Before I knew it, I had slipped back into fourth. I was looking at the backs of three guys who couldn’t touch me during the cross-country season. I wondered what the hell was going on, but I didn’t hesitate to react. I slowed a bit to give the pack some room and then veered to the outside so I could pass again on the first turn. When I heard Curtis yell, I second-guessed myself but continued to accelerate. By the time we hit the backstretch I had a five-meter gap on the pack, but I also got slapped by a nasty headwind that came out of nowhere. I held my lead until the turn and then heard the rumble of the pack closing in. My shoulders tightened, and my legs felt like the blood inside was turning into sludge.
The pack caught me on the curb, and three runners eased by me. I could see the finish line now, just a hundred meters ahead, and I was able to dig deep enough to hang tight to the back of the bunch. But with fifty meters left, two runners dropped an extra gear and pulled away. I managed to pass one guy and finished third in 4:32.
I staggered ten meters past the finish line, bent over, grabbed my knees for support, and gasped for oxygen. “Not bad, Leo,” Curtis said, lifting my arms from behind so I could stand upright.
“That didn’t look like too much fun,” Isenberg commented, taking a bite from his hot dog.
“It wasn’t,” I said, wheezing. “It totally sucked.”
“Switch to discus,” he told me. “Just three throws—I didn’t even break a sweat.”
“And you didn’t make the finals, where you’d have the grueling task of throwing three more times,” Curtis informed him. “Maybe you would have broken a sweat then.”
Isenberg gnawed some more on his hot dog and considered Curtis’s insult. “I’m content with my debut,” he finally answered.
“Keep walking, buddy,” Curtis encouraged me.
“I’ll see you guys later,” Isenberg said. “I’ve walked far enough today.”
“I don’t get it,” I whined to Curtis. “I killed those guys in cross-country. Today they’re right with me. And we trained all winter.”
“What you learned just now is that you ran a respectable 4:32 1600. And hopefully what you’ll remember is that there are plenty of other guys who can do that, too.” He laughed. “Start wrapping your head around that.”
I looked up into the stands and spotted Mom and Dad and gave them a simple thumbs-up that I was okay.
“How come your parents don’t sit next to each other?” he asked me.
“I don’t know,” I told him. “How come your parents don’t even show up?”
“Touché.”
I gathered up my sweats, and Curtis joined me for a slow jog to shake out the lactic acid in my legs. “If you run this race twenty seconds faster, nobody will touch you,” he told me.
It took a moment to process. My legs began to come back to life, but my lungs still felt roasted. “How am I going to do that?”
“Your first lap was pathetic, Leo,” he reminded me. “As a matter of fact, so were the second and third.” He was now laughing again. “You’ve just got to run faster. Go from the gun. It’s as simple as that.”
We jogged in silence for a few minutes. “I don’t know, Curtis,” I finally told him. “That really hurt.”
“It’s always going to hurt. How much pain are you willing to take?”
Curtis put in a far more impressive performance than I did in his season debut. Despite his sad soliloquy earlier that morning, he won the 3200 easily. Granted, the competition wasn’t as stiff as in the 1600, but he still outpaced the rest of the field easily by nearly twenty-five seconds.
Track was a completely different animal. I got my ass handed to me that day in the 1600, and again in the 800. It didn’t help at all that Mary had shown up to witness it.
She hung out until after the meet, wanting to give me a ride home. Curtis took our bags and tossed them in her car. “We’re running back to school,” he told her. “Lover boy won’t be available for another hour.”
I looked at Curtis, and I looked at Mary sitting comfortably in her car. “Sorry, Curtis,” I told him. “You’re running this one alone. I got beat up enough today.”
“You’re getting soft, Coughlin,” he chided.
“I promise extra miles tomorrow,” I said as I slammed the door.
“Leo Coughlin standing up for himself!” Mary laughed as we left Curtis in the parking lot. “Never thought I’d see the day.”
“I probably should be running, but I’m trashed,” I admitted.
“Let’s do something,” she said.
“I’m sorry, Mary, but I promised my parents I’d pick up Caleb from swimming. He’s at the Mid-County Y.”
She tapped her fingers on the steering wheel. By now I knew that meant that her mind was at work. “Let’s pick him up now, then pick your car up at school,” she offered. “I’ll follow you to your house. That way we gain at least an hour.”
“There’s one slight glitch in that plan.”
“What’s that?” she asked.
“Caleb might have an issue if we arrive early and cut into his swimming time.”
She dismissed my concern. “No worries. I’ll handle it.”
I spotted Caleb launching off the high dive, doing his signature corkscrew, when we arrived. From the balcony waiting area, I let Mary observe Caleb’s routine for a few minutes. Of course, the window provided a noise barrier, so Mary missed the sound element of Caleb’s performance. Still, she looked pretty bewildered. “That’s quite an impressive display,” she remarked.
“My father describes it as a unique combination of athleticism and performance art.”
“I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything like it.”
“You’re not alone, Mary. He has perfected this high-dive routine over the years, and he’s made it truly one of a kind.” “What is he yelling?”
“You don’t want to know.” Caleb tended to scream his deepest, darkest confessions while in midflight, but I figured Mary didn’t need that information.
We watched him jump a few more times.
“I’ll go get him,” she finally said.
“Good luck with that.”
Caleb spotted Mary on the deck as he climbed out of the deep end. He ran over to her and said something while pointing to the diving board. Then he scrambled up the ladder and thundered off the board, this time without screaming. She applauded when he surfaced, encouraging him to continue.
I watched as he plunged into the water and lingered below the surface. I wondered why he loved swimming so much. Was it the moment of impact and splash? Did he simply love moving in a liquid medium? Or maybe it was because water provided him with a nearly noiseless world, where vision blurred and there were few distractions?
After Caleb’s fifth jump, Mary met him at the ladder and said a few words to him. He calmly collected his towel and disappeared into the locker room. Somehow she had convinced him to cut his pool time by twenty minutes. Astonishing.
“What did you say to him?” I asked her when she returned.
“I just asked him if he wouldn’t mind if we left a little early.”
“That’s it?”
She put her arms around me and smiled. “Leo, I don’t think what I said had anything to do with it. I think it’s how I said it.”
“You need to teach me how to do that.”
“No,” she answered, wrinkling her nose. “I need for you to take a shower.”
“That seems like a fair deal.”
36.
ONCE TRACK SEASON GOT INTO FULL SWING and winter was gone for good, it felt awesome to fully immerse my mind and body in even more intense training. The rest of April brought a heavy dose of intervals: 300s, 400s, 600s. We always finished with a series of 150s to simulate the ends of races. Curtis insisted I needed to build the muscle memory necessary to dig deeper, reach for that last gear, and harness and unleash a kick. Even when every ounce of energy seemed to be sapped from me.
My body was strong from winter training. The cou
ntless long runs in the cold and darkness began to pay off. My skin, muscles, and bones were hardened by the snow, cold, wind, sleet, and slush. Curtis still owned me at any distance beyond the 1600, but he could no longer keep up with me during interval sessions. He decreased the recovery period, but I still outran him. So he devised workouts where he took various leads and I chased him down, and I developed new skills and strategies to apply in races.
As he promised, the 1600 did become my race. I followed his advice and ran the first two laps more aggressively and pushed the pace, and sure enough nobody had the strength left to run with me in the end. I ran 800s and 3200s to improve my speed and strength, but I owned the 1600. By mid-April I had shaved thirteen seconds off my personal best, winning the 1600 at the Kirkwood invite in 4:19.
“Not bad, Leo,” Curtis congratulated me. “But your work is far from done.”
We decided to opt out of the bus ride home after that meet to get in a slow seven-miler.
“Take ten or eleven more seconds off and you’ve got a legitimate shot at winning state,” he told me.
I counted off ten seconds in my head as we continued running. The distance covered in that time seemed overwhelming. “Ten seconds is impossible, Curtis.”
He laughed. “Once it gets even warmer in May and this wind disappears, you’ll be a different runner. Believe me.”
We took a right turn onto Clayton toward school and were rewarded with one more cold blast of April wind.
I counted off ten seconds again and again in my head as we took turns breaking the headwind on our run home.
Ten seconds seemed quantum.
37.
WHEN DAD FINALLY EXITED the interstate to Fort Leonard Wood, we still had to drive another five miles past one dismal strip mall after another. At a brief stop at a traffic light, I surveyed the local businesses: a couple of gas stations, a Chinese restaurant, a few convenience stores, the usual assortment of fast-food choices, some pawnshops, and a whole bunch of flashing red signs advertising massage parlors.
“What’s up with all the massage parlors?” I whispered to Dad.
“There are about ten thousand young men on that military base. And very few women. Do I have to give you a lesson on the birds and the bees, Leo?”
“Please spare him, Niles,” Mom mumbled from the backseat.
“Never mind, Dad,” I assured him. “I think I get it.”
The Fort Leonard Wood entrance was heavily guarded by several uniformed soldiers. Dad rolled down the window, explained who we were and why we were there, and handed over some paperwork. The soldiers gave us a stamped pass, and we were allowed entry.
Caleb had arrived the day before by school bus. Kids like him were coming from all across the state to compete in the Special Olympics, and Fort Leonard Wood was providing the venue and lodging.
I’d never been on an army base before, but it was nothing like I had imagined. Most of the soldiers we saw didn’t look much older than me. They looked pretty pudgy and pasty, not exactly the prime specimens featured in those commercials that promised to sculpt your abs and sharpen your computer skills if you decided to become a member of the armed forces. And their uniforms weren’t the neat, crisp, shiny numbers you see on TV either.
“Is this it?” I was in disbelief.
“What were you expecting?” Dad said. “This isn’t exactly West Point.”
Dad, Mom, and I passed one identical building after another. Whoever painted this place clearly didn’t have too many colors to choose from. I’d never seen so much brown and beige in my life. “What was being in the army like, Dad?” I asked.
“Let’s just say I wasn’t cut out for the military,” he mumbled. “I doubt you are either,” he added.
We followed signs for the Special Olympics through a maze of roads to a large athletic field. There was a cinder track that had definitely seen better days and a set of tired-looking wooden bleachers in dire need of a coat of paint. The competition began in a half hour, and the place was starting to fill with spectators.
We took our seats as the athletes were herded into lines on the far side of the track. A small flag corps marched to midfield for the playing of the national anthem. The sound system malfunctioned, and the music got painfully loud and distorted, but everyone held their hands over their hearts and managed to keep their eyes fixed on the flag.
The athletes paraded down the track in front of the bleachers where my parents and I sat packed beside other families. They waved to the crowd while a military march piped through the sound system. Mom’s eyes got all misty when she spotted Caleb. “He’s come a long way,” she reminded me softly as she put her arm around me. “Trust me on that, Leo.”
I waved to Caleb and gave him a thumbs-up. His event started in an hour. He was running the 1600—the same event I ran, of course.
“Why don’t you go give your brother some encouraging words,” Dad told me. “He can use all the pointers he can get after that last fiasco.”
Dad was referring to Caleb’s qualification meet a couple of weeks back. He was running against another kid from his school named Kevin. The entire race, Caleb ran on Kevin’s heels. Every time he’d begin to run around Kevin, Caleb would suddenly slow back down and tuck himself back behind Kevin. Something was definitely up, because Caleb was running slower than usual and should have easily kicked Kevin’s ass.
“KEVIN SAY DON’T PASS! RIGHT!” he told us after the race. “STAY BEHIND KEVIN! MAKE KEVIN ANGRY! RIGHT!” Fortunately both Kevin and Caleb got to move on to this event.
I spotted Caleb on the infield, sitting next to Kevin. “I think we went over that with him, Dad. He knows he’s not supposed to let Kevin win.”
“It’s not going to hurt to remind him again, Leo. Just go warm him up,” Dad encouraged me.
I left the bleachers, walked out to the field, and asked Caleb to follow me beyond the track, toward some barracks. When I told him we were going to do a little warm-up, Caleb accelerated several strides and broke into a series of crazy hops, skips, and jumps like a wild bull that had just been released in a rodeo. I thought this might be the first time Caleb was actually nervous about something.
“You need to calm down a bit,” I warned him. “Just jog slowly next to me.”
“JOG SLOW! RIGHT!” he repeated.
“Try not to skip or hop, Caleb,” I directed him. “Try to run like this,” I said, taking long strides and slightly exaggerating the pumping of my arms. Caleb ran beside me, his form still awkward, but with the skipping and hopping toned down.
“POKE LEO’S EYEBALLS OUT MIDDLE OF THE NIGHT!” he yelled.
“Let’s not talk about that now, Caleb.”
“SORRY, LEO! WHAT SORRY MEAN?” he asked.
“Sorry means God not punish you,” I assured him.
The last thing I wanted right now was a major temper tantrum, Caleb chasing me around a military base trying to kill me. I tried to redirect him. “When that gun goes off, go fast, but not too fast,” I told him. “Stand beside me and do what I do,” I said to him. “We’re on the starting line, and the starter will say…,” I began.
Caleb loved this part. “MARK! SET! GO!” he screamed, and then began laughing.
“That’s right,” I said, and I was laughing too. “And you want to start about this fast,” I told him, grabbing his hand and pulling him along at what I thought was a manageable pace. We ran about a hundred meters, then stopped and headed back toward the track. “And remember, Caleb, don’t listen to Kevin. You run in front of Kevin. Not behind him.”
“DON’T LISTEN KEVIN. RIGHT!” he repeated.
“That’s right,” I said. “I think it’s almost time for your race.” I walked Caleb over to the starting area and checked him in.
The girls’ 1600 was before Caleb’s race. As it turned out there was only one girl in the entire race, and she was making it very clear to everyone present that she wanted no part of it.
“Margaret does not want to do this,” she
said to herself.
Margaret wasn’t very tall, and she didn’t look particularly athletic. She had planted herself firmly on the ground, her arms crossed, shaking her head and repeating, “Margaret does not want to do this.”
A burly man in jeans and an auto mechanic’s shirt tried to convince Margaret otherwise. He tried to pull her up by her shoulders, but she wouldn’t budge. “C’mon, Margaret, honey,” he pleaded. “You said you wanted to do this. We drove you five hours to get here. We know you can do this, sweetheart! Your grandmother and auntie came clear across the state to come see this. You don’t want to let them down, do you?”
Margaret just kept shaking her head. “Margaret does not want to do this,” she said again and again.
Her father was clearly at a loss. I sensed he was about to lose his patience, so I stepped forward. “Margaret, do you want someone to run with you? Would that help?” I asked her.
It was like I cast a spell on her. Margaret got herself up off the ground and followed me to the starting line, still repeating in monotone, “Margaret does not want to do this. Margaret really does not want to do this.”
I explained the situation to the starter: if he wanted to keep the meet running on time and complete this event on schedule, it was in everyone’s best interest to let me run beside Margaret.
Then her father came over and put the matter in plainer words. “Our family traveled nearly five hours from Rutledge to get here, and her great aunties traveled three and a half hours from Kirksville. We’d really appreciate anything you all can do. For once in her life, I’d like for my girl to win, to increase her confidence. Even if she doesn’t have to beat anyone to do it.”
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