The Runner (24 page)

“We're out of applesauce.”

“You should have told me. I was in town today; you could have done a shopping.”

The table they ate at was made of wood, scrubbed down to smoothness. The joints between the separate boards had been made so close that you could see just a thin pencil line where one piece ended and the next began. The table had been put together the same way that fourteen-footer had, somebody's best work. It was as old as the farmhouse.

“I didn't know you were going,” she said.

“You should have told me it was time to do a shopping.”

She didn't answer.

“There's no call for us to run out of food.”

Nobody said anything. Bullet ate. The stuff mushed in his mouth; he couldn't even chew it.

“I didn't know you'd be going into town,” she finally answered.

“The fan belt on the tractor is giving out,” he told her. “I had to get it replaced.”

What was she supposed to say to that?

“And you know I don't enjoy pork without applesauce,” the old man said.

I'm sorry, that's what she was supposed to say. The hell with that.
Bullet pushed his chair back from the table and went to refill his bowl. Creating a diversion. When he sat down again, he looked at his mother. “This stuff is terrible,” he told her. “Want some?”

She shook her head, but her eyes had come alive. “Can you eat this pork chop?” She had one left on her plate.

Before Bullet could answer, the old man announced, “If you don't want it I'll take it. I've got room.” When nobody responded
right away, he said, “Pass me your plate, there's no need to let it get any colder than it is.”

It's almost funny,
Bullet thought, ducking his head to hide his expression. He looked sideways at his mother.

“You reap what you sow,” his father announced. “Samuel, do you hear me? You reap what you sow.”

“I hear you,” Bullet answered, without anger.
But I don't have to reap what you've sown, old man.
“Are you thinking about soybeans for the front fields next season then?” he asked.

At his right hand, his mother humphed, the sound of smothered laughter. “You, Bullet,” she warned him.

“Okay,” he promised her.

*   *   *

The coach read them the letter inviting the team to take part in the state field and track championships, the weekend before Thanksgiving. Twenty-five teams from all over the state were invited. The meets would take place over near Frederick, in the western part of the state, from Friday through Sunday.

“Well, whaddaya think, are you ready?” the coach asked them.

“Sure.”

“I'm always ready to miss a couple of days of school.”

“I hope,” the coach told them, “you're not taking this as lightly as you seem to be. Because that would mean you're seriously underestimating the competition. Only one of the schools we've played this fall is going to be there—Acorn. Remember that meet?”

“The first? They had one coach for every player, didn't they?”

“We're a lot better now.”

“Yeah, well, so're they, you can count on that.”

That point sobered them.

“And they're the only one of the twenty-five we've gone up against?”

“Look at the list yourselves. We've got no reason to be confident. On the other hand, we do have the element of surprise. They're not expecting us to be as good as we are, not the whole team. Bullet here they know about, but the rest of us. It'll be hard, I'm not trying to kid you. But—I can see it, right out in front of me—” His hand reached out, as if to pluck an invisible cluster of grapes from just overhead. “I can almost touch it. I can almost taste it.”

“Hey, Coach, you're not expecting us to
win
this thing, are you? It's only three weeks, we can't get that good in three weeks.”

The coach looked deliberately around at the circle of young men. “That would be too much, winning the whole thing. But I'd like to come in among the top ten, and I think this year we just might be able to do that. If you're on your form and you bust your guts . . . I think we're good enough for that. What do you think, are you good enough?”

“How would we know? You're the coach.”

“I was planning on being happy just not to be on the bottom again. Like, twenty-second place, or maybe even twenty-third.”

*   *   *

“The South,” Walker said, “thought it was being invaded by hostile forces. The North thought it was trampling down the vineyards where the grapes of wrath were stored.” He gave that a minute to sink in. Long enough for Cheryl to say, “‘Battle Hymn of the Republic,' Howe.” Walker just looked her in the eye and looked her in the eye.

Bullet smiled to himself. He didn't mind Walker, he decided.

“What do you think?” Walker asked. He waited to hear whatever anybody had to say.

“People were different back then,” somebody said, “so we can't think like they did at all.”

“What do you mean, different?” Walker asked.

“Well, they really believed in what they were fighting about. The Southerners really believed in their right to own slaves. The Northerners really believed slavery was wrong. To the Southerner, freeing a slave was like . . . giving your dog equal rights, you know? Dressing him up and letting him eat at the table with you.”

“You telling me that to prove things are different now?” a black kid asked.

Walker let the wave of laughter ripple over the room before asking another question. “Are people different?”

“People now?” Cheryl asked. “Sure. We know so much more.”

“Are you saying that knowledge is the key to progress?” somebody demanded.

“Well, look at the way they used to think war was romantic, dying for your country and all that. They didn't know.”

“Just marching along like sheep to the slaughter.”

“I guess we
are
really different, Mr. Walker.”

“I guess they wish we were the same, don't you think? No draft protesters, no freedom riders? Just followers.”

“Wait a minute,” Walker said. “Did you know there were riots when Lincoln announced the draft?” Silence greeted this. “And what about John Brown, isn't he the original freedom rider?”

“What are you trying to say?” somebody asked. “That we never learn and just make the same mistakes over and over?”

“History repeats itself,” Cheryl said.

“I'll tell you what I think,” one of the black girls said. “The South
was
being invaded. No, listen, if—if the Russians put up a fort on Deale Island, wouldn't you think just that?”

“Sabrina's right, we would feel invaded.”

“Of course we would, because we'd
be
invaded. Jerk.”

“So we'd go trampling down the vineyards, right?”

“Spare me another metaphor.”

“Well it's a good one, because it's interesting, because it's so ironic—the grapes of wrath. If you trample the grapes of wrath it should mean you put a stop to war.”

“The Civil War was another war to end all wars? But I thought World War I—”

“Which didn't do the job, either. When are people going to learn that making war is not the way to end wars?”

“Yeah! Then what is? Because if you're so smart and know the answer, I wish you'd tell us about it before they send me off to get killed.”

“Mr. Walker? What are you getting at?”

Walker had been watching the class. “Ask Mr. Tillerman.”

No you don't.

“Ask Bullet? Why? Is he awake?”

Well, that is pretty funny.

“Okay, I'll bite. Bullet? Mr. Tillerman, I mean—what is he getting at?”

Bullet fixed Walker with a glance. The man was looking at him, not het up, not pressuring, not entirely sure of himself; just interested.

“He's talking about the old wind in the old anger again,” Bullet said. Not, he could see, what Walker expected him to say. He watched the guy think it through.

“That's pretty subtle,” Walker said. “He's right, and he knows it—but I'm here to teach, not mystify. Let's get back to a fact, the draft riots.”

They chewed that one around for a while, asking Walker questions about the draft laws at the time, and how much you had to pay someone to go into the army in your place, and what happened to the rioters, and what happened to the draft law. Bullet relaxed back and followed his own thoughts. His father was pushing him out and the draft was out there pressuring him
in; how was he supposed to know what he wanted? In one way, getting drafted would be a way of getting away, running free and clear. In another, sticking it out at home would be a way of running beyond the reach of the draft. If he stayed on the farm, that would show his father, show him he couldn't push Bullet out. If he went into the army, enlisted, it would be a way of not being pushed into it. The feeling in the classroom was pretty clear—they wanted to run clear of the draft; not even the draft, really, they wanted to run clear of the danger. But that was one choice they didn't have, because you didn't choose the time you were born in.

Bullet thought on. Although, if it was the old wind in the old anger, the one thing you could be sure of was that it would blow on by. The war would end, his father would die; the wind was going to blow itself by whether you stood firm or ran along, with it or against it. He wondered, his legs stretched out, relaxed, crossed at the ankles, what he was going to decide to do. He had the same feeling he had waiting at the start of a race.

B
ullet looked around him. Mountains ringed this long, wide valley. To the east and south, distant mountains were massed shapes across the valley horizon. To the north and west, their shapes were clear because they lay closer. They looked as if some giant lying within the earth had punched out with his fists to form them—rough, strong, irregular, they rose up out of sloping hillsides into stone outcroppings or steep woods. Bullet ignored the crowd of competitors, coaches, officials and judges swarming around him. His eyes were on the mountains and the sky over them. The sky was clear and blue. The early sunlight was starting to take the icy chill out of the air and illuminate the details of mountain faces—here a woods of mixed evergreens and bare branches, there the long vertical gulley formed by spring floods.

It was Friday, the first day, when the schedule was an interlocked network of qualifying rounds. They had arrived last night after a nine-hour bus ride, and now they were standing around with the twenty-four other teams and their coaches, waiting for the day's meets to begin. The coach was wound up tight and so were most of the other people around. Voices swirled all around Bullet. He kept his eyes on the mountains, taking in the look of them where they had been thrust up through the surface of the earth.”

“When you're not in a race I want you here, under my eye.
You got that?” the coach told them. They nodded. “Nobody even goes to take a leak without that I know about it,” he said.

The qualifying rounds would take all day. Saturday and part of Sunday would be used for the finals. The coach had already warned them that the schedule showed some girls' exhibition matches Sunday morning, and he expected them to show up for those, however they felt. Whether they wanted to sleep in or not, he expected them to be there showing good sportsmanship. Bullet figured, he'd see what he felt like. “You too, Tillerman,” the coach had said, fixing him with his eye. Bullet debated saying he'd see, then decided it wasn't worth the hassle. “Okay,” he agreed, giving his word.

He had an hour to wait until his qualifying cross-country run. Javelin and high jump were in the afternoon. He let his eyes rove over the milling crowds. Competitors wore shorts and sweatshirts. Everyone else carried clipboards and had whistles hung around their necks. The conversations were punctuated with the sharp sound of somebody blowing on a whistle and the sound of the starter's gun. Bullet stuck around, not talking to anybody, just looking around. Tamer, he noticed, looked relaxed, as he sat talking with a bunch of blacks; most people looked, and acted, nerved up.
Blacks don't get so nervous,
he thought.

Bullet wasn't nerved up. They were running the qualifying cross-country in three different heats, so that the field wouldn't be too crowded. When the time came for his heat, he stood waiting at the start, not looking at anybody, then posed for the gun—and ran.

It was a three-mile course, up and down hills, through forest undergrowth, across deep gullies where little streams trickled, a couple of long, flat stretches along dirt roads, and then, at the end, the quarter-mile flat sprint. Bullet ran it hard. It was a good course, worth putting good work into. It was a strenuous course,
because going up and down hills required you to adjust your pace and kept you from steadying down into rhythm except during the straight runs. He came in first, feeling good, feeling worked out, feeling glad he'd had the chance to put his feet down along that course.

The only place he was liable to get into trouble, he thought, on Saturday's five-mile final race, was going to be getting over obstacles. The hurdling technique was designed for level ground. An obstacle on this course would just as likely lead into a downslope or an upslope, and the ground could send you off-balance as you landed. Bullet figured if he fell and took the impact with his arms or chest that would be all right. The danger was, of course, taking the strain on a leg, especially an ankle. As long as his legs were working, he could run.
It'll be a question of how you fall, then, if you fall,
he told himself.

The results came in at the end of dinner. Crisfield had qualified in everything but high jump and the hundred meter. “Somebody pinch me,” the coach said, reading off the results as they sat at a long cafeteria table. The college campus where the championships were held had been emptied by its own students for a long weekend. The teams were sleeping in dormitories and eating in the student cafeteria. “How'd we do last year? We stayed in the broad jump and nothing else. Except cross-country. Correct me if I'm wrong.” Bullet didn't remember last year. “Tillerman, did you see the time on that guy from Baltimore?”