Meet #6: Richwoods

 

They hail from the school in the north side of town. The school where the kids have futures. The school where all the Doctors and lawyers send their progenies. The school where kids have Advanced Placement programs and live in houses with outdoor pools and get posh vehicles on their 16th birthday. They arrive to Madison Golf course in five buses which a special shuttle for the seven varsity athletes. They all have blond hair and braces. They look like a flotilla of green smurfs.  There are green jerseys as far as the eye can see.

You could place our team in aYuGo and still have room.
 

“What it is with the schools out there is parental involvement.” Hans LoGrotto notes. “The parents want their kids to be involved in extra-curricular activities., so the parents get involved."

I want to tell Hans that four of our teammates our already fathers but I refrain.

There are controversies that for basketball especially Richwoods recruits athletes from the southside . There was an article in the paper how  a basketball recruit I sent to Christ Lutheran with who lived across the street from Aldi’s moved to a house in the north side so that he could attend Richwoods, his landlord opportunely being also the varsity basketball coach at the school.

I have just had the fastest race of my life.


 Before the race my father comes up to me again and tells me what he always tells me.

"God give you a good run."

I have already scribed 17:19 on the interior white of my arm during Mme Suhr's 6th hour French. I refrained from drinking milk or eating bread all day. I loose. I am light.This is the race. I am hopping up and down. I am taking deep and calculated breaths. I am focusing on race. Every time I close my eyes I see the tetragrammaton of neon digits forming 17:19. Every time I take a deep breath I am envisioning myself across the chute.

 This is my race.

I have worked all summer for this. I have run three times a day. There will be no wrong turns as with Woodruff and at Pekin. There will be no jostling and shit-talking as there was with Central.


There is a sense that we can do this. There is a sense that even though we are outnumbered 150-15 we can still kick their blond headed truss-funded overtly privileged ass. We do our stretches. Coach tells myself and Peacock that this team is known for boxing in and to just aim for 5:30 mile splits. He says that we are running with a more elite crowd.

"This may be a good meet for the two of you to make a statement."
 

We huddle for our pre-game ritually which has somehow morphed into Leatric asking everyone the rhetorically query of  'What side is this?' to which we echo back 'SOUTH SIDE!!!' in unison before sprinting to the start.

I nod. I say the word statement again. We line up at the start. This is the largest team we are racing against. As the gun cackles we take off.

The first 100 meters I look into the white of my arm for my said record-decimating time.  


I am drowned.

Peacock is fighting to vie for position. Almost 90 percent of the boys have semi-gelled haircuts and are wearing braces.  Their plan seems to have twenty runners go out fast the first 400 meters. I am next to Peacock. We are staying steady. We own this course. Madison park, rising up like a neo flat top above the loose shingles and working class dregs of the southside.

We own this course. We are pushing ourselves. For some reason much in the same fashion that Pekinites employed the N-bomb to address our team as a whole regardless of color, I feel like addressing Richwoods as self-righteous nepotistic economically delusional republicans, even though I know this is not true since Dawn Michelle is one of the most liberal and free thinking individuals I have ever met.

Near hole 5, 1200 meters in I am next to Peacock. The lead from Richwoods looks like Gumby. He seems to grunt an exorbitant amount when he runs. It sounds like he is having sex and having a hard time ejaculating. I am running with confidence. I am next top Peacock.  This is my third race. My third endeavor to break my cousin's record.

This is the time it will happen.

I continue to push forward. Because of Richwood’s mascot being the Knights it is impossible not to think of them as if they are guarding something while running.

The first mile is 5:14. Perhaps too fast. I am well on pace to trump my cousin’s record. Peacock is well on pace to chronicle his own Personal Best. We have emerged as the two leaders of our team in the inscrutable absence of our captain Jose.  We our fighting. Richwoods Gumby leader who won’t let us past. Every time he snaps his cleats down Peacock and myself are behind him. I look down at the 17:20 scrawled on the interior of arm.  Just listening to Gumby breath makes me want to toss an inhaler at him. As we turn behind the ELKS an unprecedented six other Green-shirts seem to be on our heels.  None of them were in the first battalion who started out the first half mile sprinting. Two go off course and sprint past myself and Peacock, getting ahead of their lead runner who is still echoing post-coital grunts. Two more are flanked on the side. Three are behind. We have a steady pace but we have slowed down. Mile number Two is 10:55.  Still fast.  My father is looking into his watching, smiling, yelling that I am doing great. Yelling that I am on course to ascertain my elusive goal. I am locked in. I look at Peacock. When we try to surge it appears that runners in front of us all but stop, form plus-signs  with their upper limbs thwarting us from advancing. Then they start running again.

We harry over the subtle mounds abutting the side of the Golf course directly above the gun range.  There is no reason Peacock and myself cannot go one two even though we are locked in.
Several other of the blonde haired truss-fund Richwoods fucks are trying to block us.  Gumby is getting further ahead.
 

Peacock and myself shoot past one blonde the three  blonde haired and braces as lads we begin to push. At this moment the record is mine to lose. One of the blonde headed lads flings is arm out as we blast past.  Peacock is behind me as we curve towards the brick avenues and six-figure homes dotting Manor parkway.  Gumby is trying to place a surge in, still sounding like he is huffing asbestos.

I kick . I am next to him. At this pace I am easily around 16:30. I am ready to decimate the FROSH record my cousin set in 83 when he entered Manual to be a Wrestler and his Coach told him he should just take Cross Country to shed a few pounds and he ended up finding his high school calling.

I bite my lip and look down.  Sexually frustrated Gumby is directly ahead. The turn towards the finish line where we make a parabolic skitter across the actual Golf course is upcoming at hole 5.

The last time I was in this position was the first race. The last time I was running with Jose and Peacock and went ahead instead of turning I went an extra hundred meters which cost me not only first place but also the record.

 I wonder how many of these kids see nothing but green every time they privy into their bank account.,  I wonder how many will

At the half mile mark, near hole 5 I am fourth.  For a second it seems like even though I have been playing catch up through a forest of Green jerseys that I can catch them. For a second it seems like I will be able to not only snap but obliterate  my cousin’s record of 17:20.  I look at Peacock. Gumby is cursing under his agape lips in plosive breaths. Its like Peacock knows that I have to do what I need to do.

It's like he knows that this is my time.

For a minute I take the lead. For a minute the only thing I am focused on is quashing those digits. For a minute I am pushing myself knowing exactly where the turn is, ready for the home stretch,
 

Everything happens at hole five along the brick contours of Manor Parkway.

Everything happens at hole five where we turn to cut across the golf course and head home.

 

 

                                              

 

A second before it happens I see Kim Zmeskal’s pale countenance and her saltine thighs. I see her falling off the La Sagrad Familia and I am trying to catch her.  I am performing wind-sprints across the inky swill of the Atlantic, finding her petite frame in Barcelona.

I am running to her and she is falling only I cannot catch her. 

I the moment I fall it feels like she is falling next to me, off the balance beam in Barcelona. At the moment it feels like we are simultaneously both writhing, keening in incontrovertible pain

                    

 

Peacock is the first to look back. . I am stomping the ground as if I am trying to put on a vicarious conflagration set to my anatomy. I grimace. The side of my right leg feels like it is being snapped and  plucked from the interior ligament of my thigh before being whittled with a potato peeler commonly reserved for obscure Irish Castration rituals.. I have been running with my father since I was five years old. The first time we went running was around Madison golf course. I t was in November and he was wearing socks on his hands for gloves.

I have never experience a pain this seething.

 Peacocks looks back. I make a motion for him to go. For him to haul ass. For him to say fuck all these hoity-toity rich kids on the North side of town with their coifed blonde hair and their braces. Just keep going.

 I swat at him.  While Peacock is by my side Gumby and three kids soar past. I swat at Peacock again. I don’t know what is wrong. I am digging down everything that is inside of me. I am fighting. I am running with a limp. It feels like my leg in anvil. For every step I take it drags it is holding me back.

 

 

I watch Peacock’s back shoot forward trying to catch sexually-frustrated Gumby.

 

I am wobbly. I am not stopping. Behind me are a bastion of encroaching green shirts.  Every time I set my foot down there is a burn. I snort several times oblivious that I am sucking up icy tears.

 

My last race at Morton and I had competed the course at this time. Now I still have half mile left to go.  

When I try to move I fall.

It feels like I am down for over an hour. When I look up I am being stampeded over by a European sea of Green Shirted lads, none of whom have stopped to help. I try to move. A pain screeches up through my leg. I look behind. Logrotto is making a turn at hole 5.

It is a blanket of Green. It is flooding at it is everywhere. It looks like pine forest trying to swim.

They all have blonde hair. The sun ricocheting off the top of their scalps.

It seems unreal. An animated shag carpet of plowing emerald. I can’t go the speed I would like. 

                                   

 

I get up. Even though I can't walk I am determined to finish the race.

I battle my way past the kids with coifed haircuts and  posh dental insurance. I battle my way past the sons of six figure income. I still can’t see Peacock. I am pushing myself even though I know I shouldn’t. I don’t know why I hurt so bad. I am thinking about my cousin's record. . The last hundred meter I pick off five of them to finish eleventh, the lowest I have finished in a dual race so far this season.

I cross the finish line limping. In a way it looks like I am skipping through the chute even though there is a grimace splattered across limp. Coach has a look of concern melted into his face. I should have perhaps pulled out of the race.  Even limping that last half mile I still beat 18:00 minutes by a tenth of second.  Had I not I would have shattered the FROSH record. Had I not the morning announcements would have said my name with a new freshman record.

The second consecutive dual race we are swept. Richwood’s goes one-two-three-four-five.  

Peacock was the only one to finish in the top ten. I am number eleven. Seven Green coats will finish before Hans and Quaynor. I don’t know what happen. This was supposed to be my race. I was supposed to be celebrating.

 I exit the chute. Peacock is bent over. As I stake a step the ground pushes up  and I face down, the scent of autumnal clover and burnt leaves somewhere distant in the air filling every pore of my body. My coach is down on one knee as if he is proposing. My father is next to him.

 I don’t know what happened. One second I was running,

I pull up next to Coach. I finish in the top ten though I am hurting.

“I don’t know what’s wrong.  Something happen after a mile and half.  It was like something popped only it didn’t. It felt like I was running on one leg the last mile and a half.

I keep apologizing even when Coach tells me to be still. I keep apologizing for failing.

Coach is taping me up. I am hobbling. I tell Coach I don’t know what is wrong. I almost broke sixteen minutes a week ago in Morton.


There will be no record even though I was well on track until the last 200 meters.

I don’t know what is wrong.