The Front Runner

by Patricia Nell Warren

  The house was silent. All I could hear was the sigh­ing of the fire and the ticking of snow against the win-dowpanes. I felt something beginning to crack inside of me. What came out first was laughter. I could just see Vince the great firebreathing Scorpio stud running smack up against Billy's Virgo firmness, and it struck me as funny. Vince had Billy's way of phrasing things just right.

  And suddenly Billy was there in front of me, alive and real.

  Vince had looked back at the fire. "So I decided— you know me, Harlan—as far as I'm concerned, lovers are a dime a dozen. A friend like Billy was worth a hundred lovers. The main thing was, I didn't feel alone any more. After the meet, I went and visited him and his dad in San Francisco. And one night we lost our minds and went into a tattoo parlor and had our sun signs put on. We'd decided that we'd face our destinies bravely... ."

  I had my hands over my face. I was making strangled animal-like noises. Was this what crying was like? Yes, definitely, there were hot tears running out of my eyes.

  Vince got up on his knees, put his arms around me and held me silently. I cried on his shoulder, both my hands clenched in his jacket. He kissed and fondled my bursting head, and pressed me against his chest. My body was so racked with spasms that the muscles felt ready to tear loose from the bones. If this was crying,

  I was grateful to have been spared other crying bouts back through the years.

  After a while I felt Vince's body begin to shake, and realized that he was crying too. Vince was a silent crier—I couldn't hear anything. But I felt his face, and it was as wet as mine.

  When we'd both quieted down, Vince told me every­thing about Billy's life, from his senior year in high school through his meeting me. That whole lost era of Billy's life, that I'd been so afraid to know in detail, opened up to my eyes. I saw him in a thousand anec­dotes, and not once did Vince tell me anything that was not consistent with the picture I already had of him. Slowly the image of Billy lying dead on the track in Montreal began to fade, and I could see him warm and living again, running with his long soft stride, his hair lifting in the sunshine.

  The dawn light was showing at the windows. First an aching gray, then a tender red light. The snow had stopped. Outside the landscape was smothered in white, the tree limbs hanging heavy, the bushes bent over. I made Vince some coffee, to help him sober up, and myself a cup of tea. Betsy came into the kitchen to give the baby his early morning feeding, and said, "Are you guys still up?" We all sat around the kitchen table. The cups clinked on the saucers, and the baby sucked greedily at Betsy's breast.

  "Harlan, where did you scatter his ashes?" Vince asked.

  "Up there in the woods."

  "If you don't mind, I'd like to go up there."

  So we put on warm clothes and overshoes and went out.

  As we started up the main trail, the trees and bushes were bent into a pure tracery. They were sheltered against the spring, their buds waiting. The ferns and wildflowers had already made their new growth, and were waiting under the snow. The sun was already so bright that we squinted—we should have worn dark glasses. We crossed the track of a rabbit that had come out from his warm hole under the snow and was off somewhere. The birds were stirring too—we could hear the soft winter whistles of the titmice and the song sparrows as they looked for food.

  A deep, peace was coming over me, and a sweet re­lease. On that path I could remember Billy without pain, remember him loping along hardly leaving a spikemark on the earth, looking over his shoulder to say, "Seven minutes."

  When we turned off onto the side trail, we had to push our way through the snowy brambles, snagging our pants. The brush seemed to have grown thicker here, as if to discourage anyone from coming this way again.

  Finally we reached the top of the slope, and looked down.

  The little clearing was virgin white. All around it, the mountain laurel was bent under the snow. The laurel had dropped its seeds, and the dried-up clusters of seed cases had withered away. I couldn't see walk­ing on down there, knocking the snow from those state­ly bushes and leaving our tracks everywhere, so I made a sign to Vince that we would go no further. Even from where we were, we could hear the little stream noising as it fell from the ledge into its small pool.

  We stood silent, looking down the slope. I leaned against a tulip tree, and Vince walked around a little unsteadily, smoking a cigarette. Now and then our eyes met, with a direct open look—that look that acknowledges the. imminence of a sexual relationship, and, in our case, that look that finally acknowledged the deep affection we had always felt for each other.

  Billy lived again in that look.

  Epilogue

  I am out on the track under the smoky lights, and I feel the noise of the crowd, and all the eyes on me.

  It is February 11, 1978. The event is the mile final in the AAU masters championship at Madison Square Garden in New York. I have had to put my body out here on the track again—to feel what Billy felt, to honor his memory with my own pain and sweat.

  There are eleven of us warming up, already stripped to shorts and singlets. We are all over forty, all wiry mature men with varying degrees of baldness and gray hair. But, in contrast to our faces, our hard glistening bodies look strangely young. We are among the finest-looking old men in the world, no doubt about it. We have found the fountain of youth. I feel young as I jog around. I am even a little shaggy, with just a few gray hairs in my longish hair and my new beard.

  In these last minutes before the race, we are all com­pleting our psych job on ourselves and on each other. Each is making out that he is cool and confident, though he might secretly be sick to his stomach with nerves. I am full of nervous energy, but not upset. This is be­cause I know that I am psyching them. They are more worried about getting beaten by me than I am worried at getting beaten by them.

  The promoters have packed the Garden to the last seat. I am aware that I am the box-office attraction this evening, the prime bait of a little genteel Roman circus. Twenty thousand people are going to watch ten straight middle-aged Christians try to eat one gay mid­dle-aged lion.

  "Kill 'em, Harlan!"

  "Go, Gary, burn that queer bastard!"

  Through my concentration I hear the voices. I am still thinking about tactics. I have drawn Lane 1, which is a bad place to be. Everything will depend on the pace. If they go out slow, and I don't get boxed in, I might try to run away. But I have a feeling that they will go out very fast, and that there might be blood all over the track, and anew American record.

  I can feel a certain hostility, from the crowd and from a few of the other runners. But I also feel a lot of support. This is a big advantage I have over the others: New York is my home territory, and the gays have flooded into the arena to back me. My entire team is up there in the stands, plus a couple busloads of Prescott students and faculty. John Sive is there with Steve Goodnight and the Angel. Jacques and his wife are there. Betsy is there with the baby, sitting by John, Vince is there.

  I pause for a moment to retie my shoe.

  One of the runners who is friendly, forty-one-year-old Mike Branch, jogs by and claps me on my tattoo. "'The old lion finally grew a mane," he said.

  "Yeah," I said, clapping him back. "About time."

  I have been pointing toward this meet all winter. Because of my coaching and teaching obligations, I could get to only a few meets, so I was reduced to sharpening myself mostly in workouts. I know so much more about training now than when I was in college. And I learned so much from Billy. He taught me as much as I did him. To my delight, I found myself able to recapture the promise that got wasted by cir­cumstances when I was young. The lifetime of taking care of my body finally paid off.

  And I have a mental edge that I have been nourish­ing for weeks. It is a peace, and no one will ever rob me of this peace again. It is Billy, his living memory inside of me. His psych was yoga, and mine is him. He runs inside of me, with that effortlessness and that total fearlessness of pain. In each race,
I re-create that image of him in my mind, and it works.

  To kill him now, they will have to kill me.

  As we jog to the line, I am dimly aware of the ris­ing crescendo of cheers and boos from the crowd.

  We are bent at the line. My tattooed shoulder brushes the arm of the man in Lane 2. The old lion is ful­filling his destiny. These days I constantly have a feel­ing of coming full circle. God has been good. For every bitter cup He gave me to drink, He has later given me a sweeter one.

  The gun fires, and we roll off the line.

  As we sprint down the straight, everybody nips to the inside. Just as I feared, I am neatly boxed in. They'll keep me in this box, impotent, as long as they can. And it's a scorching pace. The others seem to feel that this is a 60-yard dash.

  Now if I were Billy, I'd be going out of my mind in this box. But I'm a kicker, and I like running in the pack till my moment comes. I'm not afraid of their elbows and spikes, and I know how to use my own.

  With the box and the crazy pace, I make my final decision on tactics. I decide to gamble. If I lose the gamble, it won't be a public loss of masculinity, because my enemies are sure I don't have any anyway and my friends will still love me.

  I decide to stay there in the box and let them carry the pace and carry me along. If I try to maneuver out of the box, dropping back or cutting through, I might lose time and/or foul somebody. I know they can't hold this pace, and sometime in the third quarter they'll start dying and dropping off. The field will open up, and I'll be out of the box the easy way.

  So we go through the first quarter like it is the Kentucky Derby and I am walled up in fourth place, just concentrating on staying loose and not getting my spikes tangled with anybody else's. But I am hooked onto the front runners and they feel it. I am pushing them, making them set themselves up for my kill.

  In the turn the man next to me leans on me, and I barely miss putting my foot off the track and breaking stride. It's a nervous moment, but I throw him off. We hit the 440 at 61.2 seconds, which is not bad for a bunch of invalids. The Garden is a well of noise—focused as I am on the race, I can feel it. There's that mass of people out there yelling for me.

  As we whip through the second quarter, I am run­ning easily, teeth gritted. I am into Billy's controlled motion, with that grim joy pushing me, that sweet angry peace. I am five pounds lighter than I ever was, around 150, and feel so light.

  One man has moved up on the outside, putting me into fifth place, but we are still tightly bunched at the front. I'm not worried. Any time now that pace is go­ing to start tearing the field apart. We are jostling and bumping shoulders, and somebody elbows me, and I hold him off. Somebody's going to get disqualified for sure. Maybe me. Oh well. Worse things have happened to me.

  At the half-mile, we are at 2:02. This pace is in­sanity. We've all lost our heads. One of the four ahead of me is already letting go. Slowly he drifts back past me and the man beside me, and I am fourth again. Back behind me, there are two big kickers. I know the pace must be getting to them too, because I am now feeling it myself. Sometime in the next minute, all three of us are going to make our move, and it'll be a question of who is deader than who.

  Death is setting in now. The third quarter is going to be a shade slower. We're dragging a little, paying the price. I'm feeling just a little heavy, but I tell myself that I'm feeling light and effortless.

  As we're coming toward the three-quarter mark, the man beside me lets go and drops back, opening up my right side. Immediately I shift out in the clear. I'm dan­gerous. As we go into the last quarter, the old lion is opening up into his killing sprint.

  The race breaks wide open. The other two kickers are blasting toward the front too. But I'm in front of them. Through the effort and the final rush of adrena­lin, I can feel the hysteria of the crowd. They're scream­ing for everybody to kill everybody else. But the only voices I hear are "Smoke 'em, Harlan!" "Hang in there, Harlan!"

  I am an animal now, Billy the animal. I am running all out, the way Billy taught me can be done. I am not afraid to hang out my soul and my blood and my veins and my lungs and my balls. I kill off the third man, then the second.

  Then I surge past the first man, and I'm out in front. I'm free.

  About a hundred yards to go. We are practically sprinting. I can hear the other two kickers hauling me down. I have control enough that I don't turn my head to look, but I feel them hooked on me. I'm in oxygen debt. I'm hurting. My shoulders are heavy. My body and soul hurt. I am putting out everything, Billy Sive in Montreal in the last seconds of the 5,000. If you have to die, it's a good moment, when you're at that blazing peak of existence.

  One kicker is tightening up and he lets go. The oth-er is at my shoulder. We peel out of the last turn. The Garden is going wild, The tape is dimly visible off down the straight. I am dead. I have reached bottom. But the other kicker is dead too. He stays on my shoulder and can't pass me. I am dead but alive. Nobody is go­ing to kill me.

  My fainting body manages to continue hurtling down the straight. My legs are still making giant strides, but I have the feeling that they're folding under me. The roaring in my ears is both the crowd and the dizziness. I am tightening up and sick. My eyes are blurring. The two of us are plunging at the tape, div­ing into it as if it were water.

  With a last effort—I don't know from where I bring it up—I lean forward, flinging up my arms. The tape breaks across my breast.

  It takes a minute to recover. That last quarter was 59.3 seconds. The time is 4:03, just off the record of 4:02.5.

  I walk around in circles and gag a little, and finally I feel human again. My students are jumping up and down. A few gays and a few of my team have jumped down onto the track. A strange gay hugs me and gets my sweat stained on his expensive suede. I wonder if they will disqualify me. Miracle of miracles, they dis­qualify one of the other guys.

  With some of my team jogging around me, I take a victory lap, waving at the crowd with both hands. May­be it's my imagination, but the whole place seems to be applauding. There's a lump in my throat. It all comes so many years late, but it's good anyway.

  Finally I'm back in my warmups, off the track, sur­rounded by people. Jacques pounds me happily on the back. Vince makes his way through the crowd and embraces me. He and Jacques look at each other and smile for the past.

  I still have this lump in my throat.

  The CBS-TV sports interviewer shoves his micro­phone at me. The camera crews are there. "How does it feel to come so close to an American record at your age, Harlan?"

  "It feels good," I say. "I have to thank the others. They nearly handed it to me with that early pace. Maybe next time I'll break it."

  "Do you think there's going to be a sub-four-minute masters mile one of these days?"

  "I think so. I don't know who, but somebody will go under. The kids, meanwhile, are going to be break­ing 3:50, so ..."

  "You think you can break 4?"

  "Who knows? Anyway, I can only compete and train as much as my obligations to my own team permit. We'll see. Let's say that I'm back on the track with a lot of motivation, and that I plan to stay around as long as my legs are in one piece."

  With the interview over, Betsy comes up quietly and puts the baby in my arms. He wiggles against my chest, a mite of life but amazingly strong, now five months old. With his small fists clenched, he gazes around at the athletes, the bright lights, the smoky arena, with his wise, dopey Virgo eyes. He is unafraid, dignified.

  As I look down at him, I think that he already knows what kind of race he's in. He knows that it is going to take everything he has to stay up in front, to run free.

 

 

 
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