“Shit!” cried Henry.
“What?”
“I think he just bit me!”
“That was my belt buckle.”
“Pin that knee!”
He didn’t know it, but somewhere, deep inside, Clay had made a vow; he’d never be pinned like that again, or at least not quite so easily.
* * *
—
That particular morning, though, when we pushed him back through the streets, he’d also made a mistake:
He thought it was over.
It wasn’t.
If Michael Dunbar couldn’t haul him through the house in the months that came beforehand, I could help him out; I shoved him down the hallway, slung him out the back, and banged a ladder against the gutter.
“There,” I said to him. “Climb.”
“What—the roof?”
“Just do it, or I’ll break your legs. See how you go running then—” And his heart sank even deeper; because when Clay made it up to the ridge, he saw exactly what I meant.
“You get the idea? Do you see how big that city is?”
It reminded him of something five years earlier, when he’d wanted to do a project on every sport in the world, and asked Penelope for a new exercise book. He’d been under the impression that all he had to do was list every sport he knew, and halfway down the first page, he’d listed eight measly things, and realized it was hopeless—and so, he now realized, was th
is:
Up here, the city multiplied.
He could see it every side.
It was huge and massive and humongous. It was every expression he’d ever heard used, to describe something undefeatable.
For a moment or two, I was almost sorry, but I had to hammer it home. “You can go as far as you want, kid, but you’re never going to find him.” I looked out over the houses; the countless slants of rooves. “He’s gone, Clay, he killed us. He murdered us.” I forced myself to say it. I forced myself to like it. “What we were—there’s nothing left.”
The sky was blanket grey.
Around us, nothing but city.
Beside me, a boy and his feet.
He killed us hung between us, and we knew, somehow, it was real.
The birth that day of a nickname.
From the moment in the Hennessey car park, something new was set in motion. On the surface, all felt normal, as winter continued in full—the dark mornings, the clean sunlight—and bridge and tireless building.
In a steady stream of races, Carey won four, which took the total to six. As always she climbed from the radio; he loved to sit and imagine her. There were also three third placings, but never any seconds. The girl was incapable of finishing second.
On Wednesdays, when Michael was away, and Clay missed things more than usual, he took his radio and box to the trees. He held the lighter and held the peg. He smiled at the iron and feather. He sat amongst the shedded bark skins, like models or casts of body parts, like arms and fallen elbows. Sometimes he stood, the last furlong: