How many times did I consider turning and walking back out?
In the kitchen (as I learned much later), the Murderer stood quietly up. He breathed the sultry air. He looked gratefully at the mule:
Don’t even think about leaving me now.
“Three…two…one…now.”
The stopwatch clicked, and Clay was on his way.
Lately they always did it like this; Henry loved how skiers were sent down the mountain on TV, and adopted the same method here.
As usual, Clay had started the countdown a distance from the line. He was impassive, blank-faced, and his barefoot feet felt great. They hit the line nicely for the now. Only when he started to run did he feel a pair of tears, bitten and burning, swell inside his eyes. Only then did his fists tighten; he was ready for it now, this idiots’ br
igade, this terrifically teenaged world. He would never see it or be it again.
The weeds at his feet swung left and right, they swayed to get out of his way. Even his breath seemed to come out of him only to escape. Still there was no feeling on his face. Just the two arching tear lines, drying as he took the first bend, toward Seldom, Maguire, and Tinker. Clay knew how to hurt them. He had one or two of most things, but also a thousand elbows.
“Here.”
Business-like, they converged.
They met him in Lane Four with noxious sweat and forearms, and his legs continued to run, diagonally in the air. Momentum, somehow, was his. His right hand dug into the rubber, then a knee, and he threw Maguire behind him; he fended Seldom’s face. In an instant he could see the poor guy fog up, and he brought him down next, and hard.
By then, the rotund Brian “Tinker” Bell—with the secondary nickname of Mr. Plump—came in with a gluttonous thump. It was a fist across the throat, an ample chest against his back. He whispered, hot and hoarsely, “I gotcha now.” Clay didn’t like being whispered to like that. He also didn’t care much for gotcha, and very soon there was a very sad sack lying amongst the weeds. A sack with a bleeding ear. “Fark!” The boy was gone.
Yes, Tinker was forgotten, but the other two came back, one hurt, one strong; it wasn’t enough. Clay pushed away. He strode out. He took hold of the worn back straight.
* * *
—
Now he eyed the next two, and they hadn’t expected him so soon.
Schwartz steadied himself.
Starkey spat again. The guy was a Goddamn fountain. A gargoyle!
“Come on!”
That was the creature in Starkey’s voice box now, crying a call to arms. He should have known better, that Clay wouldn’t be threatened, or inflamed. In the background, the first three boys were hunched, all just blurry shapes, as he swung out wide, then changed. He aimed more for Starkey, who by now wasn’t spitting, but veering. He reacted barely in time to get a finger onto the very top thread of Clay’s shorts, and then, of course, came Schwartz.
As promised, Schwartz hit him like a train.
The 2:13 express.
His neat fringe came over the top as he buried him, half into Lane One, half in the wall of weeds, and Starkey followed with his knees. He gored Clay’s cheek with that facial hair. He even pinched him as they went kicking and a-gouging in the blood and the shove and Starkey’s beer breath. (God, that poor girl up in the bleachers.)
As if in suffocation, their feet kicked at the Tartan.
Seemingly miles away, a complaint arrived from the grandstand. “Can’t see a bloody thing!” If it went any longer in the infield, they’d have to run to the bend.
Inside the Bernborough Park greenery, there was a lot of grappling, but Clay always found a way. To him, there was no win at the end of this, or a loss, or a time, or the money. It didn’t matter how much they hurt him, they couldn’t hurt him. Or how much they held him, they couldn’t hold him. Or at least, they couldn’t quite hurt him enough.
“Pin that knee!”
A prudent suggestion by Schwartz, but too late. A free kneecap was a free Clay, and he was able to push himself off, hurdle the hundred kilos at his feet, and accelerate.
* * *