I Want to Show You More (9780802193742) Page 4

  If I stop to walk, I won’t start running again.

  It’s the statue, I think. Things would be so much easier without it.

  When I used to watch golf with my dad, he would say, around the sixteenth hole, “Now we’ll see how his mental game is.” From this point on, finishing—just keeping my statue on—is going to be a mental game.

  I once read an article about how runners can lose track of time during a marathon. A runner who finishes in five hours seems shocked it took any longer than two, while another runner, coming in at two-thirty, swears it took five.

  Seventeen. Eighteen. As far as I’ve ever made it. But the numbers—the space and time between them—have lost their meaning. Only the words start and finish matter. Trees, fields, and monuments slide past as if I’m stationary. I reach mile nineteen, a small signpost at the roadside. One straight line, one curled over on itself. Teennine teennine teennine. I have no idea how fast I’m going. I don’t think I’ve slowed down. Maybe I have. I can’t tell. I left the Whistler behind. He stopped at the Tower to have his picture taken.

  All around me runners are beginning to stagger. I see one man take off his statue—a bronze wolf—then take the backpack off the woman beside him. She’s got her mouth wide open like she’s crying. The man’s lips are moving. I can’t hear them. A golf cart picks them up; they leave their backpacks tipped over on the street.

  At mile twenty-one—twenty-one, what does it mean, I can’t believe I’ve reached it—is another water station. A tall man with a shaved head and tarnished silver donkey strapped across his shoulders walks in circles, hands on his hips, muttering. Another man is squatting under the weight of a giant stone elf with long drooping ears, holding his head in his hands, reciting what sounds like the Pledge of Allegiance. Some runners are crawling past the water tables, their backpacks hanging off the sides of their bodies and dragging along the wet pavement. The volunteers stoop to hand them cups.

  I stop running. Someone hands me a Styrofoam cup. I take a sip of red Powerade, then lean forward and vomit.

  A golf cart pulls up alongside of me. “Finished?” the driver asks.

  “I need a counselor,” I say.

  “Last tent was two miles back,” the staffer says. “You’ll have to make it on your own from here.”

  A woman in a purple cancer-survivor shirt jogs up to me. She looks fresh. “You okay?” she asks.

  “Fighting,” I say.

  “Hang in there,” she says. “Take it easy, don’t push. Walk the rest of the way, if you need to.”

  “It’s not fair,” I say. “You guys shouldn’t have to carry statues.”

  “We find that type of thinking offensive,” she says.

  “I’m sorry,” I say.

  “Just make it to twenty-three,” she says. Then she reaches out and grasps my forearm. “And listen,” she says. “Don’t cheat. Rumor is they’ve changed the way they’re handling it, to send a message to the running community-at-large.”

  “What the hell happens at twenty-three?” But the woman is already pressing on.

  I walk a few steps. My knees aren’t bending right and I can’t feel my quads. I loosen the bungee cords on my backpack, shake my shoulders until the statue tips over and rests, horizontally, along the small of my back.

  One shoulder strap, I think. I let the strap slide down my arm. I could take the statue off just long enough to reposition.

  Behind me, I hear the scree of the Whistler’s approach.

  “Whistler,” I say when he’s close enough. “I have to tell you something.”

  The Whistler stops, hands on his hips, panting. A breeze has picked up; skinny as he is, you could almost believe the sound he’s making is the wind whistling through him.

  “I lied,” I say. “I’ve never made it this far before.”

  “Figured as much,” he says. His breath smells like cheese. Sweat is streaming down his cheeks and catching in his wrinkles. “Follow me.”

  “I can’t,” I say. “My legs are done. Next time I’ll train with sandbags.”

  The Whistler turns around so that his back is to me. With one arm he reaches behind him. He unzips his Camelbak and leaves the flap open. “Take a look,” he says.

  I peer into his pack. Beside the clear plastic water pouch, surrounded by bubble wrap and secured with bungee cords, is a tiny statue carved from a luminous blue-white marble. It’s the figure of an adolescent girl, no more than six inches tall. She’s standing on tiptoe, looking into a mirror. She seems to be on the cusp of something. Her face is serene and anguished, full of ignorance and knowledge, purity and depravity. As if all of Heaven and all of Hell were condensed into six inches of stone.

  “My God,” I say, starting to cry. “I could spend the rest of my life looking at this.”

  “It’s only an adjective,” the Whistler says. “Points to a much bigger noun.”

  “How can I keep running,” I say, “knowing such a thing exists? Knowing I will never earn such a thing?”

  The Whistler’s form is wavering like heat. I reach out to him. I’m afraid he’s going to disappear. On all sides, runners are stumbling, retching, signaling for golf carts like they’re hailing cabs.

  “I want you to run behind me, a little to my right,” the Whistler says. “Keep your eyes on my statue. We call it drafting.”

  It occurs to me that at this moment the Whistler is all I have.

  I jog behind him. I know he’s taking it slow on my account. At mile twenty-two the pacer drops his sign and we turn into the woods, moving into single file along a narrow trail—first the Whistler, then the pacer, then me. I’m grateful for the shade. Men and women in orange T-shirts line the path, standing at attention in the shadows. Patches of blue sky are visible between the dark branches and shifting leaves. I swipe at my eyes, feeling as if there is some meaning in all of this I’m failing to understand, something I’ve been missing all along—as if I’ve been running this entire race with my head turned in the wrong direction.

  “There’s no secret,” I blurt out. “Is there?”

  “Another half-mile, I think,” the Whistler says to the pacer, who nods.

  We come out into a sunlit clearing. In front of us, beneath a tarp tied to tree branches, a man in a dark suit sits behind a long rectangular table. He’s wearing glasses. On the ground around the table and in the woods behind him—as far into the forest as I can see—are hundreds of statues. Some are standing upright; others are lying on their sides as if flung down. The clearing around me looks like a ransacked sculpture garden.

  “Didn’t think you’d go through with it,” the man says to the Whistler. “Famous as you are.”

  “It’s time,” the Whistler says, jogging in place.

  The businessman looks at me and frowns. White crumbs shiver in the corners of his lips. A half-eaten blueberry muffin, still in its wrapper, sits on the table in front of him. Beside the muffin are a stack of forms and a wire basket holding what look like fat black crayons.

  “You’ve got two options,” the man says to me, “for how you want to finish.” He pushes a form and pen toward me. “Check one.”

  I lean over to read the words on the paper. Letters and numbers swirl.

  “I can’t read this,” I say, pushing it back.

  The man sighs. “Option one, you take off your statue and leave it here. You get your medal, your name goes into the database, you go home. You’ll get a new statue in the mail.”

  “But I’m three miles short,” I say.

  “That’s the point,” he says. “It’s a freebie.”

  “But I haven’t earned it.”

  “You get over that,” he says.

  I hear spitting, panting, the sound of feet jogging in place. Runners are forming a line behind me. “Just dump your pack already,” one
of them says.

  “How can any of us call ourselves runners,” I say, “if we don’t even finish?”

  Above us the wind sifts through the big-leafed maples. Papers blow off the table and sway to the ground. Sunlight and shade ripple across the businessman’s face. He takes off his glasses and rubs his eyes, which are puffy with dark blue dents underneath.

  “Option two,” the businessman says, “you swap your statue for Authentic Art and keep running to the finish. But you have to find someone willing to give up their Art.” He glances at the Whistler, who’s grinning. “Finish this way, you go into the database. But you have to sign, here”—he points to the form—“stating that the next time you race you’ll give up your Art on behalf of another failing runner. Then you’re finished for good. No more statues, no more marathons.”

  “What about just continuing on with what I’ve got?” I ask the businessman.

  “You will not finish,” he says.

  “There’s got to be another way.”

  “There isn’t,” he says.

  “Just pick one,” a woman says.

  The Whistler is holding out his Camelbak, still jogging in place, knees high.

  “What about the elite runners?” I ask.

  “They came through hours ago,” the businessman says, nodding toward a pile of tiny ivory sculptures in a basket on the table.

  “So that’s it?” I say. “We put in all this work, and in the end we cheat?”

  “Cheaters,” the businessman says, his voice low, “finish their own way.”

  “Just take the goddamn Art,” the woman behind me says.

  “The question is,” the businessman says, “would you rather receive a reward for your struggles, or enjoy a reward you never expected to receive?”

  The Whistler moves toward me. “Offer’s good,” he says. “But if I was you I’d take the first option. You’re too young to sign on for Art.”

  The Whistler’s Camelbak hangs open. Alone in her agonizing beauty, the tiny girl stands on tiptoe before the mirror.

  I sprint away from the table, leaving the Whistler, the pacer, the businessman, and the other runners behind me.

  The path comes out of the woods at mile twenty-four.

  Collapsed runners line the sides of the pavement. Staffers are collecting backpacks and piling them into golf carts. The sun is high; it must be close to noon. The wind, really blowing now, sends empty Styrofoam cups scraping along the street, among broken glass, pieces of statue, empty gel packs, gum wrappers.

  A woman in a pink cap runs up beside me. “Almost there,” she says. She’s wearing a small backpack. Written on her thighs and calves, in black body crayon, is the letter “A.”

  The woman looks down at my legs.

  “You don’t have a mark,” she says.

  “I’m doing my own thing,” I say.

  She drops behind me.

  The fields on either side of the road are crammed with spectators. But they’re no longer holding up signs or cheering. No one is clapping. The silence is profound.

  Then I hear a marching band. Off-key trumpets carried by the wind, drums and oddly smeared trombones. I get a surge of adrenaline. I run past the marker at mile twenty-five. Ahead of me, in front of the crowd, I see an enormous musical outfit: fifes, drums, snares, trumpets. The crash and shimmer of the cymbals, the muted lowing of a French horn. They’re playing Tchaikovsky. Playing us on to the finish!

  Before I reach the band, I see something else: a twenty-yard-long vanguard of soldiers in gray, rifles at ready position.

  “They’ve got Spencers!” someone in the crowd yells.

  In front of me, a man carrying a statue—something in granite, with folded wings—collapses. The man falls backward, on top of his statue.

  Then another runner goes down. And another.

  None of them have “A”s on their legs.

  The unmarked runners go down clean, with hardly a tremor in their bodies. The sharpshooters are masters of accuracy and calculation, compensating for the slant of the wind, the individual pace, the bounce of the stride, the precise tilt of each head.

  I see a woman on the ground frozen in a lotus pose; another with her arms flung above her head, knees wrapped around the long neck of a giraffe in the posture of someone swinging from a trapeze.

  Now I understand what the spectators—men, women, and children—are going to see. What they have been seeing. It’s not the spectacle of failure.

  What strikes me, when the bullet hits, is the absence of sound. Or maybe it’s the fact that the sound of the bullet hitting its mark—the soft concave center of my temple—is a sound like silence. I’m stunned there isn’t some kind of an explosion.

  Do you see the beauty in this? I yell to the spectators as I go down. Here’s your high Art, brothers and sisters! Here’s your hallelujah, here’s your amen!

  My body is on the pavement, the music is swelling, and already I’ve swelled beyond it, beyond the white flash.

  Spectators probably think my race is over.

  But I’m pressing on to the finish. I’m surging past the crowd.

  Here

  Neil Corley was driving his children to the lake cottage. He’d decided someplace familiar would be reassuring. In the back of the Suburban, all four kids wore headphones with large cushioned earpieces. They were watching Monty Python and the Holy Grail for the third time in four hours. They’d left the hotel in Cedar Rapids at eight that morning; Neil told his in-laws they’d arrive in time for lunch. Now he was going too fast up Iowa 71.

  Had Jocelyn been sitting next to him, she would have quoted her mother: “Better ‘The Corleys were late’ than ‘The Late Corleys.’”

  A bird darted in front of the windshield, then sheared off into the corn. Stands of dark trees—windbreaks for farmhouses—rose at mile intervals from the flat yellow-green fields. The sun glinted off the rounded silver tips of silos. It was a still day in early July.

  The car bucketed over a pothole. “Frozen!” Myra yelled from the third row backseat. She was thirteen.

  Neil pulled the overhead screen toward the front. He glanced up—John Cleese in a chain-mail hood—the wedding massacre.

  “I said to skip this scene, Grady,” Neil said, pushing the forward button.

  “It’s fake blood,” Grady said. He was ten; Monty Python had been his suggestion.

  Neil slowed to forty-five when they entered Spencer.

  “Hey, guys—it’s the big chicken.” He waved his arm to get their attention, and Myra pushed back an earphone. “We’re in Spencer,” Neil said, watching her face in the rearview. She loved spotting the landmarks. “Remember Boy Holding Cheeseburger at the A&W? Wake up, Effie.”

  In the middle row, Effie was slumped over an armrest. Myra kicked the back of her chair and Effie jerked awake. “Where we?” she said.

  Ben, Effie’s twin, looked out his window, then turned back. “Push play now?” he said.

  Twenty minutes later Effie screamed. “Giant Silver Lollipop!”

  This time the kids flung their headphones onto the floor. The Wahpeton water tower was the last landmark before the turnoff. It did look like a Tootsie Pop for a giant; Jocelyn had made up the name. Three summers back she’d asked Neil to pull over so they could take a picture in front of it. He hadn’t stopped. He’d figured they’d get around to it.

  The road bent, and now he could see the sliding surface of Lake Okoboji behind the houses and trees. The water was the color of lapis, spotted pewter with cloud shadow.

  They pulled up to Jocelyn’s parents’ house. Neil’s father-in-law was a retired physician; now he and Ruth were snowbirds. Iowa in the summer, Phoenix in the winter. The Perrys’ Craftsman bungalow overlooked Miller’s Bay. It was shingled in slate blue with white trim work, low-slung r
ooflines, and a wall of French doors facing the lake.

  Ruth was waiting on the front porch. Neil stayed in the car and watched the kids pile into her arms. He could tell his mother-in-law was crying when she picked up Effie. Neil smoothed his hair and looked past the house, along the grassy slope of the backyard to the trio of bur oaks at the edge of the embankment. Below the trees—though from where he sat he couldn’t see them—were eight wooden steps leading to the dock and sand beach. Last summer Jocelyn and Myra had painted them to match the bungalow’s shingles.

  The bay was quiet: one white sail, children on a water trampoline, a WaveRunner cutting west. Over the water hung a cloud, flat and gray on its underside, rising into a crisp white peak. Soft-serve ice cream.

  After lunch, they all walked down the street to the cottage Neil and Jocelyn bought when Grady was born. It was a tiny stone structure—620 square feet. The front door was paned in leaded glass and still had the original crystal doorknob. The toilet and shower had been installed in what used to be broom closets.

  Myra and Grady unpacked and checked their room for spiders while Ruth helped the twins put on life vests and took them down to the dock.

  His father-in-law opened the refrigerator and held the door wide, displaying the contents like a girl on a game show. “We bought you groceries,” he said. “Just the basics.” James Perry had the smooth white hair of a towheaded toddler; Neil noticed it had yellowed from the sun.

  Neil looked into the refrigerator. Milk, eggs, butter, yogurt. Cheddar and sliced American cheese, sandwich meat in plastic containers, bread. Orange juice, Juicy Juice, all kinds of fruit. Condiments, jelly. On top of the refrigerator were boxes of cereal, potato chips, granola bars.

  “How’d you know Naked Juice is a basic?” Myra asked him. She’d changed into a bikini with little ties at the hips. Now she was lying on the futon in the living room/kitchenette with her head propped on a pile of throw pillows, sipping from a bottle of Green Machine. What Jocelyn had started drinking when she was diagnosed.