Racing the Rain (11 page)

“Seventy-two!” called Bickerstaff from the other side of the track. “Lenny seventy-eight, the rest of you about eighty-three.”

“Uh-oh,” said Demski, as they slowed to a jog, “Parsley is going to ralph.”

Sure enough, one of the slower guys, a small kid with a comical cowlick, ran to the outside of the track and let go, keeping his feet wide apart in a vain attempt to avoid splashing his shoes.

“I f-f-forgot Monday was spaghetti day,” Demski said, still jogging,

Demski and Cassidy were both breathing hard but not gasping. Cassidy was elated. The tops of his thighs merely tingled, nothing like the needle stabs that had tormented him for weeks. He could feel them more acutely now than during the warm-up, but it wasn't bad at all.

Cassidy expected to get shut down by Ed eventually, so he figured he might as well earn a little credibility while he could.
No way I can keep this up, but I can have some fun in the meantime,
he thought.

On the next interval he blasted away at the post just as Ed dropped his arm. Cassidy got five yards on him and was surprised that Ed didn't come right back. In fact, he didn't make up the deficit at all. Cassidy concentrated on his long stride, stretching out on the back straight and just letting it rip all the way around the final curve. He expected Ed to come back on him at any moment, but he never did. Though he could now feel the sharp little stabs of pain in the tops of his thighs starting up again, it was nothing like before and nothing he couldn't handle.

Bickerstaff was waiting at the white finish post, giving Cassidy a puzzled look as he blew past, ten yards in front of Demski.

“Sixty-eight,” said Bickerstaff, his voice soft. He collected himself somewhat before Demski came by.

“Seventy-two, Ed. Good one, you guys. All right, all the way through, the rest of you. Seventy-six, Lenny. Seventy-seven, seventy-eight, Miley. Okay, eighty, eighty-one, and eighty-two, Derwood, Jarvis. Good work, men. Keep moving. Number four coming up.”

Well, I've had my fun
, Cassidy thought,
and now I'm in for it. Ed's gonna be ticked, and I've probably shot my wad.

But the next one went much the same. He finished in sixty-eight again, with Ed a full three seconds back this time.

Cassidy wasn't sure what was going on. His little show of bravado had been intended as a kind of a joke, a quick grab for a snippet of glory before Ed and the others caught on and lowered the boom on him. But he had run with little pain and some very real joy at last, and no one else was to match him. In fact, they seemed to be falling behind. The rest of them were eyeing him curiously during the rests, even Demski.

Ed seemed to recover a little bit on number five and actually led most of the way, but Cassidy could tell the pace was getting to him, and he slipped past Demski in the last fifty yards and led by a second with another sixty-eight.

This time Ed stopped and grabbed his knees just past the finish line, and Cassidy did the same.

Coach Bickerstaff had grown strangely silent. After giving the stragglers their times, he walked over to where Cassidy and Demski were still bent over, gasping. He swatted their fannies with his clipboard.

“Okay, you guys,” he said. But it wasn't the usual command to keep moving, just a gesture of encouragement.

Demski really came alive on the number six, and Cassidy had to admire the fight in him. He took the lead from the start, led all the way around the first turn, and then fought Cassidy off twice on the back straight. Cassidy thought he heard Bickerstaff call out a split time of thirty-three seconds at the 220, but figured he heard wrong.

Though the tops of his thighs were once again on fire, Cassidy drove down the final straightaway, leaving Ed struggling a full second behind.

“Sixty-seven,” Bickerstaff read from the watch as Cassidy went by. Again he said it in a normal voice, kept studying his watch, seeming surprised by what he was seeing.

The rest of the runners were now strung out so far that it was taking longer and longer to get them organized between intervals. Cassidy and Demski were grateful for the extra time provided by the stragglers, some of whom were now taking more than ninety seconds to finish.

They themselves could jog only a few yards before they had to walk again. When they started number seven it was obvious they were still blown out, and Bickerstaff had no doubt they were also trying to save a little something for the last one.

But still they finished number seven in seventy-two seconds, coming across the line almost neck and neck. They stopped for a few seconds before jogging on, but they were the only ones capable of doing that. Everyone else staggered around in random clumps. Jarvis Parsley was collapsed on the infield, and Bickerstaff sent him to the locker room in the care of a manager.

Bickerstaff watched Cassidy and Demski jogging along with little slow, prancing steps all around the turn, sweat flying off them on every stride.
Now
, he thought.
Now we shall see what we shall see.

But if he thought the anomaly of the earlier intervals was now going to be corrected and that the world would thus be set aright, he was in for one last surprise.

Cassidy sprinted away from Demski from the start and simply ran away from the rest of them. He telescoped his lead over Demski up to twenty yards before the end. Stiggs and some of the other jumpers were standing on the infield yelling themselves hoarse as he went by. Even some of the weight men joined in. The tops of Cassidy's thighs were screaming at him again, but he didn't care; he could endure anything for a few more seconds. He finished gasping, body frozen into a solid block of lactic acid, but many full seconds in front of Demski, who, anyone could easily see, was absolutely balls-to-the-wall flat out.

Bickerstaff studied his watch as Cassidy went by. If he called out a time, Cassidy didn't hear it. He slowed to a straight-legged stagger, then halted, grabbed his knees, and wobbled around, working so hard to get air into his lungs he sounded in his own head as if he were shrieking. Demski and the rest were finishing now and doing likewise.

With a strange look on his face, Coach Bickerstaff walked over with the split timer held faceup in his right hand, the lanyard dangling. He held it down to where Cassidy was bent over, gasping.

It took a moment to focus, but when his vision cleared he was able to read the watch: 64.8.

“Do you still think you're a basketball player?” Bickerstaff said.

“T
his friend of mine,” said Trapper, “he's pretty knowledgeable. You know the last thing on my mind is to interfere with your team, but I thought you'd want to hear what he had to say.” He was a little uncomfortable, having put on a clean shirt and long pants, rare for him. Mr. Kamrad sat in the other chair, across from Coach Bickerstaff.

“What'd you say his name was?”

“San Romani. Archie San Romani.”

Bickerstaff emitted a low whistle.

“You know him?”

“Criminy, Trapper. Everybody knows Archie San Romani. Everybody who knows anything about track and field. Kid had his leg mangled under a truck, then grows up to be a national champion.”

“Right, right. That's him. They thought he was going to be the first four-minute-miler there for a while, I guess.”

“I remember. I actually saw him run once, at the Mason-Dixon Games.” Bickerstaff shoved his baseball cap back on his head and rocked back in his swivel chair.

He turned to Kamrad. “And what is your interest in all this, Dennis?”

“Just a friend of the court. I've talked on the phone with Archie, and I'm generally in agreement with his point of view.”

Bickerstaff turned back to Trapper Nelson. “And how do you know San Romani, anyway?” he said.

“We worked at the same place one summer in Michigan. He was going to some college in Kansas and was working over the summer. I was on my way out west. The company was called Crown Cork & Seal, manufactured bottle caps, cans, mason jar lids, and such. Noisiest place you ever heard. We worked on the same production line, got to be pretty good friends. He weighed about a hundred and forty pounds, but he could work circles around any three of the rest of us.”

“And you say you've stayed in touch with him?”

“Just Christmas cards and such. But when young Quenton mentioned the trouble he's been having with his legs . . .”

“And you know Quenton how?”

“We're just friends. Fishing and whatnot.”

“Okay, well, I don't think those growing pains are bothering him anymore, not after what I saw on Monday.”

“Oh?”

“We've got this kid, Demski, eighth grader like Quenton, ran for me last year. Showed a lot of promise, but he was still young. Well, he shows up in March this year in pretty good shape and it wasn't long before he was winning everything in sight. No one could touch him in the half mile, and he was almost as good in the 440. Cassidy, meantime, is doing okay, too. He can't keep up with Demski, but he's holding his own, picking up thirds, fourths, fifths—”

“Yeah, that's what I wanted to talk to you—”

“Let me finish. This past Monday we've got this bear of a workout scheduled. Eight quarter miles with a 220 jog in between. I wanted them in seventy-five seconds or so, knowing Demski's probably the only kid that can hit that, but, you know, giving them all something to shoot for—”

“Let me guess what happened,” Trapper interrupted.

Bickerstaff looked at him.

“Quenton walked all over them.”

Bickerstaff studied him. “How'd you know that?”

“I'm right, aren't I? What did he average?”

“A tick over sixty-nine. Demski was seventy-one flat.”

“That's what I thought. You just saw the real Quenton then.”

“What are you talking about? I've been coaching him straight through since the first of March. He's never shown me anything like that before.”

“That's what I've been trying to tell you, Bick. The kid's been about half injured the whole time.”

Trapper Nelson took a sheath of folded notebook paper out of his back pocket.

“I made a few notes here from talking with Archie,” he said. “He knew exactly what I was talking about when I described Quenton's injury to him. I said it was needlelike pains in the tops of the quadriceps that keep him from getting any knee lift. Archie said they're caused by too much speed work too early. You get these small tears in the muscles on the tops of the thighs. Archie said
he's
had them before, usually early in the season. But he says they're easy to get rid of, you just have to take a little time off.”

“What time off? The big meets are just coming up now! How's he going to be ready if he's sitting on his heinie?”

“They just need enough time to heal, and the kid'll be fine,” said Mr. Kamrad. “We get the same thing in rowing with the shoulder muscles, caused by pulling too hard too early. There's no way around it, you just have to let them heal.”

“Well, let me tell you something, Trapper, Dennis. I've been coaching track and field for more than a decade and I've never heard of this so-called injury. Plus, from what I saw on Monday, there is nothing whatsoever wrong with his quadriceps, his biceps, his triceps, or his any other kind of 'ceps. This kid is
over
his little episode of growing pains and he's ready to take on the world, I tell you what. Otherwise, how do you explain what I just saw?”

“Easy to explain, Bob. He just had a three-day weekend rest, finally giving him a chance to heal up a little bit. I'll bet by now he's right back to where he was before,” said Mr. Kamrad.

Bickerstaff made a dismissive gesture. Trapper Nelson sighed.

“Archie also had some workout suggestions,” Trapper said quietly, holding up his notes. “I don't suppose you'd be interested in seeing those.”

“I'm pretty much all set on that score,” Bickerstaff said coldly. “But thank you for the offer. And thank Mr. San Romani when you talk to him.”

The two got up to leave.

“And, Dennis, I appreciate the concern,” said Bickerstaff.

Mr. Kamrad paused at the door and gave Bickerstaff a tight smile.

“U
h-uh-uh-oh,” said Demski. “The fl-fl-fl-fl-fl, waterbird is back.”

Cassidy was miserable. They were still jogging the warm-up and already his legs were excruciating. On Monday he was invincible, and now, on Friday, he was right back where he had been before. Maybe worse.

He knew Trapper Nelson and Mr. Kamrad had failed in their intervention attempt, and with that failure Cassidy saw his dreams of glory on the track blowing away like spindrift. He tried to assure Trapper that everything would be fine, that he appreciated his efforts, but Trapper was not to be consoled. He offered to talk to Cassidy's parents, but Cassidy declined. He figured it would only complicate things further and Bickerstaff already had his back up. As Cassidy's performance declined steadily during the week, Bickerstaff became convinced that he was putting on a show for his benefit, trying to convince him that Trapper Nelson's diagnosis was correct. This seemed to anger him further, this battle of wills with one of his charges.

The workout of the day was twelve times 220 with a two-minute walk between. He wanted them to shoot for thirty-six seconds, which meant he expected Ed and Cassidy to duke it out at that speed and the rest of them to hang on as best they could.

“Y-y-you okay?” asked Ed as they lined up.

“Not really,” said Cassidy. After a horrible long run the day before, he was dreading this.

Ed finished the first one in thirty-five and Cassidy was five seconds back, his face twisted in pain. Lenny Lindstrom and Jarvis Parsley finished in front of him.