Ultra

by Carroll David

  “Hi, honey!” she said. “Did you get your breakfast? Don’t forget to have some fruit, okay? There are oranges in the fridge.”

  Seagulls flew above us, screeching loudly. It sounded like they were yelling, “T-shirt! T-shirt!”

  There was a pause. Then Kara said, “You called to ask me that? You know what my answer is. Give the controller to your sister.”

  Kara was running too fast for me. I was gasping for breath, and I was on the verge of launching lunch.

  SYDNEY WATSON WALTERS: Wait a second, Quinn. I’m not following. You said that you had superpowers. How could Kara leave you in her dust?

  QUINN: My superpowers make it easy for me to run for a long time. But I’m no good at running fast. I’m what they call slow and steady. Kara really was getting a long way ahead — even while she was talking to her kids.

  But eventually Kara ended her call. “Sorry,” she shouted back. “That was my son. He and his sister aren’t exactly getting along.”

  “Can … we … slow … down … a … bit?” I gasped.

  “What’s that?” said Kara.

  I could barely breathe, let alone speak.

  “Can … we … slow … down?” I repeated.

  “Sure, why didn’t you say so?”

  She dialed it right back. A good thing too. I was about to blow biscuits all over the trail.

  I bent over and swallowed air. Kara stared at her watch.

  “Don’t wait for me,” I said.

  “I don’t mind,” she said. “We’re still ahead of pace. No point in going out too fast.”

  She walked along the trail ahead of me. The clouds slid across the sky like they were being pulled by strings. I stared at the lake. It was as big as an ocean. You could barely see the other side.

  “We’re running all the way around that?” I said.

  “If we’re lucky,” said Kara. “Hey, did you bring any drop bags?”

  I nodded to Kara. I’d packed two of them, each waterproof and stuffed with food and extra gear. Mom was delivering them to the rest stops farther on.

  “How about extra clothes?” she asked.

  “I packed a windbreaker, tights and gloves.”

  Kara gave me a thumbs-up. “You’re in good shape then. It can get cold out here at night, but if you’ve got gloves, you’ll be fine.”

  Soon, we came to a wooden staircase. It led us down to a pebble beach. I needed a break, so I picked up a flat stone and flung it into the lake. I tried to make it skip, but it landed in the water with a disappointing plop.

  Kara threw a stone and it skipped ten times.

  “How old are your kids?” I asked her.

  “Grace is seven. Jackson’s nine.”

  “Are they coming out to cheer you on?”

  “Nah,” said Kara. “They came to my races when they were younger, but now they prefer to stay home and beat each other up.”

  The sun came out from behind a cloud. It spread its warm, liquid rays across the beach. I leaned over to stretch out my back, opened a banana-flavoured gel and squeezed the sugary goo into my mouth.

  “Have you got a pacer?” Kara asked.

  I knew I should have. When it’s dark and cold and you’ve already run 70 miles, it’s nice to have someone running with you those last 30. But no, I didn’t have a pacer.

  “I don’t have one either,” said Kara. “Who knows, maybe you and I can pace each other. If we’re still running together later tonight, that is.”

  “Won’t happen,” I said, squirting water into my mouth and swishing it around with the sweet syrup. “I’m nowhere near as fast as you.”

  “Not right now, you’re not,” Kara agreed. “But anything can happen. A hundred miles is a long way.”

  She bent over and whipped another stone at the lake. It skipped fifteen times. The lady was good!

  “In the hundred-mile race, we don’t compete against other people,” I said. “We only compete against ourselves.”

  Kara grinned like a sunlamp. “Who fed you that pile of baloney?” she asked.

  “My dad,” I said.

  She shook her head, still laughing. “You can cling to that if you want,” she said. “It might help you feel better when I kick your butt!”

  With that, we started running again, following the trail up the bluff and back into the woods. Kara threaded a course between dead stumps and fallen logs, and I followed behind, watching her ponytail bounce back and forth. My stomach felt better, and for a while I didn’t notice that the gap between the two of us was growing. But soon I couldn’t read the letters on Kara’s shirt, and the jingling of her bell became very faint. Then she was just a splash of colour far down the trail. Finally she rounded a bend and disappeared.

  FINDING MY PACER

  Mile 7

  SYDNEY WATSON WALTERS: So how far had you run by this time? Five or six miles?

  QUINN: Seven. Which meant the first rest stop, the one at Silver Valley, was still 15 miles away.

  SYDNEY WATSON WALTERS: Did you run all that way by yourself?

  QUINN: Yeah, but I was okay with that. I don’t need to be around other people all the time. My dad always liked running with other people, but I’m usually pretty happy on my own. Besides, I had Kneecap’s phone.

  Around Mile 10, I called the Albatross. Kneecap answered.

  “Hey, Q-Tip!” she said.

  “What’s going on?” I said.

  “Not much,” said Kneecap. “How’s my phone?”

  “Actually,” I said, “I was drinking some Gatorade and, well … I had a bit of an accident …”

  “What?” she cried. “You promised you’d take care —”

  I held my tongue. There was a delicious pause.

  “Ah,” she said, clueing in. “Nice one, Scheurmann.”

  “Gotcha,” I said.

  “You’re a freak,” she said. “You know that?”

  “Better than being a fun vampire,” I shot back.

  There was a moment’s pause. Then Kneecap spoke: “You know that I meant that in a good way, right?” she said. “You aren’t a fun vampire anymore. You’re getting a lot better!”

  I looked at the ground and didn’t say anything. Tiny red flowers were growing along the edge of the trail.

  “How far have you run?” Kneecap asked.

  “Almost ten miles,” I said. “I’m at Leaning Pine Point.”

  “Not bad,” she said. “And you’ve only been running for two hours. At that pace you should be finished by … let me see … Thanksgiving!”

  She was eating something. I could hear chewing noises. “What are you stuffing your face with?” I asked.

  “Only the best food ever,” Kneecap said.

  “Banana?”

  “You got it.”

  She took another bite and smacked her lips. It was pretty gross, I have to say.

  “Is Ollie there?” I asked.

  “Hang on a sec.” I heard muffled voices and banging metal. Pocket-call garble: “Hey, Ollie! You in there?”

  Another bang. Then, footsteps on gravel.

  “Ew!” Kneecap shouted. “Ick factor six!”

  There was a clacking sound and then a very loud hiss. At last, Ollie’s voice came on the line.

  “Hello?” he said.

  “Hey, Ollie,” I said. “Where are you?”

  “In the bathroom,” said Ollie. “Sitting on the toilet.”

  Totally not what I expected to hear.

  “No,” I said. “I mean, where are you, on a map?”

  “Silver Valley,” said Ollie. “We just dropped off your bags. They tied them onto the back of a horse.”

  “Really?” I said.

  “Yeah. His name is Mercury. I don’t think they tied the bags on tight enough, though.”

  I could hear the squeak of a toilet-paper dispenser, and I knew instantly what my brother was up to — unspooling a mountain of toilet paper on to the floor. He was always getting into trouble for it at home.

  “I
won’t be there for two more hours,” I said. “I hope you don’t mind waiting a bit.”

  “That’s okay,” he said. “Mom’s taking us to an antique shop.”

  “Sorry to hear that,” I said. “But listen, I need your help.”

  A spiderweb broke across my face as I walked down the path.

  “What kind of help?” Ollie asked.

  “I need you to be my pacer,” I said, rubbing the web off the bridge of my nose.

  “What’s a pacer?”

  “Whenever I hit a rough patch,” I said, “like if I run out of energy, or lose my way, I’ll give you a call on the phone.”

  “And then what am I supposed to do?”

  “Tell me a joke or a story,” I said. “Do whatever it takes to cheer me up.”

  Ollie was silent at the other end of the line.

  “Can you do that?” I asked.

  “I think so.” He sounded uncertain. “But why me?”

  “Because we’re a team,” I said. “Don’t you remember? That time you and I went running together?”

  “We ran together?” said Ollie.

  “We sure did,” I said. “But you were only two, so you probably won’t remember.”

  Dad was away, and Mom had a cold, so one night I had to feed him and put him to bed. I gave him a bowl of macaroni and cheese, and then we watched an episode of Wallace and Gromit.

  “I remember that show!” said Ollie. “Which episode did we watch? ‘The Wrong Trousers’?”

  “I can’t remember,” I said. “After dinner we danced around to Dad’s Troutspawn CDs and then we read The Pop-Up Truck Book. Finally, at nine-thirty, I put you to bed. But you were totally wired and refused to go to sleep.”

  “You should’ve read me The Velveteen Rabbit,” said Ollie.

  “I did,” I said. “But that didn’t help either. You asked where Daddy had gone, so I told you. Then you started to cry. I was scared you’d wake Mom, so I dressed you in your winter clothes, clipped you into your stroller and took you outside for a run. We ran all the way to Eugenia Line and back.”

  “Eugenia Line?” said Ollie. “That’s really far!”

  “I know,” I said.

  “Was it dark out?” Ollie asked.

  “What do you think? It was eleven at night. It was darker than Darth Vader’s helmet.”

  “Did I fall asleep in the stroller?”

  “Yep. You were out in thirty seconds.”

  An inchworm appeared in front of my nose. It was parachuting down from a tree above. I reached out and caught it on the tip of my finger.

  “Did we get caught?” Ollie asked.

  “Nope,” I said. “Mom slept through the whole thing. She’d have stuffed my running shoes in the food processor if she’d found out.”

  The inchworm crawled up the length of my finger. I knelt down and coaxed it onto a pine cone beside the trail.

  “Anyway,” I said, “that was the first time I ran at night. And you were right there with me.”

  Just then I heard another runner approaching. I expected to see the Dirt Eater, but instead it was a skinny woman wearing a shirt that looked like the Jamaican flag. She wore a skirt instead of shorts and very cool bug-eyed sunglasses. She waved as she zipped by, then disappeared down the trail.

  “I really need your help tonight,” I told Ollie. “You have to promise me one thing. Promise you won’t let me drop out of the race.”

  The trees around me trembled in the breeze. Ninety more miles, I thought. What had Dad been thinking when he let me sign up?

  “No matter what happens, you can’t let me flake out,” I told Ollie. “Even if I have two broken feet, okay?”

  “Okay,” Ollie said. “I promise.”

  “Good,” I said. “I’ve got to go. I’ll see you when I get —”

  “Wait! Don’t you want to hear a joke?”

  “Depends,” I said. “Is it a knock-knock joke?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Uh, I don’t really have time …”

  “Knock knock!” said Ollie.

  “Who’s there?” I said.

  “Cows go.”

  It was one of Dad’s old jokes. I’d heard it a million times before. But I decided to play along. “Cows go who?” I said.

  “No they don’t! Cows go moo!” Ollie squealed with laughter — a puppy with a chew toy.

  I reached into my fanny pack to make sure the picture was still there. I pulled it out and looked at it for a few seconds. “Quinn, you still there?” Ollie asked.

  “Yep,” I said, stuffing the picture back into my pouch.

  “That’s good,” said Ollie. “I have to hang up. It’s time for me to wipe. Watch out for the bears!”

  NOTHING IS IMPOSSIBLE

  SYDNEY WATSON WALTERS: We haven’t talked much about your mom. How does she feel about your running?

  QUINN: She’s not too thrilled about it. She definitely didn’t want me to sign up for the 100-mile race.

  SYDNEY WATSON WALTERS: Hard to blame her. It’s pretty extreme.

  QUINN: Sure, I get that. And Mom’s kind of nervous to begin with. If some people have an anxiety disorder, my mom has an anxiety volcano.

  (Audience laughs)

  SYDNEY WATSON WALTERS: You’ve received a lot of media attention since running the race. What has that been like for your mom?

  QUINN: It’s been hard on her. People have said some cruel things.

  SYDNEY WATSON WALTERS: Really? Like what?

  QUINN: Some guy on the radio said she’s guilty of child abuse. He said Family Services should pay us a visit.

  SYDNEY WATSON WALTERS: But it wasn’t your mom who signed you up for the race. That was your dad’s idea, wasn’t it?

  QUINN: Yeah. He’d run the Shin-Kicker a few times himself and he thought it would be cool if we ran it together. So last October he sent me the money so I could register. Mom nearly had a coronary over that, which is why Dad took me to a sports doctor and got me checked out.

  The doctor said I was the fittest kid he’d ever seen. And that my diet is excellent, and I have no body fat to speak of.

  Mom asked if the running would harm my knees.

  The doctor said that a hundred miles is a ridiculous distance, but that I’d probably quit when it started to hurt.

  I can still remember the look on my mom’s face when the doctor said that. She knew she’d lost the battle, and her smile snapped like an old crayon. After that, she didn’t ever ask about my running. But Dad and I talked about it all the time.

  SYDNEY WATSON WALTERS: Did you and your dad do much training together?

  QUINN: Lots. One time we drove out to Hither Lake and climbed all the way up Chimney Top Mountain. Dad said if I could conquer Chimney Top, then I was capable of anything. He was wrong about that, there are plenty of harder things, but Chimney Top was still a good place to train.

  Chimney Top has this crazy, unmistakable shape. It rises out of the ground like a regular mountain, but two-thirds of the way up it flattens out, like someone smacked it with a fly swatter. It’s a thousand metres tall, which is almost like two CN Towers stacked on top of each other. I just about died the first time I saw it.

  “You want me to run up that?” I asked.

  Dad grinned and nodded. “It’s not that bad,” he said. “Besides, you’ve got superpowers, remember?”

  Hold out your index finger. Point it at the sun. Now, imagine running up your finger, only it’s 6 kilometres long. The trail doesn’t go straight up to the top, of course — there are plenty of hoodoos and switchbacks you have to hike around.

  “You’ve gotta be kidding,” I said, staring through the windshield. “That’s impossible. You’re crazy.”

  “Oh, come on,” said Dad. “You’ve jumped ramps on your BMX bigger than this! When you were a baby, you took craps that were bigger!”

  Dad parked the car at the foot of the mountain. We jogged to the trailhead in spitting rain.

  “Hey now, look at that,” said
Dad. He pointed out a black pile of dung on the ground. It was the size of a hubcap.

  “A bear did that?” I asked.

  “A big one, yeah. There are his tracks, see?”

  He showed me the footprints. I felt my guts turn to water.

  “Don’t worry,” said Dad. “He’s more afraid of us than we are of him.”

  “Really?” I said.

  “You bet,” said Dad. “Besides, bears are mostly vegetarian.”

  Mostly. That made me laugh. If bears are mostly vegetarian, what are they the rest of the time?

  We started up the mountain. We jogged for a while; then, when it got steeper, we power-walked. As we climbed, the hills in the distance seemed to be climbing too, and when we came to a lookout, the highway seemed really tiny below us.

  “We’re really climbing a mountain!” I said.

  “Not yet,” said Dad. “We’re only on the apron.”

  A few minutes later we climbed into cloud. The world around us became grey and dim. Later we sidestepped some narrow ruts. “Mountain bikers were here,” I said.

  “No,” said Dad. “That’s a hoop-snake track.”

  “A what?” I said.

  “You don’t know about hoop snakes?” Dad said. “Awful things, terribly poisonous. They grab their tail in their mouth and roll down the hill like a bicycle tire. Scientists have clocked them doing a hundred kilometres an hour.”

  “You’re a big fat liar,” I said.

  “I resent that,” said Dad. “I’m not fat.”

  I was never sure when to believe my dad. He knew a lot about animals, especially whales, but sometimes he said things that didn’t sound quite right. Like once, when I was little, I asked him how he’d lost all his hair. He thought about the question for a moment, as if deciding which version of the story he ought to tell.

  “One day I was cooling off in Watson’s Pond,” he said finally, “and I must have swum too close to a beaver lodge, because WHAMMO, Mama Beaver appeared out of nowhere and went all shock-and-awe on my head! You know how beavers have those flat tails? Those things are as hard as a frying pan. My concussion was so bad, people called me Eric Lindros. And a couple of weeks later, all my hair fell out!”

  This seemed to me a reasonable answer, until a month later I asked my dad the exact same question and got a completely different story.