Part 1 (2/2)

The circle of bright yellow light from the Petzl was all he could see. Even with June there, Caleb felt an isolation so immense he could not grasp it. His other senses heightened, he heard the air echoing through his lungs, animals scurrying, a metallic taste ran over his tongue. He pushed into a light run, but the course seemed against him now. At some point the orange course markers lifted off the ground and floated in the air, leaving tracers behind them. His teeth chattered violently in the mountain wind. Once he had chipped a bottom tooth on a night like this.

”Slow it down,” June called from behind him.

But he couldn't. There was no way to get through the night but to try, ridiculously, to outrun it.

Some miles later the dirt trail under his feet became paved road. His bones took this poorly. The road had been closed to cars, but in the darkness the headlamps of the runners behind him appeared like headlights. He slowed to a fast walk, and June ran her hand along his thin shoulders.

”Smile with the sky,” she whispered.

Caleb forced a smile onto his face. This was one of Mack's infamous techniques. Other runners joked uneasily about the Happy Trails Smile, but it created oxyendorphins, which helped push pain aside. Amazing, Caleb thought, how kinetic energy works in the world.

They approached the Fish Hatchery aid station. Under the fluttering nylon they slammed Powerade and some thick orange puree. A surprisingly large crowd had gathered here in the pitch of night, cheering anyone who made it by. He heard runners who had dropped out exchanging stories of what had broken them. What was it about night, he wondered, that compelled people to talk so much? He had prepared for agony; he had prepared for blisters and night terrors; he just had not prepared for so much jabbering.

Outside, the paved road returned again to dirt, signaling the climb up Sugarloaf. As he began to ascend inside his circle of yellow light, he remembered what he had done.

He had sent the letter.

It had been hidden beneath his mattress for a week. At night, Caleb could feel the energy seeping up through the fibers of his futon. Just having written it, he understood, had altered him somewhat, rearranged the chemicals of his cells.

Before the start, during the distraction of the weigh-in, the crowd, and the darkness of three in the morning, Caleb had slipped briefly away, pulled the letter from his waistband, and dropped it casually into a Leadville mailbox.

Now he s.h.i.+vered. What events had he just set in motion? After eleven years of silence, how would Shane react? How much at risk had he just put himself of losing everything?

The idea of this blue envelope journeying to his brother carried him up the incline. He pa.s.sed a runner who was clearly sleeping as he shuffled up the path. At Hagerman Pa.s.s, he felt strong and believed he could finish the final fifteen miles without walking. They pa.s.sed the next aid station, but he kept running. Even though he knew June would stop to rest, he could not risk stopping. That was past him now.

In the dark the course corkscrewed downward; a vertiginous spiral appeared before him. He focused on his legs, one foot, then the other. He found the void. It seemed to be going well.

But at the turn of the trail, somewhere near ninety miles in, Caleb's legs suddenly convulsed, and before he understood what was happening he had stopped, pus.h.i.+ng his hands into his swollen quads, willing the blood to reverse out of them, tears rolling from his eyes. He opened his mouth and began to vomit.

A tall runner caught up to him then, panting, slid around him, and continued down the course. How many more were ahead of him? Less than ten? Had he failed his promise to Mack? Time pa.s.sed, he had no concept of how much. He stepped off the trail to urinate. What came out was brown and thick.

And then, next to him, he heard a different voice, softer, gentler.

”Blend with the air, Caley.”

A bluebird's voice. June had not stopped back at the pa.s.s; she had been out here behind him this whole time. He had given up on her, but she had not on him. He stared up at her, amazed.

And the two of them began to run together though the dark terrain. Caleb wanted to hold her, but there was nothing left in him now except this putting of one foot in front of the other, this breathing in of air, the lifting of his legs.

The course wound down to the Tabor boat lake. The mist was stunning in the light of the half moon, swirling around their ankles, whispering toward the water. Just before eleven o'clock, they jogged on smooth pavement, pa.s.sing parked cars, toward the distant lights of Leadville.

A few people stood in front of the old, solid houses, clapping. A few filmed them on phones and video cameras. A thin red neon tape, he saw, had already been broken and lay crumpled across the street. June stepped aside, applauding, and Caleb crossed under the gray finish banner, and it was done.

He fell into the arms of his housemates.

”What's my . . .” He panted, unable to force the words out. He shook his head roughly.

Hank Gutterson, a smaller, buzz-cut kid of military bearing, ruffled his hair.

”You're eighth,” he laughed.

Someone pulled off his tank and handed him water. He grinned. It was incomparable, Caleb thought, being so complete. He sat on the curb, watching the next runners jog, stumble, and crawl across the line.

Juan finished nineteenth, Leigh twenty-sixth overall, eleventh among women. Alice, Kevin, and Makailah all placed in the top forty. As they had each of the previous fifteen years, the Happy Trails Running Club owned Leadville. Caleb pulled off his shoes and limped barefoot down the dark street to a parking lot. The license plates rose and waved like banners. They shouldn't be doing that, he knew. He needed fluids.

Mack was waiting for him by his dusty black Jeep, standing with his ankles crossed. The first time Caleb had ever seen him, at the Rocking Horse Tavern a decade ago, he had experienced this same sensation of running into a wall of solid energy. Mack was a small man. Black hair curled around his ears and tufts of black beard were s.p.a.ced sporadically around his sunken cheeks. His face was a riverbed of wrinkles. With his tie-dye, he had the appearance of an aged roadie. His teeth, long stripped of enamel from decades of running these mountains, were the gray of tombstones. His eyes were a blue so brilliant they seemed not to belong to him at all.

”Ride with me, buddy.”

Inside the Jeep, Caleb was overwhelmed by the scent of sweat and pine. The leather seat irritated his raw thighs as he pulled Band-Aids from his nipples and set them in the ash-tray. His body spasmed violently. Mack handed him an old sweats.h.i.+rt, and Caleb pulled the green hood tight around his head. For all of the rocks, creeks, ascents, dehydration, snakes, and hallucinations, the biggest danger he faced was right now. The total demolition of his endocrine system from the constant exertion, stress, and the chemicals in the sports drinks had left his body defenseless. Any inconsequential virus that happened to be wandering through the Colorado air would find its way in without resistance.

Mack spoke in an animated manner, waving his hands. He preferred to drive off-road, even when a highway presented itself, and so they bounced roughly between firs and black-eyed aspens, a blur of hieroglyphic eyes dancing around them.

”You know Anne Luchamp?” he asked in his nasal voice.

Caleb shook his head.

”She finished third in Women's. She'll join us next year. I didn't speak with her, but I felt her energy,” Mack stated matter-of-factly. ”Let's bring her to a party at the house.”

Reading the waves of kinetic energy that propelled all living things was not a unique gift, but Mack possessed it as strongly as anyone Caleb had ever seen. It was how he healed them, helped them push past any barrier, physical or emotional. As a coach it made him, Caleb understood, a genius.

”I saw June pacing you there at the end,” Mack turned, a wry grin across his small mouth. ”She giving you some special training these days?”

Caleb tried to shake his head no, a trembling taking over his entire body.

Mack laughed and sang out, ”'I bequeath myself to the dirt to grow from the gra.s.s I love.' You are bequeathed to the dirt, right Caley?”

Caleb nodded. Yes, he thought, he was bequeathed. This was the pledge he had made, all of those years ago.

When they pa.s.sed Superior, Mack turned back onto the old dirt road. They drove for some time, and then he pushed the Jeep around a cl.u.s.ter of oaks, their long roots intermingled as the fingers of lovers, and a simple house made of planks and beams appeared in the distance. It lay just two hundred open yards from the base of South Boulder Peak. Safe, hidden from the toxic world, and plugged directly into the real one.

Mack shut the engine off and looked at him. ”I got a surprise for you. It's crazy good.”

”What?”

”It's a secret. I'm announcing it Sunday night. You're gonna love it. Let's get you iced.”

He opened the door. Inside, a warm smell of root stew filled the open room. They climbed up creaking oak stairs to the second floor. In the bathroom was an old ceramic tub, which Mack filled with ice. Caleb felt a need to go to his room, sweep his hand under his futon on the floor, and determine if his memory of mailing the letter was a hallucination.

But Mack took his arm and led him into his bath. Ice water rose to his waist. Time revved forward violently, then stopped like a navy jet landing on a carrier, and a seizure rose through him all the way to his lungs. Caleb lost his breath and sank into the tub. Mack leaned over and held him under his arms. And then Caleb blinked, and shuddered gently, and smiled.

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