The power to the fountain was shut off ten-minutes later. Justin watched from his window as men with flashlights moved around the pond. The overcast sky that night hid the moon and made it impossible to see what was going on at the pond. But based on the number of flashlights, he could assume there were at least a dozen people around the pond.
Justin was curious. He wanted to know what was going on at the pond. He grabbed his binoculars, the ones his mother had given him last Christmas and opened the window to his room. The ledge outside was about two feet wide. The fire escape was less than six feet from his window. He climbed onto the ledge, walked carefully to the fire escape and went down the ladder.
If he was caught out after curfew, he would face expulsion, so he moved slowly and quietly so as not to be seen or heard by anyone else. When he reached the ground, he took the backway around to the pond, the way that would take him through a wooded area that he hoped would hide him from view. About seventy-five feet from the pond, he stopped, took a crouched position behind a bush and lifted the binoculars to his eyes. He adjusted them several times to get them in focus.
There were several uniformed officers holding flashlights on the opposite side of the pond, nearest the fountain. On the pond near the fountain were three row boats with one man inside each. Someone appeared to be in the water. Then an object surfaced from the area beneath the fountain. Whatever the object was appeared to be large. Two men were attempting to pull it to one of the boats. He focused his binoculars on that area of the water.
In a few minutes, he saw a diver appear on the water’s surface. Then another. They were puling something to the surface. Justin saw a large canvas with ropes tied around it. Out of one edge of the canvas was a leg with a tennis shoe on the end.
Then two other divers surfaced next to another boat. They pulled up a second canvas with ropes tied around it. Justin’s hands and legs began to shake. His heart began to race. Justin had never seen a dead body before. It was unnerving.
The first glow of sunlight was on the eastern horizon. It was nearly 5am. The sun would be coming over the horizon soon. Justin put the binoculars back in his pocket and hurried back to the dormitory, to the fire escape.
Justin was shaken by what he had seen. Two bodies wrapped and tied in canvases being pulled from the pond. He wanted to tell someone, anyone, what he had seen. But he couldn’t. Afterall, he had broken curfew when he left the dormitory in the middle of the night.
Besides, he thought, the news will be all over campus in a few hours. Hell, it will be all over the local news, maybe even the national news.
When he returned to his room, he put the binoculars away, got a change of clothes and headed to the shower.
“The dining hall opened at 6am,” he reasoned. “By the time he showered and changed clothes, it would be nearly that time. The dormitory doors would be unlocked, and he could safely walk by the pond to see what was happening.”
There will probably be a crowd gathering close to the pond by then, he thought. People will be curious about the large group of police officers.
Justin left Rowlison Hall, turned left out of the front doorway, looked to the pond and stopped in his tracks. He couldn’t believe his eyes.
No one was at the pond. The campus police were gone. The row boats on the water were gone. There was no sign that anything unusual had happened at the pond. The fountain was running again, shooting clear water high in the air.
He went to the dining hall that day, attended classes, and talked to classmates. There was no mention of the bodies that had been pulled out of the pond. The newspaper did not mention anything. Neither did the television news. It was as if nothing had happened. The few people that knew what happened weren’t telling anyone.
Justin even questioned what he had seen. Maybe he was wrong.
The death of two people in the campus pond couldn’t have been kept quiet, he thought. Maybe I didn’t actually see two bodies. It was dark outside. I was a long way away. The binoculars I used did not have a strong magnification lens, he rationalized.
In a few days, Justin put the incident at the pond in the back of his mind. He had classes, training and work to concentrate on. Besides, he had met someone.
Her name was Risa Thompson. She was beautiful. Long flowing, thick brown hair with big blue eyes and long eyelashes. But it was her smile that hooked him. She had large, thick lips and a contagious smile that caused her lips to puff up and her dimples to jump. She had a look of innocence to her that girls from the city rarely displayed. But she wasn’t like the girls on campus that came from the hills and Ozarks of southwest Missouri. She had a sophistication to her. She spoke without the southern Missouri accent that was so prevalent on campus.
Justin first noticed her when he was walking through campus on one of the main walkways leading from the classrooms to the dormitories. She was alone, walking from the fine arts building back toward student housing. He was walking to his next class. He saw her in the distance wearing a red, flowery dress that flowed down below her knees. It was a conservative dress that left a lot to his imagination, but he could tell by the way she wore that dress, the way she walked, that she was something special.
He slowed his walk as she approached. When their eyes met, they both smiled. Hers was a big smile that stretched from one corner of her face to the other. His was a sheepish grin that boys tend to have when they are caught staring at a girl that they don’t intend her to see them looking. She said, “hi,” as they passed each other. He tried to get a “hi” out, but his mouth was dry, and the word became a soft whisper that he was certain she didn’t hear.
For two days, he thought of the girl. Everywhere he went, he looked for her. Then fate brought them together. He had been assigned an early Sunday morning shift at the Ozark Restaurant to make deliveries and pick-up bread, pastries and desserts from the campus bakery that the restaurant would need that day. He headed to the bakery first thing that morning. He pulled up at the dock behind the bakery and went inside.
That’s when he saw her again. She was working in the campus bakery. He approached her while his truck was being loaded.
“Hi, I’m Justin,” he said with a sheepish grin.
“Nice to meet you, Justin,” she said with a broad smile. “I’m Risa. You didn’t grow up from around here, did you, Justin?”
“No, how did you guess that?” he asked.
“You don’t have a southern accent.”
“Yeah, I’m from Kansas City. How about you. You don’t sound like you’re from around here either.”
“Well, sounds can be deceiving,” she said. “I’m from the Bootheel, a place called Sikeston. So, I guess that I do come from the south, but my mother is an English teacher. She worked hard to eliminate my southern drawl.”
“She did a good job,” Justin said with a smile. “I’ve got to tell you, Risa. You’ve got the most beautiful eyes.”
“Well, Justin. Is that a line you use with all the girls?”
“No, I’m really very shy. I don’t even know any girls on campus.”
“Well, that’s not true. You know me now.”
Justin had never seen a smile as warm as the one Risa was giving. He had never felt this way about a girl since Elise. He didn’t even know her, but he knew she was special.
“You know, Justin. I’ve seen you running through campus. Are you on the track team?”
“Yes, cross-country too. That was the main reason I came to S of O. How about you? Why did you choose S of O?”
“I want to be a teacher. S of O has a great teaching program, and they place most of their graduates in positions right after graduation. Besides, free tuition is great.”
“Yeah, that is true. Well, Risa, it was nice meeting you. I better go. I need to get the bakery items back to the restaurant.”
Justin turned and started to walk away.
“Wait, Justin. Don’t you want to ask me something?”
“What?” he said with a curious look.
“Don’t you want to ask me out?”
“Yes, I do,” he said with a huge smile. “Where would you like to go?”
“Well, do you have a car?”
“Yes.”
“There’s a new movie at the Branson cinema. How about picking me up Friday night about 7pm? I’m living at Claire Hall.”
“It’s a date. I’ll see you then.”
Justin was excited and nervous at the same time. Risa made him feel like no other girl he had ever met. It was an odd feeling. He didn’t even know her. All week he thought about their date. He had been a loner. He had been depressed. He had been homesick ever since he arrived on campus. Now he was excited. Life on campus didn’t seem so bad. Cross-country practices didn’t seem as difficult. Classes were a bit more interesting. Even the food at the campus cafeteria tasted better. Risa had changed his perception. He was more outgoing.
His positive attitude had not gone unnoticed by Coach Moffit and the members of his team.
“You look like you’ve turned the corner, Justin,” Coach told him. “Keep that positive attitude up, and you’re going to do well.”
His positive attitude was showing in his practices. Justin was no longer lagging toward the back of the team in his workouts. He was no longer being pushed by Eric Cramer to catch up with the pack. Now he was at the front of the pack with Brad Connelly. He was talking to his teammates, getting to know them.
“They were a good group of guys,” he told himself. “They were a team that hung together and took care of each other, and he had become part of that team.”
Besides the two leaders of the team, Brad and Eric, there was Earl Myers. He was not built like a typical long-distance runner. Earl was 6’3” and was built more like a football linebacker. He took long strides that were about twice as long as any of the other runners. He hit the ground with a force that sprayed rocks up from his heels on the gravel roads the team ran. His teammates avoided running directly behind him for fear of being hit by the rocks.
Earl was a good-old-boy from Carthage, MO. He was a sophomore and the fourth-best runner on the team. He was also crazy. He partied as hard as he ran. Earl had one speed, fast. He gave 100% to everything he did, and there wasn’t a challenge that he wouldn’t accept. During one practice, a long, slow twelve-mile run along the gravel roads, Daryl Coleman, another member of the team, challenged Earl to run the entire workout barefoot. So, Earl did. The rocks cut into his feet. They bled. The pain was horrendous. But Earl didn’t say a word. He ran the entire workout barefoot. His feet looked like a chunk of raw hamburger afterward. Peebles and pieces of gravel were embedded in the bottoms of his feet. From his ankles down, he was coated in blood. It would take his feet weeks to completely heal. Still, he never missed a practice. He wrapped his feet tightly and ran without showing a glimpse of pain.
Earl was Justin’s best friend on the team, although he wasn’t sure if Earl felt the same way about him. Justin had assumed that because Earl ran side-by-side with him during most workouts and talked to him the entire way, he must have considered Justin a good friend. But when Brad came up to Justin after practice one day and told him, “Thanks for putting up with Earl. Nobody else on the team can stand to listen to him talk the entire practice,” Justin couldn’t help but wonder if Earl spent time with him only because no one else wanted to listen to him.
Another obnoxious habit that Earl had was screaming out when he ran. He would scream at the top of his lungs whenever he felt his body slowing down. The screams would energize him. His pace would pick up. In nearly every workout and every race, the team could count on hearing at least one long, agonizing scream come from him.
The first time Justin heard the scream, he froze in his tracks. It sounded like someone was dying ahead of him.
“Keep running, kid,” Eric Cramer said. “It’s just Earl.”
Daryl Coleman was the only senior on the team. He was the easy-going member of the team. Nothing seemed to bother him. He ran because it made him feel good. He did not have a competitive bone in his body. But he had a love for running, for being out in nature. Nothing seemed to get under his skin except maybe Earl Myers. He was the exact opposite of Earl. He didn’t care about medals. He didn’t care about improving his performance. He simply liked to run. Earl was so excitable. He was the team motivator and the team cheerleader. He challenged everyone to do better. But Daryl was different. He was not going to be forced or pushed into doing more than he wanted to do. He was a pacifist. Earl was a warrior.
He would find ways to get to Earl, normally through a silly challenge he knew his teammate could not refuse.
Dennis Glenn was another member of the team. He was a freshman. Like Justin, he was from Kansas. Also, like Justin, he once aspired to get a scholarship with the University of Kansas. A torn Achilles tendon in his junior year ended that dream.
Dennis came to S of O because he had heard they had an outstanding coach who could rehabilitate almost any injury. His recovery had been slow, though. His Achilles tendon still bothered him. At night he massaged it and used plenty of ice to keep the swelling down. Before each workout, he spent thirty minutes in the hot tub, then rubbed a substance called atomic balm on his leg. His body sweat activated the ointment and caused it to heat up, soaking into his skin down to his tendons and causing them to warm up and relax. After rubbing the ointment on, he wrapped his ankle tightly with an elastic bandage.
Dennis convinced Justin to try atomic balm for his sore muscles. He had a mild case of shin splints. The first time he tried it, his skin felt like it was on fire. It was so intense that it removed the hair on his legs from underneath the balm.
“Just a little bit will do the trick,” Dennis had said.
He couldn’t imagine needing to put it on every day just to endure a workout.
Justin felt empathy for Dennis. Not only had Dennis had an injury that ended his high school running, but, like Justin, he had lost his scholarship opportunity as a result. And, more than that, Dennis was enduring incredible pain to continue running.
Dennis was the seventh runner on a seven-person team. In cross-country competitions, each team is allowed to race seven athletes. But only the fastest five are counted in the team score. The place of finish of each of the first five runners to cross the finish line is tallied to determine the team score. The lowest score wins the competition. Dennis was an extra runner. His place in the race rarely counted in the team score. That bothered him immensely.
He gave 100%. He ran with as much courage and heart as anyone on the team. But his body hadn’t completely healed. Every step he took was painful. He had no acceleration. He could only go at the same, consistent speed. Races were nightmares to him. He watched as other runners went past him. His mind and body wanted to go with them, but he couldn’t. His leg would not allow it. So, time after time, he finished near the back of the pack. Still, he didn’t give up.
Bobby Cockran was the last member of the cross-country team. He was a local boy from a small town thirty minutes outside Branson, high in the mountains. His daddy was a Baptist preacher. Bobby was a very religious person. He gave the team prayer before practices and competitions. He didn’t smoke. He didn’t drink. He didn’t swear. He seemed to have no vices. Bobby was the spiritual leader of the team. Running came second to God. He loved to run. He welcomed the pain. He often said that God tested him with the pain. Running brought him closer to the Lord. He wasn’t particularly fast, but he never gave up. Bobby was the sixth-best runner on the team. He and Dennis often ran together both in their workouts and in competitions. But, in competitions, Bobby always beat Dennis. He would hang with him until the last two hundred yards or so, then Bobby took off.
“The spirit of the Lord goes through me like a wind at my back,” he would say.
Bobby sprinted the last part of every race, usually passing several other runners to the finish line.
Coach Moffit would get upset at Bobby. “If you can finish the race sprinting, then you’re leaving too much in your gas tank,” he would say. It didn’t matter how upset the coach got. Bobby always ran the same way.
The five days before Justin’s first date with Risa went by fast. Between workouts, classes and homework, the days were short. Two days before the date, the cross country workouts eased. The season’s first race was Saturday, and the coach eased up on the workouts to get everyone’s legs fresh for the race. The team bus would leave for the University of Missouri at Rolla at 5am on Saturday morning.
In hindsight, planning a date with Risa for Friday night might not have been the best idea. But he wasn’t going to tell her that. Besides, the curfew was 11pm. He couldn’t be out too late. Justin would get at least four or five hours of sleep before he had to wake up. He had run many races in the past with less sleep than that.
Friday, after practice and before the date, he showered, shaved and applied a light amount of cologne. Then, he dressed in his church slacks and a blue button-down shirt. He combed his hair and sprayed just a touch of hair spray on it to keep it in place. Then, he took a deep breath and headed to Claire Hall. He could never remember being this nervous about a date. He was perspiring. His hands were shaking.
When he entered the dormitory, Risa was waiting for him. She wore a blue sun dress with spaghetti straps that showed her beautiful, tanned skin. The dress was shorter than what he had seen her in before. It showed her legs from just above the knees down. They were firm, tan and athletic looking. They weren’t skinny, but they weren’t thick either. They were just right.
She smiled when she saw him walk in. They walked together through campus and up the hill to the student parking lot. She took his hand when they were nearly at the top of the hill by the front gate to the campus.
The movie that they saw was forgettable. Their date was not. Risa talked. Justin listened. He loved listening to her. She was so full of life, so incredibly positive. He was an introvert. She was an extrovert. She complemented him so well. It was only their first date. He knew so little about her. She knew so little about him. But it seemed like they had known each other for many years.
The night went by fast. They stopped at Dairy Queen for ice cream when the movie was over. Then it was time to get back to campus. The dormitories were locked at 11pm. When he pulled into the student parking lot, he turned off the ignition, reached over and pulled Risa close. He looked into her eyes, expecting her to object. She didn’t. He pressed his lips against hers. It was a soft, gentle kiss. He held his lips to hers for several seconds. Her lips were sweet. When he moved his lips away, he noticed her eyes were closed, and her lips did not back away. He had the feeling that he could have continued kissing her, that she wanted him to. But he wasn’t going to chance it. The night had been perfect. He didn’t want to ruin it by trying to go too far.
They walked hand-in-hand back to Claire Hall. At the foot of the steps leading up to the entrance, Risa leaned over and kissed Justin on the cheek. “Good luck in your race tomorrow,” she said. “I’ll be waiting for you when you get back.”
Justin had trouble sleeping that night. He was nervous about the race and couldn’t get his mind off Risa. At 4:30am, his alarm went off. He dressed in his uniform and headed to the gym. A few minutes later, he was on the bus.
The bus the team road in was a ten-year-old school bus, painted white and burgundy for the school colors, with School of the Ozarks printed in large, burgundy colors on both sides of the bus. The seats inside were torn, with the cotton interior coming through tears in the fabric. The paint was rusting, and the floorboards had nearly rubbed through to the metal frame.
The bus was on the downward side of life. It had seen better days. The bus driver was named Tyler. He was a junior at S of O, short and thin. He looked younger than his twenty years. When everyone was loaded, Tyler started the bus. He struggled at first with the stick shift to get it in the right gear, but after one stall and a jump shifting into second gear, the bus was rolling.
The bus ride was quiet except for Earl. He seemed to talk the entire way, mostly to himself, since most of the other teammates were either asleep or trying to go to sleep.
The bus ride to Rolla was nearly three hours long. It was early in the morning, and Justin was exhausted. He took a seat as far away from Earl as he could get. Then he pulled his red cap down over his face, crouched down in the seat and tried to sleep. He wasn’t very successful. Every time he dozed off, it seemed that Tyler would hit a bump or he would hear Earl talking.
By the time the bus reached the golf course in Rolla, where the race was to take place, his back ached, and his head was pounding. He was far from being ready to run.
The race was a dual meet between the University of Missouri at Rolla and S of O. UMR had twenty times the student body of S of O. On paper, UMR should have easily beat S of O. They were the larger school in a larger conference with four times the number of cross-country runners as S of O. But Coach Moffit’s teams were always strong, and this year’s team was one of his best.
Less than a mile into the three-mile race, Brad Connelly and Eric Cramer had separated from the pack. Eric held on to Brad’s shoulder as long as he could, but a series of hills during the last half-mile was too much for Eric to keep pace with his teammate, and Brad pulled away.
Justin was in sixth place at the halfway mark, but his legs felt good, and he was increasing his pace. He positioned himself just off the right shoulder of the Rolla runner ahead of him. When they reached a long uphill grade, Justin increased the speed of his arm swing, shortened his stride length, lowered his head and sprinted ahead. His competitor put up no resistance. He continued his speed through the downhill, closing in on another Rolla runner. He had nestled in on the competitor’s right shoulder, preparing to pass him. But the Rolla harrier heard him coming. He lowered his head and began to sprint. That’s when he heard it.
Earl Myer’s scream was loud, long and with a defiant tone that no one this far into a cross-country race deserved to have. It was his victory scream. Brad Connelly had warned him about it. Earl liked to run from the back of the pack announcing the passing of each competitor with a loud scream. It was unnerving to the competition and energizing to his teammates.
Justin welcomed Earl’s screams. They gave him strength, and they were unnerving to the competitors. Earl’s scream threw off the stride of the Rolla harrier, allowing Justin to sprint past him into the fourth position.
Earl Myers screamed four more times within the next several minutes. Each scream was closer. He was closing on Justin. The last scream sounded like he was just a few yards behind.
The last scream was timely. It happened on the final sprint to the finish, no more than fifty yards. Rolla’s top harrier was in a full sprint. Justin was just a step behind. Earl’s scream motivated Justin. It startled the Rolla runner just enough to break his pace and allow Justin to go past him ten yards before the finish.
He didn’t realize until he crossed the finish line that Earl was right behind him. He had managed to pass Rolla’s top harrier giving S of O the top 4 finishes.