camp-bed. On the bed next to him lay Martinez, mouth open, snoring. On the other side Hugh McPhail was peeling off his shoes.

  “Evening,” said Doc. “Name’s Cole, Alexander Cole.” McPhail looked round, lifting his hand to grasp that of his companion. “Hugh McPhail.” He stood to greet Morgan.

  The Pennsylvanian introduced himself, shook hands, and moved over to his bed.

  Doc looked around him. “Looks like this is going to be our little family for the next three thousand miles. God willing.”

  “What’s God got to do with it?” asked Morgan tersely.

  “God sure as hell didn’t intend the human foot to hit the ground six million times in two months,” Doc replied. “Stands to reason we’ll all need His help if we’re going to reach New York.”

  There was no reply.

  “Time for the trough,” said Doc at last, rising. Morgan and McPhail rose with him, and Martinez, jerking himself to the vertical as if being snapped out of an hypnotic trance, scampered behind. Peter Thurleigh lay still, as though he had not heard.

  The tent stank, as the men divested themselves of vests and shorts. It was an exotic aroma, compounded of sweat, faeces, urine and grass, with just a hint of vomit. It was the air they were going to breathe for the next three months.

  In the vast refreshment tent about a thousand men and women ate, their utensils clinking noisily on tin plates. They sat on benches, eating from wooden trestle-tables set in long rows.

  “Sure ain’t the Ritz, but it’ll serve,” said Doc, sitting down with his food, and flanked by Morgan and McPhail.

  True, the fare was not princely. Hamburger and beans, followed by the obligatory apple pie, washed down by hot coffee.

  Morgan said nothing, eating his food with almost a cold fury. McPhail gobbled his, hardly pausing between one gulp and the next. Martinez held his face close to his plate, using his fork as a shovel. In the middle of mouthfuls he gulped down his coffee, sloshing both food and liquid into his mouth before swallowing the lot like a seal.

  Doc watched his companions without comment. It was clear to him that for them even such a meal was rare. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “Looks like that’s dinner,” he said, looking around him. The men finished their meal and walked to the tent exit.

  They blinked as they came from the gloom of the tent into the thin evening sun. “Jesus H. Christ,” said Doc, stopping, hands on hips. “I’ll be damned.”

  On an open patch of grass stood a black Rolls-Royce. Beside it was a wooden table. On the table stood a gleaming silver salver, plates and cutlery, whilst in an ice bucket stood a bottle of champagne. At the side of the table a butler stood stiffly, impeccable in black evening dress, a white towel across his right arm. On a wooden camp-chair sat Lord Thurleigh, dressed in a dark lounge suit, sipping wine and calmly dissecting what appeared to be roast turkey.

  Dixie Williams stood by Flanagan’s massive, gaudy Trans-America caravan and watched the runners come in. She had been watching for almost two hours. Never had she imagined it would be anything like this. Indeed, she had given no thought to the nature of the T
rans-America when she had won first prize in a “Miss Trans-America” competition and found that it constituted an “advisory” position in the foot-race. If she had imagined anything at all it was that the Trans-America would be a form of high school dash, with the competitors coming in at the end of each stage breathing heavily, but a few minutes later sipping Coke with the girls at the soda fountain. But never this.

  True, some runners came in fresh after the thirty-mile stint, and it surprised her how old many of these men were. They were almost skeletal, the muscles of their thighs standing out like those in drawings from an anatomical chart. She wondered how such sinewy bodies even managed to exude sweat, for they seemed to be entirely composed of muscle and bone. Yet sweat they did, and in profusion, as they stood talking together at the Coffee Pot, drinking endless cartons of iced coffee.

  Oddly enough, they did not act like competitors, but more like friends who had simply been out together for a long run on the road. There they stood in the thin evening sun, chatting easily, stripped to the waist, their abdominals rippling like washboards, their bodies still winter-white, while the remaining competitors continued to stream down the hill into Flanaganville.

  As her gaze wandered she could see too that the condition of many of the competitors was desperate. Some staggered or walked in, their shirts clotted with sweat, jackets and jerseys draped over their shoulders or round their necks. Some had taken off their shoes and had walked or limped the last miles, their bare feet or stockinged soles now caked with blood. Littered across the vast field competitors lay on their backs, knees bent and chests heaving, or, like animals, propped themselves on knees and hands, coughing and spitting. It was like the remnants of some vast broken army in retreat. Dixie felt tears well in her eyes, and then, turning, was surprised to find the journalist Carl Liebnitz standing beside her. He took off his steel-rimmed glasses, polished them and finally replaced them on his nose.

  “I wonder if your boss Charles Flanagan really knows what he’s gotten himself into?” he said. “Some of these poor souls have come straight from the soup kitchens. They won’t make it as far as Barstow, let alone New York.”

  Dixie did not know how to respond. “At least they’ll be better fed here,” she said defensively, wiping her eyes with her handkerchief.

  “Yes,” said Liebnitz. “Perhaps they will.” He gazed for a moment without speaking, then excused himself and walked off, picking his way between the prostrate bodies of exhausted runners until he had reached the press tent.

  Dixie looked across the vast field. On her right were the twenty massive white tents that housed the Trans-America athletes. She walked idly between them and half-glimpsed, in the dim gloom, naked men sponging themselves down from buckets of cold water.

  She passed two hysterical, weeping women, supported by attendants, and a moment later saw she had reached the circus caravans. Madame La Zonga, standing outside her caravan, was slowly unwrapping a snake from her neck. She paid no attention to the runners limping in and out of the first-aid tent. She had spent her life in the company of the strange and stricken, and Flanagan’s runners came as no surprise to her. Close by, Fritz, the talking mule, was silently munching grass.

  “Hi,” said Dixie.

  Fritz looked up, bared his teeth, and returned to his meal. It was evidently not talking time.

  Just beyond Fritz’s paddock an elderly man in white tights was juggling with five golden Indian clubs, while behind him two young men trembled delicately in a hand-to-hand balance. To their right a great bull of a man, dressed as a Roman gladiator, grunted as he heaved aloft massive barbells.

  A small, middle-aged man – the one who had spoken at Flanagan’s press conference – passed her in the company of a lean, sombre companion. They both had towels over their shoulders, and had obviously come from washing in the river. The elder man nodded cheerfully to her as they passed, but the younger runner gave no sign that he had noticed her.

  She watched them both pass. The young man’s body was bronzed and hard and looked as if it had been sculpted: hard defined shoulders, sharp horizontal slivers of muscle across his chest, the flesh of his ribs flickering like tiny fish. Dixie could not understand how a little old man like Doc Cole could possibly challenge such an athlete. And yet she knew from what she had read and heard that Cole was the most experienced runner in the race. She shook her head and made her way back to her caravan.

  Carl Liebnitz sat on a camp-chair in the press tent, engulfed in the clatter of typewriters.

  “Great day,” said Frank Pollard, tapping out his report on two fingers at the desk beside him.

  “Sure,” growled Liebnitz. “Stupendous.” In truth, he did not know quite how to respond to what he had seen.

  True, he had seen the Dorando Marathon at the I908 London Olympics and had endured the stupefying boredom of the first dance marathons of the twenties. But the former had been controlled within the limits of a sports stadium and the latter had been a harmless, if sickly, flower of the period. But the human debris now scattered on the edge of the Mojave as a result of Flanagan’s call to arms – that was a human tragedy of a different dimension.

  Most of the people littering the ground outside the press tent were not athletes. Liebnitz had seen their like at strikes, soup kitchens and Salvation Army hostels all over the nation. They had no more chance of making it on foot to New York than he had. No, the Trans-America looked to him like just another sad, seamy story of the twenties, to be filed away with pole-sitting, marathon dancing and all the other sports mutations of the period.

  “Great day,” he growled again, engaging a fresh sheet of paper on his machine. “Bring on Madame La Zonga and the talking mule.”

  AMERICANA DATELINE FLANAGANVILLE 21 MARCH 1931

  Charles C. Flanagan’s two thousand-men caravanserai is now making its broken way towards San Bernadino.

  A crowded Coliseum, after a couple of hours of carnival high-jinks, saw Douglas Fairbanks, the increasingly portly spring-heeled jack of the silver screen, fire the Winchester that set Flanagan’s hordes surging towards New York. Sadly there were falls, sprained ankles and bruises for many competitors even before the Coliseum exit was reached, as hundreds of Trans-Americans, clearly misjudging the distance between Los Angeles and New York by an odd three thousand miles bolted from the stadium. On and over the bodies of their prostrate comrades they surged; on, ever on, towards their distant goal.

  As early as ten miles out, around San Gabriel, the sidewalks were littered with the flotsam of Mr Flanagan’s enterprise. Your correspondent counted at least forty women sitting distraught by the road by the time the press bus had reached Montebello, coughing as they inhaled the exhaust fumes of passing cars. Others staggered on for another six miles or so towards Pomona before collapsing into Mr Flanagan’s following trucks. Close on two hundred failed to complete the first stage to Pomona Hill, just outside Pomona, where a camp, immediately dubbed “Flanaganville” by its weary residents, has been set up.

  There was little in the way of competition over the first stage. The Scots runner Hugh McPhail trotted in first, with the English aristocrat Lord Thurleigh, followed by Alexander Doc Cole, the fifty-four-year-old former fairground huckster, and the Pennsylvanian Michael Morgan, in that order. Close behind them came the German and All-American teams.

  Flanaganville more closely resembles a Gettysburg casualty station than the finish of a foot-race, with its medical tents choked with injured competitors. It remains to be seen if Mr Flanagan’s Trans-America foot-race is a genuine athletics competition or merely another mad little, sad little sports saga of our times. So far, the only person in profit is Mr Flanagan, who is $40,000 the richer from the failure of two hundred-odd competitors to finish the course.

  CARL C. LIEBNITZ

  6

  The Girl from Minsky’s

  From the window of his caravan, Flanagan had watched the finish with mixed feelings. True, every tramp out of the race made him two hundred dollars rich
er, but it was essential that none of his “stars” was injured, and also vital that he kept his numbers reasonably high. He was delighted to see Cole and Morgan trot in together, and to see Lord Thurleigh and Hugh McPhail come in ahead of the Williams’ All-Americans and the German team. Thurleigh was both a pleasure and a problem: a pleasure, because Thurleigh’s presence gave the race unique news value, and a problem because Flanagan had no real idea how to deal with an English lord. For days he had practised what he imagined to be an English accent, based on a Noel Coward play which he had seen on Broadway and on a slight knowledge of the New England bourgeoisie. But it was no use. Flanagan was New York Irish through and through.

  He had also no notion how to address Thurleigh. “Your highness” or “your worship” sounded too formal. He settled for “your lordship”, though he hoped he would not have to say it too often.

  The question of Thurleigh’s feeding and accommodation was more complex. Thurleigh had asked for separate feeding and accommodation arrangements to be made for him, and indeed had offered to provide his own caravan. Flanagan had agreed to Thurleigh having separate food; diet was, after all, a personal matter. He had, however, refused to allow Thurleigh separate living quarters, for if the Englishman had a caravan to himself so would dozens of other sponsored athletes, and the Trans-America would soon begin to resemble a vast, sluggish wagon-train, moving at the speed of the slowest vehicle.

  He turned away from the window. His own cabin had been sumptuously furnished by the Ford Corporation and contained bath and shower, radio and telephone communication systems, and a superb Bechstein piano, which Flanagan could not play. In a corner, on the right of the refrigerator, stood three large black tin drums marked “molasses”. These contained the nine gallons of bootleg whiskey which would sustain Flanagan and Willard Clay through the long miles ahead. It had come by fishing-boat from Cuba, via Hennessey’s warehouse, New York, to join the millions of gallons of bootleg booze in which the country had been illicitly wallowing since 1921. The Cuban stuff was the real McCoy, vastly superior to the Japanese brew, Queen James Scotch Whiskey, which they had been uneasily drinking in Los Angeles.