Race Across the Sky

by Derek Sherman

  He opened the front door to find Janelle on their couch, beads of sweat making their way down the smooth skin of her temples.

  “Get the car,” she whispered.

  Shane ran for her blue gym bag and helped her out to the Civic. Her body felt foreign and awkward, this body he had known for years. At the street she tightened her jaw.

  “Are you uncomfortable, or is it real pain?”

  “I’m having contractions. Don’t be an asshole.”

  These words, reverberating into the bones of his fully formed son, hurt him in a new and profound way. Shane brought the seat belt carefully over her belly and drove slowly over the huge hill of Mason Street as Janelle gripped his wrist.

  At the hospital, a butch nurse laid Janelle on a cold metal table and attached a fetal monitor. The nurse gave it an odd look, tore the paper from the twitching needle, and walked away without a word. More time passed than seemed necessary. Janelle expressed concern, but Shane inhaled easily; there was no problem, because in his life things did not go very wrong.

  When the nurse returned, they were taken to a wide delivery room. An epidural was called for, and Shane ordered out of the room. He wandered to the lobby, looking out the window at its glimpse of the Pacific beyond. He called Fred and Julie, and Liu and Hua, whom he had to dissuade from coming immediately over. He considered finding the number of that copy store in Boulder, but he figured Caleb would ask for information about Lily’s illness, and Shane had no answer for his failure to obtain any. Tomorrow, he promised himself. He made his way back into the warm room where Janelle lay smiling. A nurse was pointing toward a monitor.

  “That green light,” she explained, “is his heartbeat.”

  And Shane was lost in a green bouncing haze. It seemed to him to possess personality, playfulness, eagerness to see him.

  “Ready to meet your little boy?”

  It was happening so quickly; he would have liked some time to inhale. The doctor instructed him to take Janelle’s leg. This he was unprepared for but he felt more connected now, touching his wife’s body, feeling the energy burning from it, as she pushed. And some time soon after, he saw Nicholas’s head appear facedown, covered in matted, thick black hair. He watched the doctor grasp his son’s shoulders and turn his body clockwise, and then in one seamless, sudden burst, this whole being was propelled into his life as if there had never been a moment without him.

  Shane looked to Janelle, her arms outstretched for the writhing baby, and he began to laugh, and every other thought he had in the world was swept out, out into the endless ocean.

  2

  • • • • • • • • • • • •

  “They’re bike riders.” Mack shook his head in disgust. “What the fuck is that?”

  Beside him, Caleb smiled. They were driving a back stretch at dawn, under protection of full blue firs which lined the sides of the road like riot police. Last night they had been at the Rocking Horse Tavern, whose flat screens had been showing coverage of the Tour de France.

  “They go up really steep mountains,” Caleb offered helpfully, “for three weeks.”

  “On bikes. They only ride six hours a day. Surrounded by teammates to shield them from the wind. They have cooks. This shit gets you famous? Lance Armstrong is a national icon, but Scott Jurek works at a shoe store?”

  “It’s a global event.”

  “We should fly over there and run that whole course. The month before they ride it.” Mack turned to him mischievously. “Might show people a thing or two.”

  “That would be fun.”

  Thursday night at the Rocking Horse was a Happy Trails ritual. Friends from their jobs, intrigued running aficionados, and people who just enjoyed drinking with the freaks met them there. The gathering had turned into a standing party, a night for them all to get loose; things could become rowdy.

  The first time that Caleb had attended a Rocking Horse Thursday, he had been confused by the Happy Trails runners’ ability to put down so much alcohol. Pints of microbrew and shots of Beam flowed like air.

  The bartender had explained, “These guys’ metabolisms are insane. Their bodies process food so fast, the alcohol gives them a buzz, then evaporates from their systems. No matter how drunk they get, they’re sober two hours later. They don’t even get hung over.”

  But Caleb enjoyed Thursdays less than the rest of his housemates. Drinking had never interested him. More than a few of his housemates had been addicts of one sort or another though, and for them this ability to imbibe without consequence was a sort of superpower.

  Mack forced the Jeep over a pile of igneous rock. “How many people you think started biking because of Lance Armstrong? That’s how many people will start ultrarunning because of the Yosemite Slam. Once they see you.”

  “Is that what having the Yosemite race on TV is for?” Caleb asked carefully.

  “We shall spark a holy fire. A network of Happy Trails groups, all around the country, thousands of people creating kinetic energy. Can you see what would happen? There would be enough healing energy in the air to close wounds instantaneously. Cancer would end. Emotional trauma would heal like skin. You would fill your lungs with air and be whole.”

  A jarring transition from the dirt road to concrete bespoke the entrance to Superior. There the endless sky was replaced with strung traffic lights and gray billboards for attorneys-at-law. Mack swerved suddenly into a short driveway, throwing Caleb against the side door.

  “It’s time to go mass, brother.”

  Caleb opened the door to a small, ancient storefront gym. Inside he encountered the musk of a century of sweat, walked past old weights, first-generation exercise bikes, ancient metal machines, red mats with exposed yellow padding, on which measureless sit-ups had been performed.

  In the back by the lockers he took off his shirt, leaving on his small blue running shorts, socks, and an old pair of gray and blue sneakers. He took measure of his long thin torso in a mirror, as Mack unzipped a gym bag and started pulling out bottles and placing them inside the old sauna. He opened each of them; later Caleb’s hands would be too wet to do it.

  The sauna was the size of a large closet; it smelled of cedarwood and fungus. Caleb opened the door and stepped inside, heard its hiss and crackle as it fired up.

  Mack raised a fist. “‘Oh to struggle against great odds. To meet enemies undaunted. To be entirely alone with them. To find how much one can stand!’”

  He nodded and closed the door, and Caleb began to jog in place.

  Sweat filled his shoes within seconds. Each lift of his legs came with a deep intake of hot, oxygen-starved air, which scorched his lungs. His pores opened. His brain unleashed torrents of adrenaline, its pain receptors warned his body to stop.

  Blend with the air. Blend with the air.

  His discomfort grew into a sharp pain in his sides. His kidneys, he knew. Caleb found a spot on the cedar wall and stared at it. In his little spot, Caleb found the void. Here he experienced a sort of hyperspace; he registered discomfort, but distantly, the way a passenger inside a train registers landscape.

  But the void held a tricky duality: awareness that he was inside of it made it disappear. And then he was thrust into his body’s miseries. Mack had trained them to develop an unconscious muscle memory to block them from snapping out. This time the void carried him long enough that he did not notice finishing two water bottles as he pounded against the steaming cedar floor.

  Mack tapped on the narrow Plexiglas window and held up four fingers; somehow, he was only a quarter of his way through. Abandoned in a searing agony, Caleb searched for that spot again but saw only a haze of heat. Sweat burned his eyes. Desperately his mind flailed for something to grab onto.

  During a race, he would have goals that would accomplish this: the next aid station, the next climb. Now, there was only depletion, as his sneakers slipped in puddles of
his own sweat. Here he was training for anguish.

  Where was Shane? It had been three weeks, and there had been no word at all. He tried to recall his brother’s exact words: Had he said he would help, had he promised? He could not remember.

  Caleb grabbed for another bottle; the water was hot in his throat. He turned around to face the bench; there was a chance that its long slats of wood might take him on a hallucination for some length of time. But before he could slip into one, Caleb heard a tap on the glass door; Mack was holding three fingers now. He knew they signified some code, but he could not recall its meaning. His kidneys were swelling against his skin.

  If not the wood, if not the void, if not a visualization, then memory might take him from his suffering. He thought of June’s soft face, there, that felt right. He reached out a hand to feel her skin. Bluebird, he smiled. He tried to recall the first time he had seen her.

  He had been on breakfast shift on a windy March morning, simmering the grains in the kitchen, when he had heard a rare knock upon the front door. The house was two miles’ dirt drive from the nearest paved road, and visitors did not appear often. Rae had opened the front door to find a thin woman, her hair like wheat, her eyes wide and blue. She had asked for Mack. In her hands she gripped a dark blue plastic car seat, with a sleeping infant.

  Mack had been out leading a group of twelve through the chilly trails. Rae invited her to sit with them and wait.

  “So cute,” Rae had exclaimed, staring at the baby. “What’s her name?”

  June had smiled shyly. “Lily.”

  “Lily. Beautiful.”

  “How old is she?” Leigh had walked over asking.

  “She’s three weeks.”

  Caleb had stood in the kitchen doorway, squeezing a dishtowel, watching in the way he had watched girls from a high school classroom. The thin woman met his eyes across the expanse of the room and smiled. The energy between them felt as real to him as a rope line.

  “We drove from Taos to see Mister McConnell. I hope that’s okay?”

  John walked over and sat down. “Are you a runner?”

  “Yes. I read his book.” She looked extremely nervous.

  “You want to run with us?”

  “Oh, yeah, but . . . that’s not why we came.” She had hesitated, looking at them all. “I need healing. My daughter does. Do you hear?”

  Caleb walked across the wide room, the scent of pines pouring in through the open windows, to the long old couch. Arriving he heard a sound like a mountain train coming with her every exhaled breath. That was when he noticed how small the baby seemed.

  “Does she have pneumonia or something?” Leigh asked, her eyes narrowing.

  June shook her head. “They thought it was asthma? But none of the medicine works. It just makes her heart race and race. They don’t know what all it is.”

  “Doctors don’t know much,” John commiserated.

  “But I was watching a cable show, and Mister McConnell was on. He was talking about how you build up this energy by running, and it heals you? And I thought, I run. I just thought, I think he can teach me how to help her.”

  “How far do you run?” Rae asked gently, prepared to explain.

  “I’ve done fifty miles.”

  Leigh looked to Rae and raised her eyebrows.

  “Where’s her father?” she asked, glancing out the door at the small rental car.

  “Not with us. Todd left me right before she was born,” June explained plainly. “I got these mood swings . . . I guess I was kind of a beast.”

  “Asshole,” Rae exhaled.

  When Mack returned, he saw them and beamed beatifically; he had a way of smiling that brought a whole room to transcendence. Caleb had pulled himself away for a run in what was left of the mountain snow. Afterward, he looked for the woman and the baby.

  “How long did they stay?” he asked Leigh as casually as he could.

  “They’re still here. They’ve been in Mack’s room for a while.”

  Mack possessed the only private room, next to the bookcase. Walking inside his room he felt as if he had stepped into a warm bath. His sore body began to feel stronger. June and Mack lay on a soft white rug that Mack used for private reiki sessions. They looked up at him.

  Caleb stared helplessly. And saw that the baby’s pale body lay between them. Mack was holding his hands just above her chest, while June cradled her head. June was crying.

  Mack looked up harshly. To come here without an invitation was unthought of.

  Caleb was overcome by a desire to join them. “Can I help?”

  “In the morning, you take June out. See what she can do.”

  “All right.”

  Like a servant taking his leave, he had backed out of the room. After he closed the door he stood in the hall, breathing, for a long time.

  • • • • • • •

  That first run with June was a morning that would replay itself, on other runs, at night, during his dreams.

  He had led her toward the steep open road up to Boulder. Along the tapered trails he would have been forced to lead or follow single file, but here they moved side by side, as he wanted. The wide mountain road steepened, and he inhaled deeply, enjoying the burn through his legs.

  “Wow, I feel like Superwoman or something,” she had laughed. “This altitude’s so much lower than Taos.”

  No one had told her that he did not speak during runs. It was so foreign to him that he had forgotten how to do it.

  “This is actually the first run I’ve been on since Lily was born,” June went on nervously. “I was crazy guilty about leaving her with someone when we left, but this feels good.” She hesitated, glancing at him. “So, am I being judged by you?”

  Caleb grinned. “I wouldn’t know how to judge anybody. What happens is, you can’t build enough kinetic energy to heal like we do if you aren’t running around eight hours a day. People always try to join us, but that’s the part they can’t do. Usually we’d take you out on a group run to see and let the trail do the judging. But that’s been embarrassing for people. It’s better just one-on-one like this.”

  June laughed. “I’ll tell you right now I can’t run for eight hours.”

  “That’s all right. I’m not wearing a watch or anything.”

  “It must be so nice, to have a house full of people who get you.”

  “It’s perfect.”

  “Are you from Boulder?”

  “Seattle.”

  “Seattle. So how did you hear about Happy Trails?”

  He almost told her, but instead he simply described his years in consulting, the depletion in his bones. June had listened, amazed. Other than the occasional customer at her bar, she had never met anyone who had earned what Caleb had, let alone who had walked away from it, to run.

  “Where are you from?” he asked.

  “I live in Taos, but I’m from Arizona. Outside Phoenix. Not a lot of anything, you know, kinetic, going on there. My parents were always in and out of work. My stepbrothers, they were big into crystal, Xanax, shooting guns. I started running to get away from it.

  “I did some 5ks, then tens. Then I started to get super into it. At a 15k I met a woman, she was from Taos. She told me it was mystical. And that word stayed with me, mystical, for like a year. In my mind it meant that Taos had like unicorns and castles, you know?” she laughed.

  Caleb listened as if her words were rare fabric brushing his cheek.

  “After I saved enough for a good start, I drove there in my beater. You know what? I never ran into that woman, anywhere. And Taos is small.”

  “What did you do there?” he asked, so unused to this expulsion of breath while moving. But June had no concern or issues with talking and running.

  “Let’s see, I worked in a ski shop, a dying travel agency, I mean who uses travel
agents anymore? I house sat. And then I started as a server at the Gorge. It’s a bar, near the mountain. A year later I graduated to daytime bartending, and then I got some of the good après-ski shifts. Which is where I met Todd.”

  “He worked there?”

  “When he wasn’t working on mountain crews. He was super thin, with this beard, and this super-wiry energy. People like him. Being with him, it came with a whole circle of friends, and stuff to do, and I wasn’t lonely anymore. I ran for a couple of hours every morning, in the open fields and trails. Todd, with his cigarettes and drinking, he was never encouraging. He came to the finish line when I did my first marathon, but that was it. Three years ago, I signed up for the Jemez Fifty, down in Los Alamos?”

  “Did he come to that one?”

  “Todd wouldn’t even drive me. He said running fifty miles was crazy. But there was a bus of locals going, and the ride was actually so much more fun than I was expecting. People were singing and whatnot and being goofy. I finished way in the back, but I was totally excited that I made it. I rode back with my arms wrapped around strangers. At home, Todd was smoking his Newports, staring at the computer. I told him I finished, and he just mumbled something and left for the Gorge.”

  “Not everyone understands,” Caleb offered.

  June was silent for a spell. They turned up to the top of the road, where Rocky Mountain National Park sloped west. A titian sliver slipped into the sky, and they plunged straight into the trails.

  “I got pregnant by accident. Todd, he told me to stop running. He was really worried about all the jostling. But having this life inside of me, it made me want to run more. I stayed away from rocky trails, but I kept going out every morning.