Elevation(19)

I’m never going to catch her, Scott thought. She’s got too much of a lead. That damn hill didn’t break me, but it bent me pretty good.

Then his lungs seemed to open up again, each breath going deeper than the one before. His sneakers (not blinding white Adidas, just ratty old Pumas) seemed to shed the lead coating they had gained. His previous lightness of body came rushing back. It was what Milly had called the following wind, and what pros like McComb no doubt called the runner’s high. Scott preferred that. He remembered that day in his yard, flexing his knees, leaping, and catching the branch of the tree. He remembered running up and down the bandstand steps. He remembered dancing across the kitchen floor as Stevie Wonder sang “Superstition.” This was the same. Not a wind, not even a high, exactly, but an elevation. A sense that you had gone beyond yourself and could go farther still.

Heading down Hunter’s, past O’Leary Ford on one side and Zoney’s Go-Mart on the other, he passed one runner, then another. Four back now. He didn’t know or care if they were staring as he blew past them. All of his attention was focused on the red shirt and blue shorts.

Deirdre took the lead. As she did, more thunder banged overhead—God’s starter pistol—and Scott felt the first cold splat of rain on the back of his neck. Then another on his arm. He looked down and saw more hitting the road, darkening it in dime-sized drops. Now there were spectators on either side of Main, although they still had to be a mile from the finish and half a mile from where the downtown sidewalks started. Scott saw umbrellas popping open like flowers blooming. They were gorgeous. Everything was—the darkening sky, the pebbles in the road, the orange of the marker announcing the Turkey Trot’s last K. The world stood forth.

Ahead of him, a runner abruptly swerved off the road, went to his knees, and rolled over on his back, looking up into the rain with his mouth drawn down in a bow of agony. Only two runners between him and Deirdre.

Scott blew past the final orange marker. Just a kilometer to go now, less than a mile. He had gone from first gear to second. Now, as the sidewalks began—cheering crowds on either side, some waving Turkey Trot pennants—it was time to see if he had not just third gear but an overdrive.

Kick it, you son of a bitch, he thought, and picked up the pace.

The rain seemed to hesitate for a moment, time enough for Scott to think it was going to hold off until the race was over, and then it came in a full-force torrent, driving the spectators back under awnings and into doorways. Visibility dropped to twenty percent, then to ten, then to almost zero. Scott thought the cold rain felt more than delicious; closer to divine.

He got by one runner, then another. The second was the former leader, the one that Deirdre had passed. He had slowed down to a walk, splashing along the gushing street with his head down, his hands on his hips, and his sopping shirt plastered to his body.

Ahead, through a gray curtain of rain, Scott saw the red shirt. He thought he had just enough gas left in the tank to go by her, but the race might be over before he could. The traffic light at the end of Main Street had disappeared. So had the Tin Bridge, and the yellow tape across its near end. It was just him and McComb now, both of them running blind through the deluge, and Scott had never been happier in his life. Only happiness was too mild. Here, as he explored the farthest limits of his stamina, was a new world.

Everything leads to this, he thought. To this elevation. If it’s how dying feels, everyone should be glad to go.

He was close enough to see Deirdre McComb look back, her sodden ponytail doing a dead-fish flop onto her shoulder as she did it. Her eyes widened when she saw who was trying to take away her lead. She faced forward, lowered her head, and found more speed.

Scott first matched her, then overmatched her. Closing in, closing in, now almost close enough to touch the back of her soaked shirt, able to see clear rivulets of rain running down the back of her neck. Able—even over the roar of the storm—to hear her gasping air out of the rain. He could see her, but not the buildings they were passing on either side, or the last stoplight, or the bridge. He had lost all sense of where he was on Main, and had no landmarks to help him. His only landmark was the red shirt.

She looked back again, and that was a mistake. Her left foot caught her right ankle and she went down, arms out, surfing water up in front and splashing to either side like a kid bellyflopping into a swimming pool. He heard her grunt as the air went out of her.

Scott reached her, stopped, bent down. She twisted up on one arm to look at him. Her face was an agony of fury and hurt. “How did you cheat?” she gasped. “Goddam you, how did you ch—”

He grabbed her. Lightning flashed, a brief glare that made him wince. “Come on.” He put his other arm around her waist and hauled her up.

Her eyes went wide. There was another flash of lightning. “Oh my God, what are you doing? What’s happening to me?”

He ignored this. Her feet moved, but not on the street, which was now an inch deep in running water; they pedaled in the air. He knew what was happening to her, and he was sure it was amazing, but it wasn’t happening to him. She was light to herself, maybe more than light, but heavy to him, a slim body that was all muscle and sinew. He let loose. He still couldn’t see the Tin Bridge, but he could see a faint yellow streak that had to be the tape.

“Go!” he shouted, and pointed at the finish line. “Run!”

She did. He ran after her. She broke the tape. Lightning flashed. He followed, raising his hands into the rain, slowing down as he ran onto the Tin Bridge. He found her halfway across on her hands and knees. He dropped down beside her, both of them gasping in air that seemed to be mostly liquid.