Running Full Tilt

by Michael Currinder

“I’m writing a paper on it for biology,” Rasmussen announced.

  “And what have you discovered thus far in your research?” Curtis asked.

  “I’ve only come up with my title so far,” Rasmussen admitted. “I’m calling my work ‘The Rasmussen Phenomenon: The Trickle-Down Effect.’ ”

  I turned to Burpee. “Speaking of urine, what kind of name is Burpee, anyway?”

  “It’s Welsh,” he informed me. “I have not one but two bodily functions in one last name,” he said proudly. “What more could a guy want in life?”

  “That his future life partner feels the same way,” Stuper said, laughing.

  When we pulled into the parking lot, Curtis refocused the conversation. “We’ll have plenty of time to jog the course and squelch the butterflies,” Curtis assured me. “You’ve got to have a plan for this race, or you’ll get killed.”

  “I feel like I’m going to puke. I’m serious.”

  He laughed. “Just do me a favor and make sure and direct it toward Stuper if you’re going to hurl.”

  The parking lot was full of school buses unloading runners in sweats who were lugging gym bags toward an open field bordered by forest and a golf course. Our team set up camp beneath a tall, shady oak tree between the Clayton and De Smet teams. After we dropped our stuff, Curtis and I met up with Stuper and Burpee to preview the course. “We’ll start on the opposite side of this field,” Curtis explained as we headed off in a slow jog. “It’s wide open, so runners get a brief chance to sort and position themselves, and then the course angles toward that tree line we’re running toward now. We’ll follow it over a series of hills for about a mile before we head into the forest down a very narrow trail. That’s where things get interesting,” he told me. “Just jog slowly, shake off the bus ride, and try to settle your nerves.”

  Inside the forest, the path was no wider than two feet across in most sections, and bordered by trees that forced us to run single file. “Once you get in here, it’s going to be virtually impossible to pass anyone. It’s about eight hundred meters of single-track running before it opens up again, so if you get out slow, you’re pretty much screwed.”

  “And after this?” I asked.

  “You’ll find out.” We jogged in silence down the narrow forest trail. There were a few places where the trail was maybe wide enough for two abreast, but Curtis was right—it would be difficult to slip past anyone. The trail eventually opened into the large field where the start and finish were located.

  “That’s it?”

  Curtis laughed. “Not a chance. You run past the starting line and circle the edge of that field.” He pointed to an expanse of baseball diamonds opposite where we started. “Then we repeat the loop. When you come out of the trail the second time, you make a beeline for the finish straight ahead. It’s over before you know it.”

  We jogged the rest of the course in silence, did some light stretching with the rest of the team, and, with ten minutes before the gun went off, put on our spikes and did a few long strides across the field near the start. There were at least a hundred runners competing from schools all across the city.

  Gorsky met us as we made our way to the starting alleys. “How are you doing, Leo?” he asked.

  “I feel sick to my stomach.”

  He laughed. “Nervous is good, son. You should be nervous. If you weren’t, I’d worry about you.”

  My body felt tight. I grabbed my foot, pulled my knee back toward my butt, and tried to stretch my quads.

  “Today you’re just learning what a race is all about, son. What you do today will help you understand what you need to do next time.” Gorsky patted me on the shoulder. “Once that gun goes off, Leo, all those butterflies will go away. Try to relax and have some fun.”

  Curtis was already on the starting line. He waved me over. “Stay with me,” he said, swatting me lightly on the back. “I know you can do this,” he encouraged me. “Just stay right behind me, and you’ll be fine.”

  The race official lined us up in alleys by school, a hundred runners tightly packed behind a white chalk line. At the pistol blast, the pack exploded off the line. We were a mass of elbows and knees churning at high speed. Runners held their line for the first hundred meters before the mass began to untangle.

  I spotted Curtis ten meters beyond me. He had made an aggressive move toward the front of the pack as he promised, so I threaded my way through a mob of red and white singlets to pull beside him. His face was relaxed, his eyes focused toward a distant target. Sensing my presence, he paused his arm midswing and signaled a thumbs-up.

  The pack now began to funnel into a line like a swarm of bees, in clusters of threes and fours. When we hit the dirt path skirting the forest, I saw about twenty-five runners ahead of us, a medley of yellows, greens, maroons, whites, and golds. My eyes stayed fixed on Curtis. He extended his right hand slightly and motioned me to move up as he accelerated. We passed fifteen runners in the next three hundred meters as we headed toward the narrow trailhead.

  Curtis entered first, and I let a gap of a few meters open up between us so I could see my footing. There were five guys ahead of Curtis tunneling single file through the trail. The pace slowed, the tempo steadied, and I began to settle into myself and find a rhythm to my stride and breathing. The warm, dry September air was still, and it packed my lungs. It was quiet now: only breathing, the snap of twigs, and the crunch of leaves and stone beneath our spikes. I focused on the path and Curtis’s shoulders in front of me and reminded myself to relax and drop mine.

  We exited the trail, circled the open meadow, and began the second loop. There were about ten guys ahead of us now, including three way up front. In the open I pulled beside Curtis, and he motioned me to follow him as he accelerated. The first runner we passed was struggling, gasping for air, and made no effort to respond. We passed three more as we made our way toward the tree line and twelve hundred meters of rolling fairway. Cresting the first hill, we snagged three more who had begun to fade. I glimpsed the three leaders beginning their descent down the final hill. I was running stride for stride with Curtis, our breathing strong and steady. Then he suddenly yelled, “Go!”

  I looked at him.

  “Go!” he yelled again. “Go now or you’re screwed.” He swatted my back and I took off.

  I passed a lone runner on the uphill and spotted the three leaders funneling into the trailhead, the final segment of the race. Inside the forest, the bright afternoon light disappeared again, the trail narrowed, and it was quiet. My breathing amplified. The pounding of my heart felt steady and strong, and I leaned forward to glide over the trail, remembering to touch thumbs to index fingers and pump my arms. I spotted two runners just forty meters ahead. I’d made up a lot of ground, so I willed myself to run faster, to catch them before the trail ended.

  A bright light appeared, the end of the forest path, and the runners disappeared from view. Seconds later I was out of the forest, with just three hundred meters of open field to the finish. The guy in first had distanced himself, but I had a shot at taking the other two. My chest felt like it was going to blast open, but I could see the finish. I passed one, but the other guy had another gear left in him and I wasn’t able to close the gap. I crossed the line in third place.

  I stumbled through the chute and turned back toward the finish line. I saw Curtis come out of the forest in pursuit of two guys twenty meters in front of him. His form was steady, composed. He caught them easily and crossed the finish line in fifth. I met him as he walked out of the finishing chute. He pointed to me and raised his hands in question, and I held up three fingers.

  “I think I could have actually won the damn race if I’d taken off a little earlier,” I told him.

  “No doubt,” he agreed. “But not a bad first race, Leo. Not bad at all.” The guy was barely out of breath, and I suddenly realized he gave me that race. No one had ever done something like that for me before in my life, and I wondered what his ulterior motive was. I wasn’t quit
e sure if, or how, I was supposed to thank him.

  We put on our sweats and jogged the course once more to cool down, running the first few minutes in silence. Curtis finally spoke. “Didn’t I tell you it would be over before you know it?”

  “You did,” I said.

  We jogged a few more minutes. “It hurts like hell when you’re doing it,” Curtis said. “But when it’s over there’s no greater feeling than right now.”

  I thought about it for a moment. “Yeah, I think you’re right.”

  We repeated the forest trail one more time, a perfect loop to the day. “You held back today,” I said to him.

  Curtis laughed. “A keen observation, young padawan. It’s my senior year, Leo. I’m treating this season like a chess match.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You’ll see, my friend.”

  Our feet tapped the packed soil, and the fall leaves crunched beneath our steps. “You’re a runner, Leo,” he told me. Then he accelerated up the trail and flashed me a thumbs-up, just like he had in the race. It was the best I’d felt in a long time.

  16.

  THE PHONE RANG at seven on the dot.

  I was sitting at the kitchen table trying to grind out a history essay for Mr. Ohlendorf while Caleb busied himself with sweeping the kitchen floor for the third time. I handed Caleb the phone and listened as he skipped the customary greeting. “WHO IS IT?”

  Besides sharing a bedroom with my brother, I also shared a cell phone. It was part of the deal when my parents finally caved and got one for me, and it wasn’t a problem because Caleb only had one friend who called him. And he called each night at the same time.

  James and Caleb had gone to school together since age ten, and James was more socially adept. He bagged groceries at the Shnucks store a couple of afternoons a week, and from what I could gather, James was one of the few kids in the class who Caleb seemed to get along with.

  The two of them basically had the same phone conversation each night. It was the opposite of a typical phone call, the kind where one person calls the other in order to tell them something or ask for something. When James phoned Caleb, my brother answered the phone and immediately directed their conversation with a series of questions, typically the same ones every time.

  Their conversations were brief, lasting three to five minutes tops, and then Caleb just hung up the phone abruptly without a good-bye.

  “What favorite breakfast cereal?”

  A momentary pause followed.

  “What car father drive?”

  “What car mother drive?”

  “What have dinner tonight?”

  “Who make Mr. Baims the principal very angry today?”

  That question was typically followed by a slightly longer pause.

  “Do you like Cap’n Crunch cereal?”

  “What year born?”

  “Do you have kitty-cat?

  “Have bunny rabbit?”

  “Who put butter on Monica’s nose in the girls’ bathroom?”

  “Where buy groceries?”

  Caleb’s phone conversation was going on longer than usual. The questions he asked were all familiar to me, ones I’d heard him ask James countless times, not necessarily to fact-check but to maintain his compulsive habit and ritual.

  But there were more questions going on during this phone call, and longer pauses after each question.

  “Like Dr Pepper?”

  “Ride Greyhound bus?”

  “What hospital born at?”

  Caleb suddenly put the phone receiver in my hand, grabbed his broom, and began sweeping the floor again. I held the phone a moment, then heard a girl’s voice.

  “Hello? Hello?”

  I recognized her voice. “Mary?”

  “Leo, is that you?” she asked.

  “Yeah, it’s me.” It took me a moment to figure she’d gotten my number from Curtis.

  “Who was I just speaking to?” she asked. “Was that your brother?”

  “Yes. That was Caleb. Didn’t I mention he was a little…on the spectrum?”

  She laughed. “He might be, but weren’t you the one wearing a girl’s swimsuit the last time I saw you?”

  “Maybe we can change the topic? Uh, maybe talk about breakfast cereals?”

  “Well, that was one of the more interesting conversations I’ve had on the phone, or anywhere, for that matter.” She laughed again. “Why does he ask all those questions?”

  “God knows.” I sighed. “He’ll ask a person all these questions about themself, then he catalogs it, and he never forgets it. And then when he talks to them again, he repeats it all back to them, or repeats the questions. It’s kind of like a detective doing fact-checking. Then he’ll ask some more arbitrary questions, and that info goes into the memory bank too. He never forgets anything. Trust me.”

  “That’s fascinating,” she said.

  “It’s a challenge at times,” I told her.

  “Why?”

  “Um…” I had to think a moment because I’d never really had to put it in words. “Maybe because he always asks the same questions. Maybe because his questions are bizarre and unpredictable. Maybe because he asks random strangers inappropriate questions, and I’m the one who has to deal with the situation. Does that make sense?”

  “Yeah, I guess that makes sense.” She laughed softly, then was silent for a moment. “So that’s why your family moved here?” she finally asked.

  “Partly, I guess,” I told her. “He put up with a lot of crap from the kids in the neighborhood.”

  “What did they do to him?”

  “Made fun of him. Sometimes made him do stupid stuff for laughs. There were some real dipshits in that neighborhood,” I told her. “We don’t have to talk about this anymore.”

  “Okay,” she said, and it was silent again. “Leo, did you get my note that I put on your bike?”

  “I…I kind of thought it was a joke.”

  “A joke?”

  “Well, it wasn’t exactly one of my finer moments. In fact, I kind of wish I could wipe it from my memory bank,” I said. “And, if I could, I’d wipe it from yours as well.”

  “So why, exactly, were you wearing a girl’s swimsuit?” she asked.

  I was grateful at that moment that she was on the other end of the phone line and couldn’t see that my face was flushed red, but I told her the whole story, every detail, including running into my father. It wasn’t a proud moment, and I was actually kind of ashamed, but she laughed the entire time. By the end I was laughing, too. Then we hit the dreaded silence again. It wasn’t like I’d run out of things to say. It was more like I just didn’t know what I was supposed to say. This was new territory for me. Thank God she was the one who finally spoke.

  “You’re funny, Leo,” she said.

  “I guess it’s funny now, but it wasn’t funny then. Trust me.”

  “I’d like to meet your brother sometime,” she told me.

  Suddenly I no longer wanted to talk. “Now is not the greatest time,” I finally told her. “He’s been a little off lately.”

  “How?”

  “I’d rather not get into it,” I said.

  “Okay,” she said. “But can I ask you a question?”

  “Sure.”

  “How will I know if your brother really memorized all that information about me if I never get a chance to meet him?”

  The girl was certainly making it easy for me. All I had to do was pull the trigger and ask her out, but that involved letting her into my world. I didn’t like my world.

  Keeping Curtis out of my world was simple. All we did was focus on running. Mary was curious and asking me lots of questions. She wanted to know me.

  “Sorry, Mary, but I’ve got to get going. My mom needs help with something,” I finally lied. “I’ll see you tomorrow,” I said, and the line got quiet.

  “All right,” she said. “I guess I’ll see you tomorrow,” she said, and hung up.

  “Damn it,” I mum
bled to myself.

  Caleb stopped sweeping for a moment, leaned the broom against the counter, and crossed his arms. “WHO MARY!”

  “Mary is my friend,” I told him. “I met her at school.”

  “Mary like granola,” he told me. “Right!”

  “I wasn’t aware of that, Caleb.”

  “Mary like Dr Pepper!” he yelled.

  “Mary like Dr Pepper,” I repeated. “I think Mary also might like me, but I was too chickenshit to ask her out.”

  Caleb laughed. “CHICKENSHIT! RIGHT!”

  I trudged down the steps to our bedroom and felt like thwacking myself in the head a couple of times, just like Caleb did when he was pissed. Mary had clearly put the ball right over the plate, but I hadn’t had the nerve to swing.

  17.

  I RAN INTO MARY A FEW TIMES at school the next week. Our class schedules, coupled with the school hallways’ crazy traffic patterns, provided few opportunities for our paths to cross. And even when chance did provide that rare moment to flirt, I basically came across like a bumbling fool. The truth was I basically froze up whenever I saw her. I got this woozy feeling and my cheeks started sweating.

  On Wednesday afternoon I checked out of Ohlendorf’s class in the middle of a lecture to use the bathroom. I spotted Mary at the end of the hallway chatting with a few friends. When I gave her a wave, she seized the opportunity and pretty much cornered me.

  “What’s going on?” she asked.

  “I’m just taking a little break from a deep lecture on the ideological and military differences between the States and the Soviet Union during the Cold War.”

  “Ohlendorf?”

  I nodded.

  She smiled and sighed. “I suffered through him freshman year,” she recalled. “Does he still only make eye contact with the far right corner of the ceiling?”

  “Yeah. I’m starting to wonder if the guy has two lazy eyes.”

  “Whatever it is, it’s unsettling,” she said. She then tapped the top of my shoe with hers. “Curtis mentioned that you guys have some big race here on Friday. My friends and I are going to come watch it.”

  “Cool,” I said. With those words a sudden tidal wave of nausea washed through me and lasted all the way until the gun blasted to start Friday’s race.