by Nick Earls
Frank laughs. ‘Otter’s always getting confused between the mouth side of things and the arse side of things.’
I’m not even sure what that means. ‘So if I ever make him lunch, I should expect him to sit on it?’
Otter looks on stony-faced. ‘You won’t need to make me lunch.’ He touches Frank’s thigh with the tips of his fingers. ‘I’m going to rinse out the blender. I don’t want to see a millimetre of movement from you.’
Frank grips the legs of the table as the heat works its way through to his skin. Otter swings the kitchen door firmly shut behind him, but the thick carpets slows it and it shuts with a sigh and a delicate click instead of the thump he meant it to make.
‘What are you doing with Staminade poultices? That’s insane.’ With Otter gone there’s no reason to hold back. ‘Poultices are crazy unless your buttocks are full of pus, and they’re not even last century’s way of dealing with it. But a Staminade poultice? It’s an affront to that weekend sports medicine workshop I did to keep up my registration. There’s no such thing.’
‘Google it.’
I do. The only reference is on Frank’s race preparation blog, and it’s illustrated by a picture of his poulticed buttocks taken from the foot of the massage table.
‘It’s the electrolytes,’ he says, gritting his teeth as his arse burns. ‘It’s chock-full of cations.’
‘Yeah, and probably anions too. But traditionally they get where they need to go via the mouth.’
‘It’s working. It’s going to work. I can feels the electrolytes surging in. And you know how my glutes seize up.’
‘No I don’t. We’ve had no cause to discuss your glutes.’
‘Well, they . . .’
‘I think your glutes are between you, your poultices and your manservant. And your fans in the blogosphere, obviously. I might have suggested a few stretches rather than Otter’s scorched arse policy, but ...’
Otter walks back in with a bottle of scented oil. ‘Top off, Doctor,’ he says. ‘Rub-down time.’
*
I spend the afternoon thinking about film financiers and watching my phone not ring, and I make another partially successful attempt at skyping home in the evening. Frank sits in a gold robe and ugg boots watching me eat Chinese takeaway and drink a beer, as if I’m a 3D movie of a better but sub-athletic life.
Otter spends an hour manscaping extensively in his bathroom, and then goes out smelling of musk and sandalwood and carrying a large bag. He tells me Frank needs total quiet tonight, as if I have a party planned right after my last mouthful of General Tso’s chicken.
The clock in my room says it’s 5.06am when Otter crashes back into the apartment and trips on the carpet, landing with a thud. His footsteps make a clink-clink-clink sound as he stumbles to his room.
My alarm’s set for six for the next semi-pointless skype home, but I can’t sleep after Otter’s arrival. When I open my door, it looks as if something’s taken two lines of bites out of the carpet. Otter has come home in spurs.
I shut the door and sit on my bed checking email until exactly six. If I skype early it’ll be in the middle of something. I get through on the third try. Charlotte refuses to sing Humpty Dumpty when Wendy asks her to. Chelsea just keeps saying ‘massive poo’ over and over until Wendy confirms that there was indeed a massive poo.
It’s only when the call ends that I hear Otter’s voice somewhere else in the apartment saying, ‘Higher. They’ve got to be higher up the wall.’
There’s a thump, the sound of tearing plastic, a lid doing ever-smaller circles on a tiled floor.
As soon as I step out of my room I know I’ve made a mistake. The door of the nearest bathroom is open and Frank is lying on his back wearing only a fleece jumper, with his bare legs well up the wall and Otter standing like a snake charmer, manipulating the tube in Frank’s anus and squirting a bag of fluid down it.
Frank catches my eye and says, ‘G’day,’ as if we meet this way regularly. Coffee? Beer? Enema? He notices me staring at the tube and gives a knowing kind of nod. ‘All the big runners do this—they just don’t talk about it.’
‘All of them, or just all the ones trained by Otter?’
Otter has bloodshot eyes and wet hair. He’s wearing the hotel robe and slippers. No spurs. Both of his heels are red and chafed. He’s saying nothing.
‘You could reword the business card maybe,’ I say to Frank. ‘Manservant, masseur, enemateur.’
Frank looks up at Otter. ‘I told you there was a word for it. Get Philby to spell it for you.’
Otter keeps pretending I’m not there and says, ‘We’re just about loaded, Doctor. Now, keep yourself pursed as I come out of you.’
*
The race starts at 10.10 on Staten Island and the rules are clear—it’s competitors only, no hangers on. Not an easy prospect for Otter who is used to hanging from Frank’s gills most of the time. And his enema tube some of the time, as it’s turned out.
Otter checks Frank and his kit as if he’s off to his first day at school. Race number bib, start village colour and corral number confirmation, timing chip for his shoe, prototype Frank-conceived Otter-designed rip-off tracksuit, based on techniques pioneered by Buck’s Fizz for Eurovision in ’81 (patent pending).
Frank pulls at one of the velcro tabs, flashes some thigh and says, ‘We’re sharing the IP on this one, Otter and me. Reckon there could be quite a market for it.’
‘That reminds me,’ Otter says. ‘They reserve the right to DQ anyone who urinates anywhere other than in the supplied toilets. Worth remembering.’
He takes Frank to the pick-up point and I settle for a leisurely walk to the Upper East Side and lunch at a diner unloved by Zagat where I don’t have to queue for a table.
It’s the Queensboro Bridge between the fifteen and sixteen mile marks that can break people’s spirits with its long climb, so the plan is for me to stake out a designated cheering zone around the seventeen-mile mark and Otter to wait near the energy gel station at eighteen miles. Queensboro Bridge takes your legs away and at eighteen miles you’re heading for the wall. Otter says if we can get him through that and send him into the turn-around in the Bronx in good shape, he’ll make it. Not in the time Frank thinks he will, but he’ll make it.
It’s a Sunday, so I’m telling myself it’s okay the film financing people haven’t called. I check my phone three times during lunch, in case I’ve turned it to silent.
The cheering zone’s near the corner of East 77th and First Avenue.
A volunteer comes up to me as soon as I arrive. The place is full of volunteers, and this one’s mid-thirties and wearing a loose over-sized volunteer T shirt and comfortable shoes.
She asks me for my runner’s start details, and when I read them from my phone she says, ‘Oh, exciting. You’re from way out of town. You’ll have to tell me where, precisely where, and you’ll have to make a sign. There’s time. Your friend won’t be here for at least thirty minutes.’ She glances at a clipboard on which she’s been checking off the starting groups as they come through. ‘So, where? Are you from? And is your friend from there too? Is it anywhere near Cape Town? I have an ear for accents. Let’s get you started on your sign.’
She shunts me across to a long trestle table behind the action where, in the guise of sign-making, children are finger-painting and spilling glitter and one solid guy in a check shirt and trucker’s cap has decided he’s a solo production line turning out ‘John 3:16’ signs for his many kids.
I’m handed a blue marker pen and that’s when I get stuck. What kind of sentiment can do justice to the moment—to close to thirty-two years and the moment? ‘Thanks for the free room’? ‘Thanks for not making me bunk in with Otter’? ‘You have more money and luck than you deserve’? ‘Go Frank?’ What do we have, now that fifty’s closing in?
I’m tempted to put ‘John 3:16, Frank to break three hours?’ and stand behind the kids, but instead I settle on one I know he’ll go for: ‘Faster wi
th an empty rectum?’
As I make my way towards a space at the front, the volunteer closes in, same cheery welcoming smile as before.
‘Now, what have we got here?’ she says perkily, as she turns the sign around to read it. ‘You sure took your time . . . Oh. Oh dear. Is that . . . Does it have a different meaning in Australia? I think that’s a part of the anatomy. The intimate anatomy. I . . . We have a list of words that you can’t . . . Um, I might have to check something.’
She’s back in a minute with a race marshal who starts by telling me he’s an off-duty police officer. NYPD.
He takes one look at the sign, pulls it from my hand and says, ‘I don’t know what your plan is, pal, but this is a family day. This is not a day for you to grab yourself some attention with your allegedly comical sign about defaecation.’
People are turning round to see what’s going on. Every member of the John 3:16 family over eight is glaring at me.
‘One warning,’ he says, showing me one finger. ‘That’s all you get. Marcie here is now your official monitor and you can rely on me to keep checking in. Marcie, you got that two-way?’
Marcie holds up the radio. Like me, she’s staring somewhere else and waiting for the moment to pass.
Once he’s gone she says, ‘You know, I didn’t . . . He’s just having a bad day is all. And, rectum . . . it’s problematic. This is live to air, you know, on a family network.’
I stand there chastened. We fight to make small talk. Frank closes in on fifty by running a classic marathon, I do it by getting in trouble for writing ‘rectum’ on a sign. I want to tell Marcie families have rectums too, but she’s not the type to appreciate it. At least, through her two-way, we have a pretty clear idea of when to expect Frank. She calls base to track his progress across the timing mats and then we see him, an hour behind his own projections and ten minutes behind Otter’s. His face is bright red and the tracksuit is gone, but he’s still moving forward.
‘Okay,’ Marcie says, ‘I’ll cheer with you as long as it’s just, like “Go Frank” and there’s none of that other business.’ She gives me a look that says she wants to trust me.
‘No rectums.’ I put my hand on my heart. ‘Actually, could we shout out “We’re rooting for Frank?” I know he’d appreciate that.’
‘Well, sure,’ she says. ‘There’s nothing wrong with rooting for someone.’
Nothing at all. Only in Australia does it mean sex, here it’s innocent support.
We both put everything into our ‘We’re rooting for Frank’ and his head jerks our way. He sees us both bellowing it and he laughs until he blows his nose. He loses his rhythm and several other runners pass him. He stops and points to Marcie and gives me a baffled look. She happily yells, ‘We’re rooting for you, Frank,’ and points to the two of us.
‘How did you get someone to . . .’ he says to me, and then stops to suck in a couple of big breaths. ‘Tell me later. Nice work though.’
He laughs again, picks up a cup of water, and shuffles off along First Avenue.
‘Well,’ Marcie says, as we watch him head north and then lose him in the crowd of runners following him. ‘I believe we lifted his spirits. Good job. And I think the marshal said I could give you your sign back now.’
She puts it to me as though I’ll be glad to hear it, and might now happily wander the streets of Manhattan waving a sign with a rectal query on it.
‘I might leave it,’ I tell her. ‘Who knows who might find it useful?’
I text Otter to let him know Frank’s on his way and I head down 77th Street looking for a bar.
I find a place that’s dimly lit and largely ignored by the spill-over marathon crowd, I get myself a beer and set my phone on the counter in front of me. All the TVs mounted on the walls are showing the race. I check my emails. I take a look at the Brisbane Times and Courier-Mail websites.
From time to time the colour and movement catches my eye and I find myself looking up at the nearest screen. The winners have long finished but the race has hours to run and will go live to air locally for a while yet. The commentators keep finding things to say, new angles, recent finishers with stories to tell from life or the day.
I happen to be watching when Frank leaves the park for the straight run along Central Park South. This is spectator central, and Jackson Browne is now playing on the stage at Columbus Circle. The TV network has someone on the ground who’s scrunching his face up and shouting into his microphone as a crowd of thousands cheers the flagging runners.
That’s when Frank cramps, on TV and in front of maybe five thousand spectators and Jackson Browne, who is in the middle of Lawyers in Love. Frank’s left gluteus maximus has clenched hard as a rock, but he stumbles on. The show of pain and suffering lifts the cheering to another level.
And then the second glute goes. All of a sudden Frank, while closing in on the twenty-six mile mark, is in agonising bilateral spasm and skittering down the street like a giddy hatstand.
That’s when we move from the wide shot to the close-up. And then split screen. The story of the race is all Frank now, three shots of him, a triptych of anguish.
‘We’d better get an expert opinion on what we’re witnessing,’ one of the commentators says. There’s a clunking, shuffling sound as someone gets miked up. ‘I’m joined by physical therapist Doctor Lucius Tennenbaum. Doctor Tennenbaum, can you tell us what we’re seeing here?’
‘In a word, Anthony,’ a new voice says, ‘what we’re seeing is courage. Here’s one of our athletes with a disability looking at a remarkable time considering the severity of . . . ah . . . what appears to be his disability. I can’t confirm this but it looks to me very much as though he has a spastic diplegia ’ He says it slowly and with authority—‘one of the more common presentations of cerebral palsy. This man faces resistance from his own body with every step he takes, and today he put his name down to take an awful lot of them. I’d say we could be looking at a category winner once we confirm his classification.’
‘And I’d say we’re looking at a hero,’ Anthony throws in as Frank makes the turn back into the park with all the grace of a pair of compasses.
The screen switches back to a single shot of Frank in close-up, from a scooter in a low gear.
Anthony clears his throat. ‘From his number, we know that he’s Australian Frank Green, a pioneer orthopaedic surgeon and co-inventor of the Green-Tarnowski Ring. And so great is his focus on fostering and indeed trumpeting his substantial abilities that in any of the bios we can find online there’s no mention of his disability at all.’
‘This is a point he would make in his work every day, I’m sure,’ Doctor Tennenbaum adds. ‘It’s all about the triumph of ability over disability, persevering against the odds and maximising what we’ve got. What we’re witnessing is what Doctor Green has to overcome just to get out of bed in the morning, and when he makes it out of bed he’s improving the lives of others. A great man. A truly great man. It’s people like Doctor Green who show us what’s possible. This is what the New York Marathon is all about.’
We cut to a shot from above. The crowd is wild for Frank, pushing in against the race barriers as he lurches slowly past them. Then we’re back with the scooter shot, agony on Frank’s face, his jaw clenched.
We’ve seen dozens of other runners passing him since he seized up, but that’s changing now. Runners are refusing to pass. They’re banking up behind him, dozens of them, setting their pace to his and clapping as they run, cheering him on. Frank lifts his hand to wave.
And then he tumbles out of shot. The scooter brakes, the picture staggers. In another shot, we see Frank trip mid-wave and nosedive face first into the ground. He’s out cold.
My phone rings. It’s my mother. She’s watching online. ‘Frank’s down, Philby,’ she shrieks. ‘He’s down. What a wonderful effort. I didn’t even know he had a disability.’
‘He doesn’t. Other than being Frank.’
All talk in the bar has stopped.
‘Sixty yards,’ Anthony the commentator says, as a team of people in red medical T shirts move in on Frank. ‘That’s all he’s got left. But can Doctor Frank Green make it? No one would think ill of him if this was it, if he found twenty-six miraculous miles in those legs, but no marathon.’
Frank’s arms are moving. He’s face down and swimming freestyle on the concrete, his locked legs stiff behind him. The medical staff are talking but he doesn’t seem to hear them.
Then a crowd barrier falls over, and spectators start leaping over it and running his way. They’re all women. And all in matching T shirts. The commentators are clueless, but the T shirt artwork says it all. It’s the GT Ring. They’re the GTR Girls. They’re real, and they’re here—a squad of hockey players and basketballers and older women who fell in the street—and they pick Frank up like a fallen warrior and carry him forward. They break into a jog while Frank, oblivious to all, swims backstroke as he crosses the finish line on their shoulders.
‘It might only be sixty yards, but this interference could tragically cost him a category victory . . .’ Anthony’s saying as I run from the bar.
I run all the way to Madison, then I take a left to avoid the marathon crowd. At the lights on 68th Street, I get my mother back on the phone.
‘Can you see him at the finish line? Is he getting help?’
‘They didn’t stop, Philby,’ she says. ‘Straight past Tavern on the Green and off through the crowd.’
I keep her on the phone and run again when the lights change. I turn right at 58th to go south of the park.
‘Last seen heading in the direction of the West 66th Street entrance,’ she tells me when I can check again. ‘The coverage has moved on. There’s a one-legged Puerto Rican grannie who’s nearly at Jackson Browne. Go Philby. It’s up to you now.’
I’m on Ninth Avenue, closing in on West 66th Street and looking for a GTR-shirted mob when my phone rings again. It’s the film people I’d been hoping to meet. I take a look down West 65th in the direction of the park. No GTR Girls, no Frank, no sign of a place they’d be likely to have taken him.
