MARY AND O'NEIL by Justin Cronin Read Free Book Online Page B

to some of his teammates and then to his coach—a surprisingly young man, not much older than the runners themselves, with a woolly beard and long black hair—and then shoos them to the grandstands, to wait for the race to begin. By the starting line O’Neil and his teammates have stripped to their shorts and tank tops and gathered in a tight circle around their coach, their bodies making constant small movements even as they listen to what he’s telling them. They break apart then, each finding someplace nearby to go. Some jog in place, or stretch; others merely stand quietly, waiting.
    “What are they doing?” Arthur asks.
    Miriam watches. O’Neil is one of the quiet ones. Apart from the others, he has selected a spot fifty feet from the starting line, near a line of parked cars. His hands dangle limply at his sides, and his head is slightly bowed; even at this distance, she can see him breathe, and knows by the rhythm of his rising chest that his eyes, turned down, are closed.
    “He’s being alone with it,” she says.
    A hush has fallen over the crowd; everyone, parents and friends, has been led into this moment of silence, like a prayer before mass. The runners gather at the starting line.
    “This is it,” Arthur says.
    Miriam looks to O’Neil, who has taken a spot in the middle of the line, between two runners from the opposing team. She knows at once that he will do well, better than he has ever dared imagine, that this day will be his. Her confidence is absolute; she knows this fact as certainly as she knows his name. She says it then—“O’Neil”—and as she does, the runners crouch, the gun appears from nowhere, and with a single report, they’re off.
    She rises to her feet. “Go!” she cries, and the two teams burst away. “Go! Go! Go!”
     
    Arthur in the bleachers, thinking of Dora Auclaire: his son is running—the two teams are gone; in seconds they have flown over the field and disappeared into the woods—and yet his mind has drifted away from all of this, crossing two state lines and traveling half the width of New York State to alight in his office, where the letter waits in his desk. Unsent but sealed, it is, like his wave on the street a week ago, one more thing half finished. When he mails it, he knows, these many months of secrecy will all be over, and he can rejoin his life. And yet he has not done this. He was already so late another delay would hardly have mattered; he could have dropped it off at the clinic (no: he would have seen her, stopped to talk) or paused at the post office on his way home to feed the cat and pick up their bags. He could have, but didn’t, and so here he is, thinking of her.
    “Did you see that?” Miriam says. She is pointing across the field. “That kid tripped him. He almost went down.”
    “Where? What kid?”
    Her tone is sharp; she lifts her eyebrows with impatience, and all at once he returns to her. Miriam. The race. A bright cold day in fall.
    “The tall one, Art. At the starting line.” She frowns incredulously. “How could you have missed it?”
    He smiles; she knows he has no idea what she’s talking about. “Well, no harm done. Or was there?”
    “Sometimes, it’s like your head is a big empty dance-hall, Art.” She squeezes his arm. “No. No harm done.”
    As O’Neil predicted, for the next twenty-five minutes, until the runners return, they have nothing to do. To keep warm they walk around the infield, where students and other parents, about thirty of them, have gathered in little groups to talk and pass the time sipping hot cider from foam cups. For a while they fall into conversation with a man and his wife, parents of one of O’Neil’s teammates, up from New York City for the weekend. Arthur wonders about Sandra, if she has arrived yet, but supposes she hasn’t; O’Neil would have said so, even just to tease them, to make them guess. He is thinking about this and looking over the crowd to try to pick her out when a cry