Flanagan's Run

by Tom McNab

  “Get him up,” said Doc.

  Martinez and Doc pulled the German into a sitting position. He was not breathing and his eyes were closed.

  Doc put his fingers at the side of Muller’s neck.

  “Hell,” he groaned. “No pulse.”

  He stood up and peeled off his top jersey.

  “Lie him on this,” he said. They laid Muller down on his back on the jersey.

  Doc knelt and hit the German hard on the left side of his chest with the side of his fist. There was no response.

  “What the hell are you doing, Doc?” asked Morgan, kneeling to join him.

  The older man did not reply, but instead hit the German hard again, then put his ear to Muller’s chest.

  He cursed. “Still nothing.”

  He hit a third time – harder – thumping as if hammering on a table, and again placed his ear to Muller’s chest.

  Doc let out a sigh. “It’s beating.” He stood up. “How far ahead is the truck?”

  “About a couple of miles at most,” bellowed Morgan, raising his voice against the screaming wind.

  “Get ahead – and get Doc Falconer back here pronto.”

  “What about you?” asked Hugh.

  “I’ll stay till Falconer gets here. I’ll catch you up, never fear.” He bent down again over Muller. Seeing their uncertainty, he added, “Get a move on, you bastards, or this guy’ll die!”

  It was enough. The three runners trotted off down the slope, leaving Doc with his ear still to Muller’s chest.

  The old runner watched them go. He looked down the mountain at the six-mile-long stream of runners labouring through the thinning snow towards him and felt his own spirits sink. Doc sniffed and brushed the crusty snow from his eyebrows. He had no idea what he would do if Muller’s heart stopped again. He put his arms under Muller’s shoulders and dragged the German across the road into a recess in the vertical rock face and propped him up against the side of the rock. Then he sat beside Muller, pulled the limp young German over and hugged him close to his steamy, sweating little body. He pulled the runner’s cheek to his. “Live, you bastard,” he whispered into the young German’s ear.

  He sat watching other competitors pass and make their way down the mountain as the snow thinned, sat and felt his body lose heat as he pressed it closer still to Muller’s. He could see Hugh, Morgan and Martinez close in on the finish, with the Trans-America truck standing beside the road, see the quickening of activity as Dr Falconer hastily assembled his equipment and set off by ambulance towards him up the mountain.

  In a matter of minutes Maurice Falconer was with Doc and Muller and had his stethoscope pinned to the German’s chest.

  “You’re sure his heart had stopped beating?” he said.

  “Certain,” said Doc.

  “Well, it’s going at a hundred and forty beats to the minute now, so what the hell did you do?” Falconer took his stethoscope from his ears.

  Doc removed his jersey from around Muller and pulled it back over his head.

  “I just gave it a little encouragement,” he said, and began to trot down the snowy road towards the finish. Doc ended up in ninety-fifth position, twelve minutes later.

  Six hours later, as the weary Trans-Americans ate dinner or rested in their tents at the end of the day’s second stage, Flanagan, Willard and Dr Falconer sat drinking hot coffee in the Trans-America caravan at Silver Plume.

  There was a knock at the door.

  “Come in,” shouted Flanagan, lighting a cigar for Falconer, who sat at his side, scanning a result-sheet.

  It was Doc Cole, now dressed in his day clothes and jacket, his face still red from the day’s exertions.

  “Thanks for coming, Doc. Sit down,” said Flanagan. He drew from a cabinet a brown stone jug and pulled out the cork.

  “Brandy?”

  Doc shook his head. “No thanks. I leave that to the St Bernards. An orange juice will suit me just fine.”

  Flanagan beckoned to Willard, who located a carton of juice in the icebox and poured Doc out a tall glass.

  “A tough day,” said Flanagan, nodding over his shoulder at the window as the mountain winds whistled outside, the snow again matted on the windowpane of the caravan.

  “About the toughest yet,” said Doc, sipping his drink. “Be glad to get to Denver.”

  “The press boys have been badgering me for an interview with you,” said Flanagan. “Any objections?”

  “Nope,” said Doc. “No objections. I’m rested up now.”

  “Before you talk to them there’s one thing I’d like to ask you. Why did you stay back for Muller? That young pup’s been showing you his rear end for the last nine hundred-odd miles.”

  “It was the only thing to do,” said Doc. “Up there on the mountain Muller wasn’t a competitor any more, just a sick young guy in one hell of a lot of trouble. I think anyone would have done the same.”

  “Some wouldn’t. Not back where I come from,” said Willard.

  Doc continued to sip his juice. “One thing you’ll learn, Willard, as this race goes on, is that though athletes are the most selfish guys on earth, there’s no way they’d let a guy like Muller die if they could help it.”

  “But I hear he was dead anyway,” said Flanagan. “His heart had stopped beating.”

  “That’s not always the same thing,” said Doc.

  “No,” agreed Falconer, tapping his cigar on the ash-tray. “Doc’s right. It isn’t always the same thing. But how in God’s name did you get his heart started again?”

  Doc handed his empty glass back to Willard.

  “Back in the Mexico City marathon in 1912 a guy’s heart stopped beating after the race. We had an Indian there, Tom Longboat. I’ll never forget what he did as long as I live. He thumped that guy half a dozen times on the chest until his heart started beating again. Longboat said it was an old Injun treatment. So that’s what I did with young Muller.”

  Falconer shook his head, smiling.

  “Folk medicine,” he said.

  Doc spread his hands. “But it worked. That’s all that matters. So what else did you want to see me about, Flanagan?”

  Flanagan lifted a list of race results. “How far down do you reckon you finished on Morgan, McPhail and Martinez on that first stage?”

  “I reckon maybe about fifteen minutes,” said Doc.

  “We put it closer to eighteen,” said Flanagan, looking at Willard, who nodded. “Willard and I have talked it over with all the leading runners, including the Germans. We’ve decided to take eighteen minutes off your time today. Are you happy with that?”

  Doc’s lined face creased into a smile. He stood up. “Delighted. As far as I know that’s never happened in any race before.”

  “But then,” said Flanagan, “we don’t see many competitions with runners stopping to bring other guys back from the dead.”

  “I suppose not,” said Doc. “Look, I don’t want to seem ungrateful, Flanagan, but could I see those press boys right now? I’m beginning to feel bushed.” He reached the door, then turned.

  “One point, Dr Falconer. Next time you see him, have a look at Muller’s eyes.”

  “How do you mean?” asked Falconer, drawing on his cigar.

  “Last time I saw eyes like that was in New York.”

  “What caused it?”

  “Cocaine,” said Doc, and closed the door quietly behind him.

  15

  Denver: A Thousand Miles On

  Doc Cole’s rescue of Claus Muller in the Rockies made headlines throughout the United States, was briefly reported on in the sports pages of the London Times, and Flanagan even secured a further mention, albeit an unfavourable one, from Dr Goebbels in Der Angriff. The incident turned a slow, snowbound stage through the Rockies into a front-page story, while in the daily reports on the sports pages column inches grew immediately. Newspapers which had, up till then, merely taken agency reports of the race at once despatched journalists to Colorado to catch up with the
Trans-America. The press corps had soon swelled to over three hundred and Flanagan had hurriedly to commission another press bus.

  The crowd surging and jostling through the lushly-carpeted halls of the Cow Palace, Denver, towards Flanagan’s “Thousand Mile” press conference, was composed of athletes, journalists, coaches, team managers, politicians and showbusiness celebrities – anyone, indeed, who felt he could profit from the Trans-America’s growing fame.

  Flanagan himself sat on an improvised dais, flanked by Willard, Dixie and Falconer, and the leading runners, whilst in the audience their coaches and managers sat amongst the press, which included a sprinkling of local journalists from Colorado and Nebraska.

  Flanagan was still playing his part in style. Every one of the three hundred and twenty journalists had been provided with an initialled leather briefcase, and inside each case was a Trans-America fountain-pen. The conference room, which frequently housed Republican caucuses, was lushly furnished: red velvet curtains, black leather chairs, Persian carpets. If the Trans-America was in financial difficulties, there was no sign of it in the hospitality that Flanagan was providing.

  Willard banged hard three times with a gavel, and the buzz of conversation slowly died. The conference was under way.

  The first journalist to get to his feet was Carl Liebnitz. Liebnitz had become, by general assent, the press’s unofficial spokesman, and they looked to him to lead the way.

  “First, a general question. How do you see the race so far?”

  Flanagan stood up, smiling. “Well, Carl, in return I’ll give you a general answer. For the past year or so, ever since I first announced the Trans-America race, every smart-ass in the track and field world has been telling me it couldn’t be done. First, they told me that I would never get two thousand of the world’s best runners to pick up traces and travel all the way to California to run. Well, I got ’em. Then they told me that no one would sponsor the race: I got the Trans-America Bank to put up two hundred and fifty thousand dollars. They said next that we would never get the runners across the Mojave Desert. We got over a thousand across, even though they did get stopped for a while by a million gallons of desert rain. Now look at us, over a thousand miles east, with half my runners still in the ball game. Carl, you ask me how do I see the race so far? I’d say we’ve done a pretty good job.”

  Liebnitz took off his glasses and began to polish them. “Thank you. I’d next like to ask Dr Falconer a question. What have been your main medical problems?”

  Maurice Falconer rose and pushed back his hair.

  “The main problems,” he said, “came in the early few days after Los Angeles when we had the first shake-out of the really unfit. These were men and women who should never have been in the race to start with. They were shipped back to Los Angeles before they could get into the Mojave and come to any real harm.”

  “Is it true that Flanagan paid out twenty thousand dollars in medical bills?” continued Liebnitz.

  Falconer turned to look at Flanagan, who nodded.

  “The exact figure was twenty-one thousand two hundred and fifty-one, mainly for sprains, blisters, stress-fractures and heat exhaustion,” said Falconer, consulting a small notebook in front of him.

  “You’re telling me that there have been no heart attacks?” pursued Liebnitz.

  Falconer smiled and also removed his glasses, lightly rubbing the bridge of his nose as he did so.

  “I am,” he said. “Mr Liebnitz, I’m afraid that even the medical profession doesn’t have much idea of what the human heart can handle.” He rapped the table in front of him. “The heart is tough,” he said. “And immensely adaptable. Even in the past month men who started out with normal resting pulse-rates of sixty-eight beats per minute have come down to close on fifty. Gentlemen, I have seen, in the past month, soft, flabby men of a hundred and sixty pounds change to lean, fit animals of a hundred and forty pounds, capable of running over mountain and desert at over six miles an hour for six hours a day.”

  “Are you saying that the medical profession should be learning something from what’s happening out here?” pursued Liebnitz.

  “I sure as hell am, Carl, if the ladies here will forgive the phrase,” said Falconer. “Our Trans-Americans are showing what Americans were like back in the old frontier days – what men could be again if they regularly pushed their bodies hard. Remember, gentlemen, that the human body is above all a running body. That’s what it was intended for, not for sitting behind the wheel of a Buick, or smoking a pack of cigarettes. These men are an example of what we can be at our best.”

  Liebnitz nodded and scribbled on his pad before sitting down again.

  “Could you be just a bit more specific about the main injuries, Doctor?” asked Frank Pollard, the old hand from the St Louis Star.

  Falconer picked up a sheet of paper at his side.

  “Thirty-five per cent are foot-blisters. Twenty-five per cent are Achilles’ tendon injuries. Thirty per cent are cramps, sprains and muscle-strains. Ten per cent were such ailments as sunburn, stomach complaints, and the like.”

  “No heart-strains at all? You can be categoric?”

  “No. As I think I indicated before, to damage these men’s hearts you’d have to extract them and beat them with a club.”

  “What about the German, Claus Muller?” asked Pollard, his pencil pointed towards Falconer.

  The physician flushed and looked down at the German team manager, Moltke, whose face also coloured. The German official showed no other signs of even having heard the question. “Herr Muller,” Falconer said slowly, “is now in the Denver City Hospital, and at the last report was responding excellently to treatment. Furthermore, it is not my view that he suffered a conventional heart attack.”

  “But his heart did stop beating?” said Pollard.

  “I believe so,” said Falconer. “But it is also my belief that there may have been other contributory factors which the Denver medical staff are now checking out. Next question, please.” To his relief, there was no further follow-up.

  “Kowalski, Philadelphia Globe. How many men will make New York, do you reckon?”

  Falconer replaced his notes on the table in front of him. “It’s difficult to say,” he said. “A month ago, before we set out, I wouldn’t have put the figure at much more than a couple of hundred. Now I think that well over six hundred will make it.”

  “What about Miss Sheridan?”

  Falconer motioned to his left. “Miss Sheridan is here on the platform,” he said. “Why not address your question to her?”

  Kate Sheridan stood up and looked down nervously at Mike Morgan, who was sitting beside her on her left. She was dressed in neat blue running kit, and a number of the reporters stood up to get a better view of her. Some of the Colorado and Nebraska reporters, who had not seen her before, whistled.

  “How many miles have we covered so far, Mr Flanagan?” she asked.

  Willard answered for Flanagan. “One thousand and twenty.”

  “Well, up till the date we started, I had covered only five hundred miles in my whole life,” said Kate.

  “And how long would that be?” shouted a young reporter from the back of the hall.

  “Gentlemen, that would be telling,” said Kate, her eyes flashing. There was laughter as she continued. “So if someone had told me then that I would be in Denver a month later, with a thousand miles of running under my belt and about one thousand men in pieces behind me, I would have said they were nuts. But I made it here and a thousand miles from now I aim to be with you at Mr Flanagan’s next press conference.”

  “Have the male competitors been helpful to you?” asked a female journalist.

  Kate nodded. “Without Doc Cole, Charles Fox and Mike Morgan I wouldn’t be here. Doc told me how to run, what to wear, who to run with. Charles Fox dragged me through the first days in the Mojave, before he had to give up in the Rockies. Mike Morgan – well, he bopped me back in the Mojave.”

  “You say t
hat Morgan struck you?”

  Kate smiled. “Only in the cause of sport. I was lying in a ditch, feeling sorry for myself. Mike came back, knocked some sense into me and paced me in to the finish. Yes, you can say that the male competitors have helped me a lot.”

  “Glenda Farrell, Woman’s Home journal.” A severe, angular lady, her greying hair set in a tight bun, stood up. “I would like to ask: have you experienced any . . . social problems?”

  Kate smiled. “I think you really have another word in mind, Miss Farrell. No, when a guy has run fifty miles he doesn’t have much energy left for romance.”

  Glenda Farrell’s lips tightened, but she managed a bleak smile. “You misunderstood me, Miss Sheridan. I was thinking of – specifically female problems.” She sat down, blushing.

  Kate shook her head. “No, ma’am,” she said. “When you’ve got fifty miles a day to get under your feet female problems are something you’ve got to live with. One thing I’ve learnt in this race – there are pains that stop you and pains you can run with. What you call ‘female problems’, Miss Farrell, come into the second category.”

  Glenda Farrell again smiled thinly and took to her feet once more. The other journalists settled in their chairs, expectant.

  “Millions of women all over the world are anxious for you to win the ten thousand dollars offered by my magazine if you can finish in the first two hundred places. You’ve become, Miss Sheridan, something of a symbol for women the world over. How does that make you feel?”

  “It makes me feel great,” said Kate quietly. “A couple of months ago I was just a dancer no one had ever heard of. Now you tell me that women all over the world are following my every step. You should read some of the letters they send me! If what I’m doing helps girls to get out from under and tackle sports – not only sports, but the other things that women have been kept out of – then it’ll have served some purpose, whether I win the money or not.”