Mammoth

by Douglas Perry

  Her legs ached. The camp was farther up the mountain than she realized. She craned her neck, her eyes following the road up and around until the asphalt disappeared into the swampy-green miasma of the forest. She started to run again, but side to side now, to save her hamstrings. It wasn’t much faster than walking, but it felt better. Made her feel more in control. Of course, she would need to pick up the pace or it would take her hours to make it back to Spritle’s. She understood what she had to do; she had to embrace the pain. She pumped her knees and felt the propulsion throw her forward. To really get moving, she had to visualize it. She had to see herself bounding, not zigzagging, up the mountain. Victoria Lane, the Olympic champion famed for training on the steepest hills in the world! Victoria Lane, Wonder Woman’s protégé!

  She closed her eyes and threw a knee forward and out, then the other one, forward and out. Her weight bounced down on the balls of her feet, the Achilles tendons stretching and catching. She could feel the difference, the surge of power. She quickened the seesaw swing of her legs. She concentrated on her hips rotating in their sockets. Air heaved out her nose. She imagined Eileen Blum trying to churn up this road, her stomach bouncing, the waistband of her shorts collapsing under the assault. Tori wondered where that image came from. She didn’t even know Eileen; she had never spoken a word to her. God, could being an athlete be turning her into a lesbian? The fear of it caught in her throat, and she hacked at it with painful coughs.

  She wiped away the thought, brought up a more pleasant one. She thought about the first official race she ever ran. That was better. She saw herself coming over the finish line. She’d never felt anything like that in her life. Everybody looking at her, applauding her. She pulled the finish-line tape off her chest and looked up to find Coach Berman running toward her. He embraced her, swung her around. Pulling back, he held her at arm’s length and squeezed her triceps. He was smiling like a maniac. “I knew you could do it,” he said. “I knew it.” Tori remembered being amazed by those words.

  Just twenty minutes before he said it, at the beginning of the race, she had been certain she would end up dead last. Maybe just dead. All of the girls had sprinted off the line. Sprinted! They did not pace themselves, like Tori and her teammates did during practice races, saving themselves for a kick down the final stretch. These runners bolted along the paved walkway that circled the pond, before signs directed them up a ridge, dumping them onto a dirt path in the woods.

  Tori had sprinted too, because it would have been embarrassing to be left behind in the dust. But she knew she couldn’t last long at this speed. Her feet burned inside her shoes; she could hear the air screaming as it banged down her throat. She felt lightheaded. She was having trouble keeping her eyes open. She became convinced she could hold her form longer if she closed her eyes, let her mind take her away. Not that it really mattered. Tori looked up ahead; she couldn’t even see the leaders. They’d already made the turn into the woods. That’s how far behind she was. The soles of a dozen shoes bounced in front of her like rebukes. Pebbles flew out of their nooks and crannies, off into the air. She counted fifteen or so runners ahead of her. Plus at least a handful more who’d already made the turn. That put her among the very last group of runners, the losers who didn’t belong there in the first place.

  The race had just begun, and she was already blasted, just completely wiped out. She strained to look ahead again, past the girls in front of her, to the turn that led into the trees. I can make it that far, she thought. She could slow down or stop up there, once she was under the cover of trees, where no one would see her give up except the handful of sad sacks running behind her. When she finally made it to the finish line, she could say she fell and twisted an ankle. Everyone would believe that. She closed her eyes so she could will away the discomfort in her chest and stomach and knees. She might miss the turn and accidentally complete the circle back to the starting line like a fool, but she had to take the chance.

  Coach Berman had started the girls’ cross-country team at her school. He had a framed photograph behind his desk of the marathon champion Jacqueline Hansen running along an asphalt road. A dirt field stretched out next to the road and a grey barn stood behind it, like the road separated two dimensions of time. Hansen’s elbows were pressed against her sides—perfect technique—her left leg reaching out for the road, the muscles bulging. “That was the year she won Boston,” the coach said the first time he noticed Tori studying it. “Just a few years before that, just a few years ago, another woman—a friend of hers—tried to run the marathon, and the race director ran after her and yanked her off the course. Women weren’t allowed then. You were born at the right time, Victoria,” he said. “The whole world is open to you.” Tori nodded. She didn’t know who the woman in the picture was. She figured it must be Coach Berman’s wife.

  She learned later that the coach wasn’t married, that he’d never been married. By then, she realized that Coach Berman wasn’t like the other teachers. On the first day of practice, he had read to them from a mimeographed sheet of paper. “We are all familiar with the stereotype of women as pretty things who go to college to find a husband, go on to graduate school because they want a more interesting husband, and finally marry, have children, and never work again. The desire of many schools not to waste a ‘man’s place’ on a woman stems from such stereotyped notions. But the facts absolutely contradict these myths about the ‘weaker sex’ and it is time to change our operating assumptions.” The coach looked up then and smiled at them, at each one of them, these pimply, freckly adolescent girls in T-shirts and shorts, standing in a semi-circle on stork-like legs. That was Senator Birch Bayh, he said. Speaking on the floor of the United States Senate. Coach Berman took off his Oakland A’s baseball cap and wiped his forehead. He followed that by wiping his nose on his sleeve. “All right,” he said. “Let’s get to work.”

  Tori looked up, searching for Mammoth Mountain’s peak, knowing she wouldn’t be able to see it. She pondered that speech. She pictured the look on Coach Berman’s weathered, lonely face as he made eye contact with each one of the girls on the team. The speech had saved her during that first race. She didn’t want to disappoint Coach Berman. That was what drove her on. It was a regional invitational—a big deal. He’d chosen her and only one other girl—PJ, a senior, the best girl on the team—to run.

  Coming up to the first turn, Tori realized that she hadn’t seen PJ up ahead, that she might be one of the few girls behind her. One of the losers. Right then she banished the plan to stop. She successfully negotiated the turn. She was in the woods. She vividly remembered the dramatic change. The sun could no longer blaze at her. It filtered through the trees only in thin, diffuse angles, harmless and pointless. The dirt path was soft, or at least softer than the pavement. The rattling in her head with every stride had ceased. She concentrated on pumping her arms, on pulling her knees up. The girl right in front of her went down. A tree root tripped her. Tori leaped over the girl. Her heart leaped higher. That was one fewer girl she had to outkick at the end.

  She began to feel different. She couldn’t explain it. Like she was watching herself run. Like she was an electronic toy she could control with a remote. She made her knees pump higher and longer and harder. She made her arms pump faster. She could feel the back of her shirt poof out, the air current trapped in there between the fabric and the skin on her back. She imagined her skin glistening. Flashing in the spots of sun that cut through the trees. Girls backpedaled to her, their faces obscured by grotesque masks. Their pain only drove her on. She felt nothing. Nothing at all.

  Even now, all these months later, Tori couldn’t explain how she’d done it. All the other girls came back to her, one by one. She remembered doing mind whammies on them, focusing on the numbers on their backs, locking onto them like a magnet onto metal. Finally, the finish line was in sight, the tape quivering in the breeze. Tori smiled at the memory, one of her all-time favorites. She came u
p on the strangely placed pond, the one she’d admired on the way down the mountain. Okay, she’d actually run a lot farther than she’d thought. She’d gotten all mixed up. She could be back at the camp by nightfall. She looked at the sky. No, not by nightfall. But not too long after that. She wondered why she was going back to Spritle’s Racers. She hadn’t thought about why until now. She was fleeing, that was all. Her feet took her back the way she had come. Well, why not? The coaches would return for her when they realized they didn’t have everybody. They would have to. It was the law or something.

  And if they didn’t? She’d be there all by herself, in the middle of nowhere.

  Tori sang to herself in her head. Silly Love Songs, her favorite song. Some people want to fill the world with silly love songs—and what’s wrong with that? Tori knew it wasn’t cool to like Paul McCartney. The boys at school, if they even knew about the Beatles, dug John Lennon. He was a tough guy; he raged against the corrupt world, the war machine. He pointed out hypocrisy. Even George Harrison had a mystique that made him alluring. He looked crazy, with the beard and the hair and the intense little eyes, but in a good way. She saw an interview he did on television once, and he kept saying “Hare Krishna,” as if it were a secret code. But Paul—Paul was the Beatle their parents liked, their mothers. Well, Tori liked him, too. He seemed like he’d be nice to her if she ever met him. He seemed normal. And his songs made her believe it was possible to be happy, that everybody could have somebody to love, if you had an open heart.

  Tori turned: she was hearing the echoes of her shoes banging along the street, even after she’d stopped. Funny. The wide-open world, outside of cities, did crazy things with sounds. She listened, fascinated, as the tuck-tuck, tuck-tuck tinkled across the evening air. A figure appeared around the bend below her. Startled, Tori screamed. She scrambled up the road, tripping, scraping her hands.

  “Wait!” a voice called. “Wait! Stop—please!”

  It was a male voice, a deep voice, but child-like. Tori didn’t believe it could belong to either of the men she’d seen attack the basketball boy. She slowed and turned around to look at him. He was still a relatively small figure in the distance. She backpedaled a few steps, as a test, to be sure she could start running again in a flash.

  The man held up an arm. “Yes, thank you. Hello.”

  “Stay right there!”

  The man stopped. She couldn’t make out his face but she could tell from his posture that the directive confused him.

  “I’m sorry?” he said.

  “I said stay there. Who are you? Why are you following me?” Her voice broke; she discovered that she was screaming at the man.

  The man put his hands on his waist. His shoulders heaved. He put his head back and drank from the air above him. Then he looked at her again.

  “I’m King. King Desario.”

  “Right. You’re a king.”

  “Sorry.” He smiled, still catching his breath. “Nickname. My name’s Oscar. Oscar Desario. I was coming out onto the road when you jogged past. You looked like you knew where you were going. So I followed. I’m glad you stopped. Jesus. Why are you running up the hill?”

  “Two men were chasing me.”

  “Really?” He looked behind him. “Who?”

  Tori felt her face flush. “Maybe they weren’t. I’m not sure. They might have been chasing me.”

  “Why were they maybe chasing you?”

  “I saw them beating up a kid.”

  The man’s mouth ticked downward. He tilted his head, judging her. “What’d they look like?”

  “I don’t know. There was a tall one and shorter one. I think the shorter one had a beard.”

  “The Johnson brothers.”

  “You know them?”

  “I know of them. Melvin and Gordon Johnson. They’re kind of the bad seeds around here.” He paused, put his arms out, palms up. “May I come closer?”

  Tori shifted her weight, left foot to right. She accepted that she wasn’t afraid of this man, Oscar Desario. He looked like Danny Shapiro, her old boyfriend. A grown up version of Danny. Kind of. He had the same big, soft lips, the same square head. The same small, sloped shoulders, like a squirrel on its hind legs. When Tori didn’t respond to his question, he began to slowly walk forward. Tori pegged him as being her father’s age, but he had long hair, blown dry into a Robin Gibb poof and then sweated into a prickly mullet. When he reached her he put his hand out, and Tori, feeling weird, shook it. He smiled: a nice smile. “So, I’m King, like I said. What’s your name?”

  The clammy warmth of his hand made Tori want to cry. It felt so good. She lurched forward and embraced him. King, below her on the slope of the road, staggered, belatedly grabbed her around the back, and steadied himself.

  “Whoa! Whoa!” he said, stifling a laugh. “You okay?”

  Tori held him tight around the neck. Tears leaked from her eyes, and she wiped them on his shoulder. She was embarrassed to be hugging him, but she didn’t want to stop. Finally, she released him and stepped back.

  “I’m Tori,” she said, feeling the heat in her face.

  King tilted his head to survey her, which made Tori uncomfortable and pleased at the same time. He seemed to be memorizing her, imprinting what he saw on his brainpan. An urge to kiss him suddenly washed over her. He was old and sweaty, but it couldn’t be worse than her kiss with Danny, her first and only. Her teeth had hurt the rest of the day after it, and he’d ended up with a cut lip. They’d gone their separate ways—Danny to the baseball field for practice, Tori to the bus—without another word. She’d tried to meet Danny’s eye and smile, but he turned away with his head down.

  “Don’t worry about the Johnsons,” King said. “They’re harmless. Well, not harmless, but not as bad as they seem. And I’m here now. I’ll stay with you. If you want.”

  “Okay. Thanks.”

  “So. Where are you going?”

  “I was going back to the camp—I’m at summer camp—but no one’s there anymore, so I’m not sure I really want to go back. I need to call my dad.”

  “Sure. Your dad’s probably worried to death.”

  “There’s no one in the town. It’s a total ghost town.”

  King reflexively looked over his shoulder, toward Mammoth View. “I know. That’s why I’m out here. My girlfriend wanted to drive to Stockton, and I went with her, then changed my mind. But I bet a lot of people are starting to come back. Like me. It’s safe.”

  “They left because of the earthquake?”

  “The earthquake. All sorts of reasons. It was much ado about nothing.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “That’s Shakespeare. Much ado about nothing.”

  “I mean, why’s it nothing?”

  “Well, it’s like if you yell fire in a movie theater, everyone runs out even if they don’t see any smoke.” King turned and looked off down the road toward the town. “I live on the east side—a couple of miles from here,” he said. “You can call your father. Have something to eat.”

  Tori looked down. She watched herself flex her right foot.

  “Or I can take you to the police,” King said. “They’ll call your father for you, I’m sure.”

  Tori continued to study her shoes. She felt paralyzed.

  King got the drift. “Okay, well, I’m heading back. The police are on Second Avenue, right downtown. Across from Benny’s Diner. You can’t miss it. It was nice meeting you, Tori.” He turned.

  Tori lifted her head and watched him walk away. She watched him shrink with every step, and when he was the size of a Lilliputian, she started to follow.

  Chapter Eighteen

  They spotted a used car lot on Hunter Street—Enterprise Car Sales. Jackson parked the Skyhawk about four blocks away, next to a squat industrial building whose windows were all either broken or caked with dirt. Billy thre
w the door open and stepped into the street, with Sam clambering after him. The car wobbled as Sam jumped to the pavement. On the other side, Jackson stepped out and straightened up with a groan. He pulled off his driving gloves, shook out his hands. He left the window wound down, the key in the ignition. He figured the Buick would be gone before sunrise.

  Billy cradled the bag of money in his left arm and slammed the trunk. He faced Sam. “You got everything out of the car? Absolutely everything?”

  “Even my chakra.”

  “Okay.” Billy pointed toward the dealership. “You’re up first.”

  Sam glanced at Jackson, who nodded, and Sam began walking down the sidewalk. After four strides he burst into song: “That’s the sound of the men, working on the chain gay-a-yang. That’s the sound of the men, working on the chain, gang.”

  Billy and Jackson leaned on the car, watching Sam walk away from them.

  “You sure he’s okay?”

  Billy looked at Jackson. “Sam? Absolutely.”

  “I’m thinking he seems like the kind of dude who needs money. All the time. He’ll come calling on you.”

  “Well, we’ll see. You don’t have to worry about that. He won’t even know where you are.”

  “What are you going to do if he comes and demands his share? Waving a gun around.”

  “You’ve got Sam all wrong.”

  “I don’t think that I do.”

  “Well.” Billy squinted and picked Sam out of the falling sun. He was now a pinprick moving against the oncoming traffic.

  Forty-five minutes later, Sam pulled up in a red Datsun, and Billy and Jackson climbed in.

  “What took you so long?” Jackson demanded. “How long’s it take to hand over a wad of cash?”