Part IV
Level, Solid,
Square and True
1991–1995
35
Connell passed through a long, dark tunnel and emerged into an enclosed courtyard, where he joined a buzzing mob of boys waiting, as per mailed instructions, for someone to usher them in. There were no adults present, so they were exposed to each other without buffering—boys used to being at the top of their class, each now merely one of many. One head towered over the others, and Connell heard speculation about the big guy’s basketball prowess, the city championships he might lead the team to by dunking on helpless opponents. It was thrilling to think of the havoc he’d wreak on their collective behalf, the revenge he’d enact for the years of slights and indignities they’d suffered as grammar school nerds. His size was a metaphor for the greatness promised to them. He would reveal the past to have been a prefatory period, a chrysalis of awkwardness.
In a sudden access of courage, Connell drifted across the courtyard toward the tall boy, who up close had a childlike face. When Connell introduced himself, a startlingly deep, though gentle, voice emanated from the boy, whose name was Rod Henni. He learned that Rod also rode in from Westchester, from a town called Dobbs Ferry. They were ushered into the auditorium, where they listened to speeches, filled out forms, and collected books, before heading to the cafeteria to continue buzzing through an excited lunch. At the end of the day, Connell and Rod took the 6 down to Grand Central together, steeped in the newness of everything they’d heard. They agreed to meet in the morning by the clock.
The next day, as Connell approached the clock, Rod waved to him and leaned his crane-like form down to pick up his backpack. Connell felt the nervous stirrings of new friendship, which offered the potential for mutual understanding but also for disappointment. He didn’t want to start out on the wrong foot and be unable to recover.
“What’s up, man,” Connell said, looking away to affect casualness as they slapped five. He tried to drain his voice of any character whatsoever.
“I’m so excited to be heading to school!” Rod said. “I never thought I’d say that!”
As Rod looked to him for confirmation, Connell realized that this boy was not going to be his salvation. Rod’s eyes were bright, his body hunched in an awkward question mark. Connell wanted him to stand up straight.
When they gathered in the gym that day for a free hour of play, Rod confirmed Connell’s suspicions. He couldn’t catch a pass or dribble. He certainly couldn’t dunk. He could barely hold the ball and jump in the air at the same time. The only damage he could do on the basketball court was to himself.
That first week of school, Connell couldn’t shake Rod, who came to the cross-country meeting with him. It was an open call; there weren’t any tryouts. If you came to practice regularly, you were a member of the team.
Cross-country wasn’t a cool sport. Waking early on weekend mornings to run for miles, running every day after school, and enduring the ribbing of “real” athletes kept people away. Connell prided himself on being a “real” athlete, a ballplayer, but no one would know it until spring came around. He joined the cross-country team to strengthen his legs for baseball, to increase his velocity and stamina. He learned to care about the sport and his performance at it, though, and to feel frustrated by his limitations. He had long, lean muscles and was trim and fit, and he was good enough to know what it felt like to hang with the really good runners for long stretches. As they pulled away, he could feel in his body what it would take to stay with them, to be great.
In practice, Rod was deadly serious, a grinder, Coach Amedure’s example for everyone else. Coach always talked about how he was going to make a hurdler out of Rod come winter. It was obvious that Rod lacked the coordination necessary to leap over a single hurdle, let alone a series of them.
Rod’s times in practice never fluctuated, no matter how hard he worked. He was always a minute behind the slow pack. He excoriated himself for his slowness. The source of this ruthless self-criticism became clear early in the season, when Rod’s father came to a meet. As Rod crossed the finish line, Mr. Henni screamed at him in full view of everyone else. Connell and his teammates gathered around Rod, patting him on the back, but that week at practice they took up the charge themselves, sensing Rod’s weakness. They made fun of Rod’s gait, his heavy breathing, his profuse sweating, even his shorts. Connell didn’t refrain from joining in. He knew it was wrong, and Rod knew it too. When he laughed at Rod’s expense, Rod searched him silently with his eyes. A modicum of natural ability was all that separated Connell from Rod; that and maybe the fact that Mr. Henni was sort of insane. It wasn’t easy to have a father like that, but Rod didn’t help his cause by walking around with an innocent, vulnerable look on his face. That was the kind of look that made people nervous, made them want to do something to make it go away.
? ? ?
When Connell got home from practice, his father was on his hands and knees in the kitchen, scratching at the brick floor with a metal brush to strip away the dingy varnish. He was making his way from the kitchen to the den and into the foyer, one brick at a time. Connell changed into an old pair of jeans and joined him. Hunched and silent, they worked side by side. As Connell pushed his weight into the metal bristles, he felt the ache of the five-mile run descend into his muscles.
“At this rate, we’ll be done in the year two thousand,” he said.
“Keep working.”
“The fumes are killing me.” All the windows were open and there were fans set up on the kitchen counters, but it was a hot day in September, and the solvent-smelling air barely moved. “I have a headache.” Connell sat up and rubbed at his hands, inspecting them for raw patches.
“You don’t want to help, don’t help.”
“I’m helping.”
“Then do it without commentary.”
They dug at the crannies in the bricks. The solvent ate at the varnish, but he had to work hard at each brick. He thought there must be a machine to do this, but his father was determined to do it this way, his way. He refused to rest, as if he was trying to make some kind of point.
Connell scrubbed another half brick clean of varnish. “I have a Latin quiz tomorrow,” he said.
His father waved him away without looking up. “Do your homework,” he said.
“I can help,” Connell said guiltily.
“Do your goddamned homework.”
? ? ?
That weekend, his father took him to Van Cortlandt Park for a cross-country track meet. The sunny morning, the expanse of sky, and the brisk winds all filled Connell with a feeling of possibility dampened only by his dread of what would come once the gun went off: a mile-and-a-half run through hell; acid respiration and an agony of fatigue. A little distance away on the meadow, locals chased after a soccer ball, indifferent to the impending torture.
Parents and siblings stood around in a groggy pack. On the edge of the group, Rod was bent over double, palming the ground with his long planks of hands, as diffident a presence as a six-and-a-half-foot-tall boy could be. One of Connell’s teammates, Stefan, who kept everyone on edge with sarcasm, snickered in Connell’s direction at the spectacle of Rod’s ungainly lankiness curled up in an awkward, striving stretch. The only one of Connell’s teammates who didn’t laugh was Todd Coughlin, whose natural dominance on the course allowed him to be generous.
Connell’s father took pictures of the team as they stretched. Lately, his father had taken pictures of everything. In protest, Connell looked away from the camera, tunneling into his stretches, concentrating on the useful burn in his hamstrings and the territorial defensiveness he felt at the fact that another team had started stretching nearby. They were hopping and flapping their thigh muscles out with an aristocratic ease.
After the gun there was some rough jockeying for position—elbows, furtive shoves—as the mob converged on a point in the middle distance. The pack winnowed quickly into a grim line; a natural order emerged. A long, flat expanse led to grueling back hills, where, except for human trail markers stationed at bridges and overpasses, he was on his own, taunted by the leisurely scrawled graffiti on the rocks, dodging horse manure, and trying not to twist his ankle in the jagged ruts in the path. The hills culminated in a precipitous downhill, which he took at a breakneck clip to avoid giving away too much ground. At the bottom, near cars whizzing by on the Henry Hudson Parkway, came a quick turn and a shock of open space, a quarter-mile straightaway flanked by spectators and hollering coaches, where he wearily approximated his best sprint to the finish, his heart and lungs in pure revolt.
He saw the distant mob at the finish line as though through the wrong end of a telescope and wanted to step to the side and vomit. A large pack of runners passed him, calling on some mysterious reserve. He could hardly keep his head up.
He heard his father’s voice before he saw him. “Come on, Connell,” his father shouted gently through cupped hands. “Come on, son.”
He took deep breaths and flung his legs out before him as though they didn’t fit and he wanted to return them to their rightful owner. He gained on the pack a bit. A wall of cheers rose up as the finish line neared. He wanted to come through with the others. There wasn’t much time left to catch them. It wasn’t the first pack; those guys were resting already, turning over spray-painted gold in their hands. What it was was a little cluster of competitors. There may or may not have been medals left to fight for. They always gave out so many: thirty, fifty, God knew how many. The top quarter, the top third. Gold ones, silver ones. Then bronze. Then nothing. Coach Amedure got annoyed if anyone asked how many would be handed out that day. “Why do you care?” he’d say. “Why do you want to feed off the bottom?”
He caught up to the cluster, barely. They were funneled into the rope cordon. Plenty of medals remained. Hunching over, trying to catch his breath, he watched the officials hand them out. Each subsequent medal cheapened his own a little. When the medals ran out, runners came in to less fanfare. Individual voices could be heard in the din. The crowd at the finish line began to thin.
The laggards came trickling in. Among them was Rod, upright and stiff, like a totem pole come to life. Rod’s reedy father screamed at him in frustration and the other voices around hushed at once. The harangue continued after Rod had crossed the finish line. People looked away, embarrassed for the boy, and Coach Amedure tapped his pen at his clipboard in impotent censure.
“What’s that boy’s name?” Connell’s father asked.
“Who, him?” Connell said. “Rod.”
“Stay here.”