Race Across the Sky (5 page)

“I'm going to get him out of there,” Shane stated quietly.

In the morning, he left for the airport.

• • • • • • • • • • • • 

“Y
our bro's coming today?”

It was just before nine in the morning; Caleb had been running for four hours. Bumblebees nearly the size of eggs skittered through the gaillardias. A cluster of bluebirds burst over his head. Moving at a good speed, Caleb felt an ascension of joy that he supposed classical composers and Renaissance painters had touched. Running was art, he knew, and its masters were also capable of masterpieces.

As he galloped through the familiar trails, Caleb visualized the Hardrock 100 course that awaited him next month. He saw himself in its hundred miles through thirteen soaring peaks of the San Juan Mountains, its fields of wildflowers, its granite peaks covered with snowpack. He felt he was there. Running trails, he could imagine anything he wished with stunning clarity.

He was in the midst of this revelry when Mack jumped out from behind an especially bountiful white ash.

“Caley!”

Caleb stopped suddenly; immediately his body began to overheat.

Appearing unexpectedly at the end of a run to add more time was a favorite training technique of Mack's. He'd written about it in
You Can Run 100 Miles!
Ultramarathon courses are full of unpredictability. A sudden rainstorm might create a mudslide, an animal might carry off a course marker, a lateral muscle might tear. Unforeseen requirements to double the body's effort without notice were part of the sport and so, Mack taught, it should be part of the training. But today, instead of shouting his usual “add ten” Mack asked about his brother.

“What time's he showing up?”

Sweat poured from Caleb's chin. “I don't know. This morning.”

Mack was grinning, fingers playing with his black beard. “We gotta make tonight
good
for him. I'm throwing a shindig.”

Caleb squinted uncomfortably. “I think he just wants to spend some time with me.”

Mack went on as if he had not heard him. “I'm getting two kegs of Fat Tire, two one-point-seven-fivers of Beam. I'm inviting some people from the Horse.”

“Okay,” Caleb gave in, “that'll be great.”

“So, Shane,” Mack asked jauntily, “friend or foe?”

Caleb hesitated. The truth was, he wasn't certain. Whatever attitude Shane was bringing was beyond him. As he stood breathing hard under the pines, a memory surged from the recesses of his brain. He had been fifteen, listening to
The Wall
in his room
.
Caleb had overheard a girl he admired talking about it before class, and he had dutifully sought it out at Mills Music. Shane, who must have been ten, had wandered in. The two of them had not spoken but sat listening to this strange, sad music. This had not succeeded in bringing him any closer to talking to the girl at school, but it had brought the brothers together for an afternoon.

“Friend,” he answered. “He just wants to hang out.”

Mack slapped his shoulder. “Add seven.”

Without another word, Caleb pushed off into the underbrush.

From behind him he heard Mack shout his Whitman. “‘Allons! The road is before us! It is safe—I have tried it. My own feet have tried it well. Be not detain'd!'”

And so Caleb burst over the earth, spine straight, arms like pistons, landing on the balls of his feet, in a state of constant forward motion. This was how the body built up its store of its key fuel, what Bergsonists called élan vital, what Mack called kinetic energy. Without forward motion, Caleb knew, the body sinks into stasis, depletes, decomposes daily. It was no coincidence that disease rates had exploded exactly as human culture sank into ergonomic chairs. He thought he might talk to Shane about this. He wanted his brother to understand his life, just a little, before he asked him.

He tried to recall if he and Shane had ever spoken about something this important. The five years between them had been too long a distance. He had been on the Washington State distance team while Shane was still in middle school and starting InterFinancial's training program in Manhattan while Shane was negotiating college applications. Caleb was aware of being watched from afar, like a runner cheered from the stands. Still, some bond remained between them, he could feel it, somewhere deep within his cells.

When he emerged into the open field behind the old house, he saw a strange car, rental-company purple, parked in front. Caleb sprinted the hundred yards to the back stairs, took them three at a time, and pushed opened the back door. Sweat dripping from his forehead, he went through the kitchen out into the expansive main room.

It was too much to absorb right away.

The two people he loved most in the world were sitting on the floor, knees up, talking as casually as if they had known each other for years. Behind them, Kevin, Leigh, and Alice bustled around with dustpan and broom. Seventies reggae played from the old plastic boom box on the floor, as the sun streamed through the dusty windows.

June's voice fluttered through the air and landed on him like a kiss.

“Caley, look. Your brother's here.”

•   •   •   •   •   •   •

Shane looked different.

His round face, his bright eyes, his short black hair were unchanged. But a new thin line stretched across his forehead like the impression left by a Halloween mask. The skin under his eyes seemed to have taken on a slight shadow.

Shane stood up and Caleb hugged him; his body felt thick, like a good tree. But Caleb knew by the way he pulled away and stared that the feel of his own body had proven startling. Suddenly Caleb felt embarrassed, by his letter, his need, his body. He glanced nervously at June, but she did not seem to share his anxiousness; she was gazing at them both from the floor, her pale eyes wide and happy.

“How was your trip?” Caleb asked quietly.

“Easy.”

In truth, Shane was feeling a little shaky. His drive from the Denver airport had taken him along a harrowing mountain road, with a sheer drop just a few yards to his right. Initially, the lack of a guardrail had exhilarated him. But suddenly a sense of consequence washed over him, of leaving his unborn son fatherless, and Janelle a single mother, and he had felt a sharp and vicious fear. He had slowed to a cautious thirty-five miles an hour. By the time Shane arrived at the old wood house, he understood that something had left him on that road that would not be so easy to get back.

When he found the isolated dirt driveway, the door had been opened by a thin woman with pale skin and an explosion of marigold freckles. Shane recognized the face of a hardcore athlete—a complete absence of body fat accentuated every muscle. Even her hair seemed poached, like a horse's mane. Her lips were thin, her mouth small, and her nose had a tiny, turned-up way that made him think of money. But her eyes were enormous and they seemed to live completely apart from the hard face that encircled them. They were the eyes, he thought, of a softer soul.

June had led Shane to the middle of the room and sat now on the wood floor with him. Through the windows he could see the bark of forest firs. People of all ages walked barefoot around them, sweeping the floor, leaving for and returning from runs. They came over and introduced themselves in a friendly manner that struck him as wholly genuine. One would never know, looking at them, what their bodies could accomplish.

And then Caleb had walked in from the back of the house. Of course, Shane thought, he would not come through the door that he expected.

Standing, Shane had to remind himself that this was his brother. Close up, his face was that of a much older man than he had seen in online photos of race winners. There were lines, his teeth had darkened, he seemed whittled down to his basic self. Bones and will.

Suddenly, June announced, “I see it.”

They both turned to her.

“You guys have the same mouths. That's where you're brothers.”

Shane blinked.
Where they were brothers was in their shared fear of their father Fred playing endless Tony Bennett eight-tracks in the station wagon, in being guinea pigs for their mother's sporadic attempts at starting a catering company, in their uncountable shared miles jogging as a family through the winding roads of Issaquah. Where they were brothers was in the fact that each of their molecules shared chemical proteins built from recombinant DNA that was 99.9 percent identical. It was a lot more, he wanted to tell her, than their mouths.

“So”—Shane spread his arms wide—“we're having a baby.”

Caleb glanced at June, and then quickly touched Shane's shoulder. “That's awesome. Do you guys have a name?”

“Nicholas,” he confided, his voice lowering conspiratorially, as if someone might inform Janelle's friends. “Nicholas Wei.”

“Way cool.” June clapped her hands.

Shane looked down sheepishly.

“Should we go for a hike?” Caleb asked him suddenly.

“Didn't you just get in? You're all sweaty.”

“Let's get you changed.”

Shane followed his brother up a short flight of wood stairs. That he was this close was incredible to him. The days he had dreamed about some moment like this were too many to consider.

The second floor emitted a thick scent of wood and skin. They passed a series of closed doors, which looked to have been made recently. Rooms, he guessed, had been divided. Caleb led him to the room that he shared with Kevin Yu. It was not dissimilar to a college dorm: two futon mattresses lay on the floor, separated by only a few feet. Next to Caleb's was a small closet, open and full of folded T-shirts and a neat row of beaten sneakers, each the multiple colors of running shoes. Who had established this design sensibility, Shane wondered, and why? Swirls and lines of different colors, what had they to do with moving through nature?

Under a window sat a boombox and a couple of blank CDs with handwritten labels. Shane squinted to read them; they appeared to be recordings of meditations. A stack of running magazines had been piled next to Kevin's futon; each had clearly been read repeatedly. A small metal fan was plugged into a floor socket and spun uselessly.

“We can share this tonight,” Caleb offered, pointing to the mattress.

“Sure, cool.”

“We're having a party. But we could go hear some music in town after?”

“Don't you guys go to bed pretty early?”

“Usually around twelve. We get up at four.”

“In the morning?”

“You're having a baby,” Caleb smiled. “Get used to four hours' sleep.”

Shane found running clothes in his bag. As he changed he was aware of Caleb watching him. He almost asked him then: what do you need that you can't explain in your seven-point handwriting? But Caleb wanted to hike, he guessed, because he wanted to speak privately.

Caleb was pointing. “Hey, that shirt.”

Shane had brought an ancient Grateful Dead concert shirt he had purchased in Seattle in 1989. It had holes in both sides, was yellowed under the arms.

“I remember you screaming at Mom for putting that in the dryer.”

Shane glanced down. “I guess you can tell you're getting old when your favorite shirts become workout shirts.”

Walking downstairs he mentioned, “Hey, before we go, I need to eat something.”

“We eat at five.”

“Yeah, okay. But it's twelve. All I ate was a muffin at the airport.”

“We don't have anything.”

“You don't have anything?”

“You can do it,” Caleb assured him, turning through the kitchen.

Shane acquiesced. In contrast to his bluster with Janelle, his goal was to play ball here, to accept Caleb's world, and keep all paths open. A sound he recognized caught his ear from down the hall, but he followed his brother out the back door.

At the far end of a crudely constructed deck, three wood planks led down to an expanse of beautiful, pristine wild tallgrass, which opened to the base of South Boulder Peak. On the deck, an older man with a bare chest covered in white hair raised a hand. His head was shaved close, and he held the posture of a naval officer.

“Hey John, this is my brother.”

“Welcome,” John said amicably as they shook hands. John's grip was sure. “Enjoy round two,” he exclaimed, patting Caleb's back.

“How far have you run today?” Shane asked as they crossed the field at a quick walk.

“Just six.”

“Miles?”

Caleb shook his head. “Hours.”

The heat hit Shane then, intense, energy-sapping. He felt trapped and vulnerable, without any cover or shade. Half a mile later they approached the beginning of some winding trails, ascending up into the trees. The start of the mountain.

“Mom's good?” Caleb asked him suddenly, as they started.

“She's all right. Considering.”

“Considering what?”

“She hasn't seen her son in eleven years.”

Caleb said nothing. Shane felt a need to stop the tension he felt mounting.

He tried to say something lighthearted, but the chemicals of food deprivation were sludging through his frontal lobes, mucking up the action. He found it difficult to formulate thoughts. They moved into the shaded trails in silence.

And suddenly his world shifted. The shuffle of their sneakers on the dirt seemed shatteringly loud, the breath in his lungs felt pure. The metallic aftertaste of his flight, the stress of his drive, his resentment at the thought of their mother's pain, dissipated, and a pleasing lassitude enveloped him. A good hike, Shane decided, might be the perfect thing in the world.

“So, who's that girl?”

“At the house? June.”

“Is she your girlfriend?”

Caleb's stomach jumped, as somehow the smell of June's skin sailed out of the sky. “No. We don't do that here.”

“Don't do what?”

“Have . . . girlfriends.”

“Is that like a policy?”

Caleb stared at him. Shane took a breath. Handling Caleb felt like tense negotiations with the North Koreans; they might break off at any time.