by Tyler Knight
“If you tell anyone, ever, I’ll kill you.”
The boy remembers Bee. How he was moving one moment, and then he stopped and never moved again.
Then the woman pulls her shorts down to her sneakers… She has the same pieces as Mom.
“Come here…both of you. Open our mouths… Stick out your tongues.”
He does what the grown up tells him to, sticks out his tongue. The other boy goes first. Could he tell this to his dad? He remembers the bathtub, and the last time he told Dad. What would his dad do if he told him about this? He decides keep it to himself. To never tells anyone. Stuff it way down. Way down where it will fester inside for forty years. The boy wonders, What did I do wrong?
• • •
The next afternoon, instead of waiting in the rec room for his mom, he stands at the edge of the pool. The reek of chlorine burns at his nose. The surface is smooth and calm. On the tiles beneath him, the number six, and black lines that run the pool’s length to the other side.
The boy steps off the lip and falls into the pool, but the instant his face goes under the water he changes his mind. He’s made a mistake! He flails in place, reaching for the edge but it’s just beyond his grasp. His head drops below the surface. The chlorine stings his eyes and everything he sees is a blue blur. He thrashes his way back up, and for the moments when his head’s above the surface and he gasps for air, he takes in almost as much water as he does air. Coughing, he reaches for the edge but touches the side wall instead of the coping, pushing himself a bit farther away. His arms feel so heavy…so tired…
Soon it is all he can do to keep his lips and chin above the surface. Thoughts run to his mom. He so wants to live…
Kicking with his legs, he reaches for the edge of the pool…and gets fingers on the top of the coping. Not trusting his strength to pull himself out, he edges his way along the lip until he reaches the ladder. At the top, shaking and coughing out water, he promises he’ll never try to hurt himself again.
• • •
The sweep stares at me. No mist vapors rise from her breath. Her eyes don’t reflect the steel drum’s firelight. They drink it.
I say, “Is this the part where I buy time by playing you in a game of chess by the sea?”
“This is not an Ingmar Bergman film, and despite your nom de guerre, you’re no knight.”
“No…I suppose I’m not.”
“Are you ready to come with me?”
“Can I change my mind if I feel better later?”
“All sales are final.”
“I’m not ready.”
“You’re not here to discover how far you can run. You’re here so that you can finally stop.” She looks down toward the sea. Fog has rolled in, hiding the violence of crashing waves behind it, and there is no horizon to delineate the blackest depths of sea from the heavens above. I follow her gaze out to where world ends and the infinite begins.
I try to work out the math of distance remaining in the race and required pace per mile to finish… Each thought feels as though it’s wrapped in individual tufts of cotton. With effort, the numbers reconcile.
“No. I still have time. What do I do now?”
She smiles. “Take a step.”
The reaper powers up her headlamp, then runs onto the course back toward the direction we came from.
I watch her light. It fades and then it is gone. Dawn breaks. Down the shoreline, the burning trash can is gone.
When I stand, my bloated stomach strains against the inside of my hoodie as though I’m a Biafra refugee… In part, the effects of the Ibuprofen. There’s a chill on my legs as though my piss has frozen to my leggings… Can piss freeze? Is piss ice a thing?
I power up my headlamp, and stand on legs with ankle, knee, and hip joints that feel welded in place.
Take a step…
I take a moment to brace myself against the lifeguard tower. I set off toward the bike path.
Tweet: “I’ve lost control of my bladder. I burst into tears for no reason. Seeing things…I’ve no grasp of what is real.”
• • •
Day two. Dawn
The long night challenged every one of us moment to moment to reaffirm why we are subjecting ourselves to this suffering. Regardless if you’re leading the race or are DFL, we all suffer. It is a battle far more mental than physical. During this battle you will ask yourself, is this worth it? All it takes is once to not have a strong enough answer for the question…a moment of weakness, and you will find a reason to quit. The night has whittled the field of athletes away to single digits.
• • •
Day two. O-nine-o-five
The aid station materializes through the fog yet again like a recurring lucid dream where the more I struggle toward it, the more I’m Zeno’s fucking arrow. I pass through it and swipe Red Vines from the table without breaking stride.
The race director calls after me with concern. “How are you feeling?”
“Don’t pull me. I can do this! Don’t pull me no matter fucking what!”
I’ve less than a half marathon left. With a noon cutoff I should be able to walk it in the rest of the way, but this does not give me comfort. You can read all over endurance forums about the tragedy of athletes getting pulled from races, or runners’ bodies just quitting on them and refusing to take their owners one step farther after running ninety-five miles. Ironman triathlete Julie Moss comes to mind. After fighting physical and mental battles for 140 miles, she was within the length of a driveway from the finish line and victory when she collapsed, crawling on her hands and knees toward the tape, only to get passed by another racer.
• • •
Day two. Eleven-o-one
I’ve death marched for the past two hours. I don’t even bother to pick my feet up from the concrete to step. I kinda shuffle along by shifting my weight side to side and leaning forward. My bladder has released again, and my gut is so distended, my belly button threatens to pop out like a turkey timer. I need to puke, but I manage to hold it in.
The race director’s wife pedals next to me on a bike.
She says, “Great job. Two miles left!”
“Thanks.”
“I need you to start running.”
“No way. Impossible. Besides, I don’t have to run. Plenty of time.”
“How you finish matters. How do you want to remember the end?”
She smiles, then pedals away.
Take a step…
I pick up my pace, but my feet scream in pain and I return to shuffling.
There’s a signpost aside the path a bit farther down… What if I ran to that? I can do that.
After I pass the signpost I slow down, but not to the death march pace of before. Instead, I pick a couple sitting on a beach towel. When I pass them, I keep running until I cross the finish line to a cheering Amanda and a group of volunteers. I do burpees, but stop at two. The race director hands me my finisher’s belt buckle. It has the Buddha engraved on it. Below the godhead the words, “Enlightened 100.”
Amanda hugs me and I kiss her cheek.
The race director says, “Congratulations! You’ve accomplished something only point-zero-zero-zero-zero-one percent of the world’s population has ever done.”
A volunteer says, “Fourth place among men, fifth place finisher overall!”
“Ha-ha!” Amanda says. “You know what that means?”
“What?”
“A girl beat you… You got chicked!”
A volunteer takes my photo holding my buckle with Amanda. We walk toward the aid station table. To be accurate, she walks and I shuffle.
She says, “Are you sure you’re going to be able to handle going to Vegas in a couple days? You never cared about winning ATM awards.”
“I don’t. I’m in no danger of winning anything
I’m nominated for, but it’s my first year back in the business so I have to be seen pretending to care.”
At the aid station, smiling volunteers load up a plate of food for me. I thank them and work on a cinnamon roll as we walk to the car.
“Really good people, Erik.”
“Heh, yeah…I’m gonna do this again. I’ll volunteer at a race for sure. The people here are special.”
“Maybe then you’ll see what I’ve known all along.”
“What’s that?”
“The human race…it’s worth participating in.”
End.
“Dedicated to all human beings.” —Radiohead
For the OG Forum
Acknowledgments
Thank you, Yuval Taylor, the first publishing professional to believe in my talent (huge for a writer’s confidence during the nascent stages of his career), and for introducing me to my literary agent; Tucker Max, for reading my work early on and creating a thread on The Rudius Media forums to develop my storytelling craft. I printed and carried your first email of encouragement in my wallet for years until it disintegrated. My literary agents, Peter McGuigan and (Mr.) Matt Wise, at Foundry Literary + Media for the postgrad level refinement of my craft, the countless editing hours, for fighting for me, and your friendships. John August and Craig Mazin for the Scriptnotes Podcast, a great educational tool for all storytellers regardless of the medium. Thank you, Tyson and the Rare Bird staff, you’re the new incarnation of Grove Press from its mid-century heyday, and I’m proud to be on your list. Jerry Stahl, for Permanent Midnight, which showed me what is possible in a memoir. Joe Rogan, for always telling the truth. The Cult writing workshop. My beta readers. Axel Braun, for providing a safe space to fail while I learned how to perform. Without that talk back in ’02, I would have quit and this tome wouldn’t exist. “Amanda,” my greatest advocate in life. And to my detractors who said I couldn’t: your vitriol is a napalm-soaked log tossed into my furnace of desire
(Thanks, cocksuckers!).
