The Peerless Four Page 12

  After that, his life filled with drunken-wasted years. He took a morbid pride in his failures, joining the ranks of bar regulars who delight in their separation from outwardly successful, simpleminded people. A reverse-snobbish camaraderie based on disappointments and the temptation and trap of a catastrophic existence.

  Then one afternoon much the same as the others, with Sacks settled at his barstool, a fellow patron near him lifted a newspaper, shoved his finger at the photo of the three women crossing the finish tape of a race, their chests thrust forward and faces strained with the usual mouth-gaping crazed look.

  The patron thrust his finger more, finally opining, “Now what the hell makes a girl go and do something stupid like that?”

  “I don’t know,” said Sacks. He stared at the photo, remembering the sucked-in, haunted look he had in the old photos of him mid-run, and then he stared into his forever-diminishing glass of whiskey, pondering some more.

  After some time, he looked up and said, “What the hell makes men run, jump, tackle each other, throw a ball, lift weights?”

  “Not the same,” the other man insisted.

  A heated discussion ensued concerning the absurdities of sports, life, motivations, and the sexes. Abruptly, the discussion turned to imaginary exaggerated personal observations of the other’s mother and sisters. This dialogue was soon silenced with fisticuffs, ending with both men thrown out of the bar and to the sidewalk.

  The fight continued in the dirt outside the bar, a wrangling dust-ball of two, until the authorities came and dragged the men to jail.

  It was soon after this fight, while inside a jail cell yet again, awaiting his release for his eleventh drunk-and-disorderly, that Sacks underwent a mysterious internal psychic shift. Ten years from his career-ending accident, he stopped drinking, smoking, and carousing and took up coaching.

  There weren’t many willing to coach girls, even though Sacks later claimed they listened better, so it was only a matter of time for Jack to find him, and Jack paid him well enough.

  The underdog status of girls was a definite lure, but Coach Sacks also took satisfaction in knowing that no matter how hard the girls trained or tried, they would never be as fast as he was in his prime, and he told them so on a regular basis. He insisted that this information motivated them, even after I told him that it motivated him.

  When stationary, Coach Sacks still looked like an athlete: tall, broad-shouldered, solid. But when he moved, his shoulders pulled forward and he walked with a dragging limp. He stayed still as much as possible, leaned against fences and walls.

  Unlike most coaches, he didn’t yell. He rarely raised his voice. His heart had weakened from his destructive years, and he was careful to maintain his composure. But there was also a quiet ease and calm that came from his having used up his stupidity and loud brashness in the bars.

  He treated the girls with respect and they responded. He was in his mid-thirties and they were young, so that I was not that surprised when he and Flo developed an intense connection, as she was training for the 800-metres, his race that he lost without ever running. He trained with her the longest: Jack brought them together before Ginger, Farmer, and Bonnie.

  Flo demanded his attention and took pride in messing with his impartiality. There was between them a familiarity suggestive of marital unselfconsciousness and emotional telepathy, yet Coach Sacks was also indulgent of her like a besotted father. Attentive, cautious, and watchful, he was disturbed by her flirtations with other men, which were frequent. But she came back to him for support, and he was her center.

  He taught her to run as he had, and he’d lean against the wall and watch her, an echo of him. Before she met him, she had just been running, something she did, a race here and there, most she won, some she lost. He taught her to go faster, take longer strides, hold her head higher, to use more arm action, to keep her elbows closer to her sides. She joked that he hypnotized her, and he did have blazing eyes, hardly ever blinking, just staring through you, burning away.

  He told her that it wasn’t the first lap but the second and final lap that was the farthest from the finish. The 800-metres was lost on that second lap, records broken or forfeited, careers made or ended. A small space between anonymity and fame, greatness and mediocrity, happiness and despair. The second lap wasn’t a metaphor for life, he said, but for every bad thing you endured and continued to endure.

  The others ran clumsily, heads back, arms flinging, and all effort. Her running was assured, distance combined and measured with speed, all grace. He knew her inside and out, and that was why when he said, “Keep her from distractions,” I knew that he was telling me to keep her away from the boys.

  Bonnie was enlisted in this task, as she was Flo’s roommate. Both girls were in high school. And though Flo behaved like a high school girl, Bonnie did not. Ever since her disqualification, Bonnie was responsible, helpful, trustworthy, and my personal spy. She was beginning to understand that if running was the only thing in her life, if it was her only purpose, then when she lost, she had no other purpose. For her, losing was devastating, but now that she’d lost, she had to do a lot of soul-searching.

  When Bonnie knocked on my door after breakfast that morning, saying, “It’s me,” I knew before opening it that Flo was in trouble and that most likely this trouble included a boy.

  As I followed Bonnie to the track, she explained that Flo was practicing with some of the boys and that maybe she was over-reacting, maybe that was okay, but that she didn’t know for sure. I told her that she’d done the right thing by coming to get me. Flo’s greatest weakness was the inability to ignore a dare, especially when boys were involved.

  A warm foggy rain drifted down, and I said, “Her heat’s tomorrow,” and Bonnie said, “I told her to stay put,” and I said, “She’s just warming up, it’s probably okay,” and Bonnie said, “Sure,” but we both knew how competitive Flo was, and how she liked to show off.

  We got there and saw Flo running calmly alongside the boys’ 1,500-metre runner, Scotty Walter, and they were talking casually. Bonnie and I looked at each other and laughed in relief.

  Scotty and Flo continued running, and we stood watching and waiting for them to make their way to our side of the track. Scotty was lean, with the narrow face and loping stride of a greyhound, and his dark hair flopped into his eyes.

  I looked up into the sky for a second, feeling the mist but not seeing it, and then, “Oh no,” I heard Bonnie say, “no, no, no,” and my eyes met her horrified face and followed her gaze to Scotty, speeding to pass Flo.

  Flo sped up too, not wanting Scotty to pass, and then he went faster, and so did she, and I yelled, “No!” but before we could do anything, Flo was full-out racing Scotty and he was full-out racing her.

  They were headed toward us, their faces full of strain and determination from going all out, and then he was looking over his shoulder, for she was behind him a few paces, and she went down in a running somersault.

  My hand was over my mouth and Bonnie’s hand was over hers, and then we were running to Flo’s crumpled fetal-like body, hearing her agonized groan. She went to a sit, pulling her knee to her chest, and the first thing she said was, “Don’t tell Sacks.”

  But with his radar-like Flo alert, Coach Sacks sensed something, for there he was, hobbling in a wide step with incredible speed across the track, his arms swinging, helping to propel him. He looked like a great bumbling ostrich. His eyes were fixed on us, his face red. He made his way sideways between two boys, pushing and dodging, and then he was in the clear, crossing toward us again.

  Scotty, Bonnie, and I opened a space from our huddle, and Coach Sacks inserted himself, taking over in an awkward kneeling position. He lifted and assessed Flo’s leg, angled her foot, tested its ankle.

  “A muscle strain,” he said in a calm tone, “not bad. We’ll ice it, and you’ll be fine.” His assurance, however, did not correspond with his worried expression.

  We were quiet, and I wished for
the great relief of the day’s inking itself to night, of the whiskey rattling in my flask and then tilting and moving from flask to lips to mouth to throat to heart.

  And then Coach Sacks broke the silence along with his magnanimity: “What in the hell were you thinking?” His eyes were wet and partly closed. “Goddamn Jesus Christ!”

  Flo said, “Sorry! I’m so sorry! It was so stupid,” and her eyes, usually bold and reckless, were full of remorse.

  With gravitas, Scotty apologized, and there was nothing more to say but Coach Sacks said, “I’m at a loss. I can think of nothing that fills me with greater loathing than a display of stupidity for stupidity’s sake.”

  Flo looped an arm around Bonnie and Scotty and was hop-stepped back to her room, where she rested and iced her muscle, and prayed to be ready in the morning for her 800-metre heat.

  But before we left her room, Coach Sacks looked at her in bed, and he kept looking so that she couldn’t take it.

  “Anyway,” she said, hesitantly, wildly, watching him closely, “it was an accident.” She gripped his arm. “Anyway,” she continued, “there’s more to life.”

  Coach Sacks shook his arm free. He stared at Flo in disbelief.

  “I mean,” said Flo, “well, life goes on.”

  “Sure,” said Coach Sacks, but he meant the opposite.

  “You fell,” she said, “you fell worse than what I did.”

  “I did,” agreed Coach Sacks, looking down at her.

  The following morning was warm and overcast and needed to rain. The sleeves of my dark-blue dress were flecked with tiny drops of moisture but the specks disappeared seconds after arrival, and when I reached out my hand, I felt nothing. So the rain swelled in the sky and didn’t release, and the girls gathered for the 800-metre heat.

  Farmer agreed to run with Flo for moral support, even if she wasn’t a long-distance runner, and there they were, jogging side by side to the starting line, running in such beautiful synchronicity that they looked for a moment like twins.

  Flo’s leg hurt but Coach Sacks wrapped it earlier, telling her if she could get right mentally, that would help. “Don’t try to pass anyone,” he said. “Pull up behind and then cut out fast. Unleash the entire sprint you got toward the finish. Cut out around and get your lead and cut in again, fast, before anyone knows what’s going on. If someone tries to pass, listen to her stride and don’t look back. Listen and guess. Just when you think she’s going to begin sprinting, lengthen out and pull away. Don’t let the runners know you’re in a hurry. You can overtake them without letting them know.”

  Flo nodded and Coach Sacks took his pocket watch, lifted it and said, “What’s this?”

  “My enemy.”

  “What are you going to do?”

  “Conquer it.”

  So everyone agreed that Farmer would help with the mental, and Farmer was jiggling her fingers, and Flo was jumping up and down. A few of the runners were running back and forth in their lanes.

  The slow terrible minutes came before the race—drawing for positions, instructions imparted, and the awful hush before the starter’s commands. Then Flo was digging her feet in the dirt and looking over at Farmer, six girls down, and Farmer was looking back, digging her feet and nodding, yes, I’m here, Flo, you’re okay. Flo looked ahead, concentrated, fingers sprawled in front of her, shoulders down.

  There was a calm in the midst of the commotion. A single instant of composed disbelief that it was about to happen, in a fraction of a second, it would happen, after the months, the miles, the mornings, the travel, the practices, finally happening.

  Then the gun was fired and a cloud of white smoke rose above the man who’d fired it, and the girls sprang forward in a wave. The pack of girls joggled, loosened, and stretched from each other, like a fist opening into a hand. Coach Sacks leaned at the wall of the stadium next to Jack and cursed aloud while Jack patted his arm.

  Flo said later that the noise from the stadium added to the growing roar in her head, and she let it fuel her stride. She started strong and moved into it, building her speed, forgetting her pain, her legs unconnected. For an instant, she looked over a lane and saw Farmer staring right back, and it got her feet to fly even more.

  The second lap, her mouth went dry. She felt nothing but pain and torment running toward the tape, the faces of the crowd blending and swimming as if she were in a dream. Behind her was the tenacious ghost-sound of feet chasing her, urgent and alarming, gaining, but she reached the tape before the sound caught up. She clenched her fist high above her head as she crossed, and then the American girl crossed. Third came Farmer, to everyone’s surprise, qualifying her.

  A few of the girls went to their knees after the race, and I watched the reporters scribbling. A pair collapsed at the field, lying at their backs looking up at the sky, and their hands went to each other. They kept holding hands, staring up at the sky, and I wanted to tell the reporters that they had it all wrong.

  The American girl was found to have been paced by a teammate on the infield, an infraction worthy of disqualification, but the authorities chose to overlook it, issuing a mere warning. Bonnie said, “Why’d I get disqualified, and she gets nothing?” and the only answer we could come up with was that she was American.

  Nine runners, including Farmer and a bandaged Flo, lined up for the 800-metre final the following afternoon.

  I accompanied Farmer for her warm-up beforehand, and Flo stayed in her room and rested her leg, hurting from the strain of the 800-metre heat the day before. The noise from the stadium barely carried to us on the outside, at a plot of grass where no one went. Farmer did her stretches, her easy jog, some sprints. The clamor in her head needed to be contained, unleashed only in the ferocity surrounding the pistol crack. Now the buildup floated inside her. Grief, despair, worry, the tension of her body. Building to release until there was nothing left.

  Trying to warm up in the stadium, being too close to the crowds, made the girls frazzled, causing the buildup to come in gushes, getting them there too early or ending it too soon. It was better to warm up in private, in quiet, in comfort, this last bit of calm. Though Farmer wanted me there and asked me to come, she didn’t speak the entire time.

  Once we entered the stadium with its circus-like atmosphere, Farmer said to me, “I can hardly swallow,” and I told her that she would be okay, that once she got moving she would know it was like all the other times, that the noise inside and around her would be drowned out by her legs running.

  The crowd went wild over something, and we both shot looks around us, and it was no longer privacy but all jolt, all electric and connected.

  The girls positioned in their concentrated squat-like prayerful places at the starting line. Eighteen legs attached to nine bodies, nine hearts, poised and waiting, that tiny calm second of forever before the gun.

  Jack stood with Coach Sacks, and Coach Sacks reached up and fumbled with his collar, jerking the button and tie loose. His head was going from side to side as if stretching the muscles.

  Then there was the burst of the pistol shot, and Flo rose like a bird from the starting line, Farmer just behind. There was that familiar second of shocked silence from the crowd and then it erupted. Farmer was near Flo but by the first half Flo was running a close third, and Farmer was toward the end.

  At the beginning of the second lap, Flo was passed by the Swedish girl. Flo recharged, overtaking a German girl and holding her position as she neared the final stretch. Then the Japanese girl surged, drawing even, and she swung an arm, accidentally striking Flo, knocking her off stride. The collision shook Flo’s concentration. She was fading, with the American girl closing in.

  Farmer saw what was happening, and she darted and passed four runners, and it was the most remarkable and purest piece of sportsmanship I ever saw. My shout was lost in the noise of the crowd, and my heart wanted to leap through my skin and hop on the ground in front of me. Farmer drew even with Flo and coaxed her to go all out. Flo responded, her
leg shooting out a little further, and then she was back to her great leaping strides. It was as if Farmer was holding her. Connected as they neared the finish, linked like a web, their sweat one and the same, and their breath, and then a hesitation in Farmer, a falling back, allowing Flo to cross before her.

  At the finish, Farmer placed her arm on Flo’s shoulder, they took a few steps, and Flo dropped—knees to hands—down to the ground. Farmer went beside her, comforting and consoling, her arms around her, and I knew in that deep place inside me that Farmer could’ve finished fourth, or even higher, but that she believed that this was Flo’s race. She was there to support Flo, not to beat her, and so that was what she did. Then Farmer looked up and gave me one dazed, confirming glance.

  Three girls collapsed on the infield and cried, including Flo, and first aid was rushed to them, the reporters writing about how women weren’t up to the Olympics, look at them, hysterical and exhausted. But there wasn’t anything wrong. The girls living a moment they couldn’t believe existed, needing to lie on the ground to take it all in. Both creators and beneficiaries of history, and it was confusing and overwhelming, and they needed to lie down and cry as the moment exploded.

  But the reporters kept writing, and the officials rushed to administer first aid. The scene of the girls in need after the 800-metres was enough for the all-male International Amateur Athletic Federation to ban girls from all races longer than 200-metres. One of the officials said, “The effect and fatigue of competition does not conform to the ideals of womanly dignity and conduct. It doesn’t lead to the promotion of sport, but on the contrary, because of its effects on the spectators, is detrimental.”

  The rule holds and most likely will be there when I’m dead and gone. I’ve come to understand that distance running, more than any other event, is the great equalizer. You don’t have to have good equipment or expensive tracks or coaches, and it just doesn’t matter. But they’re making sure to keep us out.