“That’s nice.”
“We were pretty good.”
“Cool.”
“You don’t think I can play football?”
“You? No. You’re a pussy.”
“Mick! Don’t talk to your stepdad like that.”
“He’s not my stepdad. You guys aren’t married.”
“You know what I mean.”
“You think you’re faster than me?”
“Yes.”
“You want to make a wager?”
“That I’m faster than you? Sure. I’ll dust you.”
“Okay, let’s race. If you lose, you have to do the dishes for a week. If I lose, I’ll get you whatever you want for dinner.”
We shake on it and walk out to the street. “This is stupid,” Mom says and rolls her eyes.
We line up in the middle of Breys Avenue, leaning forward with our arms down, shaking our fingers. He doesn’t bother to put on shorts, just his baggy White Guy jeans. “To the sign for B Street,” Doug says, pointing to the intersection fifteen houses down.
“Okay.”
“On your mark. Get set.” My legs feel like wound springs, like I could practically fly down the street.
“Go!”
I put my head down and pump hard toward B Street. When I look up, he’s already ten feet in front of me and pulling away. I charge hard, trying to will myself down the street as fast as I can but as his baggy jeans and white T-shirt and old tennis shoes get farther and farther in front of me, I slow down to a walk. He crosses B Street with his arms up and circles back.
“You know who was the star wide receiver on that football team?” He points both thumbs at his chest. “Me.” We walk back to the house.
“Congratulations,” Mom says. “You’re faster than a ten-year-old.”
“He wanted to race. It was all for fun.” We walk into the kitchen and he points at the dishes in the sink. “I guess you’ll be getting to work on those.” He takes a drink of water and places it on the counter. “Wash this one too.”
When I’m finished with the dishes, I ride to the trail in the woods next to the school, drop my bike and run until my legs ache, my head is dizzy and my lungs burn. It’s nearly spring and the Jaycee Relays are still two months away. I probably don’t even need to train because it’s just some dumb race. But here in the woods, in the crisp dusk air as the sky turns from dark blue to black and I see my breath come out in clouds in front of me, I don’t even care about the race. It isn’t the point. Here beneath the trees I can become a shadow and just run.
* * *
DOUG IS THREE times my size. I’m made aware of this by the way he stands over me to get his cereal off the top of the fridge. He crowds close and says, “You need anything?” looking down. It’s less a threat than a reminder like the way he lifts my bike with one hand over his head from the back porch and puts it in the barn that still smells like rabbit shit even though the rabbits are gone. When Mork poops on the stairs because he has diarrhea and nobody let him out, he drags him by his collar, points his nose at the pile of shit and hits him across the snout, “Bad dog!”
I scream, “Don’t you hit him! He didn’t know!”
“He needs to learn. This is the only way dogs learn anything.”
When I go to the woods next to the school to train on the dirt track with the Jaycee Relays team, I can feel my body getting stronger, the power in my lungs as I fly down the dirt trail. Mark Johnson is faster than I am, but I’m not far behind. We do wind sprints and long laps and practice handing off the baton without dropping it. There isn’t much that feels better than knowing you can use your own two feet to go wherever you like. Running is simple. That’s what I like about it. It’s something a caveman could understand. Who’s the fastest to that rock? Go.
There is a crowd in the stands at the cinder track at Bush’s Pasture Park on the day of the Jaycee Relays. The bleachers are filled with parents, teachers, friends, little brothers and sisters, cousins, aunts and uncles, some with flags, some in T-shirts matching the ones worn by the teams of kids from every school for thirty miles. Orange slices are handed around and cups filled with water. At the end of each race there’s a good-hearted cheer from the crowd as the first graders then second graders then third graders receive their medals. As I warm up with Mark Johnson and the other kids on my team, I think this really is a great little town sometimes.
Rounding the final turn of my leadoff leg, I hear that crowd of mothers and fathers and aunts and uncles yell and clap for me and I feel my heart leap up into my throat as I become the shadow, the breath, the weightless messenger and I hand off the baton in third place. I grab my knees and feel the red blood in my face, the comfort of the grass. I am awake. I am alive. I stand and scream for Mark Johnson as he crosses the finish line second, running his anchor lap in sixty-three seconds, nearly catching the sixth grader from Four Corners Elementary who out-leans him.
I get a red ribbon with a medal and a small trophy to carry home. After the race, when everyone is leaving with their moms and dads, some on shoulders, some carried into station wagons and pickup trucks, Mark Johnson says, “Hey, Jollett, good race!”
“Thanks, man! You too!”
His dad says, “You need a ride? Where are your folks?”
I feel a flush, a warmth on my neck, a wrongness spreading to my knees like I missed something critical. “Oh, they’re still in the stands.”
“Well, we’re going for pizza if you want to come.”
I didn’t think this far ahead and I know the lie sounds clumsy. I just forgot. There was the race and the crowd. The cinder track is so much faster than the dirt trail in the woods behind the school.
“Okay. I’ll tell them. I’m not sure if we’re busy because they said they were going to take me to Sizzler.”
His dad looks at me. He’s wearing a thin nylon blue jacket and jeans, the door to his station wagon open, his dark skin bunching around his eyes beneath a handsome shaved brown dome. I can feel them on me. “You sure you don’t need a ride, son?”
“Oh, no no no no no. No. My parents are just over there. Good race, Mark!” I turn away. I can feel his eyes on me as I jog back toward the track, toward my bike which I locked to a pole beneath the stands. I ride my Huffy two miles home to the house on Breys Avenue, holding a grip in one hand and the trophy in the other. The house is empty so I put the trophy on the bookshelf next to my bed and make myself some scrambled eggs with sliced hot dogs. I put on my headphones and my copy of Pornography by the Cure.
“How was your running thing?” Mom asks when they get home from their Al-Anon meeting.
“We got second.”
“Who got first?” Doug asks.
“Four Corners. But they were all sixth graders. Mark and I think we can take ’em next year.”
“Better hope you grow.”
“I will.” I shoot him a look. “Even if I don’t, I’ll get faster. It’s just training.”
“Boys and sports,” Mom says, beating on her chest.
“Sports are cool, Mom. And girls play sports too, you know.”