It’s interesting: O’Brian uses his affiliation with those guys to express his distaste for blacks, but the Aryans spend most of their time on Jews and I don’t think O’Brian knows enough about Jews to know what he’s supposed to not like. I wonder how many people who hang out with them are just unconscious peckerheads who need someone to hate.
Anyway, the point was that Lion is getting fast and will probably qualify for State in the 100 ’fly. Everything in Stotan land is perfect except for the fact that Jeff is stuck. He actually slowed a couple tenths of a second in the last meet down in Pullman, but I think that was due to a bad start and one mediocre turn.
This next weekend is Montana, and even though it’s a driving marathon—we go to Billings, clear across on the eastern side of the state, and then up to Havre, close to the Canadian border—Lion and I are both going to try to qualify for State there. Because the high schools and colleges share the pool in both towns, we swim at Eastern Montana State’s pool in Billings and Northern Montana’s pool in Havre: both fast pools—particularly Northern’s.
I think the Montana road trip, more than any other, makes us family. We’re together from mid-afternoon on Thursday until way late Sunday night non-stop. That’s like being in a sensory-deprivation tank with friends of Jabba the Hutt for three days. Swimming just wouldn’t be the same without the Montana road trip.
CHAPTER 11
February 2
I qualified for State out of state—in Havre, Montana. Fourth meet of the year and I’m in—at least in the 500. I’ve never been this strong or in this good a shape. I just keep getting faster and there’s no limit. I’m not lifting weights now, or doing any workouts other than in the water, and I’ve increased my daily mileage by about half. At the beginning of the year all I wanted to do was qualify again, or maybe dare to hope to make it to the consolation finals, but now I don’t know; anything could happen.
Before my race in Havre, Max told me that after ten laps I should shoot for the level of fatigue I reached during the worst parts of Stotan Week. I didn’t even get close—the race isn’t long enough—but my time was more than three seconds below State qualifying time.
And it may not even matter.
This weekend I got a good look at a rough side of being a human being on this planet, and things may never be the same again.
I said the Montana road trip is a bear, but we love it. Last year, even though he was out of school and not swimming, Jeff worked a way to get emergency weekend leave from his Reserve training to go along because it’s such a good trip. It’s the longest of the season, an infinity of driving and swimming and putting up with each other. Thursday afternoon we begin the 500-mile drive east to swim against the two high schools in Billings on Friday, then shoot another 400 miles north to take on the high school in Havre on Saturday. Sunday it’s a straight shot back to Spokane. Most of the traffic we see is snowplows and sanding trucks; we could make the trip faster on a five-passenger dogsled, but the school doesn’t have a dogsled, so we fill up the back of the van with oranges and candy bars and head for cowboy country.
Thursday we left an hour later than planned—Cerruti the rat got an extra hour of The Game of Life, which is what Nortie now calls the Skinner Box—in cold, clear, sunny weather amid high hopes of winning lots of races and losing two meets. Lion had T-shirts made up that said:
FROST
SWIMMING
WE’RE NUMBER THREE
because there are usually two other teams at each meet.
We barely cross the border into the Idaho panhandle, headed up into the Rockies, before Jeff moves to the portable seat across from Nortie in the back of the van, takes Nortie’s book out of his hand, closes it and starts to deal.
Nortie utters a weak “Help, help, save me,” but three years of road-trip tradition will not be denied. There is no escape. Jeff has already informed Nortie they will be attending the same college so Jeff can work his way through playing Gin Rummy with him. It’s doubly hard on Nortie because, besides losing nearly every hand, he has to suffer Jeff’s derision every time he lays down a card that he’d have known better than to play had he been paying attention. Nortie never pays attention. “Were you gone to the bathroom when I played that?” Jeff says, or “Good to see you’re saving threes. There’s two more of them in the discard pile.” Then when Jeff slaps his hand down on the seat, yelling, “Gin!” he sucks his tooth. Nortie dives for his coat, but if he makes it, Jeff blows the ill wind down the sleeve.
Lion’s been quiet on this trip. He sketches most of the time we ride and comes to only when we stop to eat, though sometimes you can get him started on a monologue as he draws. Tonight he’s not talking much. One of the Billings swimmers is a top-notch butterflyer and Lion is going to have to haul it out to beat him. His silence is a psych-up, though he’ll get plenty verbal just before the race. We know he’s feeling okay because he packs away everyone’s extra fries and pickles and any other tidbit left unattended. He’s also stocked the jukebox—a vintage Rock-Ola—with quarters and punched up every rock song in sight, some of them twice, in an effort to block out the other customers’ selections, which seem to lean heavily to Tammy Wynette, George Jones and even Gene Autry. Some of the records were in there when this machine was made.
In an hour we’re back in the parking lot, ready to forge on. Snow falls in tiny, feathery flakes and light wind sways the tall lodgepoles back and forth just at the edge of our vision behind the parking-lot spotlights. Off behind the restaurant somewhere a stream, surely outlined in icy white, tumbles over frozen rocks. Max stands beside the van, head cocked, listening and watching; this is home for him. He looks like he’d just as soon head into the little bar, order up a pitcher of beer and sit the rest of the night in front of the big stone fireplace that takes up most of one wall. But he makes a quick phone call on the pay phone just inside the door and we’re off. We got places to go, butts to kick.
A half-hour back on the road, I offer Max a breather at the wheel so he can catch a little shut-eye and drive late. He decides it’s a good idea and pulls over so we can switch. The snow isn’t real bad, but it slows us some because I don’t know the road as well as Max and I don’t want to be the reason the Frost swimming team disappears from the face of the earth before achieving its appointed destiny.
The light in the back of the van is on and Lion still sketches, calling up to me to change the radio station once in a while and occasionally setting his work aside to stare out the back window into the snowy darkness. Nortie owes his net worth plus in gambling debts to Jeff, so they’ve shut down the game for the night. Max is supposed to be sleeping, but I see his reflection in the windshield, and he’s awake, staring silently into the snow flying into our headlights, almost hypnotized. Who knows what he’s thinking?
About three quarters down the east side of the mountains Max takes over again. I’m pretty sure he hasn’t slept, but he says he’s rested and wants me to get some sleep for the meet tomorrow. I settle in comfortably, back against the door, feet on the engine cover, and close my eyes. But it just ain’t time for the kid to nod off. Watching Max’s reflection in the windshield off the greenish glow of the panel lights, I notice what a handsome man he is. He’s not classic, certainly not in our culture, but his look is strong—easily powerful. It’s the handsomeness of wisdom and self-assurance. I find myself wishing I knew him better.
My wish is granted in a way I would never have expected. Somewhere in the eastern foothills, just before spilling out onto the Great Plains to begin the longest, flattest, most boring ride known to Western man, Max takes a sudden left onto a side road and drives about three miles till we come in sight of a small farmhouse. He turns again into the long driveway and pulls up next to the snowy front yard. Lion has long since hung up his sketching and sacked out. He sits up and looks around, then drops like a rock without even asking.
The living-room curtains part and a woman’s face appears in the window; then below her, in the same windo
w, a child peers out through cupped hands. Max reaches into the glove compartment, removes a pair of mittens and says, “Hang tough, I’ll be back in a few minutes.” It doesn’t even occur to me to ask what we’re doing here. Nortie wakes up and asks where we are and I tell him to go back to sleep. Jeff doesn’t stir.
As Max approaches the house, the woman, dressed in a blue velour robe and sheepskin slippers, opens the front door and the little girl shoots past her and down the sidewalk in her snowsuit, arms wide open, takes a flying leap and engulfs Max. The woman disappears back inside, and for the next fifteen or twenty minutes I watch a different Max than I’ve ever seen. They romp in the snow, throw snowballs—only hers connect—make snow angels. Max carries her around the yard on his back, throws her into the snowbank and tickles her, all to the tune of her delighted squeals. Then they roll up three gigantic snowballs for a snowman, and when it’s together, with two really stupid rocks for eyes and sticks for arms, Max lifts her up to put his hat on the snowman’s head.
I’m completely struck that I’m watching Max Il Song romping and playing in the snow with a six-year-old girl in the wee hours of the morning in the middle of nowhere; and somehow I know it’s important.
The door to the house opens and the woman stands in the doorway, arms folded, looking patient. Max and the little girl hug and he walks her back to the porch, exchanges a few words with the woman and turns to come back down the sidewalk as the two disappear. The little girl appears in the front window again and waves; Max waves back from the door of the van.
“Thanks for waiting,” he says, sliding back into the driver’s seat, like maybe I had a choice; like maybe I was going to drive off and leave him out there in the dead of night at the foot of the Rocky Mountains.
We drive in silence for the next half-hour or so. I wish I knew what I just saw, wish I could find a way to talk to him; but if he wanted to talk, he would. He just watches the snow-covered road and pushes on. He looks sad.
“That’s what I like about athletics,” Max said after a while, as if continuing a conversation we’d been having all along. “The rules are so clear. You know the consequences of every act: exactly how many fouls you get; what makes you a player and what takes you out of the game.”
I didn’t know what to say, so I nodded.
“That was my daughter,” he went on, and I said, “Oh.”
He was quiet a second, then he gave me a glimpse of what I might be in for if I want to grow up with anything that resembles grace. He said, “You know, Walker, I’ve worked real hard in my life to make sense of things. I studied Tai Kwan Do for years and years to teach myself discipline; spent a lot of time in the Orient trying to get some different perspectives—my ancestors’ perspectives—and I think I’ve done a pretty good job of becoming conscious.” He was quiet again and I thought I saw a tear in his eye. “I love Allysia like fury,” he said; then with a half-smile. “Even more than her mother hates me. And it kills me that I can’t be there for her during this time in her life, while she’s growing up and changing every day and trying to make sense of things for herself.”
I said, “I guess you don’t get to see her very much.”
“I see her when her mother says I can see her,” he said, and obviously wasn’t going into it further.
Max was quiet another mile or two, tapping his fingers against the wheel with a clicking sound I recognized—it was the first time I noticed he had bought himself a Stotan ring too—then he said, “You know, Walker, I’m not a bad man. I try to be straight and I think I’m pretty decent. But no matter how decent you are, no matter how intensely you work toward the light, nothing changes the past. This is a world where you pay for everything you do. Remember that. Life doesn’t forgive you because you’re young and ignorant. Life only has to be true to itself.”
He looked over at me and smiled. “That doesn’t mean you’re supposed to live in fear. Just be sure to consider what you do.”
“We’re going to mix it up in Billings,” Max announces about 10:30 Friday morning as we shoot east across the plains, having spent maybe three and a half hours in the Butte TraveLodge before getting up at 7:00 to push on. We’re down out of the Rockies, we’ve had a good breakfast and we’re making good time, with the sky only spitting and the loose snow swirling behind the van as we zero in on Billings. “Walker, you’ll do the sprints.”
I cheer. Trading the 50 and the 100 for the 200 and the 500 gives me a net gain of 550 yards.
“We swim at the college in Havre, and they’ve got the faster pool,” Max goes on. “I want to rest you a little to hit the qualifying time there. Lion, you’ll stay with the ’fly in Billings. Collins will push you good there.” He smiles. “Now we need a volunteer for the distances.”
“Jeff will do them,” Nortie says.
Jeff looks asleep, but he squints one eye open and shakes his head slowly.
I say to Nortie, “If you want me to qualify on Saturday, you got to make sacrifices.”
“You’re right,” Nortie says. “I’ll sacrifice Jeff.”
Jeff sucks his tooth. Nortie will swim the distances.
We talk strategy for a few miles. We’ll swim the freestyle relay, forfeit the medley. Once again we’ll lose the meet on second and third places, but we’ll show well in our events.
We go back to what we were doing, the interior of the van bright from the reflection of the snow outside. Though the sky is still gray, you almost need sunglasses to watch the road or read.
Nortie explains to Jeff that if he could figure out what reinforces Jeff, he could train him to do anything Nortie wants. “You’d be my slave,” he says. “No more of this big-red-bully stuff, no more Gin Rummy. You’d be licking my boots.” Jeff sucks his tooth again and blows Nortie over. Lion draws a quick sketch of that, only in the picture Jeff’s breath is a surly dragon, and Nortie applauds.
We drop the meet to both high schools in Billings, as expected, and blow them away doing it. Lion wins the 100 ’fly and is within eight tenths of a second of qualifying time. We’re in Billings long enough to swim, shower and get back on the road north to Havre. Jeff is down because his times were slower than last week, so there’s no Rummy game. Darkness has already closed in as we pass the city limits and we figure we need to make it at least halfway before stopping. It’s more two-lane highway a good deal of the way, but it’s mostly flat and straight, so we make reasonable time. Max wants to give us a couple hours to stretch and warm up in Havre tomorrow, so we’ll have another quick stay in some cowboy motel along the way and head out early.
I’m up front again with Max, and as we work our way north through the snowy night, I can’t help wishing we could get back to that level of intimacy I felt with him last night. But that’s over. There’s no denial; Max isn’t embarrassed or anything, just back to dealing with what’s immediate. I can’t help feeling privileged to have been given that glimpse through the window of his life.
After a short night in a one-horse motel in a one-horse town I never got the name of, we hit the road early and roll into Havre about 1:30 in the afternoon. That gives us two and a half hours before the meet, so we wander around town awhile, wondering if this is really the Yukon. We check into the Roundup, stretch out on the beds for fifteen or twenty minutes, then head over to the pool. We find we’re going to be swimming against the college swim team too and they have two guys trying to qualify for small-college Nationals. That gives us something more to shoot for. You couldn’t mix college and high-school athletes in most sports, but some of the fastest swimmers in the world have yet to see their first shaving razor, and even though we weren’t notified ahead of time, Max thinks it’s a great idea. Since neither the high-school nor the college team has a real good middle-distance man, I’ll have to do it on my own, but I swim well against the clock anyway. Max enters me in the 1,000—strictly a college distance—to get a good long warmup, and says to swim it about three-quarters speed. My 500 split in that is within four seconds of State qualif
ying time, so I know I’m hot. I feel strong as a bull. My 500 time is three seconds under what I need and Nortie jumps into the water, hugging me and splashing water on my face and yelling “Awright!” almost before I touch, and when I catch my breath I have to hold him underwater to calm him down. Max is right there with his stopwatch and a handshake.
Lion is two tenths closer in the 100 ’fly and we figure he’s got it made by next week, but the thing that makes it all academic is that Jeff collapses on the last lap of the 100 backstroke.
He goes out ahead for the first fifty yards, ready to blow it open after the second turn, then just runs out of gas. Near the end of the third lap everyone has passed him, and shortly after the turn into the fourth he gets caught up in the rope and can’t get out. We watch in disbelief for a split second before Lion dives in and hauls him out. Jeff can’t get it back; he’s breathing short and looks pale and real disoriented. He lies on the deck awhile and we dry him off. Nortie’s panicked, running around, trying to cover him with towels. Even the college trainer takes a look at him. Finally, to be safe, they call a local ambulance.
Boy, now that was scary. Jeff is the toughest guy I know, and watching him lying there on the deck with no control over anything wasn’t my idea of a good time. We stuffed our clothes in our swimming bags and wore our warmups out of there. There was only the medley relay left, which we weren’t swimming, and I don’t think any of us could have swum anymore anyway, though I don’t think anyone believed anything was seriously wrong. Max gave me the keys to the van and told me to go back to the Roundup; that he’d go with the ambulance and call us in my room as soon as he knew anything. By then Jeff had come to, though he looked real tired, and he said he was fine; he wanted to go back to the motel with us. Max said no deal and we split.