Running Full Tilt

by Michael Currinder

  “It’s challenging in a different way,” he said as he pulled his right leg behind his ass in another contorted motion.

  “Final advice?”

  “Beware of the Dark Side.” He stood, jumped up and down a few times, shook out his shoulders, and stretched his neck. “Don’t try to be a hero and run too fast, especially at the beginning. Follow Gorsky’s orders and you’ll be fine.” He nodded toward the distance as we walked over to join the team. “Overconfidence, overambition, pride—consume you they will,” he warned.

  Gorsky was marching across the football field, a clipboard in one hand and some large timing contraption in his other. It was the first time I’d seen him without his shots and discs.

  “One more thing,” Curtis said as he laced up his shoes. “I hope you didn’t eat too much lunch.”

  Gorsky told us to take a seat on the bleachers and announced our agenda for the day, a confusing prescription of numbers, distances, times, and recovery periods that sounded like a foreign language. He then scanned the team, taking attendance. “Where’s Stuper?”

  “He had to go see a doctor,” Rosenthal answered.

  “Is he injured?” Gorsky asked, marking his clipboard.

  “He’s got a bad case of poison ivy,” Rosenthal explained. “We were running in Forest Park the other day and he ducked into the woods to go to the bathroom. He wiped himself with it.”

  “Geezus!” Gorksy winced, sounding actually concerned. “Is he all right?”

  “Yeah.” Rosenthal went on. “At first he wouldn’t tell his parents. He thought it was herpes because he’d just seen pictures of it in health class. But then we helped him connect the dots back to Forest Park.”

  “And reminded him that the only way you can get herpes is through sexual contact,” Burpee continued.

  “That’s not entirely true,” Curtis interrupted.

  “It is in Stuper’s case,” Rasmussen chimed in, making the rest of us break into laughter and additional discussion.

  Gorsky finally had to squelch the conversation. “That’s enough, gentlemen! Report to the starting line in fifteen minutes ready to begin. And let Stuper’s little problem serve as a cautionary reminder to you all: Leaves of three, beware of me! If it’s shiny, watch your hiney!”

  I joined Curtis as he headed out for a slow jog and asked him for a simpler explanation of the workout and, more important, what was in store for me in terms of pain and agony. “We’re going to do a short warm-up, then a few strides, then run eight 800s, two laps,” he explained. “Gorsky told you to run at a little over a five-minute-mile pace. I’ll be running faster, so don’t try hanging with me. At the end of each 800, you’ll have a two-minute recovery. Keep moving during that time, a light jog down to the end of the track and back. Just breathe deeply and focus on getting ready for the next one.”

  “That doesn’t sound so bad,” I told him. “That’s only four miles. What’s the big deal?”

  “You will soon find out, Leo,” he said, laughing. “The workout really doesn’t begin until the sixth interval. We’ll see how you’re feeling then.”

  I could hang with Curtis on most distance runs, so I figured it would be no problem keeping up with him for these shorter distances. We started the first 800, and those two laps felt like nothing, so despite the times Gorsky had prescribed, I locked in behind Curtis and ran with him. The first lap was a breeze, but on the second I began to labor on the homestretch. The pace was fast, much faster than any previous run we’d done, and by the end of the first interval I was winded. Curtis was breathing hard, but he was composed, his eyes and mind focused.

  The two-minute recovery elapsed in a heave of heartbeats, and by the time Gorsky was counting down the final five seconds of our short rest, I was still out of breath.

  After the first lap I was gasping, and even though I hung with Curtis, I was toast by the end of the second 800. I spent the next two minutes bent over, clutching my knees, praying I wouldn’t throw up lunch. I started the third interval and stuck with Curtis for half a lap before pulling into the infield and blowing out cafeteria lasagna, much to the amusement of a few football players.

  I jogged slowly across the inside of the track, weaving my way through the field, avoiding football players colliding with one another, hoping I could make it to the starting line in time for the fourth interval.

  “You’re done for today, Coughlin!” Gorsky barked from the bleachers.

  I waved Gorsky off and shook my head. I gave him two thumbs up, breathed in deeply, and spat out the sour residue of puke still lingering in my throat. I was determined to recover in what few seconds remained.

  “Leo,” Gorsky shouted. “I said you’re finished. Off the track. Now!”

  “Happens to every guy sometimes this does,” Burpee gasped in Yoda as he stepped to the starting line beside me for the next interval. “At one point or another we’ve all tried to slay the dragon. You try to hang with Kaufman during intervals and you’re guaranteed to lose your lunch.”

  Curtis’s face was flushed, but he was still standing, tall and strong, awaiting the command from Gorsky to begin the next interval. Still fighting for air, I finally accepted I was done.

  “Get over here!” Gorsky yelled.

  I stepped off the track and slogged my way toward the bleachers and sat down beside Gorsky. As he waved his arm and gave the command for the next interval to begin, I felt like a failure.

  “That’s what you get for being a jackass,” he muttered. “Had you followed my instructions, you’d still be running, and maybe even running with Kaufman by now.”

  I felt beat up for the second time in one day.

  I watched Curtis glide across the backstretch. “Find your rhythm, Kaufman!” Gorsky screamed. He was midway through the fifth interval, looking stronger than he had on his first.

  “How long have you been running?” Gorsky asked me. His eyes were focused on his clipboard, his pencil scribbling numbers.

  “Since summer.”

  Our eyes followed Curtis around the back turn. “That guy you’re trying to keep up with has three years’ experience on you. He’s one of the top runners in the state, Leo. The fact that you can hang with him on a seven-mile run is impressive, but I hope today’s workout taught you that you’re not quite on the same level as him…yet.”

  Gorsky patted me on the back, then redirected his attention to the guys still running. Compared with Curtis, the rest of the team was tragic. Rosenthal crumbled and flopped to the ground after each interval. Burpee staggered around in circles like guys in the movies who’ve been shot several times in the gut. Rasmussen was practically walking. The workout was now at a stage where Gorsky had Curtis on a separate program, taking off when Gorsky raised and dropped his arm. I sat and watched. I felt ready to get back out there and join him.

  “I’m good to go again,” I told Gorsky.

  “No. You’re done for today, Coughlin. Just keep watching and see if you can learn something,” he said. “He’s pushing himself, but he’s able to sustain it for the entire workout. That’s because he’s got strength, and he knows his body. You’ll get there, Leo. But not if you run like you did today. You need to respect the process.”

  Gorsky glanced back and forth between his stopwatch and Curtis. “Now get out of here. Go do a cooldown and get yourself ready for tomorrow.”

  After Curtis finished his last 800, I joined him to jog the trail on the periphery of campus.

  “What did you learn today, Leo?” Curtis asked.

  “I learned that you can kick my ass.”

  “What you lacked today was a little humility and respect. Give Gorsky his due. Listen and do what the old man tells you to do. Even better, listen to what I tell you to do,” he said with a smirk. “Patience you must have, my young padawan.”

  “Enough with the Yoda,” I told him. “Seriously, Gorksy just happened to mention that you’re one of the best runners in the state.”

  “That is a fact, Leo. But I�
��m not interested in being one of the best,” he told me as we began a slow jog around the campus. “I want to be the best. And to do that, I could use a little help.”

  “I’m not following.”

  “You’ve certainly got talent, Coughlin, and if you’re patient, this could be an amazing year. For both of us.”

  I had no idea what Curtis meant, but I nodded. The thought that Curtis was depending on me felt good, but it also made me a little nervous.

  13.

  I MOVED UPSTAIRS for a few weeks and slept in the spare bedroom, but that had its own drawbacks. While I appreciated having my own space and a door I could lock during the night, it also meant sharing a thin wall and narrow hallway with my parents.

  Dad woke at the crack of dawn, blasted NPR, and did a twenty-minute calisthenics routine that included grunts, groans, and other bodily sounds. Mom’s prep for her early shift at the hospital somehow involved opening and slamming every closet, cabinet, and dresser drawer in the room multiple times. At night I listened to them bicker while their television blasted the local news, followed by Letterman’s opening monologue.

  And since the spare bedroom was directly above the room I shared with Caleb, he discovered a way to keep me awake, too. He began tapping the ceiling below me with a broom handle to resume our bedtime conversations.

  “Leo.” I could hear him through the floor. “Leo,” he repeated. “Leo, who put butter on Monica’s nose?”

  While it was creepy hearing his voice coming out of the woodwork beneath me, and I knew I shouldn’t be encouraging him, I’d still answer his questions.

  “Leo, what car God drive?”

  I suppose I could have tried earplugs, but his voice sounded sad and sorry, like he missed me. But I was still wary of sleeping next to him in a dark room.

  Then Caleb had his first seizure.

  Epilepsy added a whole new dimension to Caleb’s problems. His seizures were like crazy lightning storms in his head that made his neurons zip and zap dangerously and caused his body to convulse like a flopping fish.

  I’d just walked into the house after a brutal workout, a nine-miler followed by strides and abdominal work. The bike ride home nearly did me in. I made a quick cheese sandwich to hold me off until dinner and had just collapsed on the couch to watch some Jeopardy! when I heard thumps and clatter coming from the bathroom. I figured Caleb was probably going ballistic about something, like maybe we had run out of Comet cleanser, but then the sound softened and began to follow a rhythm and tempo unlike his usual tantrums.

  I got up off the couch and treaded the hallway carefully to the bathroom. Caleb was lying on the floor thrashing and writhing. His eyes were rolled back in the sockets, eyelids fluttering, and he was making this terrible wheezing sound like he couldn’t breathe. Both arms were stiff and extended, and his head lifted and thudded against the tile floor.

  “Caleb!” I yelled, but even as the words came out I realized he clearly wasn’t conscious. I knelt beside him, held his head, and continued calling his name. I didn’t have a clue what was going on, or what I was supposed to do. His lips and face began to turn a strange bluish gray and I started shaking, thinking he might die any second. Just as I was about to bolt for the phone, the thrashing and wheezing began to subside. Finally, he let out this strange moan, and his breathing relaxed and softened.

  Caleb lay still on his back for a moment, looked at me, and blinked in confusion. Then he just closed his eyes and drifted into a deep sleep. I bent closer to him and pressed my ear to his face and listened. A warm wind brushed against my cheek, and I knew he was breathing.

  I sat beside him for a few minutes, then gently roused him. He opened his eyes again, reached for my hand, and squeezed it. He gazed for a long moment with this expression on his face like he wanted to tell me something, but then he slipped back into deep sleep.

  I grabbed a towel from the rack, folded it, and placed it under his head, then ran to the phone. Mom was virtually impossible to contact when she was on shift at the hospital, so I called Dad.

  When Dad arrived twenty minutes later, Caleb was still asleep on the bathroom floor. “What exactly happened?” my father asked, holding Caleb’s head in his lap. Caleb stirred lightly but didn’t wake.

  I told Dad about the thrashing, the wheezing, his face turning blue. Caleb tried to get up but then struggled and lay back down. In all my life, I’d never seen my brother so frail and weak.

  Dad bent down and gently shook him. “Are you all right, Caleb?”

  He was groggy. “All right,” he repeated. “What happen?” His glazed eyes looked around in confusion at the bathroom, at my father, and then at me.

  Dad looked pretty shaken. “I’m going to call your mother,” he told me. “Don’t let him try to stand up.”

  When Dad left the bathroom, Caleb closed his eyes and began thrashing and wheezing again. I shouted for Dad, and he cradled Caleb’s head in his lap again until the episode ended. He then placed my hands under Caleb’s head in the same way. “I’m calling an ambulance,” he told me, and dashed down the hall.

  —

  I kept my eyes fixed on the ambulance’s red flashing lights in front of us and wondered whether my brother was still alive inside. “What happened to him?” I asked.

  My father was quiet. “I have no idea, Leo,” he finally said. “My best guess is that your brother just had a few seizures.”

  Mom met us in the emergency room. She made me recount the entire story a couple of times, then the three of us just sat in the waiting room in silence, except for the drone of the evening news playing on a television set suspended from the ceiling.

  Mom perched her purse on her lap and wrung her hands gently. I couldn’t tell if her lips were trembling or if she was mumbling prayers. Dad paced and pretended to study some old black-and-white photographs on the wall of the hospital during its construction. His eyes were glazed, his mouth slightly open, and he rubbed his chin.

  I picked up a few magazines and flipped through the pages and tried to read, but I couldn’t concentrate. So I got up and wandered over to the reception desk, where there was a large aquarium. I don’t know why, but watching fish just swim around in a tank and listening to the bubbles always calmed me. I studied the movements and patterns of the mollies and tetras as they slipped and darted past one another, and wondered why fish never collide with one another. At the bottom there was a little catfish perched on a white stone.

  It made me think about the time a few summers ago when Caleb and I went fishing at my grandparents’ farm. It was early evening, and we were drifting on the still pond water in silence. I remember wondering what it would be like to talk to Caleb if our situation were different. I wanted him to be like an ordinary older brother who would tell me stupid jokes and give me advice about stuff. Instead I was baiting his hook with a grasshopper, teaching him how to handle a fishing pole, and listening to him talk about fans on Greyhound buses.

  “Keep an eye on that bobber,” I told him. “If it moves, yank your line,” I said, mimicking the motion with my hands.

  “Keep eye on bobber,” he repeated. “Right!”

  I baited another grasshopper on my hook and tossed my line into the water. We waited and waited, and just when I was getting ready to quit, my red-and-white bobber began to wiggle and dance. It disappeared below the surface and my pole curled and I thought it was going to snap. The line pulled tight in one direction and I yanked hard in the opposite. It took forever to reel the fish in, but eventually I got it out of the water and hauled it over the side of the boat.

  It was a catfish, the biggest fish I’d ever caught. Together Caleb and I watched that fish flip and fight on the boat’s metal floor, neither of us saying a word. When the fish finally stopped moving, I slowly moved my hand toward it, but I knew full well I wasn’t going to touch it. Then it started flipping and tossing itself again, and I panicked. It lay there between Caleb and me, its gills slowly flapping, exposing flaming-red tissue.


  All of a sudden Caleb bent toward it and pinned it with his right hand to the floor of the boat. Then, for the first time I could ever remember, he looked at me with this expression in his eyes that told me I shouldn’t be afraid. With his hand holding that fish down, I pulled the hook from that catfish’s mouth, then reached for the bucket and scooped a little water from the pond. Caleb lifted the fish and gently slipped it into the pail. The catfish thrashed for several more seconds, thumping its tail fin against the metal, and then surrendered.

  Caleb and I eventually paddled to shore, removed our fishing gear from the boat, and headed back to the house. I carried the poles and Caleb carried the bucket, and he laughed out loud the whole way home.

  “Leo, who put butter on Monica’s nose?” he asked me.

  “Caleb did.”

  “Who put cat in mailbox?”

  “You did.”

  “Who drew train tracks on dining room floor?”

  “You did.”

  “Caleb get in big trouble! Right!”

  We were side by side but in two different worlds.

  The one thing Caleb had known for sure was that I was too scared to put my hand on that fish. He might not understand a lot, but he’d understood that.

  By the time I wandered back to Mom and Dad’s corner of the waiting room, I could tell by her crossed arms and his clasped hands that they were in the middle of a spat.

  “I can’t believe we’re even discussing this, Elise,” Dad whispered. “We don’t know the facts yet. Let’s just wait and hear what the doctors have to say.”

  “I’m a nurse, Niles! I think I have a pretty good idea of what’s going on.”

  Dad finally acknowledged my presence with a nod before turning to Mom. “I never said you didn’t know what’s going on, Elise. I’m just asking you to keep an open mind.”

  Mom bit her lip.

  I took advantage of the break in the action. “What are we talking about here?”

  Dad glanced at Mom and raised his eyebrows, his offer for her to initiate the discussion, but she shrugged and shook her head. “Nothing really, Leo,” Dad finally said. “Your mother is just worried about what this might mean for your brother.”