Bridge of Clay(12)

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.



* * *



—

There were cheers now, and whistles.

A herd of nicknames came charging down, grandstand to track. From that distance their calls were very vague—more like the songs in his bedroom when the nighttime southerly came—but they were there, all right, and so was Rory.

For 150 meters, Clay had the ochre-red surface to himself. His heart clanged, the dry tear lines cracked apart.

He ran at the refusing light, at its stubborn, bulky rays.

He looked into his gait, at the elastic width of Tartan.

He ran at the cheers of boys, who called from the grandstand shade. Somewhere in there was that red-mouthed girl and her careless, wayward shoulder. There was no sex in the thought, just that similar thread of amusement. He wondered about her deliberately, for a suffering was soon to begin. It didn’t matter that this was the fastest he’d ever got here. Nothing. It meant nothing, because there, fifty meters from the finish, Rory now stood like a rumor.



* * *



—

Leading in, Clay knew he should be decisive. To hesitate would ruin him. Timidity could kill him. Not long before they met, at the far right margin of his sight, there was twenty-four boys’ worth of miscellaneous shouts. They damn near brought the grandstand down, and before them a glimpse of Rory. He was typically raw and wry.

And Clay?

    He fought every urge, to sidestep, left or right. He virtually climbed into him and somehow made it over. He felt his brother’s anatomy: his love and lovable anger. There was collision between boy and ground, and just the one foot was held now. One arm locked around his ankle was the only thing standing between Clay and something long considered unachievable. There was no getting past Rory. Never. Yet there he was, dragging him behind. He was stretching back to palm him off. His arm stiffened, but an inch or two from Rory’s face, a hand rose up like a titan out of the deep. A handshake from hell, he crushed Clay’s fingers with one effortless clinch, and with it, he ripped him downwards.

Ten meters short, he hit the track completely, and what was it about Rory’s weightlessness? That was the irony of the nickname. A human ball and chain implied an unbearable heaviness, but here he was more like a mist. You turned and he was there, but when you reached out, nothing was left. He was already somewhere else, causing danger up ahead. The only things of mass and weight were the depth and rust of his hair, and those hard grey metal eyes.