Run, Billy, Run

by Matt Christopher

  “Any distance. You name it,” said Billy.

  He spoke quickly, without weighing what he said. He had been humiliated enough by Cody, and he was promising himself that he wasn’t going to let the damn guy get away with it again.

  “Any distance? You know I can take you in the hundred. Easily.”

  “I said you name it,” repeated Billy, tight-lipped.

  Suddenly Cody seemed a trifle uncomfortable. “How about making a bet first?”

  “Okay. But keep it under a dollar.”

  “I’m not thinking of money,” said Cody. “I’m thinking of something more interesting.”

  “Like what?”

  “Like the winner takes Wendy to the movie Saturday night.”

  Billy caught his breath and stared at Cody. Laughter sprang from the small throng.

  “Take him up on it, Billy,” someone remarked.

  “Sure. Don’t be chicken,” said another.

  Cody’s bet ricocheted in Billy’s mind. “She’s going with me,” he said.

  “I heard she was. But if I win, she goes with me.”

  “Take him up on it, Billy,” another voice broke in from the group.

  “Quiet,” said Rudy. “Let him make up his own mind.”

  “You heard me,” said Cody. “Take it or leave it.”

  Billy licked his dry lips. You rat, he thought. “Okay.” The word sounded as if it had come from someone else.

  “Thanks.” Cody smiled. “We’ll run the hundred.”

  “Boooo!” exploded from the group.

  “Give him a break! Make it the four-forty!” one kid shouted.

  That there was at least one kid siding with him salved Billy’s feelings. But it wasn’t much help.

  Cody’s face reddened. “Okay. We’ll run the four-forty,” he said.

  “Okay. The four-forty,” Billy agreed.

  “Name the time and place,” said Cody.

  “This noon,” replied Billy. “At the track.”

  “You’re on.”

  They shook hands on it.

  A gang of about seventy-five students were at the track during lunch hour, waiting anxiously for the race to begin.

  Billy had succeeded in avoiding Wendy all morning, and hoped she hadn’t heard about this. So her reaction to the race was still to come. He dreaded to see the moment.

  He realized later how crazy he was for having agreed with Cody on the bet. Cody had caught him off guard, hadn’t given him enough time to consider it. It was foolish, ridiculous. Wendy was not a thing. She wasn’t a slave. She couldn’t be placed on a pedestal and bet on.

  But that was what Cody and he had done. Placed her on a pedestal and bet on her. And now that the bet was on, Billy was committed. But, because the race was the four-forty, Billy felt he had a chance. A slim chance.

  They both carried their track shoes to the track, and put them on. A kid was selected to start them off at the starting line. Rudy volunteered to be the judge at the finish line. There was no other change in the runner’s dress. They both wore the same clothes they had worn to school.

  “You ready to go?” asked Seattle.

  “I’m ready,” agreed Billy.

  They stepped on the track and got in position at the starting line.

  “On your mark! Get set! Go!” shouted the starter.

  The runners took off. Billy tried to get the jump on Cody, but knew the instant they started that he hadn’t. He ran hard, pumping his arms, legs, gritting his teeth.

  At about the halfway mark he inched up to Cody’s side, and went past him by half a step. But at about the three-quarter mark he saw, from the corner of his eye, Cody again creeping up, and gradually gaining on him.

  Billy tried to get his legs to move faster, to make a last ditch effort to forge ahead. But he lacked the stamina. When they crossed the finish line Cody was only a step ahead of him. But a step was all he needed.

  A cheer went up from the onlookers. Rudy and several of Cody’s friends rushed to him and showered the winner with plaudits. A few of the students came over to Billy and offered their condolences.

  He turned, started to head back to the school, and found himself staring into an aggrieved face. His heart felt as if it had been pierced by an arrow.

  “Did you — hear about the bet?” he said.

  Tears blurred Wendy’s eyes. “You dare to speak to me after that? Yes, I heard about it. Who hasn’t? What do you think I am? I wouldn’t ever go to a movie with him, or you either, Billy Chekko! I hate you! I don’t ever want to see you again!”

  She turned and fled toward the school, her dress flying up behind her, her words echoing and reechoing in his mind as Billy stared helplessly after her. It was a wonder she hadn’t slapped his face; he felt that he deserved that, too.

  He returned to the school, despising himself for challenging Cody to a race, despising Cody for making that utterly ridiculous bet, and despising himself for agreeing to it. That foolish agreement had ruined the finest friendship he had ever had.

  He was in the library during study hall, researching material for social studies, when he saw Wendy come in. Barely looking around her, she headed for one of the shelves of books, selected a volume, and carried it to a table. She was glancing at it when Billy came up quietly beside her.

  “Wendy,” he said softly. “I’ve got to talk to you.”

  She looked at him, and her eyes blinked. “I told you I don’t want to speak to you anymore!” she said bitterly. “Go away!”

  “Wendy, please.”

  “No!” She picked up her book and moved angrily to another table.

  Billy felt eyes upon him, and blushed with embarrassment as he saw half a dozen or so other students in the room staring at him and Wendy. He went back to the table he had been sitting at and stared down at the book before him, looking at the words but not seeing them.

  He wished he were dead.

  Chapter 13

  “THERE WAS more blasting today,” said Billy’s mother, sitting in the living room with a partially finished woolen rug sprawled across her lap. She had started to hook it last week, hoping to get it done by Christina’s birthday. “We all went up in the field again, except Mrs. Shuler. She fell and hurt her hip the other day, and you couldn’t get her out with a forklift.”

  “You’d need more than a forklift,” said her husband, looking over the morning paper. “She must weigh three hundred if she weighs an ounce.”

  “When’s supper going to be ready, Mom?” asked Billy.

  He was lying on the floor, one leg cocked over the other, hands crossed over his head. The day had been the worst he had lived through in a long time, and he didn’t want to lie here any longer thinking about it. No matter how he tried to think of something else, Wendy’s angry face and bitter words were too strong to blot out.

  “The usual time,” said his mother. “Six o’clock.”

  Suddenly he wished he hadn’t asked. He had thought about asking his father if the two of them could drive over to Ulster Road and practice, but he just remembered what his father had told him about learning to drive. Why go out in the car if he couldn’t drive it, too? Forget it.

  “Why’d you want to know?” His father’s voice sliced into his thoughts.

  Billy shrugged. “Oh, nothing important.”

  “Want something to do to kill some time?”

  Billy heard the rustle of the newspaper as his father folded it and pushed it into an already jammed magazine rack.

  “Not necessarily.”

  From the corner of his eye Billy saw his father rise from his chair.

  “Come on,” said his father. “We’ve got about half an hour.”

  Billy looked at him, hope brightening his eyes. “We?”

  His father grimaced. “Look, Billy, I told you that you’ve still got three years to go yet before you can learn to drive a car,” he said stolidly. “That’s final. But that doesn’t mean you can’t come along and sit beside me in the car and watch ho
w I do it.”

  The hope perished.

  “I’d rather stay here.”

  “Billy!” exclaimed his mother. “What’s got into you, anyway?”

  “He’s sore because I laid it on the line to him that I don’t want him learning to drive a car till he’s old enough to get a junior driver’s license,” Mr. Chekko explained placidly. “At fourteen he’s too young. He’ll just be tempted to get in the car and go somewhere, even if it’s just down to the end of this road. If he happened to be caught by a cruising cop it’d be my tail.”

  “Your father’s right, Billy,” said his mother. “I’m surprised that you should act like a two-year-old about it. Why don’t you go with your father? Maybe he needs your moral support.”

  He wanted to hear no more of it, so he got up and went to the closet for his jacket. He followed his father out of the house and to the car parked in the driveway beside it.

  “I haven’t heard you say anything lately about track,” said his father as he backed the car out to the road. He didn’t seem to have any trouble backing up, Billy observed.

  “That’s because I haven’t been too involved,” he said. “I didn’t run at all last Friday.”

  Mr. Chekko shifted the lever into Drive, and the car shot ahead. “Why not?”

  “Because of a blister I had on the back of my heel, something that the coach thought should heal real well before I run again,” answered Billy. “And because he doesn’t think I’m fast enough to compete.”

  “Maybe he’s right.”

  “I don’t know. Maybe he is. But now I feel sure I can do better in the mile and two-mile races. I’m more used to the long-distance runs.”

  “Have you told him that?”

  “No.”

  “Maybe you should.”

  “I’m not going to tell him anything,” said Billy. “Not anymore.”

  His dad drove to Ulster Road, made the left turn and drove up it, going slightly faster than he usually did. A truck came hurtling toward them. Quickly Mr. Chekko turned the wheel, pulling the car toward the side of the road.

  “The crazy nut!” he exclaimed.

  As the truck whizzed by, the car started to slide off the shoulder into a ditch. His father cursed as he turned the wheel fiercely to the left and stepped on the accelerator at the same time.

  But, instead of veering back onto the road, the car slipped farther into the ditch. His father removed his foot from the accelerator and hit the brakes, but by then the car had struck the bank with a severe crunch. Billy’s dad careened against the steering wheel and Billy against the dash, their seatbelts cushioning the shock.

  Father and son stared at each other. “You okay?” asked Billy’s father, his chest heaving.

  “Yes. How about you?” Billy was shaken up, but not hurt.

  “I’m all right.”

  His father shifted the gear lever into reverse and gunned the motor. The car backed up about a foot and lodged there, the motor racing, right wheel spinning.

  “I think we’re in solid, Dad,” surmised Billy.

  “You think? I know!” said Mr. Chekko, shutting off the engine. “Of all the luck. If the front end’s damaged I’ll have to postpone taking my driving test. I was hoping to make an appointment week after next.”

  He and Billy unbuckled their seatbelts and got out of the car. They stepped into the ditch and took inventory of the damage done.

  “Well, the right fender and the bumper are bent,” Mr. Chekko observed, disappointment in his voice. “Bad enough, but it could’ve been worse.”

  They heard a sound coming from down the road. Billy looked and saw the truck that had passed them backing up.

  “Well, look at that,” he said, grinning.

  The truck backed up to within five feet of the car, and stopped. The door of the cab opened and two men stepped out.

  “Saw you going into it,” said the driver, a young man about twenty. He knelt and looked under the car. “Transmission’s touching. Hook up the chain, Ed. No way they’ll get out of here without help.”

  The driver’s co-worker hooked up a chain between the rear axles of the car and the truck, and in two minutes had the car back up on the road.

  “Much thanks to you boys,” said Mr. Chekko. “But — ah — you were coming down the road pretty fast, you know. I pulled way over because I was afraid —”

  The driver smiled. “I’m not arguing with you, sir,” he broke in pleasantly. “It was my fault. But don’t worry. Our insurance will take care of the damages.”

  He took a pencil and small pad from his shirt pocket, scribbled something on the top sheet, tore it off and handed it to Billy’s father. “That’s my name, and the name of the insurance company. I’m sure they’ll handle it for you. Sorry about what happened, but we’ve been on the go all day and would like to get done before sunset. Take care, now.”

  “You, too,” said Mr. Chekko.

  The men got back into the truck and drove off, speeding as fast as they had when Billy and his father had first encountered them coming down the road.

  Mr. Chekko shook his head sadly. “A decent guy,” he said, “otherwise he wouldn’t have stopped. But look at him go. Know what that means, Billy? Now that we’ve got a car we’ve got to be on the alert more than ever. There are just too many careless drivers, nice guys or not, on the road.”

  They entered the car. “We might as well go home,” decided Mr. Chekko, glancing at his wristwatch. “It’s not six yet, but I don’t feel right driving around with my front right fender and bumper banged in like they are.” He looked at his son. “All right with you?”

  “Sure, Dad.”

  Mr. Chekko started the car, checked to make certain the road was clear, and turned it around.

  “Garages close at five,” he said sadly as he headed back for home. “So I can’t take the car to one till Saturday. Bull and horsefeathers. I guess I just don’t live right.”

  “You and me both, Dad,” said Billy. What a day it had been. First the bet and the race, then Wendy’s anger, now the car.

  Since the car had to be repaired there was no telling when his father would get his driver’s license. Billy’d have to keep doing his mother’s errands on foot for at least another month, he thought despondently.

  After a somber supper he waited patiently for Dan to finish reading the sports pages of the paper. Dan, it seemed, always finished eating before he did, and got to the paper first.

  Christina seemed to find solace reading the comic page and Ann Landers until the sports pages were free for her to read at her leisure. At this time of day Sheri was giving her doll a bath and preparing her for bed, after which her own bedtime came.

  Mr. Chekko, sitting in the living room with his ankles crossed and his fingertips pressed together, cleared his throat. “Billy,” he said, “I’ve been thinking.”

  Billy looked at him gravely. “About cutting wood?”

  His father laughed. “No, not about cutting wood. About that accident. I noticed you handled yourself pretty well.”

  Billy grinned. “Well, thanks, Dad.” He could take a compliment from his father anytime. “You did, too. I thought you’d get mad, but you didn’t. You handled the whole thing quite nicely yourself.”

  Mr. Chekko shrugged. “Never mind that. What I want to say is, I’ll teach you to drive.”

  Billy’s eyes widened. He couldn’t believe his ears. “You — you will?”

  His father’s eyes met his squarely. “That’s what I said, didn’t I?”

  “Oh, wow! Thanks, Dad! Thanks a million! Hey, you’re the greatest, you know that? Just the greatest, Dad!”

  His excitement had reached a peak when he heard Dan’s droll voice cut in, “Hey, Billy. Listen to this. Cove Hill’s having a meet with Hamlin on Thursday,” he read from the paper. “They’ve gone undefeated so far. Did you know that?”

  “No. And don’t tell me about it,” said Billy, still bubbling with joy over the news his father had given him. Noth
ing could be better news than that!

  Dan read on silently for a while, then cried out, his interest shown by the expression on his face, “Hey, Billy, here’s more. ‘Both the one-mile and two-mile races were won easily by Hamlin’s Scott Nichols, a junior, who hasn’t lost a race since he joined track in his freshman year. The tall, easy-going youth is the fastest long-distance runner this community has seen in a long time.’ Fastest, baloney. I never heard of him. Have you?”

  “That’s because you haven’t been reading about track till I got started in it,” said Billy. “Yes, I’ve heard of him. And I guess he’s good, from what I’ve read.”

  A grin spread across his brother’s face. “Hey, man, wouldn’t it be great if Coach Seavers had you run against him?”

  “You want to see him make a fool of me, too?”

  “No! I told you, Billy. I know you’ve run long distances, over hills and rocks and through weeds and everything. You’d be good in cross-country. But I bet you could beat anybody in the mile and two-mile. Anybody. Including this Scott Nichols.”

  Billy smiled, touched. “Know what? Every once in a while you surprise the hell out of me, Dan.”

  Dan frowned. “What d’you mean?”

  “Well, you’re sticking up for me. Even though I sometimes act like a second father to you, and you get sore at me, you still come back on my side when the chips are down.”

  “Heck, why shouldn’t I?” Dan said. “We’re brothers, aren’t we?”

  Chapter 14

  THERE WAS track practice after school on Tuesday. Billy attended it. A callous on the back of his heel was the only sign left of the blister. And he had no worry of getting a fresh one; his new track shoes fit him perfectly.

  If Coach Seavers saw him there — and there was no doubt in Billy’s mind that he did — he didn’t show it. Billy was among the runners near the track, stretching and hopping up and down to limber their muscles and condition their hearts for the vigorous runs ahead. The high jumpers, broad jumpers, pole vaulters, and discus throwers were in their respective sections, working under the guidance of Coach Rafini.

  There weren’t more than a dozen kids watching. They wore sweaters or jackets with their collars turned up. The sun hadn’t shone all day, and a stiff breeze was sweeping across the field. Even Coach Seavers was wearing a jacket over his sweatshirt.