Never Be Better
He had never been a great runner. He was good, he couldn’t have been fifth in the standings otherwise, but he wasn’t great. He didn’t have the legs or the heart. He had the desire, he wouldn’t have been perched on the starting block, eyeing his finger tips if he lack the will, but he didn’t have the heart, the physical heart. The doctor and the second opinion had said it was too big, too big to do what he did. He didn’t listen. He wouldn’t have been where he was if he had. He wouldn’t have grazed the limelight had he listened to the nay-sayers and scoffers, the ones who said he couldn’t run after what had happened in Salt Lake, what had almost happened in Atlanta. They didn’t understand. He couldn’t, but he was going too. As the two thousand eyes watched he was going too. Their wasted breath and sentiments meant nothing to him. He hadn’t been born to run, but he’d do it anyway.Two blocks over, crouched in a stance that mirrored his own was last years champion: a lean, knotted muscle squeezed into a matching blue short and tank top outfit with his name in white relief across the back. It was largely unnecessary. They all knew who he was. His face had graced the cover of ever magazine and his name was uttered from every radio broadcast. Everyone knew Alan Better, the youngest world record holder in the 400 meter. He was the golden boy, the blue clad knight of the track, as one columnist had called him. The front page of the local news that day had read “No One Is Better” with the subtitle, “Repeat Inevitable”. Some whispered that he could keep a 100 pace through the whole track, some openly discussed it. The sky was the starting point.
And it was a blue sky that covered the track that day. Deep in its monotonous hue. Clouds were nowhere to be seen, uprooted from the ground by loggers and taken to places unknown. The runners had finished their last minute warm ups and were crouching in to their set positions. The crowd, blanketed under a murmur of anticipation, shifted and eddied like a disturbed, wind blown pool of water. Far up in the bleachers their sat two men, one dressed in a black overcoat, the other in a sweater of the same color. The man in the sweater leaned into the man in the overcoat.
“Who you got?” The man glanced at him, then turned back. “I mean, I got Better, but who you got?” The man watched the track. “Come on, you gotta have someone” the sweater man said a little more anxiously. The overcoat man’s white beard moved as if he was about to speak but the pop of the starting gun, deafened by the distance up the stands had punctured the bubble that had kept the crowd in check and all at once the unrelenting surge of held back emotion breached the white wall separating the stands from the field and it spilled over onto the track.
He ran. He ran hard, perhaps the hardest he had ever run. He was sick of the doubters, he was sick of the people that told him he couldn’t. He was more sick of the people that ignored him, passed him over for features on ESPN and Sports Illustrated, sick of just being another number, another runner, another nothing. He was done so he ran, ran till became his younger self hurling across a grassy field in a pick up football game. He ran till he no longer felt his feet beneath him but instead they had become a blur of flawlessly smooth motion that propelled him past his counterparts. He was barely aware of the crowd’s gasp at his burst of speed, barely aware of Better’s mouth open in disbelief and determination as he passed him at the 200 mark. He had entered his own world in which everything else slowed and the only thing that he was conscious of was the rhythm of his step and the beating of his heart. Its rhythm pumped, faster and faster as time moved slower and slower. Then it stopped. Everything flooded back into his awareness at once, the crowd’s roar became overwhelming but he could barely hear it over the silence of his heart. Where had it gone. A hot rush of pain gripped the front of his chest and worked its way through him till ever inch of him was screaming. Yet he said nothing. All he could do was look forward at the finish line that was fifty yards away but with every step he took grew farther. He knew he wasn’t going to make it, he had always know but with one last look at the finish line the closeness of it astonished him.
“Almost” he whispered as he stumbled, the other runners passing him. He looked up to the blue sky that was slowly receding from view.
“Almost.”
Better went back often. He would bring a folding chair, climb up to the peak of the hill that sat next to it and seat himself overlooking it. He had told his friends and family that it he did it to reminisce, to remember the glory days, and they all agreed and declared that it was his right. He had been, after all, a world record holder, the best of his peers in the 400. But those times were gone and he knew it. It hadn’t been obvious at first. He slowly dropped from first in the rankings to second then to fourth. It had only been after his sponsors had dropped him that he realized that his days of running were over. He hadn’t saved, hadn’t invested, and hadn’t cared. Now nobody cared about him. The sports world forgot his name, his kids had left the house, his wife had died and his friends had all but left. Now he sat alone atop a hill overlooking it. It was empty now, a section of the stadium had collapsed and city officials had deemed it to costly to renovate so they had allotted enough money to have the debris removed, the track torn out and the field re-grassed. Only the sign stood, slightly worn but still proudly proclaiming the name Ted Jefferson Memorial Park. Better folded up his chair in disgust, “should have been my name” he said with his back turned from it. A taxi pulled slowed and, almost on second thought, pulled up to the curb near the hill. The driver rolled down the window and yelled across the green “Hey, ain’t you Better, Allen Better?” Better walked over to the passenger side of the taxi and looked in. “yessir, that’s my name”
“I remember you, the runner right?” The taxi driver was an elderly man dressed in his favorite black sweater.
“Yessir, that’s me”
“Need a lift”
“Don’t got no money”
“its fine, this one’s on me, I got you”
“That’s mighty swell of you” Better said as he got in.
“Home?”
“Home.”
The taxi pulled away. There wasn’t a car on the road.
