by Deacon Rie
Stephen didn't think the smiling lady was the typical runner someone would expect to get up early on a weekend and take in a marathon. She appeared to be healthy but only because she wore the extra weight well. Though attractive in her youth, her beauty was somewhat concealed by the lack of tightness in her skin. Stephen suspected she may have been someone who recently lost a significant amount of weight and perhaps the marathon was the capstone adventure to a recent lifestyle change. Nevertheless, her beauty emerged from a joyful glimmer, radiating from her calming blue eyes and a contagious smile which even the anticipation of a full marathon couldn't hinder.
"You know what I mean." the man sweetly continued on. Somewhere in his late fifty's or early-sixties, he wore a thick but faded red and off-white plaid jacket, worn out blue jeans and rugged brown boots with scuffed tips that spoke proudly to the years of a healthy work ethic. "I just want you to know how special you are." The man's words rode a slow Southern drawl. "Just want you to know how much you mean to me- to all of us. We'll look for you on the course but don't you feel like you gotta be looking for us. You just be careful and you go about doin' what you need to do. But don't you feel like you have to run fast. I mean you… you just ain't gotta prove nothin' to no one out there today. You just do your best and be careful and don't you worry about a thing while you're out there."
"Daddy…" The young lady tried to interrupt.
He continued on, unfazed. "You just listen to your body and if something ain't feelin' just right you don't go on pushing it or trying to prove anything. You just be careful and you make sure you drink water and you do all the things you know along the way."
She made another attempt. "Daddy…", but it was as if she hadn't spoken at all.
"If anything goes wrong you just tell someone and we'll be there. And we'll be there and we'll be doin' whatever needs to be done. We'll take care of making things right as rain. I just want you to know how special you are to us. And just you don't worry about anything cause we'll be just as proud of you."
"Alright, Daddy," she firmly ended her father's speech. "Now you're just repeating yourself."
"Oh. Sorry about that. I just…" The man gently fumbled his words.
"It's okay. Please stop worrying. I feel good. It's going to be a great day and I know I can do this. I'll be careful and smart but what I need you to understand is that I am going to do this and it's going to be alright." The young lady gave her father a sweet but sassy head tilt. "Daddy, do you hear me? Everything is going to be alright."
"Okay, I know. I'm sorry." He compassionately leaned his head to mirror hers. "Maybe… it's just that this is a long time for you to be out there on your own and I don't want you doin' anything dangerous out of feeling like you gotta prove something."
"I know, Daddy. It's not like I'll be alone. Look at all these people out here!" She extended her arms as if to introduce him to the sea of bobble heads stretching their limbs around her.
"I know you're not alone. I just wish you weren't running by yourself." His jaw clenched and Stephen watched as the man's face drifted from concern and dipped into a deep sadness. The young lady's smile curved into a conflicted grin as she looked up at her father with gentleness. She reached out and touched his forearm. The lively dialogue had come to an abrupt halt. They looked into each other's eyes and continued their conversation in silence.
Watching the man's countenance change under the gentle caress, Stephen found himself struggling to hold his composure. It was the look a father gets when the most precious treasure he has ever held begins to pull away and he knows there is no choice but to let her go. Regrettably, it was a look Stephen knew well and it brought a familiar pit back to his stomach. Though it seemed a bit more drama than one would expect before a marathon, Stephen had learned long before that there were no limits to the emotional peaks and valleys which could come from a daughter's touch. It was true; the gentle caress of a daughter's hand in those tender moments could take a parent back to the hospital room where they counted each of those tiny fingers for the first time. Stephen related to the girl’s father and the difficulty he felt trying to accept her dismissal of parental hyper-concern.
The father murmured after a minute, clearly struggling to hold it together as his little girl grasped his hands together. "We're all proud of you. Every one of us. Every…" His voice broke and the man's lips pressed together as if they were a dam threatening to crumble behind the weight of long-held emotions.
"Daddy, it's alright. I love you." She embraced him with a warmth that removed all hint of the morning's chill. She pulled away and began stepping backwards into the crowd. Her face erupted into a big smile and she thrust her fists into the air as she called out to her father. "Don't worry. I'm going to be great today!"
"You're already great." He lurched up and yelled above the heads, blowing her a kiss before quickly turning to make his exit through the crowd and up to the curb. With the young lady still looking in her father's direction, Stephen saw the sleeve of her father's thick plaid jacket rise above the crowd and thrust an exaggerated thumbs up.
Feeling the pit begin to settle, Stephen appreciated how the warmth of their conversation had distracted his own mind from the constant cut of the raw breeze. The young lady turned away and began rolling her neck like the other bobble heads as she made her way to an open area next to Stephen.
She caught Stephen's eyes and gave an introductory, "Hello."
"Good morning," Stephen said with an awareness that proximity had made him an unintentional but obvious eavesdropper to her sweet conversation moments before. Stephen decided to open the door for conversation with a friendly smile. "Sounds like your dad has the pre-race jitters."
"Yeah. I think he's more stressed about this race than I am." Her voice was pleasant and encouraging. "You'd think he was the one lining up in this crowd!"
Stephen thought of all the unsolicited advice he had received leading up to the marathon and how annoying it was when someone began a conversation with questions about whether this would be his first marathon. It seemed like such a dumb line of questioning. Of course this was his first marathon. He tried to imagine what sane person would do this more than once? Stephen tried to think of something less intrusive to discuss, if for no other reason than to distract from his earlier faux pas of failing to disguise his eavesdropping.
"He seems very supportive. And encouraging. It's good to have caring people like that cheering for you."
"Yeah. It's cool." she responded with a friendly smile and flipped her leg backwards into an open palm to stretch a quad muscle.
Maybe it was the arctic sensation. Perhaps it was just too early in the morning. Regardless, Stephen‘s innocent politeness began pouring out and it was simply too late to stop the rookie train from leaving the station. "So, is this your first marathon?" His face flushed unnoticeably in the cold.
The lady looked up at Stephen. "Yeah. I just started running a few months ago. My sister, Amy, got me hooked up with this crazy thing." The young lady looked off to the side as if to sarcastically stare down an invisible third party to the conversation. "Actually, she signed me up for this torture and then she told me about it."
"Wow, that's one way to get someone on board!" Stephen chuckled.
"I'm Carrie, by the way," she replied while extending her hand.
Meeting her hand, he responded, "Stephen."
"It's nice to meet you, Mr. Stephen. So, what about you? Ever done one of these before?"
"No. This is my first. I'm actually somewhat shocked it's not blatantly obvious. I feel like I'm standing out like the sore thumb in this crowd."
"Oh no, it's obvious. I'm just trying to be polite!" Carrie responded with a cheeky laugh. "I'm kidding, of course. I get the feeling there are more of us sore thumbs out here than other fingers."
"That's encouraging; I think. Thanks for the boost in confidence." Stephen did start to feel a little more comfortable in his discomfort.
"Oh, you’ll want
to take confidence from someone else besides me. You know, like one of these people around here who call themselves runners. I'm so nervous. I've gone to the bathroom like eight times already this morning."
Stephen's chuckle was accompanied by a release of anxiousness and it came out louder than he intended. "But you're here, right? That's got to count for a lot."
"Seriously," Carrie stiffened into an over exaggerated resemblance of a Queen's Guard at Buckingham Palace. Her neck tilted and her eyes rolled to peer into Stephen's, "I may very well die out here."
"Well, at least you made it this far."
Letting go of the drama performance, Carrie responded more lightheartedly, "Oh, I'm finishing. There's no doubt about that. I may just die afterwards but I tell you, I am running this thing. And if I can't run, I'll walk. If that doesn't work, I'll crawl. Heck, you may even see me rolling before too long. But by golly, I am absolutely finishing this thing."
Stephen loved her playful confidence and in between his laughter he continued, "So your sister signed you up and she's not running with you. How does that work?"
"Well, she has a pretty good excuse, I suppose. She was always the fit one. Miss Health Nut who's was married to her juicer since she was a teenager. Pureed vegetables were never my thing though. I'm more of a dairy-gal. As in like, the cookies-n-cream type of dairy!" Carrie smiled naughtily at the thought of her guilty pleasure. She had an infectious smile and with the mention of her sister came a tenderness which told Stephen that she and Amy had a special relationship.
"She convinced me to go on a jog with her one afternoon, which was more of a ‘walk with heavy breathin' for me, by the way. So, while we're out there she tells me she just signed us up for a marathon. Just like that. Like she had just made me breakfast or picked up my laundry. You know, like, ‘Hey there, that's a cool shirt you're wearing. Oh, by the way, you're running a marathon.'"
Stephen wasn't sure if this sarcasm was meant to be funny, but Carrie was cracking him up and he welcomed the opportunity to laugh in light of the grueling task ahead of him.
She continued, "But you know, last year I started exercising and changing what I ate. I gave up ice cream." Carrie's voice dropped an octave as she revealed her displeasure about that particular element of her life change, "And after a while, I got to running. Of course, lots of running." Carrie emphasized the comment with a dramatic head swing. "Oh Lord, so much running." Her feigned torture was worthy of comic's stand up routine. "But you know what? The next thing you know, here I am. 75 pounds lighter, wearing tights and wasting perfectly good dream time!"
"75 pounds? Really?!?" Stephen wanted to be encouraging but was genuinely impressed.
"I know; right! That's like kicking a hobbit off your back!"
"That's awesome." Stephen thought about the time he had successfully lost 10 pounds and was genuinely impressed. "Sounds like you had a pretty memorable year."
"Yeah. You could say that." Carrie seemed to drift off into her own thoughts and Stephen took it as his queue to continue stretching.
Feeling the awkwardness of standing next to someone with nothing to do but watch the lull of the conversation drift into the air Stephen broke the silence, "So, is your sister meeting you somewhere to cheer you on?"
Carrie continued looking at the bobbing heads in front of them. "Oh yeah. She's cheering me on alright. She darn well better be or I'm gonna kick that skinny little rear of hers." Stephen saw Carrie's demeanor change as her eyes began to drift above the sea of bodies like she was expecting to see someone. She shook her shoulders as if knocking off a sheet of ice and asked Stephen, "Alright- your turn. So, who twisted your arm to get you here on a perfectly good day for bagels in bed?"
Was it the challenge? A test? Therapy? A desire to see if he could persevere; do something big from start to finish? After everything he had come through, did Stephen really have anything to prove to anyone? And if he did, could a running twenty six miles actually prove anything of value? It could, he decided; to himself at least. He needed to know he was strong enough to follow through and finish the challenge he had begun. He needed to prove that to himself. This motivation for showing up to the starting line revealed more insecurity and indecision than he felt comfortable sharing with a quasi-stranger. Instead, he summarized his explanation with, "A friend mentioned it and, I guess it seemed like a good idea at the time."
Carrie politely chuckled, "Yeah, I suppose there are worse reasons for lining up and freezing your behind off with a few thousand other people in the wee hours before the crack of dawn."
Stephen thought about how some things really did seem to be without purpose at times. More than once he had questioned whether or not running this race actually held any purpose for him or anyone else. "I think maybe it's something I've wanted to do for a long time but never really got around to doing it."
"Kinda like a bucket-list thing?"
"More like a challenge to myself. I've thought about doing this a few times before but life had other plans, I guess."
Carrie twisted her back in some sort of cross between a stretch and a bounce and said, "It's amazing how somehow life just always seems to get in the way just at the wrong time. There's just always something. But I think sometimes you just have to show up anyways."
"Yep, I think you're right about that. Sometimes we just have to show up anyways," he repeated. As their conversation blended into silence, Carrie's words lingered in his ears. Nerves tingled from the anxiety of the upcoming run and the prolonged wait was punishing.
Hurry up and wait. After all this time, you're still hurrying up to wait.
The present situation was not too unlike the Army's unofficial motto about hurrying up to wait. The awareness resurrected a memory of his waiting with sensitive nerves. He looked at the people in front of him and saw the bodies of the other runners bounce and wiggle with attempts to stay warm in the crisp of the cold dark morning. It unconsciously bothered him to see the loose formation and the undisciplined lack of bearing as the crowd moved around without an apparent purpose. Stephen scanned the crowd and recalled the memory of his first military deployment. In his mind, he began to see the forward-facing bodies of the runners reorganized in proper rows and columns of a military formation. Their heads were stilled and all eyes were locked to the front. Hundreds of uniformed soldiers stood in formation awaiting final instructions to board their designated ‘herky-bird," the C-130 transports which had gathered on the tarmac in preparation for taking his unit overseas.
Mile 1
A solid fist thumped hard against Staff Sergeant Stephen Lantz' right shoulder. The unexpected jolt yanked his attention and nearly knocked him off balance and out of formation.
"Relax, Lantz. You're going to pop a bra-strap." Sergeant First Class Royce Mayweather, Stephen's platoon sergeant always had a way with words. Stephen often considered it to be a misguided way, compounded by the fact that words were never in short supply around Mayweather. Spending much of his active duty time with the Fifth Ranger Battalion had honed a naturally quick wit and earned the man an advanced degree in sarcasm.
It is common knowledge that service members make significant personal accommodations for their families while their country prepares for war. For Royce Mayweather, accommodations were complicated. So he routinely left them out of the equation when volunteering for assignments which offered a taste of adventure. The fact that adventure often required unaccompanied duty was a consequence Mayweather often neglected to consider. He had passion for the military life. Passion for the Army. Passion for the training. A genuine passion for the intensity of a combat theater. But the man also loved his wife and he was determined not to repeat the mistakes of his own father. The man who's life in a prolonged Naval special forces career was as much a mystery to young Royce as was his death.
After a dozen years, the small print on the sign up form for Army adventure began to reveal itself and the heavy toll on his marriage reached a breaking point. When Mayweather's wife decided
she could no longer be married to both the Army and her husband, she laid out all the cards and told him to make the call. Thankfully, by providing a taste of the life he loved, switching over to the Army National Guard became a compromise which allowed him to stay attached to the military while keeping Mayweather married. More importantly, it kept him sane. And here he was again, leading another platoon on their path to Army adventure. Stephen knew Mayweather's wife was grieved over the anticipation of another deployment. There was little doubt she regretting having ever approved the "hardly-ever-deploys" National Guard, as it was known before the September 11th terrorist attacks. But approve she did and to Mayweather it was like having a hall pass on exam day.
Now, at o'dark-thirty, with hundreds of soldiers readying on a freezing tundra someone dared to call a tarmac, Mayweather was having way too much fun for Stephen's taste. Rolling his shoulder to work out the sore spot from Mayweather's wake up call, Stephen seethed at how completely off guard his platoon sergeant had caught him. Though the real pain came from the fact that Mayweather had left before Stephen could deliver a sharp quip without making it obvious he was breaking ranks. That was alright, there would be other opportunities. Ranger or not, the man had to sleep at some point. Thankfully, Stephen was patient and had already plotted a suitable response for his longtime but antagonistic friend.
Stephen looked down his row with a gradual but not overly obvious tilt of his head to see his men; his duty, his responsibility. Immediately to his left, Jonesey looked nervous. Stephen knew it wasn't something he needed to address immediately. Once they were boarded on the planes to the pre-deployment training station, an abundance of harsh ribbing by Corporal Ambrose would give Jonesey the boost of confidence he needed. Leonard "Jonesey" Jones and Duncan Ambrose grew up across the street from one another and had been close friends since elementary school. They were a couple of high school baseball stars who did everything together. Both stemming from proud patriotic families, it was no great surprise to either family when a couple of weeks before graduation, Leo and Dunc simultaneously told their families of their intention to enlist in the Army. It was a race to the phone as excited mothers hurriedly rushed to call each other, causing phones to ring busy at each house. Their fathers, having seen similar phone exchanges take place over the years, stepped out onto their respective front porches and greeted each other with a reassuring nod and proud wave.