Dead Heat

by Linda Barnes

  He’d always meant to race again. Life had interfered. Instead of running the marathon the next year, he’d run away—all the way to England and the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art.…

  He sighed and stared at the TV screen. All that was ancient history, long before the race became a media event, back when the field of runners was still a manageable size. The Boston Athletic Association struggled valiantly every year to pare the field down to three thousand, shortening the qualifying times. But they had no control over the renegades who waited until the official starters were off and then hurled themselves into the race.

  Edward Heineman didn’t seem to be among Channel 4’s on-the-scene crew. Nor was he manning the station desk. Spraggue switched channels.

  The Channel 5 helicopter flashed an aerial shot: The ground around the raised white spire of Hopkinton Church lurched and settled, as if the church had been built on a sprawling anthill. An earthbound camera operator scanned the first row of runners, the ranked world-class runners, the Rodgers and the Salazars, the Waitzes and Teskes, tensed for action. These runners would have the chance to sprint when the starting pistol sounded. They’d be off with the shot, letting the second rank, the second row, race forward. Further back, blocks away, blocks behind, the runners were packed in like mannequins en route to department stores. It was impossible to tell which arm belonged to which runner.

  The helicopter shot was a classic; it could have been this year’s or last year’s, or a relic saved from the early sixties. April 19 meant the marathon at Hopkinton, just as December 25 meant Christmas. The town of Hopkinton, always referred to on this occasion as “the sleepy little town of Hopkinton,” awoke once a year to play host to the multitudes, providing gym floor space to rest on, town green space to stretch in, and every available bathroom in town.

  Spraggue surveyed the crush of runners; there weren’t more than ten, maybe twenty, with the remotest chance of victory. But ten thousand eager faces attested to the lure of the race. Every exhausted combatant who crossed the finish line, who conquered 26 miles and 385 yards of unyielding pavement, won the marathon.

  Maybe next year.

  11:45 A.M.—time for the first race of the marathon to begin, the wheelchair competition. The twenty chairbound athletes spun away from the starting line, determination propelling muscular arms.

  Spraggue realized that he was watching the tube with more than random curiosity, that he was searching for a particular runner. If he’d been manning a camera, he would have treated the audience to a view of Senator Donagher.

  The Channel 5 reporter was roving through the crowd near the starting line, interviewing marathon celebrities: Johnny (The Elder) Kelley, who’d run in over fifty Boston Marathons: Tom Brown, whose family had been responsible for firing the starting pistol since the beginning of time. Steeped in tradition was the Boston race.

  Pete Collatos must be somewhere in that stifling crowd, a sea of runners ahead of him, an ocean behind. Spraggue remembered so clearly his own teenage terror of falling at the start, of being crushed under heedless racing feet.

  There—a miniature Brian Donagher peered out of the TV screen, pacing, half jogging, smiling tightly, nervously. Pete Collatos, his shadow, showing no effects of the previous night’s debauch, grinned uncomfortably, straight at the camera. The reporter didn’t mention the upcoming election; his station might have to grant Bartolo equal time if he gave Donagher any opportunity to spout campaign slogans. And there could have been no “equal” time. The draw of the sports hero being what it was, it was only a matter of years before the entire Senate was filled with ex-football heroes. Marathon fame gave Donagher an unfair advantage. Bartolo, if he were watching, must have been fuming.

  Five minutes to twelve. The runners were all poised to prove their prerace predictions. The contest would be marred by the absence of several elite runners. Patti Catalano was injured and out of the running, a disappointment for those who liked to cheer on the hometown favorite. Toshihiko Seko, last year’s winner, wasn’t defending his title. Spraggue wondered if Seko’s no-show status had anything to do with the perennial dispute over fees. The BAA prided itself on not paying expense money; the draw of the race was enough, they maintained. But with so many other races boasting commercial sponsors, playing under-the-table prize money in defiance of AAU rules, how much longer could venerable Boston hold out? How much longer could the world expect marathon runners to remain amateurs considering the incredible salaries paid to other athletes?

  The aerial camera panned the throng of runners. All the way up the provincial main street of Hopkinton, the line stretched—runners twenty, thirty abreast. Sleek professionals with concentrated faces. Weekend joggers, muscles tensed. Some wore sweat suits. Some brief shorts. There were runners with funny hats, white cotton gloves. Runners with exotic faces. Men. Women. Teenagers. The Cowman, who always ran the race with a horned headdress weighing him down. And an incredible variety of T-shirts.

  The T-shirts were crucial. The fans keyed in on them during the race, yelling “Come on Detroit Track Club! Hey, Motown, you can do it! You’re almost there, Detroit! Six more miles, Detroit! You’ve got it, Detroit! Run, Detroit! Go!” Or Memphis or Seattle, or Argentina, Canada, Sweden …

  Spraggue tried to remember the code used for the official numbers. W for women; that was easy. M for masters, the older runners. V and F were also age-linked, he thought, but he wasn’t sure. Why didn’t any of the commentators think to explain that instead of blathering on about the wind?

  The starter raised the gun. The front-liners got down into the approved starting crouch. Even the commentators grew silent as the starter prepared to press the trigger.

  When it finally fired, the gun gave off a disappointing pop. In the front row, they ran. In the tenth row, they jogged. In the twentieth row, they marched slowly forward. Two city blocks back, nothing. No discernible motion. Some, out of impatience more than necessity, began to jog in place. And then, with astonishing suddenness, the logjam gave. The screen was filled with bobbing heads—up and down, up and down. Like a flood pouring into the sea, the runners streamed forth out of Hopkinton. It took twenty minutes for the parade to pass the starting line. The commentators wisely held their tongues. The stream of humanity needed no discussion.

  Back in the bad old days before running had become a popular pastime, the on-scene reporters had generally greeted the gun with: “Well, folks, it’s Patriot’s Day and the saps are running!”

  The camera watched the runners speed off past the spire of Hopkinton Church, head out on the open road to Framingham. The fleetest would cross the Prudential Center finish line in downtown Boston some two hours and ten minutes after the starting gun sounded. The rest would falter across all day. No trophy was given for the final finisher. Spraggue had heard tales of runners staggering across the no-longer-there line well after dark.

  He hoped he wouldn’t have to wait that long for Pete.

  Fifteen minutes after the final dawdling runner had crossed the starting line, Spraggue left his apartment.

  The signals from Collatos had been confusing and contradictory. Since no clarifying phone call had come from Donagher’s bodyguard, Spraggue had determined to fulfill both requests; he’d observe the race from the top of Heartbreak Hill, and he’d meet Pete after the race in the Prudential Center garage. It could be done, either by a judicious choice of driving routes or by the use of public transportation. Only tourists got trapped on Patriot’s Day.

  One hour and twenty-five minutes before the fastest runner would crest Heartbreak Hill, he was on his way, driving over to Boston College. Early, but not too early. The hills would be crowded, teeming with spectators who desired nothing more than to cheer their favorites on.

  He parked on one of the twisty side streets off Beacon Street and trudged up the hill to Commonwealth Avenue.

  Heartbreak Hill was a misnomer. The stretch of the race known as Heartbreak was actually three hills, three gentle inclines in a three mile se
ction of a downhill course from Hopkinton down to the sea. It was their geographical placement in the race that was the killer. They struck after twenty miles, when most of the runners were just starting to “hit the wall,” that physical and psychological barrier of pain that every marathoner knows and dreads.

  A crowd was already forming in front of St. Ignatius Church, a knot of police and observers. Crowd control was a touchy issue along the twenty-six mile course. Some cities had complained this year about the expense of providing policemen to line the route; Pete Collatos wasn’t the only cop laid off as a result of the supposedly tax-saving Proposition 2½. Kenmore Square, in Boston proper, was the worst place for the runners, close enough to the finish line to attract hundreds of watchers and blessed with Fenway Park. With considerable foresight, the Red Sox always scheduled an 11:00 A.M. game. Just as the biggest glut of runners raced through, the game would end and thirty thousand screaming fans would be loosed into the general melee. Last year the crowd had closed the runners off to a single lane. Everyone said that the spurious women’s 1980 champion must have jumped into the race during the Kenmore Square confusion; things had gotten so jumbled, so out of control, that the Goodyear blimp might have joined the race unobserved. During the final frenzied mile, ropes, plywood boards, and mounted police had to be used to keep back the cheering hordes.

  Conscientiously, Spraggue kept his promise to Collatos. He had a chat with a robed priest on the doorstep of St. Ignatius, an idle, pass-the-time-of-day talk that yielded information: The bell tower was certainly locked today of all days. Wouldn’t it be a shame now if some youngsters got to thinking the tower would be a good place to view the race and one of them fell through the rotten boards up there? Spraggue nodded his head in earnest agreement and moved on, looking up at the rooftops, almost colliding with passersby. He had to force himself to do the job, so unlikely did the appearance of a melodramatic killer seem on such a festive afternoon under bright revealing sunshine.

  He’d brought along a radio to keep track of the race. Without one, standing for over an hour at one particular point on a twenty-six mile race course could be limiting. He alternated between WEEI and WBZ, switching to see who had the best coverage. Because he had the radio, other enthusiasts hovered near.

  “Is Billy leading?” That was the most often asked question, Bill Rodgers being the local hero. “Where are they now?”

  The latter query, once the runners got as close as Framingham, was unnecessary. You only had to look up to spot the helicopters. Spraggue counted five and hoped they all had qualified pilots, accustomed to flying in close formation. A small biplane trailed an ad for a local Chevy dealer. Ah, the joys of amateur athletics! No matter how the BAA tried to keep the crass world of big bucks from intruding on their marathon, every world-class runner would traipse by studded with advertising slogans. Bill Rodgers was a personal advertisement for his own line of running togs.

  “Who’s leading?”

  Spraggue pressed his ear to the radio. “Ron Tabb. Not much chance to win, but he always goes out strong.”

  “Where’s Salazar? Where’s Rodgers?”

  The radio was starting to be a pain.

  When the first wheelchair racer made it by, biceps straining, face crimson, everyone forgot about the radio and cheered. The helicopters were hovering almost overhead now; the wheelchair contestants heralded the runners to follow.

  The first runner always had an escort. He was preceded by the press bus, flanked by motorcycle cops, followed by a police car. It was a wonder that the man could run, so hampered was he by a cloud of carbon monoxide—spewing vehicles.

  A swelling roar of approval shook the spectators. Not one, but two runners hove into view, impeded by the motorized cavalcade. A close race! The crowd loved an all out dead heat finish even better than they loved the spectacle of their own Bill Rodgers running the hills in splendid isolation. Eyes strained to catch the numbers as the runners, scarcely a meter apart, flashed by. Papers rustled as viewers checked their programs. Beardsley and Salazar! Salazar was expected, but where was Rodgers? Who was this Beardsley? Spraggue listened to the radio and watched the crowd.

  He found himself enjoying the crowd as much as the race, maybe more.

  In the immediate vicinity of the church, there must have been at least ten individuals clutching water bottles. Spraggue wondered how many of them were there by appointment, waiting for a specific runner, how many were there to hand out the precious fluid to the generally needy. A tall blond guy with a blue T-shirt, a terry sweat jacket, and ropey muscles looked like he ought to be out there running. Except for the tape on his ankle. He limped a few steps out and offered his water bottle and words of encouragement to a dark foreign-looking man with a huge mustache.

  Off to his right, a group of Boston College students waited to cheer on a classmate, passed the time barbecuing hamburgers on a portable hibachi, drinking endless cans of beer from a huge cooler. They carefully piled each empty beer can on a ten-can-base pyramid, creating a roadside shrine to Budweiser. The picnic smell provoked in Spraggue an exquisite hunger.

  Now that little guy with the pink face standing under the streetlamp, he might be the flunky Donagher had stationed nearby with water.…

  As the crowd went crazy, shrieking, singing, climbing trees for a better view, the world class runners passed—the sleek thoroughbreds, the thin whippets, the models for the rest. TV cameras perched on the top of the hill transmitted every detail cross-country.

  The talk turned to records. Were they on a record pace? Could there be a record with this blasting sunshine, this heat, this dryness? A tiny dark woman, a doctor or nurse, said authoritatively that on a day like this, each runner would need ten ounces of fluid every fifteen minutes, not to mention salt.

  In other races, once the winners went by, the crowd diminished, the excitement dulled. Not so in the Boston Marathon. The crowd grew steadily, many of the new arrivals bearing signs and banners. WE LOVE YOU, 345. GO, BOBBY! TULANE TRACK CLUB. Family and friends congregated, waiting for their own winners. The Hill was a place where encouragement was needed.

  The runners came thick and fast now, each raised fist eliciting a cheer, each new face cause for celebration. The question asked now was, where’s the first woman?

  Not until 1972 had women been allowed in the marathon. Before then, the athletic union, in its wisdom, had decided that women weren’t made for endurance sports; the most a woman could be expected to run was 100 meters. Not that women hadn’t run the marathon before ’72. As far back as ’51, a Canadian woman had sneaked by the ruling board. And Cambridge’s Sarah Mae Berman had been in the thick of things for years. Roberta Gibb had run in ’66, shocked by the AAU’s dictum that “women are not physically able to run long distances and furthermore, they are not allowed.” But they were all unofficial contestants, right up until the infamous K. Switzer—K for Kathy, unbeknownst to the male guardians of gender purity—had run with an official number, a number that was almost forcibly ripped off her chest by the outraged race director.

  Now the women were in to stay, breaking two-thirty, passing a lot of the men. No one seemed upset by it. It gave the crowd something extra to cheer about when Charlotte Teske went by with her motorcycle escort, something more to wonder about. Where was the supposedly front-running Grete Waitz?

  First wheelchair, first man, first woman. Still the crowd stayed, waiting for family, for friends, for all the winners to pass by: the conquerors of middle-aged spread, middle-aged torpor, vanquishers of cigarettes and emphysema. And always the crowd waited for Johnny Kelley, forever young.

  A cheer rang out, louder than any since Charlotte Teske had passed. Brian Donagher crested the hill, Pete Collatos at his side. Sweating, winded, Donagher thrust both hands in the air. The crowd lifted him on. Exhausted, he glowed.

  “Hey, Brian!” The call came from a woman Spraggue had noted briefly when he’d considered who in the crowd was likely to play Sir Galahad to a thirsting stranger—
a tall woman with creamy, pale skin, wearing a long skirt, more formally dressed than the other spectators. She bounded out of the crowd, took a few running steps, waved a blue-tinted plastic water bottle in Donagher’s direction and hollered, “I voted for you in every election!”

  Donagher, who’d been glancing around as though expecting someone or something, flashed her a grin, and, to the delight of the crowd, altered his course to accept her offering. The woman’s heavily lipsticked mouth opened and closed as she strained to keep up with Donagher’s slightly slackened pace. Those near her laughed, but Spraggue was too distant to hear the words she addressed adoringly to the senator. Spraggue studied the pantomime; the woman urged Donagher to take the water bottle and run with it, not to bother about returning the bottle to its rightful owner.

  “Finish in under three hours and I’ll vote for you again!” the woman said loudly. She had a deep friendly voice with the faintest trace of an Irish brogue.

  Donagher sped on. Spraggue saw him squeeze at the straw-topped bottle before the profusely sweating Collatos held out a hand for it. They shared the water as they ran. A shout went up: “Donagher! Donagher! Donagher!”

  Then the two were out of sight and the cameras that had followed the celebrity runner since he came up the hill, panned back to catch the next human wave.

  The finish line. That was the next challenge: getting there. Viewing the crowd, Spraggue feared that he’d been overly sanguine about mobility on Patriot’s Day. He took stock.

  The car was temptingly close. But once in the car, once downtown, he’d need a place to park—and those, on Marathon Day, were impossible to find. The garages were jammed, closed for the most part. The out-of-town tourists, fed up and amazed that a city would have no provision for parking, would have taken up all the favored tow zones. He didn’t believe in blocking fire hydrants or snatching slots reserved for the handicapped. He could park at the police station on Berkeley Street.… No, Menlo might hear of it and haul him in again.…