by Tom McNab
Five hundred bucks. Five hundred bucks . . . Morgan felt as if his lungs had taken over his whole body. He was simply one heaving lung, sucking oxygen in great desperate gulps. Five hundred bucks, a hundred yards to go . . . He squeezed his body for one last effort, but it was not there. He could go no faster. Then, as Morgan felt himself wither and fade, the menacing brown shoulder on his left side disappeared, as Muller gave a deep sob and dropped back. Morgan passed the Trans-America bus a good ten yards up.
Half a mile behind, Doc and McPhail picked up a broken, exhausted Martinez, who summoned a tired smile, the sweat dripping from his face.
He pointed his finger to the side of his head as they passed.
“They mad,” he said. “They mad.”
Flanagan had erected only six main tents for this intermediate camp, five as rest tents, in which a supply of blankets had been placed, upon which the runners could lie for four hours. The other was the medical tent, within which Dr Falconer and his staff dealt with a diminishing number of casualties.
Doc watched the first hundred-odd finishers, noting each man’s condition. The race was already hardening up, with a solid core of experienced distance runners dominating the first three hundred places. The All-Americans and the German team looked solid and well-organized and Eskola looked strong, as did the Frenchmen Dasriaux and Bouin. Doc was surprised how relaxed Thurleigh looked, despite his following Muller’s mad rush. The Englishman had trotted in a couple of minutes behind Martinez, looking as if he had been out for little more than a stroll along the Thames.
The runners continued to stream past the finish towards the Maxwell House Coffee Pot, just one hundred yards beyond. After a while Doc walked down from the road to the camp area and entered the first rest tent. Martinez, Morgan and McPhail stood together, bodies streaming sweat, unrolling their blankets.
“Why?” said Doc, hands on hips. “Why?”
All three men knew what Doc was talking about.
Morgan held up five fingers, the sweat streaming down his face and neck. “Five hundred bucks, that’s why.”
Martinez sat peeling off his shoes. He shook his head. “Five hundred is a lot of money where I come from. We plant new crop with five hundred.”
Doc looked down at Morgan, who had pulled his vest over his shoulders.
“You need it that much?”
“Yes.”
Doc shrugged. “You know your business best,” he said, finding a space on the floor to the right of Martinez. “But there’s one helluva long way still to run. A few more sprints like that could bust your balls.”
For the first time Morgan’s face cracked into a smile.
“What the hell do you care, Doc? We’re competing, ain’t we?”
Doc returned his smile. “Yes and no,” he said. “I’ve been racing for about thirty-odd years now. Most races you see your men before the start of your race, then it’s goodbye, Charlie, till next time. Sure, you get to know the guys you race against – you become friends – but this caper’s a whole new world. Here what you’re up against isn’t each other, it’s the desert, the hills, the cold, the wind, the sun, the snow. We’re all up against them, kinda like a team. Even those Krauts, those crazy Chinamen, the whole nutty League of Nations out there. By the end of the next leg we’ll have sorted out the jokers and we’ll be down to the real runners. And every time one of those guys drops out you’ll suffer a little. You can bank on it.”
Morgan thought back to his own past. He knew what Doc meant. In the line at Bethel he had seen his friends fall around him; in the first fights he had felt pain every time he knocked down his man. Pain inside.
Hugh moved round and sat on Doc’s left, so that the four men now formed a tight semi-circle.
“Why do you think Muller hit it so hard?”
Doc shook his head and slowly unlaced his shoes. “I can’t figure it out. He musta gone through the first eight miles in close on an hour. Crazy.”
He dropped on to his back. “Still, no point in letting it bother us. Four hours. That means four hours’ shut-eye.”
He unrolled his blanket and laid it on the floor. Then he took two rolled-up blankets, placed both at the bottom of his “bed”, and put his feet on top of the bottom roll.
“The circulation,” he explained. “Having my feet above my head means that the waste can get pumped back to the heart easier. Try it.”
He leant back on to his mat and within minutes was snoring loudly.
“You the only girl left?” asked Dixie. She was standing with Kate Sheridan outside her caravan on the edge of the camp.
“No girls passed me,” said Kate, “but I think we got about ten left. Say, they only seem to have a tent for the men. Could I use your caravan to clean up?”
“Sure,” said Dixie. “We’ve got showers. You want one?”
Kate nodded gratefully, peeled off her running shoes and climbed up the caravan steps.
“Three of us sleep here,” said Dixie, following her. “Myself, and Mr Flanagan and Mr Willard’s secretaries; but I don’t see much of them. They seem to spend most of their time at the Trans-America bus.”
Kate nodded. “With Flanagan? That figures.” She pointed to the end of the caravan. “That’s the shower over there?”
Dixie nodded and opened a cupboard behind her to take out a rough white towel. The caravan was sparsely furnished: three beds, a chair, a simple stove, a shower and sink.
Kate quickly peeled off her vest and brassiere, and walked over to the crude, makeshift shower. She unbuttoned her shorts and slid off the dark silk briefs below them.
Dixie had never seen an adult woman naked before, and she had never imagined that anyone would ever strip off with such impunity. But there Kate stood, legs, face and shoulders brown with the California sun, and the fluffy pubic “V” which Dixie could scarcely bear to look at.
Kate sensed her embarrassment.
“When you’ve been in a burlesque a few years you’ve seen one helluva lot of naked women. No place for modesty there.”
The shower was a rough, improvised affair, little more than a punctured bucket served by tepid, brackish desert water, which was released by pulling a chain.
Kate stepped into the shower and let the dark, lukewarm water flow over her. The Trans-America was skimming every ounce of surplus flesh from her. Even as a dancer her body had been hard, but this was a new and different hardness. Her thighs had become lean and rock-like, her stomach flat, her shoulders muscular and firm. But the real hardness was inside. There she was beginning to feel the growth of a powerful engine: a heart and lungs capable of pumping out enough oxygen for fifty miles a day was beginning to develop. She hoped it would develop in time.
Kate had never realized that there were men like this, hundreds of men who could run at nearly seven miles an hour, seemingly for ever. At least there was a rest day after the “cut” which would give her time to recover.
Even as the water flowed over her and she massaged her thighs with soap, Kate felt tired. Doc had given her good advice, but the first twenty miles had been hard and the next twenty would be even harder. She had run the first stage in fifteen minutes inside four hours; that gave her fifteen minutes’ grace for the next twenty miles, in order to beat the cut. But she was now running with tired, heavy legs, and beginning to realize, too, the enormity of the task which would face her over the next three months.
“Everything all right?” shouted Dixie above the hiss and splatter of the shower.
“Great,” said Kate, stepping out of the shower to pick up the towel which Dixie had laid out for her.
Dixie ventured a closer look. She had always thought of women athletes as masculine creatures, akin to the big-buttocked “hockey hags” she had seen play in college matches. True, Kate Sheridan’s body lacked the softness of her own, but she was just as much a woman. Her femininity simply expressed itself in vibrant, glowing athleticism.
“How do you feel?” asked Dixie.
“
I’d feel a lot better if I didn’t have another twenty miles ahead of me,” said Kate, towelling her black hair. “Jesus, my legs are stiff.” She kneaded her calves.
“D’you . . . d’you want me to rub them?” asked Dixie nervously.
“Would you? I don’t want to ask any of those guys – they might get the wrong idea!”
Dixie laughed. “How do I do it?”
“I’ve been watching those fellas. They always push upwards, towards the heart.”
Kate pulled on her pants and stretched herself out slowly and painfully on the divan.
Dixie started on Kate’s right calf, gently pressing upwards towards the back of the knee. She had expected to find Kate’s muscles hard, and was surprised to find them soft, even flabby to the touch.
She was, in fact, finding that high-quality muscle is loose and supple when relaxed; it is untrained muscle that is stiff and rigid.
Kate groaned, her arms dangling over the side of the divan.
“Am I hurting you?” asked Dixie.
Kate raised her head. “Hell, no. Just that they’re so stiff. Don’t be afraid to press hard.”
When Dixie had finished on her calves Kate sat up and pointed to her thighs. “I’ve watched those guys working on each other. They roll the muscles around from side to side, with the knees bent. Then they work on the backs, the hamstrings, and finish off on the front of the thighs, with the legs straight.”
Dixie turned to Kate’s thighs, using both hands. The muscles moved through about forty-five degrees, then recoiled, the muscles at the front of the thighs flickering subtly beneath the girl’s smooth, hairless skin. Then Dixie turned them in the other direction and watched the muscles flutter back into position.
As she pressed upwards on the thick muscles at the back of Kate’s thighs she could feel tension in the bulging belly of the hamstrings.
“Ow!” yelped Kate.
Then to the front of Kate’s thighs, working with both hands, pressing upwards towards the inside of her groin. Again she could both feel and see the muscles flowing beneath her hands. She could also feel herself begin to flush and glow as her hands moved into areas which she had never explored, even in her own body.
“Thanks a million,” said Kate, sitting up. “Now maybe these legs’ll carry me twenty miles to get inside the cut.”
“What time do you have to reach?” asked Dixie.
“Got to go for about four hours five minutes, just for safety,” said Kate, pulling her vest over her head. “That would give me a total of seven hours fifty minutes and qualify me for the next stage into the Mojave.”
“Do you think you can do it?”
“A year ago I couldn’t make it round the block. Sure I can do it. There’s thousands of girls out there could do it if they just got off their butts and tried. But forget about me. Are you Flanagan’s girl?”
“No,” said Dixie, blushing.
“I’ve seen the way he looks at you. I know that look. He giving you trouble?”
“No,” she said awkwardly.
“Just you let me know if he does. I’ve met plenty of guys like him.”
“Leave me to deal with Mr Flanagan – you’ve got over a thousand men to cope with.” Dixie was surprised to hear the words rush from her mouth, and she blushed again.
Kate smiled and draped Dixie’s towel across a chair. “I don’t see that as much of a problem,” she said. “Fifty miles a day would kill off any Valentino.”
Kate ruffled her hands through her still-damp black hair and walked towards the caravan door.
“No,” she said. “A couple of thousand men are no sweat. Three thousand miles . . .” She sighed, shook her head and opened the door.
“Do you think you can do it?” asked Dixie.
“I’ve got to,” said Kate, looking out into the desert. “Nowhere else to go.”
She turned to Dixie and smiled.
“Anyhow, can you think of anything better to do?”
Dixie sat at the door of the caravan, looking out over the baked scrubland, and watched as the other girl made her way back to camp. Kate seemed so sure, so confident, so hard. Yet it was not the same as her own hardness. Kate’s was the hardness of cynicism, hers of fear and doubt. Perhaps they could help each other over the long miles between here and New York; though she could not see what she herself could offer.
9
Into the Devil’s Playground
3.45 p.m., 24 March 1931. One thousand four hundred and eighty-three men and women sat silently in front of the Trans-America centre, awaiting the afternoon briefing for the second money stage. It was sixty-five degrees Fahrenheit, but the sun was hidden behind light cloud, as thankfully it had been all morning. They were now deep into the Mojave, and the first days of running had taken their toll. At least three hundred of the competitors would have difficulty surviving the six-hour, ten-minute “cut”.
“Gentlemen,” said Flanagan, then – “Sorry, and ladies,” as he beckoned to Kate and the small group of women of which she was a part. “The second part of the day’s final stage will be twenty miles into Shot Gun Camp, five miles ahead of the Mojave Indian village. It’s rough country, with a few long hills.”
He pointed behind him to a line of Ford trucks, some of which were already trundling up the desert road.
“Six of the trucks will start half an hour behind the field and pick up those who aren’t able to finish. The lead trucks are moving off now to set up camp ahead of us, but the Maxwell House Coffee Pot and a first-aid truck will stop three miles out from the start, and there’ll be another first-aid point at fifteen miles. This time there’ll be three further food and water-stations – at five, ten and fifteen miles. Any questions?”
“Yes,” shouted out the swarthy little Frenchman, Bouin, standing up, “M’sieur Flanagan: no more of your peanut butter sandwiches at the feeding-stations, I beg of you.” There was the customary barrage of jeers and cat-calls from the athletes.
“Point taken, and accepted,” said Flanagan, smiling, looking over his right shoulder at Willard, who nodded. “And remember, everyone: tomorrow’s your first rest day. I reckon you’ve earned it.” He checked his watch, then looked up. “You have thirty minutes before the start.”
The Trans-Americans broke up and settled themselves into small groups as Flanagan’s crews finished the dismantling of the midday camp. The German team moved away from the central area in front of the Trans-America bus to sit apart on the sand in an arc around their team coach, Volkner, who spoke to them quietly and earnestly. A couple of hundred yards away, not far from the road, O’Rourke, the plump American coach, could be heard haranguing his team. To their left, the Finns Pentti Eskola and Juouko Maki sat beside each other on a rock, neither saying a word, while the Frenchmen Dasriaux and Bouin jabbered and gesticulated to each other only a few yards away. The Trans-America trucks continued to trundle off across the desert, the Maxwell House Coffee Pot wafting Rudy Vallee’s “Whiffenpoof Song” out through its loudspeaker system into the dry desert air, to no one in particular.
The start was an exact replica of the morning stage. Muller strode into the lead immediately, this time sucking in Bouin, Eskola, Martinez and the Mojave Indian, Quomawahu, as well as four other unknown runners. Doc shook his head as he padded off with Thurleigh, Morgan and McPhail, and they spent the first three miles together, running evenly through the stretched field, in the mid-fifties.
“That guy Muller must have Montezuma’s Revenge,” Doc growled, moving up behind the All-Americans who were in the first fifty places, for their early running had been more cautious than that of the morning.
Muller started to sweat early, but the German’s rhythm was still relentless, and the first five miles were accomplished in a swift forty-five minutes. As before, Martinez pranced alongside the German, this time on his left, seemingly untroubled by the fast pace. Quomawahu, who had finished twenty-first in the morning leg, was a tiny nut-brown figure in a white head band who had dominated loc
al Mojave desert runs for many years. The Indian’s stride was unusually short, but low and economical, and he scuttled across the sandy desert like a frightened beetle.
Bouin was another of the front runners. Hirsute and mustachioed, he ran with the fluidity and certainty of a three-time Olympian, occasionally looking to his side over his left shoulder to check on Muller. The four other runners who had stayed with the leaders for the first part of the stage faded after only five miles and sank back into the heart of the field.
Eight miles in just over an hour and ten minutes, and of the leaders only Bouin stopped for water. Muller was still pressing hard, his only sign of effort being a muscular twitch at his right temple. Bouin looked at the German’s back, shrugged then trotted on. Surely, he thought, Muller’s pace would drop.
Behind them, in thirtieth position, Doc could see the leaders three quarters of a mile up, on a curving incline ahead.
“Look,” he said to Hugh, pointing ahead. “They must be five minutes up on us and still going away.”
The All-Americans had also noted the position of the leading runners and had slowly started to ease away from Doc’s group and from the German trio. Doc let them go. He would have to make a decision on whether or not to pull Muller in within the next three miles.
Some way back, Kate Sheridan had early in the stage sought out Charles Fox and settled in on the right side of the old man.