The Front Runner

by Patricia Nell Warren

  As they had peeled out of the last turn, Armas had pulled up to Billy's shoulder. They both looked sick now, both deeply in oxygen debt, both dizzy and call­ing on the last bit of glycogen. They were both running like animals.

  Armas hung at Billy's shoulder for about ten strides. And then, almost in mid-stride, he cracked. Billy had broken him. With whatever his final fatal edge was, gay desperation or maybe just Vitamin E pills, he had broken the iron Finn.

  Still in control, though dying himself, Billy pulled away. He was a yard ahead, then two yards, as Ar­mas came apart at the seams.

  I felt my muscles go limp with relief. Vince grabbed my arm and shook me with silent joyous delirium.

  The two were halfway down the straight to the finish line, with those two yards between them and Armas staggering, when it happened.

  Later on, in the videotape, I would see it in slow mo­tion. Billy seemed to falter a little, and his head snapped a little to the left. Then his legs gave way un­der him, just as if somebody had flicked the switch powering his legs to "off." Still burning forward, yet falling at the same time, he slumped slowly, grace­fully to the track.

  As he hit the red tartan, the jolt snapped through his body. He slid a little on his left side, his right leg sliding forward as if to take one last stride. His head struck heavily against the low board rim on the inside of the track.

  Actually, it happened so fast that the crowd didn't burst its lungs with a huge scream until it was over.

  On the videotape, you could see Armas, dazed, glancing down at Billy as he passed him. "I thought it was luck," Armas would say later. Then he gathered himself and ran heavily on, easing the pace sharply because he didn't have to worry about anybody catch-ing him. When he hit the tape, he was staggering.

  Back up the straight, Billy lay sprawled by the board, in lane 1. He didn't move. The other runners were skirting him, looking at him, running on.

  I was horrified, not even thinking of the lost medal. What could have happened? All kinds of crazy possi­bilities ran through my mind. At the least, a terrible muscle pull. A concussion as his head hit the board. A massive leg cramp. A heart attack.

  Beyond the finish line, Armas was on his hands and knees, looking more like a spent decathlete. Officials were running toward Billy. I also saw the U.S. team doctor and distance coach Taplinger running toward him. The stadium was a sea of babbling and comment. Many people were applauding Armas' victory, but just as many were standing, their eyes fixed on Billy.

  He did not move.

  I was already scrambling down to the track, push­ing and shoving blindly. Vince and Mike were behind me.

  We were on the track. Several officials tried to stop us. I shouldered one out of the way. Vince punched one. Three of them caught Mike and held him.

  Vince and I ran up the track.

  A number of people were already bending around Billy. Tay Parker was kneeling by his head, and mo­tioning them back. "Give him air," he said. "Get away."

  Billy lay on his left side, with his left arm flung forward on the track, the gold ring glinting on it. His face was turned down and his hair fell forward, hiding it. He had fallen with such force that his glasses had been jolted off. They lay just ahead of him, shattered. The only motion in him was the sweat trickling earth­ward on his limbs. It seemed incredible that this body, which seconds ago had been moving as fast as a distance-running man is capable, could be so still.

  "He may have hit his head on the board there," Tay Parker was saying.

  Then we saw a little pool of blood spreading from under his hair. It was the darkish blood of a runner deep in oxygen debt. I told myself that I didn't see it.

  "Christ," said Parker. "He couldn't have hit himself that hard."

  The officials, bug-eyed, were crowding around. Park­er motioned them away again. Vince was kneeling by Billy's feet.

  Gently Parker turned Billy over. Then we saw what his hair had hid. The whole left temple and part of his forehead was gone. In their place was a pink and white bleeding crater. Bits of bone, blood and brain had exploded down his face and into his hair. Pieces of bone, with hair attached, came away in Parker's hands.

  I told myself that I did not see this.

  Parker was shaking his head, dazed. He was feeling in Billy's hair on the other side of his head.

  "I can't believe this," he said. "It's a bullet wound."

  "A bullet wound?" I repeated stupidly.

  "I was a medic in Nam, I've seen plenty of them," said Parker. "Look, here's where it went in." He showed us the small, dark red hole, parting Billy's hair so that the sunlight hit it.

  I was kneeling there clutching Billy's warm, limp hand as he lay there with his head on Parker's knees. It was beginning to occur to me that that hand would never squeeze mine again.

  I looked dumbly up at all their faces. They were all silent, stunned, not reacting yet. Gus Lindquist had just come up and shouldered through the group, and was getting his first look at Billy's bloody head. Our eyes met. At that minute, I think, Lindquist began to under­stand the tragedy that he had participated in.

  It was Vince who cried the unutterable cry for me. He bent down over Billy's feet, his head almost touch­ing them, and he gave a sound like an animal being crushed to death in a press. He stayed there like that, holding Billy's spiked feet, and sobbing in that suffo­cated way, as if there were no air in his lungs.

  Slowly I let Billy's hand go. I picked up his broken glasses and my fingers closed around them so hard that the glass crackled. On the track where he had lain, there was a wet imprint of sweat from his limbs. It was already drying. I looked at his eyes. They were half-open, gazing softly, so clear, so empty now. The left eye had a film of blood over it.

  Some of the runners had come jogging back up the track to see what the trouble was. Armas, somewhat recovered now, was with them. He bent beside me, looked at Billy, muttered something in Finnish, and put one hand over his eyes. His shoulders started to shake. Someone pulled him to his feet and led him away.

  Someone put his arms across my shoulders. I looked blankly up, into Mike Stella's face. He was dead white, and the tears had run clear down to his jaws. Tay Parker 'was kneeling there with Billy's head on his knees, crying. More and more people were coming across the infield. A photographer shouldered his way through the group and flashed a picture. Then another one.

  It began to occur to me that it was strange—all these tears, but none in my own eyes. I was clenching the broken glasses so hard that my hand was cut.

  Suddenly the voice of the announcer cut through everything.

  "Ladies and gentlemen, Billy Sive is badly hurt . . . the information reaching us from the track is garbled ... a correction, we regret to announce . . ." The announcer's voice was breaking. "We regret . . . Billy Sive is dead . . ."

  A wave of gasps and screams went through that huge place. Even in my benumbed state I felt it.

  "... Dead ... apparently shot from the stands ..."

  Screams of panic at the thought of a gunman loose in the crowd.

  ". . . Ladies and gentlemen, please, no panic . . . the police have arrested the gunman as . . . trying to leave the stadium..."

  The voice was cutting through my head.

  "Billy Sive is dead . . ." The announcer himself breaking up, trying to control his voice.

  The high jumpers and officials beginning to run across the infield, abandoning their event.

  Somebody was prying my hand open, taking away from me the broken glasses, mopping my hand with a handkerchief. I was helping Tay to carry Billy. He was so warm and limp, and his shattered head rolled against my breast. They had killed him, right there on the track where we'd thought he was safest.

  ". . . Dead . . . shocking . . . tragic . . . keep calm ... the athletes are..."

  In the first-aid room, Tay was picking the glass out of my hand and taking a few stitches. Billy was on a stretcher, covered with a sheet. Someone was jabbing a sedative shot into Vince's
shoulder to quiet him down.

  My eyes were dry. They were almost unblinking. The" times were still up there on the huge score­board.

  ARMAS SEPPONAN FINLAND 13:04.5 FRANCOIS GEFFROY FRANCE 13:10.1 JOHN FELTS AUSTRALIA 13:10.9 VITALIY KOSTENKO USSR 13:11.4 BOB BELLINGER USA 13:11.6 It was not until later that I was able to reflect on the irony. Only death could force my front-runner to give away a world record, like the one he gave to Ar­mas.

  It was not until later that I was able to reflect on it as history. At Munich and Mexico City they had slaughtered the innocents out of sight, behind the scenes. Here they had slaughtered the innocent in full sight of the crowd, at the peak of his life.

  19

  Slowly, in the next couple of days, as Canadian police questioned Billy's killer, the story came out.

  How he became increasingly disturbed at our exis­tence, how his latent, repressed homosexuality made him fear, love, and hate Billy. How he became obsessed with the idea of killing Billy on the track, how he finally decided there was no better place to do it than the Olympics.

  How Richard Mech traveled to Canada weeks be­fore the games. How he posed as a workman, smug­gled his weapon into the stadium and concealed it, foreseeing that security would be tight because of all the rumors. How he was not able to carry out his plan during the 10,000 meter, and had to wait till the fol­lowing Sunday. How he stood in one of the exits off the stands, holding the rifle under his coat. How he snatched it out quickly as Billy and Armas rounded the last turn and no one paid any attention because they were screaming and yelling. How he held his fire because he didn't want to hit Armas by mistake. How he fired as Billy pulled away in his finishing sprint.

  Like me, Mech was a military man and a marks­man. Like me, he loved the Bible. But in his fear he saw himself as God's avenging angel, sent to wipe Billy from the earth with the ardor of his own personal fire and brimstone. Insane though he was, I understood him.

  That was the terrible thing. In spite of my grief, I understood just what had gone on in Mech's mind. He and I had branched from the same American root.

  We took Billy's body back to New York on a special jet supplied by the Canadian government.

  The whole group was still together. John had col­lapsed in the stands when he saw it happen, but he was able to walk off the plane unaided at Kennedy, white and unspeaking. Even the Angel had seemed to understand that his nonthreatening acquaintance had been killed, and he cried against Steve's shoulder.

  I was still experiencing things without reacting to them. It seemed to me that I had become a camera, that recorded images in a mechanical way.

  In New York, I recall being in a large room some­where with a lot of reporters and a mike in front of me, and making some remarks about how if I could have every person who had hassled Billy, from people who wrote him hate letters to officials who wanted him off the track, charged in court with first-degree murder, I would do so. But I added that unfortunately there were not enough courts and lawyers in the country to process the case.

  The world was in its usual state of futile guilt. We have all become so accustomed to violence that the hand-wringing was now just a social ritual. There were editorials about how such things shouldn't happen. I read some of them. Unbelievably, there were also peo­ple who said that Billy deserved to die.

  The gays had occupied buildings in New York and Washington, demanding a Congressional investigation into the continuing persecution of gay people, demand­ing the death penalty for Richard Mech. Thousands of shocked straights flocked to these demonstrations, most of them young. Like an automaton, I put in an appearance at one of the big zaps in New York, and said a few words to the massed men and women, and was overwhelmed by their grief and sympathy, which I did not know how to react to.

  The athletes, now home in their countries, were say­ing that unless their lives could be unconditionally guaranteed at the next Olympics, they would not go. They had struck and walked off the field Sunday after Billy was killed. The Montreal games had ended with the running of the 5,000 meter. Armas Sepponan and the other two finishers had refused their medals. The victory stand stood empty. The anthem was not played.

  The closing ceremonies had turned into a gigantic memorial service for Billy, with festivities cancelled. The Olympic flame was dimmed out with the stands packed and everybody weeping but me.

  It looked as if Billy's death might have broken the back of the Olympic movement.

  But the only thing now real to me was Billy's body in the expensive ornate black coffin hastily supplied in Montreal.

  There was the decision of what kind of arrange­ments to make.

  "The decision is yours," said John.

  "A big messy funeral," I said, "so the gays can cry over him. Then cremate him."

  The funeral at the Church of the Beloved Disciple on Fourteenth Street was bigger and messier than even I'd anticipated. It was a hot muggy day, and gays were fainting in their feathers, sweltering in their leather. The streets around the church were packed. It was an­other of those gay social affairs overrun by straights and celebrities and tourists. The police had a hard time maintaining order. The separatist gays tried to beat up some straights and chase them off, saying, "This is our funeral." Finally I had to go out and talk to them. In the name of Billy's nonviolence, I asked them to let everyone come that wanted to.

  The hot church was packed with hard, gay faces. The smell of sweat, leather and flowers was overpower­ing—the only smell that was missing was amyl nitrite.

  I sat in the front pew with the group, staring at the casket.

  It had stood open there for a day and a half, almost —you could say—in state. Thousands of people, most­ly gays and young people, had filed past it. Billy had belonged to the young, and he had been openly, coldly assassinated, like a Kennedy, a King. They looked at him and cried and piled flowers around the coffin and spoke yet again of how American society was insensi­ble to human subtleties.

  Billy lay there wearing his brown velvet suit. Be­hind his glasses, his eyes were closed. The gold medal lay on the ruffled breast of his shirt. His left hand, laid over his right, wore the gold wedding ring. The Montreal undertaker had washed the blood out of his hair, combed it carefully, and had done a passable job on his head. But no, he didn't look like he was sleeping.

  The angel of death had cruised him. Death, that hustler, that last lover.

  Delphine had put a huge bouquet of white lilies on his body. He had tried hard to find hyacinths, but found to his surprise that hyacinths don't bloom in Septem­ber. So he had settled for two weeks' groceries' worth of lilies, and their fragrance seemed to fill the church.

  The Prescott pro musica played some slow mourn­ful Renaissance songs. Jacques had come, and blew into his recorder waveringly, sometimes breaking off.

  Father Moore stood up in the pulpit. The church was very quiet as he spoke.

  "Harlan Brown has asked me not to deliver a eu­logy," he said. "And he's right. Billy's eulogy is written in thousands of hearts. Anything we could add would be superfluous. Instead, Harlan has asked me to read some passages from the Bible and from the teachings of Buddha that he and Billy read at their wedding."

  We all sat with sweat rolling down our bodies. Not a sound disturbed the silence of the church, except an occasional muffled sob from somebody. In his gentle, deep voice, the gay priest read those immortal words:

  " 'Let us live without hate among those who hate

  " 'Set me as a seal upon your heart, as a seal upon your arm, for love is strong as death ...'"

  Surely I'm going to cry now, I thought. Oh God, help me to cry. I don't even want to be comforted.

  But my eyes stayed dry and burning. With all its strength, my body denied his death. Yet in my mind, his death was so present that I couldn't even remem­ber him. As the priest read those passages, I tried to recall how Billy had looked sitting on the grass in that brown velvet suit, with the spring sunshine bright on his hair. But the image was gone
.

  The gay priest was saying, ". . . and I'll close this brief service with a contribution of my own. It's fitting, I think. It's A. E. Housman's poem 'To an Athlete Dying Young.'"

  As he read it, I tried to remember how Billy had looked running on the track in Montreal, just—it seemed—scant hours ago. But the image was gone.

  "'... And find unwithered on his curls/ That gar­land briefer than a girl's,' " Father Moore read, finish­ing the poem.

  Beside me, Vince bent over his knees, choking out loud. John sat very straight and silent, with the tears running down his cheeks. A wave of sobs went through the church.

  Even Father Moore was crying. He looked down at the coffin and said in a stifled voice, "Good-bye, Billy. One of the joys of paradise will be seeing your blithe spirit again. Good-bye."

  After the funeral, we took him to a Manhattan funeral home. The director, a gay, had offered his ser­vices free of charge. We watched the casket rolled away to the crematorium.

  A few of us stayed and waited. His death was be­fore me. I had X-ray eyes and could see through the thick walls of the crematorium. I could hear the roar of the retort and feel the heat. The flaming coffin burst open, and the fire ravished that perfect body. It cramped into rictus, the curls ablaze, the velvet smol­dering, the brain seething in the shattered forehead. Molten glass dripped from his eyes, and molten gold ran off his breast.

  He would not burn like other men. No fat there, only bone to char and muscle protein to carbonize. The lactate would still be in his blood from that last effort.

  Several hours later, the funeral-home director put in my hands a heavy tin canister labeled with Billy's name and the date, containing his ashes.

  The next day I departed from the group, and drove back up to Prescott alone. I had told everyone to stay strictly away from me for the next 48 hours, and they did.

  The house was just as we'd left it. The Irish setter ran to meet me—one of the campus maintenance men had been feeding him. He jumped and barked. Billy's bicycle stood on the porch. In the border, a few lilies, asters "and phlox were in bloom. Behind the house, the tomato plants were wilting a little from lack of water, but they had ripe tomatoes on them.