Part 2 (2/2)

”He was a great runner.”

”The Yosemite Slam was crazy dangerous,” Hank picked up. ”A hundred and ten through the park, in summer. The hardest climb came at the end, when everyone was exhausted. Steve was climbing near Taft when he fell. He broke his back.”

Rae added, ”The year before that, Pete Fresciente had a heart attack the day he finished. They found him in his motel room. That was two in a row, there was police involved, and the owners shut it down.”

Mack spoke roughly. ”I can't tell you why those people died. I can tell you they did not train with me.”

He had everyone's attention.

”We are not just bringing back the most challenging physical event in the country, we are amplifying it. And the whole country is going to f.u.c.king watch it.” He beamed. ”I already talked with a gal at ESPN. She says the country is ready. Because it ain't no bulls.h.i.+t Iron Man, watching dudes jog down a highway.

”This is going to be like watching a war. Seventy-two straight hours on old mining trails, up twelve thousand feet and back a dozen times. In complete darkness, in brutal sun, over waterfalls, through mines, Half Dome, up El Capitan. Rescue can't even get to eighty percent of the course. Stunning s.h.i.+t to look at on a plasma screen. But the most stunning things will be you. People want to watch people who believe in themselves.”

”ESPN?” Rae frowned.

”This event is going to be the spark for our whole movement. ESPN is the wind. People are going to watch this in bars, at home, at the gym.”

”That'll bring out all the hacks,” Rae suggested anxiously. ”Clogging the trails, puking all over the place.”

Mack shot her a riley look. ”A hack golfer can buy expensive clubs and clog up a pro course. But no fancy sneakers can force you up El Capitan in your sixty-sixth hour. It'll make pretty amusing television to watch poseurs try. People can place bets on when they'll drop and beg for ambulances.”

”I just don't get it. What's wrong with-”

”Go upstairs please.”

Caleb watched Rae stand solemnly, heard her callused feet shuffle up the wood steps behind him.

Mack turned to the group. ”We have a great world here, but I feel stasis. We run, we work, we travel, we enter events, and we kick their a.s.ses. But what's forward? I want kinetic energy in this group, not just in our individual bodies. A new event, the hardest event in the country, that's motion.”

”Cool.” Ryan raised his hand for a high five and got one from Makailah.

”We're going to spend the year training. And someone here”-he looked at Caleb-”is going to win.”

Aviva put her hand on the small of Caleb's back and rubbed a gentle circle. The bottle of Beam made its way to him, and Caleb took a good pull, feeling its warmth slide into his belly. Across the circle, he tried to catch June's eye, but she was watching Mack.

”But before Yosemite, we have the Hardrock, and that's no Fat Race. Hands.”

Aviva took Caleb's left palm, and Gigi took his right. Mack put a small pipe to his lips, lit a soft ball of chocolate brown has.h.i.+sh, took a hit, and pa.s.sed it on. Its sweet thick scent blended with the cherrywood, and the house entered a dreamlike phase. Caleb exhaled deeply.

This morning, he had spoken with his brother for the first time in ten years. Shane's voice had sounded different than he'd remembered, but their conversation had been easy. They had agreed on this weekend for his visit. At first he had felt a deep relief, but now the guilt of what he wanted Shane to do bubbled through him, and he worried that Mack would see it in his soul.

But Mack was occupied, rubbing his hands together, collecting his energy, his voice quiet and sincere.

”We had some injuries this week. Leigh's ankle, Hank's neck.” He closed his eyes. ”'Smile O voluptuous cool-breath'd earth. Earth of the slumbering and liquid trees. Earth of the mountains misty-topt. Rich apple-blossom'd earth! Smile, for your lover comes.'”

The pipe reached Caleb, and he inhaled; the has.h.i.+sh encircled his head immediately. He felt the blaze of the fire, heard the crackling of the birch. He felt Gigi's small fingers hover near his back and a furnace emanate from her palms. Under his skin he felt a shudder, as her energy unblocked closed channels throughout his body. This heat spread to his foot and knee and sinuses, everywhere he had difficulty. He did the same for Aviva beside him, and she for Hank.

Happy Trails was made up of seventeen people, of different ages, backgrounds, parts of the country, but they were one single being now. When he healed Aviva he was healing June. It was, he thought, a type of prayer. Communion in its most literal sense. Mack believed that s.e.xual energy creates a chemical enzyme called orgone, which he regarded as one of the body's most powerful forces. On Sunday evenings they created orgone in each other, and this in turn helped them heal.

Across the room he heard June's distinctive breaths. His stomach clenched. Do not look, Caleb told himself. Do not. But he did, and on her face he saw the look he loved. Her eyes squeezed shut, her mouth open, her arms raising beside her, hovering as though in a penitent prayer.

Mack lifted his hand, and they each stopped moving, holding it. Caleb felt a hot energy fill his lungs and pulse out into every limb. He felt his blockages burst open, dead zones spring to life; he felt swallowed whole.

Then Mack nodded, and they all s.h.i.+fted, and then like fission, waves of kinetic energy bounced through the house, out to the mountains and into the sky and back again, and he could feel June connected to him all the way across the circle, a part of him now, where she was supposed to be.

4.

As Shane hit the freeway, rays of light bounded off the bay beside him.

This morning he had an informational interview with Dennis Adderberry, the Director of Commercial at Helixia, which Janelle had arranged the morning following the arrival of Caleb's letter. He had never met Dennis, but he had heard of him for many years. He had a reputation as genuine and honest, and Shane was flattered that he had made time for him.

But Shane knew he was not prepared. That short letter on blue paper had stolen his attention from everything important. When he had phoned the copy store listed on the return address, their conversation had been disappointing. After a silence, Shane had explained that their due date was next week and offered to come this Sat.u.r.day. The whole exchange had been stilted, and Shane had hung up feeling disoriented and doleful.

Today, he swore he would focus on his own future. He was listening to sports radio, wearing his brown suit with a French blue s.h.i.+rt and his blue tinted wraparound running shades. His short black hair was gelled back. His mouth tasted of mint. He kept a watch out for the South San Francisco exit, and took it to Pinon Drive.

As always, he felt astonishment at Helixia's headquarters. Visitors to Orco Pharmaceutical's campus in Saint Louis drove a winding, tree-lined mile down Orco Boulevard, and parked by a reflecting pool in front of an imposing black gla.s.s headquarters. Where no one could miss it, an enormous sign listed directions to the gym, the steakhouse, the helipad.

Helixia's architecture conveyed the opposite message entirely. The headquarters of the third-largest biotechnology company in the country was a simple seventy-year-old brick warehouse. Two decades ago the company had constructed a separate two-story concrete building beside it for research and production labs, an addition as drab and unadorned as a Midwestern middle school. All the money here, the buildings communicated, went to research.

Shane stepped inside. Here he saw that Helixia was not without some unnecessary adornment: by the reception area stood a small corn plant.

”Well, hi, Ruth,” he nodded to the elderly receptionist. He had known her for some years.

”Janelle just got in,” she informed him.

”Actually, I'm here to see Dennis Adderberry.” He signed in and smiled at her. ”You have a great morning.”

He rode an old freight elevator to the third floor, and walked down a long hallway to Dennis's office.

Dennis Adderberry was exceedingly tall. He seemed around forty years old, with striking silver hair offset by thick black Scottish eyebrows, over a boyish face. In place of the Orco Director of Sales' blue suit and American flag pin, Dennis wore a loose yellow golf s.h.i.+rt and khakis. He smiled broadly.

”You're here,” he said in a surprisingly deep baritone.

”Thank you for seeing me.”

”Well, I know a little bit about you. First, sir, you have excellent taste in wives.”

Shane grinned.

”Second, you have great relations.h.i.+ps with doctors. I wish our team had more of that. You'd be surprised how many oncologists still aren't comfortable with what we do.”

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