The Runner

by Cynthia Voigt

  “Where are you going?”

  “Look, Shipp, if you don’t want to do this, it’s fine by me.”

  “I don’t want to, but I’m going to,” Tamer said. “I figured you felt the same way.”

  Bullet could have grinned, it was so exactly what he was thinking. “So?”

  “Whaddaya mean so? I thought you were supposed to be coaching me, not just proving your superiority. You don’t know shit about coaching, Tillerman.”

  Bullet didn’t argue.

  “You know what I’m beginning to think? I’m beginning to think you think I don’t know a mug’s game when I see one.”

  “Apparently you don’t,” Bullet told him.

  Tamer jumped up, eyes angry, body ready. “What’s that supposed to mean, Whitey?”

  Bullet was ready, if he wanted to try a fight. They stood there in the silent air, yards apart, facing off.

  “The way I see it,” Tamer said carefully, the words coming out slow and calculated, like a glove across the face, his eyes fixing Bullet, his heavy eyebrows low, “if you can get me to quit, you’ll be able to run. Having it all your own way again.”

  Stupid. “I wouldn’t waste my time.”

  Tamer stepped toward him, fists bunched. “What does that mean? You’re so damned laconic, Tillerman, I don’t think you know what you mean half the time you open your mouth.”

  “I know,” Bullet said, slow and calculated, “exactly what I mean.”

  Tamer halted, and thought. “So you mean you wouldn’t waste your time scheming like that?”

  “You got it.”

  Tamer thought again. “You could say that, you know? Make it a little easier on the rest of us to figure out what you mean.”

  Bullet shrugged.

  “What’re you after, Tillerman?”

  “I run,” Bullet answered.

  Tamer almost exploded. Bullet could see him belting himself in from exploding. Then he laughed, without humor: “Don’t break your back being communicative. I guess, if it’s a mug’s game and I learn something, I’m not the mug.”

  “It’s got nothing to do with who’s a mug, Shipp,” Bullet told him patiently.

  “Maybe not. If you’re straight; which I doubt. Whitey has trouble being straight. But that’s beside the point, so keep your hair on. The point is, what good you can do me? Right?” Bullet didn’t answer. “And what you just advised me, in your ineluctably supportive manner, is that I can run through it.”

  Ineluctably? Shit. “Yeah.” Bullet drifted back toward the track.

  “Do you run through it?” Tamer demanded.

  “Sure.”

  “When?”

  “Just before nine. But—” Bullet stopped himself.

  “But what, Whitey?” the voice challenged him.

  “I’ve never seen you do it.”

  “You’ve never seen me quit.”

  “So what?”

  Tamer chewed on that. Bullet waited.

  “Whadda you mean, run through it?” Tamer asked.

  Bullet shrugged. “Just what it says.”

  Tamer groaned.

  Bullet looked at him. Coloreds give up easier, against the odds.

  “Go ahead,” Tamer said, ready. “Say it.”

  Bullet wasn’t scared. “Coloreds give up easier,” he said.

  “Blacks,” Tamer corrected him. “And I don’t.”

  You can’t prove that by me.

  “I’ve got to go now, but you can watch me tomorrow,” Tamer said.

  “It’s still light,” Bullet pointed out.

  “Yeah, but I’ve got a job to get to.”

  The next afternoon, Bullet watched: watched the point of exhaustion, watched the legs and arms start to sag, watched Tamer pace down and gather himself together—and run through it. Hunh, he thought, watching the big muscles work. Surprised.

  At the finish, Tamer fell onto the ground, as always, but his eyes were open and his teeth showed a big smile. “Brother,” he said. “Bro-ther. I hate to admit it, but you were right.”

  Bullet didn’t say anything.

  “It sure does hurt, though.” He looked up at Bullet, squinting against the sun. “You do that every day?”

  “Yeah.”

  “You must feel no pain, no pain a-tall.”

  He could think what he liked.

  “This meet tomorrow, what do you think our chances are?” Tamer got up, dusting himself off.

  “Why do you keep collapsing at the finish?” Bullet asked.

  “I’m not hung up on pride, not me,” Tamer told him. “Whites get hung up on pride. Me, I fall down because it feels so good to be lying there. Are you telling me you don’t want to do just that?”

  That was the last thing Bullet wanted to do. He didn’t say anything. Tamer looked at him, considering. Bullet looked right back, not considering anything.

  Tamer came in third in the cross-country, an easy, level, three-mile course. The coach came over to them, elated. He started clapping them both on the back. “A week and a half of work, and already—we got it, boys; we got it in our hands. I knew you two would make an unbeatable team. I knew it.” Bullet looked up to find Tamer staring right at him, his dark eyebrows raised in tolerant amusement—what the coach didn’t know wouldn’t hurt him, Bullet guessed.

  * * *

  When Jackson grabbed his shoulder and told him to eat with them in the lunchroom on Monday, Bullet thought he was in for some long speeches about “doing the right thing.” He considered heading outside to eat, but not seriously: It was cold, a real edge to the wind. Not as bad as yesterday out on the water, hauling up on the oyster tongs, but not comfortable by any stretch of the imagination. So he slid onto the bench beside Lou, who did not move far enough along to give him much room. “Hi,” she said, her voice low, close. “It’s been a while.”

  Across from them Cheryl said, “I didn’t miss him.”

  “You see him every day in History,” Lou said.

  “Whoopeedo,” Cheryl said. “So, what do you think of Tommy’s editorial?” she asked Bullet.

  “I didn’t read it.” Bullet glanced at Tommy, who seemed to be carrying around some subdued excitement.

  “You’re the only one then. I got hauled over the coals by our esteemed advisor.”

  “Why?”

  “Because the silly twit didn’t know until someone told her that there was more to it than met her eye,” Jackson told him. “And my guess is, they told her at some length. I could almost feel sorry for her. Except she figured that Tommy here was some tame little editor, which shows how much she knows.”

  “It was a good one,” Tommy told Bullet, proud.

  “Really good,” Cheryl seconded the opinion. Bullet didn’t doubt it. “‘Crisfield Colors’—that’s a great title too. The whole thing is great.”

  “Not great,” Tommy said, one eye on Bullet. “But good. Great may be the one in this week’s issue. See, I talked about the colors as if I was talking about red and white, but I was really—if you read it another way—talking about black and white. And she didn’t pick up on it, she put her fat blue okay right on the top of the paper. I couldn’t believe it, I tell you. I almost took it back and asked her if she knew what she was doing.”

  “They’re going to keep closer tabs on you now, though,” Jackson warned.

  “There’s nothing they can do, because we’re the ones who do layout and deliver it to the printer, so we’re the ones who really decide what goes in. I never thought of that before. So I’ve got a dummy editorial to give her this week, and I’ll print the one I want to. What do you think, Bullet?”

  “Sounds like you can pull it off.”

  “Yep. I can’t believe I never realized that before. I mean, how dumb can you get? And I figure, once it’s printed—what can they do? I mean, I’m an elected officer, right? They wouldn’t dare just fire me. If they try to throw me out of school, I’ll appeal to the school board, and they wouldn’t like the publicity one bit.”


  “They could have you impeached,” Cheryl told him.

  “They could try,” Tommy said, “but they’d never pull it off. Well, what do you think?” he asked Bullet.

  “You look like you’re enjoying yourself.”

  Tommy laughed over Cheryl’s exasperated, “Deadhead.”

  “I am, we all are, aren’t we? At least we’re doing something, not just sitting around letting them steamroll us. Wait’ll you see it, Bullet, it’s called ‘A Buried Incident.’ About that black guy getting beat up. You gotta read it.”

  Bullet ate away at his sandwiches.

  “Seriously, I really want you to read it. You’ll like it—because whether you know it or not, you’re on our side.”

  “He’s not on anyone’s side except his own,” Cheryl said.

  Tommy and Lou shook their heads, disagreeing. Bullet didn’t bother responding. He didn’t mind if Cheryl was right, for a change; it was no skin off his nose.

  * * *

  That afternoon he started looking at Tamer’s technique. He watched him practice the hurdles and even ran one round against him. Bullet lost time over the jumps, but made it up on the runs between. As he went around the track, he no longer lost as much time and he made up even more, so that he came in well ahead at the end. “What’re you trying to prove, Tillerman?” Tamer demanded.

  That gets through to you, does it? Bullet wasn’t pleased or displeased by the guy’s anger, just interested. “Nothing, Shipp,” he answered, moving on to put in a few high jumps, so the coach wouldn’t get on his back. Tamer watched him go but didn’t have anything to say about it. After practice, Bullet told him, “You’re making some mistakes when you run. In technique.”

  The dark eyes stared at him, hostile. Not his problem.

  “You lean too far forward,” Bullet said. “You got to keep your back straighter—give your lungs a chance. And use your arms. You let them too loose, you know?”

  “No, I don’t know.”

  “Look, if you pump with your arms, like this—not too much, just enough—you can set your own pace up. And your knees, get them higher. You’re okay with that but you could do better.”

  The guy just stood there, staring out from under his heavy eyebrows.

  “What makes you the expert, Tillerman?”

  Bullet shrugged. It made no difference to him. “Nothing. Shipp.”

  “And don’t call me that.”

  “What, Shipp? It’s your name.”

  “It’s my old man’s name.”

  “Same thing.”

  “No, it isn’t. Not at all the same. He died bad,” Tamer said.

  Bullet almost laughed, and he went ahead and said what he was thinking: “And my old man lives bad. Big deal. Tough luck.”

  The dark face glowered at him. “I don’t even want to understand you, Whitey. But I guess I better try it your way, although I don’t know why I should. You’re no expert and I do okay my own way. But I’ll try.” He went around the track, slowly. Bullet could see him reminding himself to get his back straighter, get his arms working for him. Bullet watched, not thinking about anything. Tamer went around the track again, faster this time, but not at his best speed. Looks right, Bullet thought. “Looks right,” he called, as Tamer started off on a third round.

  Coming off the track at the end of that lap, Tamer reported, “It feels right too, I am sorry to say. I can’t do much about the knees, I don’t think.”

  Bullet didn’t much care. “What do I call you then?” he asked.

  “You don’t have to call me anything. But my name’s Tamer.”

  The names coloreds give their kids, Bullet thought.

  “Spit it out,” Tamer told him.

  “What kind of a name’s that?” Bullet said.

  Unexpectedly, the guy grinned. “You’re asking me that? You—Bullet. Bul-let,” Tamer said, “and you’re asking me? You whites are something else.”

  So what, Bullet thought, angry. Then the humor of it struck him, and he looked over Tamer’s shoulder to the track, to keep himself from smiling. “Okay,” he said, looking back at the dark face, “I see what you mean. But I named myself, when I was a kid. I chose my own name.”

  “My mother was hoping I’d be tamer than my brothers, or at least that’s what she told me.”

  “Yeah? Did it work?”

  “Not according to her. But I am civilized, a civilized man. What’s your real name?”

  “Bullet,” Bullet told him. “They named me Samuel.”

  “After the prophet in the Bible?” Bullet had no idea. “Man, do parents ever not know, yeah?” Tamer remarked. “They just dream all over their kids. All that wishing and hoping—it’s really sad if you think about it.”

  Bullet never thought about it.

  “And I’m as guilty as the next man,” Tamer said.

  “Hunh?”

  “You didn’t know? That’s right, I forgot—information doesn’t cross the color barrier. I’ve got a kid, a baby girl.”

  “Why’d you do that?” Bullet demanded.

  Tamer laughed. He laughed so hard he had to lean against a tree to stay standing up. “The usual reason,” he choked out. “Don’t get pissed, I know what you meant—but you heard how it sounded. C’mon, Bullet, no need to feel ashamed, nobody heard you but me, just some black guy. And it’s funny,” he laughed.

  Bullet had to admit it was.

  “But I’m not about to let you know what we named her, un-unh,” Tamer said. “Because then you would laugh. And I’ll answer the question, yes, I’m married—well, it was my fault as well as hers, and yes it cost me the year of school. Whitey wasn’t getting me onto welfare.”

  “Most coloreds don’t feel that way,” Bullet said.

  “Blacks,” Tamer said. “And you don’t know from nothing about it, Whitey.”

  The next afternoon an icy rain drizzled down from the low clouds, so the coach cut practice short. Bullet and Tamer stayed behind to practice. Three of the other runners, all white, stayed behind too. “Hey, Bullet, the coach said we should see if you’d give us some tips,” their spokesman said. “Would you?” They were sure of his answer, they were ready to do what he said.

  “No,” Bullet said. Not worth my time.

  “Hunh?” Surprise stopped them. “Why not?”

  Bullet didn’t say anything.

  “What’s so special about him?”

  Bullet didn’t say anything. He’d never thought about it, except he wasn’t wasting his time with Tamer. And he knew these three.

  “What is it, you turning into a nigger lover? Inte-gra-tionist liberal?”

  “Black,” Tamer corrected patiently.

  “No,” Bullet said.

  “Shipp?” they asked Tamer.

  Nothing to do with him. What were they trying? Nobody can make me.

  “You asking me to put pressure on him? On him? You’re asking a nigger for help? You’re in a bad way, Whitey. A bad way.”

  “How come he’ll work with you and not us?”

  “Damn-all if I know,” Tamer said. “Who knows why he does anything. But I can tell you, it’s no picnic. So if I were you, I’d tell the coach you don’t want to anymore. Think about it before you fly off the handle. We’re doing better, aren’t we? If you want to get a shot at the state championships, you can’t afford to have Bullet off the team again, can you?”

  “Okay,” they muttered. “Yeah. Okay. I didn’t want to do this anyway, did you? Work with that bastard?”

  They went off to the showers and Tamer turned to Bullet. “They had me scared for a minute. There’s only so much integration I plan to tolerate.”

  “They didn’t scare me,” Bullet said. “Doesn’t it burn you?”

  “Them?” Tamer asked. “Are you kidding? Besides, you were burned enough to cover the situation for both of us and have some left over.” He started off around the cross-country trail, taking it a little slow to keep his back straight, to get his arms working and his legs in sync. Bullet
stayed at the track, going over the hurdles, concentrating on footwork as he approached each jump. His timing was still off. Once he figured that out, he thought, he’d work on the angle of his following leg as he went over the jumps. First things first.

  CHAPTER 18

  As they left History class on Thursday morning, Cheryl handed Bullet a copy of the school paper. “Take a look at the editorial,” she told him, then added, “If you can read. This one’ll really get them going. I can barely wait to see what they do about it—he’s really nailed them on this one.”

  Bullet read it at the start of the next class, opening the six-page paper to the editorial page and folding it back before putting it on his desktop.

  A Buried Incident

  —for Tamer Shipp

  They discovered the incident one morning, going to work. There were a few of them who came upon it simultaneously, all of them wearing light gray suits and carrying the rules rolled up in their pockets, sticking out; all of them with polished shoes, their shoelaces tied into neat, manly bows.

  The incident looked terrible, lying there on the roadside. It was almost unrecognizable. Was it black? a little black incident? Or was it white, a white one? Or red? Or blue?

  Nasty, they knew it was nasty. They took the rules out of their pockets and unrolled them. For a long time they tried to find out what the rules told them to do, because what the rules said wasn’t what they wanted to do. Then for a long time they stood, all around, looking down at the disgusting little incident, which was just lying there. They really wanted to go away and pretend they hadn’t seen it, pretend they had gone to work down the other road that morning, or driven by so important and fast they couldn’t possibly have noticed.

  “What if?” one said. And “What if?” another answered. “What if?” “What if?” So they pushed it out of sight and buried it in the dirt by the wayside, covering it over with leaves. The first thing they did when they got to work was wash their hands. “Phew,” they said. “That was close.” “Phew.”

  The buried incident rotted peacefully away, until the children came along. Curious, the way children are, and not knowing any better, they pushed the leaves away and dug around in the dirt, until they could see what it was. “Ugh,” they said. “I don’t like it.” “I don’t want it.” Some of them vomited. Some of them poked at it with sticks to show how brave and clever they were. Scientific-minded children picked up little pieces of it to take home and study. Bullies threw stones at it. A few girls cried a few tears.