The Runner (19 page)

They didn't approach the coach together, but Tamer was there when Bullet trotted up at the start of practice. The coach
came to greet Bullet and shook his hand. “I knew it,” he said happily. “I knew you had some team spirit, kid. It's good to see you.” He clapped Bullet on the shoulder.

Bullet didn't say anything.

“You had me worried, I'll tell you.”

Bullet flicked a glance toward Tamer's face. The guy was trying not to smile.

“But your heart is in the right place, just like I thought.”

Tamer coughed into his hand.

“So. You two guys made up a schedule or anything?” the coach asked.

“No,” Bullet said. Tamer was still choking away in the background.

“I'll leave it up to you, kid. We're gonna have ourselves one hellava team. One sweet hell of a team,” he repeated. “All right, let's get going,” he called. “You okay, Shipp? You got a cold or something?”

O
kay,” Tamer said. He and Bullet stood warily together, facing one another. Practice was over and everybody else had gone back, to cars and buses; the sun was lowering, the air growing sharp. “What do I have to do? Don't expect me to enthuse, Tillerman.”

Bullet wasn't expecting anything. “There's speed and there's stamina,” he said. He looked at the big colored guy: “What are you, six two? Weight one ninety?”

“One seventy.”

He had a dark shadow, too, over his jawbone and above his lip. He looked full grown.

“Twenty in the spring,” Tamer said, bored. “Blood type O-positive. C'mon, Tillerman, let's hear it, I've got other things to do.”

“Nobody's making you,” Bullet said.

“We going to work out or not?” Tamer insisted.

“Stamina first. I usually run ten miles.”

“Ten?”

Bullet nodded.

“Every day?”

Bullet nodded.

“No wonder you outclass us.”

Don't kid yourself, it isn't just the practice time.

“You would anyway, though, wouldn't you.”

Bullet knew when he was being baited.

“So these races are diddly squat to you.”

Bullet just went on with the business at hand. “You want to be able to run seven or eight, but you've got to work up to that.”

“It's already the second week in October, I don't have much time. I've run four miles.”

“Once. And barely,” Bullet reminded him.

“Every day since then,” Tamer answered. “I don't get caught in the same trap twice, Whitey. What's the longest these courses get, at our level?”

“Five miles and that's only the championship course.”

“So I'm looking for six, six easy. Correct?”

Bullet shrugged. He was looking for seven or eight, but if he wanted to know better and shave it down to six, if he needed to feel like he was making all the decisions himself, that was no skin off Bullet's nose.

Tamer continued: “So I should do this course, once more around.”

“It's no good unless you do six consecutively.”

“Yeah, well, I can see that, but I can also see the sun getting lower. Let's get this over with.”

Tamer chugged steadily along the cross-country path. Bullet kept back just behind him, feeling like he was barely moving at all. About halfway around the course, the colored guy fagged out—he leaned even further forward, his arms hung at his side, his feet just barely got off the ground. Dogged, he stumbled through the last mile. Then he collapsed full length onto the grass.

Bullet waited for him to catch his breath.

“What a way to make your name in athletics,” Tamer groaned, rolling over and sitting up.

“You're big for a runner,” Bullet pointed out.

“You're not exactly small,” Tamer answered. “I was going to go out for football, but—” He looked back to the course he had run. “I never saw you running this five times. How do you get in ten miles?”

“I've got a course I run, at home.”

Tamer stood up. Sweat ran down his cheeks and stained his gray T-shirt. “I'll run that with you.”

Bullet shook his head. “Nothing personal.”

Tamer looked at him without pleasure.

“My old man would probably take a shot at you. He won't have coloreds on the place.”

“Blacks,” Tamer said.

“Nothing personal,” Bullet said. “We could do the job quicker and better there. But he's a crack shot.”

“You aren't kidding,” Tamer said.

Bullet didn't answer. Of course he wasn't kidding.

“Like father like son, huh? Just a chip off the old block, the old white block. Save your breath, Tillerman, I don't need to hear it.” He got up. “Okay. I'll do this one again. You can go home, Tillerman, you've made your point. I'll make it around fine without your company. Better without.”

“Fine by me, Shipp.” Bullet turned around and jogged back toward the school. Behind him he heard the heavy feet start off again.

After a couple of days, the colored guy didn't start fading out until just after the fifth mile. Tamer ran the cross-country route three consecutive times, every day, staying for an hour after practice let out. Bullet hung around and ran the third lap behind him. He could almost predict where the big legs would start to run sloppy. On the third day of this, when Tamer collapsed at the finish, Bullet told him, “You've got to run through it.”

“Shut up, Whitey.” Tamer lay stretched out on his back, his big chest heaving.

“Suit yourself.” Bullet started off. Suiting himself.

“Hey!” The colored guy yelled after him.

Bullet turned around.
Now what?
Tamer was sitting up, his legs out, rubbing his calves.

“Where are you going?”

“Look, Shipp, if you don't want to do this, it's fine by me.”

“I don't want to, but I'm going to,” Tamer said. “I figured you felt the same way.”

Bullet could have grinned, it was so exactly what he was thinking. “So?”

“Whaddaya mean
so?
I thought you were supposed to be coaching me, not just proving your superiority. You don't know shit about coaching, Tillerman.”

Bullet didn't argue.

“You know what I'm beginning to think? I'm beginning to think you think I don't know a mug's game when I see one.”

“Apparently you don't,” Bullet told him.

Tamer jumped up, eyes angry, body ready. “What's that supposed to mean, Whitey?”

Bullet was ready, if he wanted to try a fight. They stood there in the silent air, yards apart, facing off.

“The way I see it,” Tamer said carefully, the words coming out slow and calculated, like a glove across the face, his eyes fixing Bullet, his heavy eyebrows low, “if you can get me to quit, you'll be able to run. Having it all your own way again.”

Stupid.
“I wouldn't waste my time.”

Tamer stepped toward him, fists bunched. “What does that mean? You're so damned laconic, Tillerman, I don't think you know what you mean half the time you open your mouth.”

“I know,” Bullet said, slow and calculated, “exactly what I mean.”

Tamer halted, and thought. “So you mean you wouldn't waste your time scheming like that?”

“You got it.”

Tamer thought again. “You could say that, you know? Make it a little easier on the rest of us to figure out what you mean.”

Bullet shrugged.

“What're you after, Tillerman?”

“I run,” Bullet answered.

Tamer almost exploded. Bullet could see him belting himself in from exploding. Then he laughed, without humor: “Don't break your back being communicative. I guess, if it's a mug's game and I learn something, I'm not the mug.”

“It's got nothing to do with who's a mug, Shipp,” Bullet told him patiently.

“Maybe not. If you're straight; which I doubt. Whitey has trouble being straight. But that's beside the point, so keep your hair on. The point is, what good you can do me? Right?” Bullet didn't answer. “And what you just advised me, in your ineluctably supportive manner, is that I can run through it.”

Ineluctably? Shit.
“Yeah.” Bullet drifted back toward the track.

“Do you run through it?” Tamer demanded.

“Sure.”

“When?”

“Just before nine. But—” Bullet stopped himself.

“But what, Whitey?” the voice challenged him.

“I've never seen you do it.”

“You've never seen me quit.”

“So what?”

Tamer chewed on that. Bullet waited.

“Whadda you mean, run through it?” Tamer asked.

Bullet shrugged. “Just what it says.”

Tamer groaned.

Bullet looked at him.
Coloreds give up easier, against the odds.

“Go ahead,” Tamer said, ready. “Say it.”

Bullet wasn't scared. “Coloreds give up easier,” he said.

“Blacks,” Tamer corrected him. “And
I
don't.”

You can't prove that by me.

“I've got to go now, but you can watch me tomorrow,” Tamer said.

“It's still light,” Bullet pointed out.

“Yeah, but I've got a job to get to.”

The next afternoon, Bullet watched: watched the point of exhaustion, watched the legs and arms start to sag, watched Tamer pace down and gather himself together—and run through it.
Hunh,
he thought, watching the big muscles work. Surprised.

At the finish, Tamer fell onto the ground, as always, but his eyes were open and his teeth showed a big smile. “Brother,” he said. “Bro-ther. I hate to admit it, but you were right.”

Bullet didn't say anything.

“It sure does hurt, though.” He looked up at Bullet, squinting against the sun. “You do that every day?”

“Yeah.”

“You must feel no pain, no pain a-tall.”

He could think what he liked.

“This meet tomorrow, what do you think our chances are?” Tamer got up, dusting himself off.

“Why do you keep collapsing at the finish?” Bullet asked.

“I'm not hung up on pride, not me,” Tamer told him. “Whites get hung up on pride. Me, I fall down because it feels so good to be lying there. Are you telling me you don't want to do just that?”

That was the last thing Bullet wanted to do. He didn't say anything. Tamer looked at him, considering. Bullet looked right back, not considering anything.

Tamer came in third in the cross-country, an easy, level, three-
mile course. The coach came over to them, elated. He started clapping them both on the back. “A week and a half of work, and already—we got it, boys; we got it in our hands. I knew you two would make an unbeatable team. I knew it.” Bullet looked up to find Tamer staring right at him, his dark eyebrows raised in tolerant amusement—what the coach didn't know wouldn't hurt him, Bullet guessed.

*   *   *

When Jackson grabbed his shoulder and told him to eat with them in the lunchroom on Monday, Bullet thought he was in for some long speeches about “doing the right thing.” He considered heading outside to eat, but not seriously: It was cold, a real edge to the wind. Not as bad as yesterday out on the water, hauling up on the oyster tongs, but not comfortable by any stretch of the imagination. So he slid onto the bench beside Lou, who did not move far enough along to give him much room. “Hi,” she said, her voice low, close. “It's been a while.”

Across from them Cheryl said, “I didn't miss him.”

“You see him every day in History,” Lou said.

“Whoopeedo,” Cheryl said. “So, what do you think of Tommy's editorial?” she asked Bullet.

“I didn't read it.” Bullet glanced at Tommy, who seemed to be carrying around some subdued excitement.

“You're the only one then. I got hauled over the coals by our esteemed advisor.”

“Why?”

“Because the silly twit didn't know until someone told her that there was more to it than met her eye,” Jackson told him. “And my guess is, they told her at some length. I could almost feel sorry for her. Except she figured that Tommy here was some tame little editor, which shows how much she knows.”

“It was a good one,” Tommy told Bullet, proud.

“Really good,” Cheryl seconded the opinion. Bullet didn't doubt it. “‘Crisfield Colors'—that's a great title too. The whole thing is great.”

“Not great,” Tommy said, one eye on Bullet. “But good. Great may be the one in this week's issue. See, I talked about the colors as if I was talking about red and white, but I was really—if you read it another way—talking about black and white. And she didn't pick up on it, she put her fat blue okay right on the top of the paper. I couldn't believe it, I tell you. I almost took it back and asked her if she knew what she was doing.”

“They're going to keep closer tabs on you now, though,” Jackson warned.

“There's nothing they can do, because we're the ones who do layout and deliver it to the printer, so we're the ones who really decide what goes in. I never thought of that before. So I've got a dummy editorial to give her this week, and I'll print the one I want to. What do you think, Bullet?”

“Sounds like you can pull it off.”

“Yep. I can't believe I never realized that before. I mean, how dumb can you get? And I figure, once it's printed—what can they do? I mean, I'm an elected officer, right? They wouldn't dare just fire me. If they try to throw me out of school, I'll appeal to the school board, and they wouldn't like the publicity one bit.”

“They could have you impeached,” Cheryl told him.

“They could try,” Tommy said, “but they'd never pull it off. Well, what do you think?” he asked Bullet.

“You look like you're enjoying yourself.”