Flanagan's Run Read online

  “Go get me Doc Cole,” said Flanagan to Willard.

  Five minutes later Cole was comfortably settled in front of a tall glass of iced orange juice in Flanagan’s caravan.

  “How can I help you, Flanagan?” he asked, the sweat still visible on his forehead.

  Flanagan gulped down his coffee.

  “I think we face a little technical problem, Doc. I suppose you already know Morgan went out and brought Kate Sheridan in?”

  “Yes,” said Doc. “What of it?”

  “The Germans have demanded I disqualify them both.”

  “On what grounds?”

  “That he assisted her in finishing the stage.”

  Doc took a final gulp of his orange juice, sucking on the cube of ice he had taken with it. He looked up.

  “Did he pick her up, drag her along, carry her?”

  “No. Not as far as I know.”

  “Flanagan, you probably know that I ran in the Dorando Olympic Marathon of 1908. Perhaps you heard of it? Dorando arrived in the White City Stadium first but in a state of rigor mortis. Hell, he didn’t know if he was in London, England, or Gary, Indiana. He fell, was picked up by some officials, fell again, and in the end was practically carried over the line by the judges.”

  “And was he disqualified?”

  “Yep, but remember that he was lifted and carried across the line. Could I have another peek at your race rules?”

  Willard handed the slim rule book across the caravan to Doc, who ran his finger slowly down each page in turn.

  The runner shook his head.

  “I can see that you’ve pretty much followed the amateur rules, but there’s nothing here to cover Morgan’s situation. Hell, what do you think those Germans and All-Americans are doing if it isn’t pacing each other every day of the goddam week?”

  “What would you say if I disqualified both of them?” said Flanagan.

  “I’d say you were disqualifying her for something in which she played no active part, and him for sheer decency and kindness.”

  Flanagan put down his cup.

  “Thanks, Doc. You’ve helped me make up my mind.”

  The older man rose to go. “And do you mind telling me what you’ve decided?”

  Flanagan gave him a toothy smile. “That they both run,” he said.

  “Coffee?” asked Dixie.

  For a moment Kate did not know where she was. She looked sleepily around her, at the plain white ceiling above, her black hair tumbling over her sunburnt face. She felt the coolness of silk on her arms and realized that she was wearing a pair of pink silk pyjamas, and was covered by a thin white cotton sheet. She was in bed in Dixie’s caravan.

  “How . . . ?”

  Dixie anticipated her question. “How did you get here?”

  Kate nodded sleepily, shaking her tousled hair.

  Dixie poured out a steaming cup of black coffee, asked after sugar and cream, then explained. “It was Morgan and McPhail who brought you in. Them and Doc Cole. But don’t worry – it was me who cleaned you up and undressed you. You weren’t really capable of much last night. How do you feel now?”

  Kate rubbed her calves. “Stiff. Feels like someone’s been banging my legs with jack-hammers.” She sipped her drink.

  “Did anyone ever tell you you make great coffee?”

  Dixie smiled.

  Kate put down her cup thoughtfully. “I just can’t figure out that guy Morgan. Jesus, the first time he spoke to me was only yesterday – and then he bopped me one.”

  Dixie stared at her.

  “Morgan hit you?”

  Kate cupped her jaw in her hands and gingerly moved it from side to side.

  “No complaints. I had it coming to me. Anyhow, I made it. The only thing I can remember is the time. Seven hours fifty-four.”

  “So you beat the cut?” said Dixie, pouring herself a second cup.

  “Yes, by over five minutes. I sure hope Flanagan doesn’t have any more of these cuts for a few days.”

  Dixie picked up her clipboard and shook her head.

  Kate smiled. “That’s all I need. A couple of days’ rest and some easy running and I’ll be as right as rain. You just watch me.”

  Dixie looked out of the window at the rows of tents on the desert plain. She could see Hugh McPhail walking not far from the caravan, and waved.

  He looked over towards her and smiled in response. Within two minutes he was seated in the small travelling home sampling her prize brew. Their hands touched as she held his cup, and for a moment he wondered if her hand had lingered a moment on his.

  “How are you feeling?” he asked Kate, who sat in her running kit on Dixie’s bed.

  “All the better for this coffee,” she replied. “I’d sure like to thank you guys for getting me here last night.”

  Hugh blushed. “It was mainly Morgan,” he said, looking down at his cup. He was still thinking of Dixie’s hand.

  There was a moment’s silence, then another voice joined in the conversation. “What the hell is this, a coffee morning?”

  They looked round to see Flanagan at the door. He was dressed in his Tom Mix outfit and carrying a sheaf of papers on a clipboard.

  He pointed to Kate.

  “I’ve got some news you won’t like,” he said. “The German manager Moltke has put in a protest – about Morgan helping you. He wants you both disqualified.”

  Kate flushed and started to speak. “You can tell Moltke, whoever he is . . .”

  “Don’t get yourself in a tizzy,” Flanagan said quickly. “I threw his protest out cold. Anyhow, it was Morgan he was really after, not you. Morgan’s the one who might cream his blue-eyed boys, they must reckon. But I’ve got some good news for you, too. The Woman’s Home Journal have offered a ten-thousand-dollar prize if you can finish in the first two hundred places. Does that get to you?”

  “I’ll say,” said Kate, grinning. “What place am I in?”

  Flanagan looked at his clipboard.

  “Seven hundred and eighty-ninth,” he said. “So you’ll have to kill off over five hundred guys to get to that ten grand. Even the famous Miss Lily Langtry herself couldn’t have done that.”

  “No,” replied Kate. “But then Lily Langtry hadn’t hoofed for six shows a day!”

  Close on two hundred miles east of Los Angeles, the Trans-America had ceased to become a race purely between individuals. Rather, it was between teams, between groups of men drawn together by friendship and the desire for success, and the certain knowledge that it was going to be difficult for any individual runner to win on his own. The fifteen State teams, the All-Americans, the Germans, the various company-sponsored teams – these groupings had been known at the start of the race, but now the social chemistry of the Trans-America had changed, and the race was composed of dozens of less formal alliances. Some of these had in common age, others experience, yet others race, religion or colour; but most of them cut across all these boundaries. Just as men had travelled in families from the East fifty years before, so the Trans-America was dividing up into families to make the return journey, only this time families of athletes.

  Kate Sheridan was aware of this, aware of the daily need to go beyond individual ambitions. She knew herself to be in a unique position. She was now the only woman left in the race, with no female group to which she could adhere.

  C. C. Flanagan had not been the only man to show interest in her. The two hundred-odd miles of the Trans-America did not appear to have depleted the sexual energies of some of the competitors, which seemed to be fuelled by quite a different source from their running.

  Chance, however, had led her towards Doc’s group, which, though its members had reached no formal agreements, moved about the camp as one. At the centre of the group was Doc himself, the fountainhead of running knowledge, even more than that – someone with whom she and the others felt entirely comfortable.

  After tea on the rest day Kate had made her way to Doc’s tent to find him sitting outside with Ma
rtinez, Morgan and McPhail.

  As she approached she saw Doc fish deep into his knapsack and pull out a small piece of emery paper. Then he pulled off his shoes and inspected his feet closely. Hugh, Morgan and Kate looked at each other in wonder.

  “’Spect you’re wondering what I’m about,” said Doc. He rubbed the paper across the side of his left foot. “Friction,” he said. “We got to run on ball bearings. Have any of you any idea how many times our feet will hit the road on any one day? Then I’ll tell you. About seventy thousand. So we don’t want roughness on the feet or in the shoes. That’s why I polish my feet smooth. I do it every day.”

  Disregarding Kate, Doc went quickly over both feet, then clipped his toenails close, so that there were no protrusions. Next he powdered his armpits with talcum and then smeared Vaseline on the front of his chest and his nipples. “Friction again,” he said. “Used to get sore nipples. Same with the crotch.” He opened the top of his shorts and poured some more powder down inside, then shook his shorts around with both hands. “You don’t just run with your legs,” he explained. “You run with everything you’ve got. The Ford Automobile people call it ‘testing to destruction’. That’s what we’re doing out here. Testing ourselves to destruction. Only I don’t figure to get destroyed.”

  Hugh looked on dumbly. There was so much he had to learn, and quickly, or he would soon be out of the race, stranded on the roadside on some vast American desert. Luckily, his feet had so far held out, though he had done no more than talc the inside of his shoes.

  Doc next drew out from his knapsack a long-sleeved soccer shirt. “It’s going to be sunny tomorrow. Every part of your skin below neck level should be covered, otherwise that sun’ll flay you alive. Sure I’ll sweat in this, but my arms and shoulders won’t burn.” He pulled out his white peaked cap. “This’ll protect my face,” he said. “Reckon my legs are brown enough to take the sun, so I’ll leave them free.”

  He looked up at his three companions.

  “I don’t know why I’m telling you guys all this, ’cause one of these days one of you is going to have me whole for breakfast.”

  He stood up. “Look out there,” he said, pointing into the desert. “The devil’s playground; it’s the meanest, driest land God ever made. A fossil wasteland of yucca, Joshua trees and dry lake beds. Jesus, sixty years back they brought out camels from Arabia, and even they didn’t last long.”

  He returned to examining his feet, but the respite only lasted a moment.

  “Any of you think you’re going to run easy across that in seventy-five degrees or more, then think again,” he said, looking up. “No, just you treat the Mojave with respect and run out quiet on tiptoe and maybe you might just make it across.”

  He pointed out into the distance. “Tomorrow I intend to shuffle across that desert at just over six miles an hour at best. And if that mad young Kraut wants to run wild again then let him. Anyone who goes with him every day will be a basket-case by Vegas.”

  “And what about me, Doc?” It was Kate who spoke.

  Doc finally nodded his recognition, picked up a broken branch and traced a line on the ground.

  “This is where we are now,” he said, making a mark on the sandy soil. “About a hundred-odd miles south of Vegas. Then more desert, then the Rockies. If you can make it over the Rockies, Miss Sheridan, then I reckon you just might’ve run your body in. Depends how quickly you can adapt.”

  “You were talking about clothing, Doc. Does that go for me too?”

  “Exactly the same. Cover up all light coloured skin. Get a floppy hat in Barstow to keep out the sun and keep your face cool. You mayn’t look much, but this ain’t no beauty competition.”

  “What about face creams?”

  “Hell, no,” said Doc. “Unless you’re figuring to fry like an egg.”

  He looked at her, sensing her uncertainty.

  “Look, Kate, you can make it. You showed your stuff at the last cut. But just you take it slow, and stop at all water-points. And don’t be too proud to walk.”

  “Walk?” said Kate.

  “Walk. At seventy-five degrees and above your body can’t keep its temperature in balance, even with all the sweating in the world. In that heat the body chemistry goes crazy. So listen to your body; do what it tells you. Nothing chicken in that.”

  “You’ve really got it worked out,” said Kate admiringly.

  “Well, I’ve had thirty years to think about it,” said Doc. “I don’t know much else.”

  She turned to the rest of the group, reddening. “I’d . . . I’d like to thank you guys for yesterday.”

  “Heck,” said Doc. “It was Morgan here who went back. The rest of us, we just did a peck of stretcher-bearing. Morgan here did all the real work. Thank him.”

  He stood up, patting his belly. “Anyhow, my stomach tells me it’s dinner time.” He gave a quick sidelong grin at Morgan, and walked off towards the refreshment tent, followed by McPhail and Martinez, the little Mexican gabbling excitedly away to Hugh about his earnings. Kate watched them move off, then sat down on the rock which Doc had vacated.

  She looked steadily down at the sand at her feet.

  “I’d like to thank you, Morgan.” She realized suddenly that she didn’t even know his first name.

  There was no reply.

  “Why did you come back for me?”

  Mike Morgan looked at her steadily, chewing on a straw. At last he spoke. “Maybe it’s because I once trained with a pug called Clancy up in the Tuscarora mountains, back in Pennsylvania. It was the hardest time of my life. Back there Clancy said I had ‘bottom’. He said it to me like it was some sort of compliment. Bottom. Well, you got it, Miss Sheridan.”

  “Bottom?” said Kate, reddening again.

  She looked across at her companion, his body only partly visible in the gathering dusk. For a moment she felt again the tug of that invisible thread that had bound them in those last desperate miles, even though the need for the link had now gone.

  “Yes,” said Morgan. “And don’t think for one moment that if I hadn’t got to you that you would have just lain there and given up. No, you would’ve got up and finished, because that’s the kind of person you are, ma’am. Lady, you ain’t got a single ounce of give-up in you.”

  With that Morgan got to his feet and ambled off towards the others.

  Bottom. That was all the man could say, and then just walk away. Kate normally had a flow of smart repartee to hold a man long enough to keep his interest; but not this time. She sat dumb, letting Morgan amble off into the dusk. Surely there had to be more than this? Perhaps hundreds of miles on, far beyond these sour, arid wastes. But not now. Sometime, maybe.

  10

  Cross-Country to Las Vegas

  6 p.m., 26 March 1931. Silver Lake, Nevada. “Testing, testing . . . one, two, three,” bellowed Willard into the microphone. In front of the Trans-America caravan sat one thousand two hundred and fifty-five men and one woman, all that remained of the Trans-America after just two hundred and thirty miles. Four weeks in the Californian sun had tanned their complexions a golden brown, and a day’s rest had given their skins an added glow and vitality.

  Willard Clay was in his element. All his life he had been a fixer, an organizer. At five foot four inches and one hundred and seventy pounds, he knew that there was no athletic event for which he was suited, except possibly sumo wrestling, and he had been born in the wrong country for that. However, even as early as the fifth grade he had been the one who had arranged the basketball matches between local street teams, raised money for Father Murphy’s church funds, even organized track and field meets on a sixty-by-forty-yard strip of dirt sunk in a canyon of tenements. Willard loved the challenge of organizing people. The more the better.

  Flanagan: he was the dreamer, and in the ten years since they had first met it had been Willard’s job to put flesh and bones on Flanagan’s dreams. Flanagan was, in the best sense of the word, a “con” man, in that he had the capacity
to gain people’s confidence, and Willard knew that it was something that he himself could never do. However, once Flanagan had launched himself into a project, it was Willard’s job to place brick on brick, and this he did superbly. Willard made certain that there was a man for every task, that each man knew his role, and, however humble it was, that each man was recognized. Flanagan could well strut about in his Hollywood gear, but it was Willard who would get things done.

  He had known that the Trans-America would be his most difficult task. Organizing a race across a continent was difficult enough, but handling two thousand runners, plus a circus and the attendant press corps – that was a job in the loaves and fishes category, and Willard did not anticipate the same level of divine support. Yet he revelled in his work. What was more, from the beginning he had taken to the runners. They were honest, decent men. He respected them, and in time they would grow to respect him.

  “Testing . . . one, two three,” he shouted again. Hands were raised to indicate that he was being heard.

  Flanagan took over the microphone.

  “Thank you, Willard,” he said, looking at the throng seated in front of him. Under his breath he added, “Hell, I feel like Moses leading the Israelites.”

  A Trans-American standing close to Flanagan stood up, his voice ringing out in the dry air.

  “Mr Flanagan, if you are Moses, for pity’s sake gimme some of them tablets of the Lord – I haven’t been to the john for days!”

  The athletes roared, their laughter lost in the dry desert.

  Flanagan in turn grinned good-naturedly then held up his hands for silence.

  “Okay, fellas, quieten down. Just want to let you know the programme for the next few days. Tomorrow, just over forty miles through the desert across the McCullough range taking us into Las Vegas . . .”

  Jeers and laughter interrupted Flanagan as the stocky Frenchman, Bouin, got to his feet. For Bouin, in the Great War a sergeant in the French army, had already become known as the barrack-room lawyer of the European group. “Mr Flanagan, what manner of place is your Las Vegas?”