Bridge of Clay(97)

I scoured the DVDs.

All I could find on athletics, till a woman was standing behind me.

“Hello?” she said. “Young man? It’s nine o’clock. It’s time to close.”



* * *



—

In the lead-up to Christmas, he did it.

Hector went out and went missing.

All of us took to searching, and it was something like looking for Clay, except Clay, this time, was with us. We all went out in the mornings, and the others went out after school; I joined them when I came home. We even drove back to Wetherill, but the cat had up and vanished. Even jokes were falling flat.

“Hey, Rory,” Henry said, as we wandered the streets. “At least your balls have had a chance to recover.”

“I know, good bloody riddance.”

Tommy was out on the outskirts of us, and mad and sad as hell. As they spoke he’d come running over, and tried tackling them down to the ground.

“You bastards!” He spat the hurt out. He flailed and punched away. He swung his boyish arms. “You bastards, you fucking pricks!”

At first they just made light of it, in the darkened street around us.

“Shit! I didn’t know Tommy could swear so well!”

“I know—that’s pretty good work!”

But then they felt the eyes of him, and the pain in his ten-year-old soul. Much as Clay had broken that night, in the future, in the kitchen, in Silver, Tommy was breaking now. As he fell to the road on hands and knees, it was Henry who bent and reached for him; then Rory who held his shoulders.

    “We’ll find him, Tommy, we’ll find him.”

“I miss them,” he said.

We all fell on him.

We walked home that night in silence.



* * *



—

When the others all went to bed, Clay and I watched the movies I’d borrowed, we read the small crowd of books. We watched films about the Olympics, and endless documentaries. Anything to do with running.

My favorite was Gallipoli, recommended by the librarian. World War I and athletics. I loved Archy Hamilton’s uncle—the tough-faced, stopwatched trainer.

“What are your legs?” he’d say to Archy.

Archy would say, “Steel springs.”

We watched it many times over.

For Clay it was Chariots of Fire.





1924.


Eric Liddell, Harold Abrahams.

He loved two particular things:

The first was when Abrahams first saw Liddell run, and said, “Liddell? I’ve never seen such drive, such commitment in a runner….He runs like a wild animal.”

Then his favorite Eric Liddell:

“So where does the power come from, to see the race to its end?

From within.”

Or as the actor Ian Charleson delivered it, with the amazing Scottish accent: From wethun.



* * *



—

As time went by, we wondered.

Should we place an ad in the RQT, for a lost but annoying tabby?

    No—we would never do anything so logical.

Instead there was Clay and me.

We’d look at what remained in that classifieds section, which culminated, always, in the mule. When we ran he’d be steering us over there, and I’d stop and call to him, “NO!”

He’d look at me, disappointedly.

He’d shrug, he’d go, come on.

To ward him off, I softened when something else arrived, in an ad that was placed by the pound: A female, three-year-old border collie.

I drove there myself and picked her up, and came home to the shock of my life—for there, right in front of me, on the porch, they were all out laughing and celebrating, and between them, the Goddamn cat. The bastard had come back!

I got out of the car.

I watched the beaten-up, collarless tabby.

He looked at me; he knew all along.

He was a cat with particular schadenfreude.

For a moment I expected a salute.

“I s’pose I’ll just take the dog back,” I said, and Rory threw Hector sideways; he went flying a good five meters—and there was high-pitched, bloodcurdled meowing. (I bet he was glad to be home.) Then Rory came stalking over.

“You got the little bastard a dog now?” But he was also partly congratulatory.

And Tommy?

Well, Tommy picked up Hector, and shielded him from the rest of us, and came over and opened the car. He hugged the cat and the dog simultaneously, and said, “God, I can’t believe it.” He looked over at Clay and asked; it’s so strange how he knew what to do: “Achilles?”

Again, a shake of the head.

    I said, “This one’s actually a girl.”

“Okay then, I’m calling her Rosy.”

“You know that isn’t—”

“I know, I know, it’s the sky,” and we were back for a moment together: His head in her lap in the lounge.



* * *



—

Mid-December, a Sunday, early morning, we drove to a beach in the south, in the depths of the national park. Its official name was Prospector, but the locals called it Anzacs.

I remember the car and the drive there: