Ultra

by Carroll David

  Toenails are supposed to be pink, not black.

  I felt sick — like something in my stomach had curdled.

  I peeled off my tights and T-shirts and wrung them out. My chest was covered with purple welts. I put my wet shirts back on and tried to stand up, but a spike of pain shot up my spine. I slumped back down against a pile of rocks.

  Bad thoughts swam through me like eels. My gels were gone. My cookie bag was gone too. And I had no idea where the trail was anymore.

  Just then, as I was trying to decide what to do, a stone popped loose from the pile of rocks at my back. I twisted sideways and shone my light into the hole.

  Something glinted. I reached inside.

  SYDNEY WATSON WALTERS: Don’t tell me. The Shrine.

  QUINN: Yeah, but it wasn’t much to look at. I’d expected a fountain, or a stone building or something. This was just a shabby pile of rocks.

  SYDNEY WATSON WALTERS: And you expected something more than that?

  QUINN: I’m getting to that.

  I reached inside the cairn and felt around. My fingers touched a metal box. I pulled it out. It was heavy — maybe a couple of kilos. Three lines had been stamped on the lid:

  For runners left behind,

  And for those who give us courage.

  We give thanks at this shrine.

  I unlatched the clasp on the lid of the box and opened it up. It was filled with a bunch of junk. Silver dollars, dried flowers, shoelaces braided into crosses.

  What a disappointment.

  I unzipped my fanny pack and pulled out my photo, glad that Mom had had it laminated.

  I slid the photo into the box, flipped down the lid and slid it back inside the cairn.

  SYDNEY WATSON WALTERS: Tell me about the picture.

  QUINN: The one of my family? It was nothing special. Just a picture of the four of us, all together. Dad was wearing his uniform and he had his hand on my shoulder. Mom and I were wearing our Sunday clothes. Ollie was holding his gecko, Boo.

  SYDNEY WATSON WALTERS: What did it feel like, leaving that picture at the Shrine?

  QUINN: It didn’t feel like anything, really. I’d promised Dad I’d leave something there for him, so I guess I was glad that I could keep my promise.

  SYDNEY WATSON WALTERS: Didn’t you feel anything else?

  QUINN: What do you want me to say, that I cried? I didn’t. I’d had it with crying. Mom’s shrink says that crying will make me feel better, but I’d done it a bunch of times, and it didn’t change anything. That doctor didn’t know what he was talking about. You can cry all you want, but the world is still a total suckfest when you’re done.

  After I plugged up the hole in the Shrine, I dug around in my fanny pack. Kneecap’s phone was soaking wet and out of juice. For a second I thought I’d wrecked it, but when I clicked the spare battery into place, the screen lit up.

  At last, I thought! A little good luck!

  I dialed the Albatross, but nothing happened. I stared at the screen. NO SERVICE, it said.

  I climbed to the top of the pile of rocks, thinking I might get better reception. I called Kneecap’s house. NO SERVICE, the phone said.

  Then I went a bit crazy. I couldn’t believe all my bad luck. I picked up a rock from the top of the Shrine and whipped it at the forest as hard as I could. It glanced off a pine tree with an ear-splitting crack.

  “It’s about time you cleaned yourself up!” I shouted. Then I reached down and picked up another rock.

  This time the rock smashed against a boulder. “How’s that for a surprise?” I yelled.

  I jumped down off the cairn and pulled a bunch of rocks loose. “Take that!” I screamed. “And that! And THAT!”

  I threw the rocks as hard as I could. My heart was hammering and my vision was a blur. Finally, when I ran out of loose rocks, I reached back into the cairn and pulled out the tin box. I guess I would have thrown that too, but then Kneecap’s phone began to ring.

  For a moment I didn’t know what to do. I sat down with the box and stared at the phone. The screen said two words: CALLING: SCHEURMANN.

  Part of me wanted to chuck the phone into the forest. I’m not sure what stopped me from doing that.

  “Hello?” I said finally.

  “Quinn?” said Mom.

  “Hi,” I said.

  My throat thickened up and I felt a sobbing in my chest. Be cool, I told myself. Breathe deep.

  “Thank God!” Mom said. “I’ve been calling for two hours!”

  “Really?” I said. “I guess the network was down.”

  “Are you okay? There’s a tornado warning.”

  “I know,” I said. “The storm just ended.”

  “Really? It’s pouring here!”

  “Don’t worry,” I said. “I’m fine.”

  No I’m not! I wanted to scream. No I’m not!

  I felt like I’d been run over by a train.

  “Have you crossed the finish line yet?” Mom asked.

  “Not exactly,” I said.

  My fingernails were blue and my whole body was shivering. I was actually having trouble hanging on to the phone.

  “Where are you?” Mom asked.

  “At the Shrine.”

  The phone line crackled between us.

  “You must be soaking,” she said. “Are you warm enough?”

  “Toasty warm,” I said. I clenched my jaw so my teeth wouldn’t chatter.

  “We’ll be at the base camp in an hour,” Mom said. “Hang on; I’ll wake up your brother.”

  I listened to the rainstorm pounding my house, far away.

  “Hello?” said Ollie.

  “Hey bro, how’s it going?”

  “Quinn?” Sleep in his voice. “What time is it?”

  “Nearly five,” I said.

  Thunder sounded over the phone.

  “Is it storming where you are?” Ollie asked.

  “Not anymore,” I said. “It was bad for a while. My fault. I gave some bad news to Wind.”

  Ollie said nothing to this. I rubbed my feet. One of my toenails came off in my fingers.

  “I need your help, Ollie,” I said. “I don’t think I can finish this race.”

  “Do you still have two feet?” Ollie asked.

  I looked down at the ground. My feet, wrapped in decaying duct tape, looked like used-up teabags.

  “Sort of,” I said.

  “Can you move them?” said Ollie.

  I wiggled my feet back and forth. Two toes had turned purple, but the rest seemed okay. “Yes,” I said.

  “Then you’re going to finish the race,” said Ollie.

  I appreciated what he was doing, trying to boost my spirits like that. But wait. That’s a lie. I didn’t appreciate that at all! I actually wanted to yell: Listen, you pig stick, you’ve been sleeping in a warm bed all night long, so why don’t you just —

  “How many miles do you have left?” Ollie asked.

  “Three,” I said. “But I think I broke some toes, and the tornado blew all the course flags away.”

  DNF, I thought. Those letters didn’t sound so bad. Actually, they sounded a bit like a prayer.

  “Want to hear a knock-knock joke?” Ollie asked.

  “Come on, Ollie,” I pleaded. “I’ve lost my way. My body is toast. And I’m freezing to death!”

  “Knock knock,” said Ollie.

  “OLLIE!” I shouted.

  “Knock knock.”

  I sighed. “Who’s there?”

  “Accordion,” said Ollie.

  “Accordion who?”

  “Accordion to the TV, the wind is gonna blow all day!”

  Ollie roared with laughter at the other end of the line.

  I didn’t laugh. Jokes were the last thing I needed just then.

  “The storm blew the trail markers away,” I repeated. “Even if I had the strength, I wouldn’t know which way to run!”

  “Sure you do,” Ollie said. “You’ve got GPS.”

  He was right. I’d seen the a
pp on Kneecap’s phone. All I needed were the Base Camp’s coordinates.

  “You can do it,” he said. “I know you can.”

  You skid mark, I thought, I feel like crap. I’d rather be dead than have to run any farther.

  Ollie was quiet on the other end of the phone. Kneecap was right, I suddenly realized. I am a fun vampire.

  “Ollie?” I said.

  “What?” he said.

  “I can’t do it. I’m quitting.”

  I hadn’t known I was going to say that. But now that I had, relief flooded through my body. I’d run 97 miles. I’d crossed paths with a bear, I’d nearly fallen off a train bridge, and I’d nearly been swallowed by a tornado.

  “Why are you quitting?” Ollie asked.

  “Because I’m hurt,” I said.

  “As much as we hurt when Daddy died?”

  OLLIE’S WISE WORDS

  Mile 97, 5:06 a.m.

  SYDNEY WATSON WALTERS: Your father served in Afghanistan, isn’t that right?

  QUINN: Yeah. He was on his third tour of duty.

  SYDNEY WATSON WALTERS: Do you remember the day that he left?

  QUINN: Sort of. I thought his bus was coming at eight, not at six. Mom kept yelling at me to get up, get up.

  Ollie came into my room. “Hurry up!” he pleaded. “He’s leaving soon!” He sounded kind of choked up.

  “Get lost,” I said.

  A few minutes later Dad came and sat on the edge of my bed. We’d fought the night before, so I pretended to be asleep. I heard the clomp of his boots and the rustle of his pants. “Gotta go, kiddo,” he said and he leaned down and kissed my head.

  Then he went. Climbed onto the bus and was gone.

  SYDNEY WATSON WALTERS: What had you been fighting about the night before?

  QUINN: Afghanistan. He’d already gone there twice. I didn’t get why he had to go back.

  “If you were a real father,” I’d told him, “you’d stay with us.”

  SYDNEY WATSON WALTERS: What did he say to that?

  QUINN: He kept talking about all the kids over there. How they had no food, no water, no education.

  “How about dads?” I asked him. “Do they have any of those?”

  “A lot of them don’t,” he said.

  I said, “I know how they feel.”

  Dad counted to five beneath his breath.

  “I watch the news, you know,” I told him. “A lot of people think we shouldn’t even be in Afghanistan.”

  “A lot of people are wrong,” he said.

  “Maybe you’re the one who’s wrong,” I said.

  SYDNEY WATSON WALTERS: It’s been a terrible war. No one can argue with that. And it’s the families of the soldiers who have sacrificed the most.

  (Audience applauds)

  QUINN: Okay, fine. But do you know how many times Afghanistan has been invaded? Dozens of times. Russia, Britain, Genghis Khan, the United States, they all invaded Afghanistan at one time or another.

  Now — do you know how many of those invaders won? None of them. Not a single one. That’s because Afghanistan is unwinnable. It doesn’t take a lot of brains to figure that out.

  (Long silence; audience fidgets)

  I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said that. Do you need to go to a commercial now?

  SYDNEY WATSON WALTERS: No, this is important. Your story is important.

  QUINN: It’s just that, in Afghanistan, everyone loses. Especially my family. We lost a lot.

  SYDNEY WATSON WALTERS: Your dad was driving over a bridge outside of Kandahar …

  QUINN: It was an IED — you know, Improvised Explosive Device. The whole right side of the carrier was blown in. Both of his legs were torn off.

  (Long silence)

  SYDNEY WATSON WALTERS: Take as much time as you need. Would you like a glass of water?

  QUINN: Don’t you get it, he lost his LEGS! The legs he used to go running with!

  (Long silence)

  SYDNEY WATSON WALTERS: It’s okay, Quinn. It’s not your fault. It’s most definitely not your fault.

  QUINN: But it is, don’t you see? I pretended to be asleep. I never said goodbye. I never told him —

  SYDNEY WATSON WALTERS: What? What didn’t you tell your father?

  QUINN: I never told him … that I love him.

  Ollie was still quiet. Fingernails of light glimmered behind the hills.

  “He’s only been gone since November,” Ollie said finally. “But I’m already starting to forget what he was like.”

  “That’s not true,” I said. “You remember his jokes. You’ve been telling them to me all through this race.”

  Ollie clicked his tongue like a tree frog.

  “You also remember his stories,” I said. “That one you told me last night, about Dad running the New York Marathon.”

  I rubbed my feet. The duct tape was peeling at the edges. Somewhere above me, an airplane rumbled through the sky.

  “I remember something else about him,” said Ollie.

  “What’s that?”

  “Sometimes at night, when Mom had her book club over, Dad came into my room and played his ukulele.”

  “What songs did he play?” I asked.

  “Songs he made up himself. He had this one about a whale who wishes he could fly.”

  “Do you remember how it went?” I said.

  “I think so.” And he sang:

  Say hello!

  Wave goodbye!

  Swim today!

  Tomorrow we’ll fly!

  I leaned back against the pile of rocks and listened to the water dripping from the trees. A burst of static hissed down the line, and I could hear Mom telling Ollie to hurry up and get dressed.

  “How’s Mom?” I said.

  “Not so great,” Ollie said. “I don’t think she slept very much last night.”

  I could hear Ollie pulling open his dresser. Suddenly he said, “You should be nicer to her, you know.”

  “You think?” I said.

  “Yeah. She misses Daddy too.”

  Snot was leaking out of my nose. I wiped it off on the back of my sleeve. I thought of Ollie, sitting in his bed, and the liquid light of his aquarium, and the sound of electric bubbles. Down the hall, in the fridge, cherry yogurt and cheese sticks. It all seemed a million miles away.

  “I’m not really cheering you up, am I?” said Ollie.

  “In some ways you are,” I said. “But my feet are toast. I can’t finish this race.”

  “You only have three more miles,” said Ollie.

  “In this mud,” I said, “that’s two hours of running.”

  “You’ve still got an hour before the cut-off,” said Ollie.

  “I don’t care about the cut-off,” I said.

  “I know,” Ollie said sadly. And then he said, “I always knew you wouldn’t finish.”

  “What?” I said.

  “I always knew you wouldn’t finish.”

  There are only six words in the entire English language that are guaranteed to get an exhausted runner up and moving again. And Ollie had just said those six little words.

  “Everyone else knows it too,” Ollie said. “Grandma Sue, Auntie Lauren. Even Mom thinks you’ll quit.”

  “You’re wrong,” I said.

  “Want the GPS coordinates?” Ollie asked.

  “Yes, go ahead.”

  THE KICKING OF SHINS

  Mile 97, 5:29 a.m.

  The GPS claimed I had 3 miles to go. But that was total crap.

  Those 3 miles felt more like 30. They went on forever. They refused to end.

  A purple glow blotted out the stars. Orange light nibbled at the edge of the horizon. It was 5:30 in the morning. I’d been running for 23½ hours.

  Only 30 minutes left until the cut-off.

  I shook myself awake and punched my quads to loosen them up.

  “Let’s go, dammit!” I said. “Move!”

  Reluctantly, my legs obeyed.

  Downed trees were everywhere, and the t
rail was scarred with oozing sinkholes and craters of brown water. From time to time I saw the glimmer of Hither Lake through the trees to my left. That was good. If the lake was on my left, I must be travelling south. The GPS confirmed that I was going the right way.

  Still, it was slow going. The hills were greased with a shiny coat of mud. When I came to a deep ravine, I tried to get to the bottom without falling. What a joke! I wound up slaloming down the slope on two feet and then I did a face-plant into an oil slick of muck.

  Too bad Kneecap isn’t here to see this, I thought as I stood up and scooped the mud out of my ears.

  Red-winged blackbirds began to sing. I took a step forward and sank into the earth. In a heartbeat, I’d sunk right up to my butt. I twisted my body sideways, yanking back my legs. When my feet popped into the air, both of my shoes were missing.

  “Hey!” I shouted. “Give me back my shoes!”

  I lay forward on my belly and reached my arm down into the oozing muck-hole. I had to get my shoulder right in there and press my cheek deep into the mud before I snagged the shoelaces with the tips of my fingers. When I finally got the shoes out, they were as black as tar. They looked like two enormous cow patties.

  Eventually I got the shoes back on to my duct-taped feet. I ran on, slipping and sliding in the mud. Mosquitoes hummed all around me.

  And then something strange happened. As I ran, I heard another runner behind me. I could hear him splashing through puddles and snapping tree branches. I stopped and turned around and waited for him to catch up. I waited for 2 minutes, maybe longer. But the mystery runner never appeared.

  Uh-oh, I thought. I’m hearing things again.

  I kept going. When I came to a swollen creek, I washed the mud off my face and arms. I heard the noises behind me again, and this time I could clearly see a light in the forest.

  Thank God! I thought. I’m not going crazy after all!

  I stopped and waited for another couple of minutes, but again, the mystery runner failed to appear. The light in the forest vanished between the trees as I watched. What the heck? I thought to myself.

  In the end, I decided that it was probably my dad. He was watching out for me. He wanted to make sure that I was safe.

  “Don’t worry, Dad!” I yelled. “I’ve only got two more miles to go! And I’m still not dead! Hooray for not being dead!”