by Tom McNab
“Fifteen hundred metres, just short of a mile,” said Peter. “That was my main race.”
“Then my answer is fifteen hundred metres.” Grinning Farne pulled lightly on a Havana. “Yes, that’s my idea of a sprint – fifteen hundred metres. Happy?”
“So what’s your idea of a real test of an athlete?” said Peter through clenched teeth.
“The long distances,” said Flacke, scenting blood. He picked up a copy of The Times. “Like this damn race in the States.” He put down his drink and rifled through the newspaper until he reached the sports pages.
“Here we are, my lad,” he said. “C. C. Flanagan’s Trans-America next March. Three thousand one hundred and forty-six miles. Take a bloody Irishman to think up a race like that, says I.”
Peter Thurleigh looked at Farne.
“Is that your opinion too?”
“I should say so,” said Farne. “Three thousand miles – that’s my idea of a bit of sport.”
“Does it say how many have entered for the race?” asked Peter.
Flacke sipped his brandy, then returned to The Times.
“At the present date one thousand one hundred and twenty,” he replied.
“And what would you lay against an English runner finishing in the top six?”
Flacke looked across at Farne.
“I would say that depends on which Englishman we’re talking about.”
“Me,” said Peter Thurleigh.
“Ten to one,” said Flacke. Farne nodded.
“Then I lay ten thousand pounds,” said Peter Thurleigh, standing up. “No need to shake hands on it.”
On the other side of the tent Hugh McPhail could not sleep and instead sat writing a letter to his friend Stevie. How could he explain what it was like to be here, somewhere in the middle of a desert north of Las Vegas, to little Stevie, back in a dark Bridgeton slum? How could he explain the endless daily stream of men pouring themselves into the landscape, crawling painfully East, driven on by a crazy Irishman in a cowboy suit? It was like something out of a Hollywood movie; certainly it was the same terrain, and all that it lacked to make it complete was the menace of Indians lurking behind rocks. He put down his pencil, only the first paragraph of his letter complete, and shook his head.
A hundred yards away, in the luxury of Dixie’s caravan, Kate Sheridan slept soundly. Now that Flanagan had ended his “cuts” she was able to run at a pace which allowed her body to adapt daily. Daily, however, she still managed to pass a few more men, moving slowly towards her target of a place in the first two hundred and a prize of ten thousand dollars. The national press was already speaking of her as the first of a new breed: a superwoman capable of taking on men at their own sports. Only she knew how weak, how uncertain she really felt, never sure that her body or will could stand up to the searching daily tests.
But while some newspapers had taken her up as a symbol of the “new woman” of the Thirties, an Isadora Duncan of sport, some had ignored her altogether, while still others had denounced her as a muscular strumpet – although they changed their minds as photographs of a vibrant, attractive woman started to arrive at their offices. The ladies section of the Amateur Athletic Union of the United States refused to comment on “Miss Sheridan”, beyond observing that she had undoubtedly lost her amateur status. Kate had retorted by saying that she had lost that years ago; a comment which was not reported in the national press. Meanwhile she was enjoying herself immensely. Her body now stripped of fat, her pulse down to a regular fifty beats a minute, she had never felt more alive. The running, far from taking something from her, made her feel stronger. It would all be perfect if only Morgan would touch her. Every day, after the stage was over, they met with Doc and the others in unspoken but understood union. But unspoken and unacted upon it remained.
Two-thirty. The tent was beginning to stir. Half an hour to the next stage, twenty miles across hot, dry, rising ground.
Doc kneaded olive oil lightly into his calves and thighs. They were climbing up to over five thousand feet in the next twenty miles in unseasonable heat, and he would feel it. They would all feel it, particularly those who had not at least a few hundred miles’ training under their feet.
Mean air. The air thinned at these heights – not to the degree that it would later in the Rockies, but, with the heat, enough to stretch them, even at a modest six miles an hour or inside.
He patted Hugh on the knee.
“Take it easy,” he said. “We’re running to over five thousand feet again. Thin air. Slows you down.”
He looked over at Morgan. “Tell the girl too,” he said. “Tell her to take it slow.”
The gun cracked and one thousand one hundred and twenty runners trundled out on to the soft broken road. The sun had not yet lost its sting and Hugh could feel it on the surface of his soccer shirt.
Although they were now moving into mountain country the road itself did not rise steeply. These were quite unlike the mountains of the Scottish Highlands. These mountains were brown and scabby like slag heaps, nature imitating not art but industry. The sandy-coloured hills were cracked and lined, split by endless sun and occasional flash floods. Farther off, Hugh thought he could see the white of snow, but surely that could not be.
Even on this stage the German Muller took the lead, flowing easily out into the still bright desert. This time no one attempted to keep up with him.
Doc, Martinez, Morgan and McPhail joined the leading group, behind the All-Americans and the German team, forty runners strung out over a hundred yards. Kate settled in at the back of the field, her running stride modified to a low, neat, heel-first action.
This time Hugh did not sweat at all. Rather he felt his body begin to burn early on, and he craved water long before the first refreshment point. He looked to his right at Doc. The older man’s body was like that of an insect. He crawled across the broken road, taking up each rut and ripple easily.
On reaching the first water-point Hugh drank in great gulps, but this time there was no satisfaction, no matter how much he took: his body absorbed the water just as the greedy road was absorbing him.
Five miles on, at the next water-point, the heat had not diminished.
The leading group had telescoped to a huddle of men running at a steady nine and a half minutes per mile, with Muller and Stock over half a mile ahead. Hugh could not stop drinking, and even when he splashed cooling water on his face and body it dried immediately. There seemed not enough water on earth to satisfy him.
Between ten to fifteen miles it happened. The field split. Hugh could feel himself become detached, gradually dropped by the leading group, and there was nothing he could do. Doc, Martinez, Thurleigh and Morgan and half a dozen others slowly eased away from him, and Hugh found himself with the Indian, Quomawahu, and a dozen others, struggling, his breathing becoming increasingly laboured.
They were still climbing and the thin air was beginning to take its toll. It was like running in an airless furnace. Soon Hugh was no longer racing; he was simply surviving, moving from one stride to the next.
The telegraph posts. They looked more like crucifixes strung across the brown plain. Hugh thought only from one crucifix to the next. By these painful steps he made his way to the final water-point, five miles from the finish. He drank until his throat ached. Five miles to go. He poured some water on the front of his thighs and gulped down the remainder. He was on his own now, no Doc to pull him through. His legs were heavy, and even after several minutes at the water-point his breathing had not fully recovered.
He had been in this situation before, back in the sour mosses of the Highlands with Duckworth, but never at altitude and never in such heat. Every message from his body told him to stop. After all, it was all pointless. There was always the next stage, and over two thousand miles to go. What did it matter that he stopped and walked for a few miles? But it mattered to him. Back in Scotland he had made a vow that he would never walk. He would run across the United States of America.
Pole
to pole, crucifix to crucifix, endlessly spanning the plain. About him lay the crumbling hills over which shadows now slid like sleek cats, but Hugh no longer knew nor cared. His mouth had completely dried out and hard white foam began to form on the outer edges of his lips. Somehow he was still aware of his hands moving in front of him, his toes below him just passing within vision. Somehow his mind was still working, fighting its own battle, as if there were two selves in senseless debate.
He was dying, for there were miles to go, weren’t there? Miles which his legs could not possibly penetrate. He was alive, for he was moving. He was dead, for the air itself seemed to be poison, destroying his throat and lungs. He was alive, for the blood still pulsed through him, serving his onward legs. He was alive. He was dead. Alive, dead, alive, dead, alive, dead . . .
Hugh fell forward into a dark pit, spent, arms out to his sides, helpless.
“Fifty-fifth,” shouted Willard Clay. “McPhail, Great Britain.”
When Hugh recovered consciousness he was in the hospital tent with Doc Cole and Dr Falconer standing over him. Falconer flicked his thermometer and put it back in his pocket. “A hundred and four point five degrees,” he said. “His blood’s been on the boil.”
Doc looked anxiously at Falconer. “He going to be all right?”
“A week ago I would have said no,” said Falconer. “Doc, do you realize McPhail’s pulse was 205 beats a minute when we brought him in? He must have run the last five miles with a pulse close to 200 and a temperature of over one hundred and five degrees. Crazy!”
He took his stethoscope from his ears to let it rest on his shoulders and pulled his fingers back through his yellow-white hair.
“Have you any idea what you men are?” he said. He did not wait for an answer. “Living laboratories. In these three thousand miles you could provide enough information about the human body to keep physiologists in work for a hundred years. But no, they’ll be sitting back in their labs in their clean white coats, dissecting frogs and rats, when the real stuff is out on the road here. Hell, they could find out more about heat tolerance here than they’ll discover in a million years back in their universities.
“A week or so from now, in the Rockies, they’ll find out more about the heart, local muscular endurance, and the way the body responds to altitude than they’ll get in a mountain of books. Jesus, each runner’s heart will beat fifty-four thousand times a day, every single day of this race! Our scientists have got over a thousand living experiments out there, and none of them gives a damn!”
He looked down at Hugh.
“All of this doesn’t help you much, son. Sure, you’ll be all right. Anyhow, the forecast for tomorrow is cool, perhaps even a touch of rain.”
Doc pulled Hugh to his feet, and, after thanking Falconer, the two men walked out of the tent into the gathering gloom.
“You sure had us worried out there,” said Doc. “Muller blew up, but still made first, Stock just behind, myself fourth. What you didn’t know back there is that the guys in front of you were running even worse than you, so you didn’t lose much time. As things stand, just over an hour covers the first twenty men so far. It’s a real tight race.”
Hugh shook his head. “I can’t face heat like that every day, Doc. It’s not possible.”
“You won’t have to,” said Doc. “The forecast is cool for the next few days. Today’s heat was way out of line for the time of the year. Anyhow, give me your shirt.”
Bewildered, Hugh did as he was told. Doc opened the bag he was carrying and withdrew a thin knife.
“You know all your body needed today?” he said, stabbing the knife through Hugh’s jersey. “Air.” He stabbed Hugh’s shirt again. “Your body couldn’t get rid of its heat. No wonder you couldn’t run.”
He sat down on a rock and continued to pierce Hugh’s shirt with his knife.
“This lets the air get to you and cool the skin. Then you can stay cool.” Doc handed him back his punctured shirt. “Heat,” he said. “It near finished the whole field at the St Louis Olympics back in I904. The only thing that kept Hicks, the guy who won it, on his feet was the slugs of strychnine his manager kept fixing him.
“Then, in 1908, in London in the Dorando race, it was just the same. The sun hit us like a stone and guys were reeling about like drunken sailors. Johnny Hayes, one of our boys, won that one. Funny thing, no one remembers Johnny, ’cept his mother. No, next day the papers were all full of Dorando, Dorando Pietri. They said his heart had moved two inches. Anyhow, Princess Alexandra gives him a cup for bravery a few days later and off we all went on the great professional marathon roundabout. We ran everywhere – the Nile, Berlin, Edinburgh; we even ran indoors at Madison Square Garden.”
“Indoors?”
“Anywhere, just so long as it was twenty-six miles three hundred and eighty-five yards. I ran in some good ones too. The best was the last, a two hour-twenty-nine minute run by the Finn, Kohlemainen, in 1912. I ran two thirty-four, the fastest I ever did. Then a few years later it was all over: the marathon bubble was bust. All of us, Dorando, Hayes, Shrubb, were pros – no way back to the Olympics. Still, we had a few laughs and made a few bucks.”
“Why did you keep running?”
“Just couldn’t stop. Funny thing – when I got drafted in 1917 the army wouldn’t take me – flat feet!”
Doc saw that Hugh had not yet taken his point.
“Hell,” he said. “I know running isn’t a team sport. The biggest load of crap I ever heard was at the 1908 Olympics. We were on the boat to London, first day out. The team manager, an East coast Irishman, name of Gustavus P. Quinn, gets us all together in the ship’s lounge. There we are, big Irish shot-putters like whales, bean-pole high jumpers, quarter milers, just a pair of legs with head on top, and marathon-runners like skeletons on diets. ‘First thing I want you men to realize,’ said Quinn, standing to his full five foot four, ‘is that you are a team, the United States team. Therefore, gentlemen, you must help each other. So I want to see the shot-putters out there putting up the bar for the high jumpers. Middle-distance boys, get yourselves out there and run beside the walkers. All the time, remember, men, you are a team.’ All the fat-arsed noodles around him nodded and filed off into the bar.”
“And what happened?” asked Hugh.
“Nothing much,” said Doc. “The putters threw, ate and drank. The runners ran round and round the boat, the jumpers jumped, and the walkers heeled and toed it round the ship. In track and field you are alone, ’cause this is sure as hell no team sport. Don’t get me wrong. It’s not that I’m not happy when I see the Stars and Stripes go up there on the masthead. Just that it’s only by running for yourself that you can do the best for your country. Hell, what’s a country anyhow? Just a collection of people who live in the same place, most of whom don’t care a dime whether you’re on your way to the Olympics or the moon. But this, the Trans-America, it’s different.”
“How?”
“First, because there’s money at stake, enough money to split with a partner if you win one of the big prizes. Second, because here men can team up and help each other through bad patches all the way to New York. It’s already happening, every day. You see what I’m getting at? How we could work together?”
“But what chance do we have against teams like the Germans and the All-Americans?” asked Hugh.
“The way those Germans are going, not much,” said Doc. “They’ve got a manager, doctor, masseurs. But that’s my point. We’ve got to form teams. That means groups of guys who will split whatever prize money comes their way, guys who trust and respect each other and who’ll back each other up over the next two and a half thousand miles. That’s the only hope for people like us.”
Hugh nodded. “It’s happened already. I’ve heard that Bouin and Eskola have teamed up, and so have Quomawahu and Son.”
“Jesus,” said Doc. “A Frenchman tied up with a Finn, an Indian with a Jap. We’re doing better here than the League of Nations.”
They sat down on their blankets, facing each other.
“So here’s my offer,” said Doc, drawing a circle on the dirt floor with his index finger. He cut the circle in half.
“A fifty-fifty split all the way, no matter what. Say, for argument’s sake, one of us gets hurt, and the other takes the race, it’s still a fifty-fifty split.”
Hugh nodded. “What if anyone else wants to join the team?” he asked.
“Then we both have to agree to their joining. No point in teaming up with someone one of us doesn’t like. Hell, it’s a big enough pot, and I’m sure we can both think of guys we’d like to team up with. But let’s cross that bridge when we come to it. What do you say? Partners?”
Hugh pulled his punctured shirt over his head and tugged it down over his waist. He stuck out his hand.
“Partners,” he said. “Though God knows why you chose me.”
14
Across the Rockies
The Trans-Americans had been the first men to cross Colorado by foot since the Mormons had travelled West, towards Utah, sixty years before, although they were passing through three times faster than ever the Mormons, with their creaking pushcarts, had done. They were pioneers, too, not in the geographical sense, but in a different way, moving daily into uncharted territories of their own bodies and spirits.
Many of the press began to realize this, sensing the difference between the Trans-Americans and the marathon-dancers, pole-squatters and tree-sitters who daily competed for headlines alongside Flanagan’s men. Every state in the Union had individuals or teams in the race, and daily the results made the front pages of local papers, or, where none existed, in the windows of Western Union offices.
The nation’s political leaders had not been slow to take advantage of the Trans-America. The national mine workers’ leader, John C. Lewis, proclaimed that Flanagan’s Bunioneers proved beyond doubt that if all Americans were given a fair day’s work for a fair day’s wage they could bring the nation’s economy back to life. Vallone of the Federal Inter-State Truckers was even more blunt. “Has anyone ever thought of the energy, the sheer horsepower, these men are putting into the roads of the United States?” he asked at a Union meeting. “And we’re supposed to be in a world-wide Depression. If we could put a tenth of that energy into something worthwhile we could cure this whole sick world.” In New York Governor Franklin D. Roosevelt, now deeply involved in the investigation of the administration of Flanagan-supporter Mayor Jimmy Walker, observed that, whilst applauding the achievements of the Trans-Americans, he would review Mayor Walker’s pledges to Mr Flanagan within the week. Avery Brundage, then making his dogmatic way through the American Olympic Committee, was still more outspoken. “The Trans-America foot-race,” he said, “represents the apotheosis of professional sport, the crass exploitation of athletes by unscrupulous promotion.”