Retribution

The Verrazano Bridge would be the worst of it. Thousands of runners, pushing and shoving, like salmon making their way upstream. Later, as they moved through Brooklyn, the runners would spread out, making one continuous stream that would last for hours.

Despite the crush, Clark felt the adrenaline as she moved outside, crossing the bridge. On the far outside lane she could glimpse north, seeing the boats on the East River. The weather was meant for marathoners. A chill had descended on the northeast that caused her teeth to chatter just before the gun went off. She knew that her body would warm up fast as the sun began to burn off the chill, but she would be miles into the race before heat became a problem.

Clark felt a breeze cutting up the East River. Helicopters covering the New York Marathon zoomed over the bridge. She felt energized; happy, even. Happier than she had felt since Parker had left.

Boston had no effect. The runners were a sea of red, white, and blue. There seemed to be more energy than a nuclear reactor’s core. They were not to be deterred.

It surprised Clark that she had the energy even to let her mind wander. Parker would have wanted her to concentrate on the race, not him.

God, he has really trained me for this. She was holding a solid pace, already starting to pass other runners. Clark could feel lightness in her stride.

She passed the ten-mile mark.

I need to keep the liquids. William had reminded her that early on the energy would feel limitless. The adrenaline would be pumping. This was her first marathon and the lack of humidity in the north would energize her even more.

Clark cut over to the water station at mile twelve and forced herself to slow and grab a cup. Again, at the end of the tables, she grabbed a Gatorade and a Power Gel. She drank as much of the liquid as she could force down.

I feel so alive! She laughed at herself. I sound like a commercial. The others in the courthouse had made fun of her for weeks now. The general consensus was that she’d collapse after mile ten. She laughed at that thought as the fifteen-mile marker passed by.

I’m over halfway. A little thirsty, but nothing bad. Clark was even maintaining the same pace. She looked at her watch. 7:45-minute miles. That can’t be right, 7:45? She was ahead of her targets. And this was mile sixteen.

Clark realized that two of the runners had kept the same pace with her now as they neared the eighteenth mile. They were slightly ahead of her when she came across the Verrazano. It looked like a father and son, a gray-haired man with a runner’s body but legs white as a newborn child. He obviously had trained in the far north, where the cold rarely let one run without his sweatpants. The son, in his early twenties, inherited more from his mother than his father. He almost appeared to be Cajun, with a dark complexion. At first they chatted as they ran, but as they crossed the Queensboro Bridge, they became increasingly quiet.

“You still with us?” the son asked Clark as they passed by milepost eighteen.

“Oh, yeah.” She still had the energy to smile. “Are you slowing down?”

“Don’t make me laugh, it hurts too much.” He smiled at her, but you could see the beginnings of it being a forced smile.

William had warned her of the gap between milepost twenty and twenty-five. It would be there that she’d be truly tested. Clark started to pull apart from the others as she passed the sign 20. Now she was passing fewer runners. Runners would occasionally pass her. It was here that she’d have to reach deep. It wouldn’t be easy.

Dad would be there. Standing at the side. Smiling with that ridiculous pipe stuck out of the side of his mouth. Her legs were burning now. Somehow, some way, she was still passing a few other runners. Some looked desperate, soaked in sweat. Now her mouth was dry, like she had swallowed a cup of dust, and her lungs began to burn.

Just don’t ever let the thought of giving up get into your brain. Not for one second. William had said that repeatedly, again and again, when the runs had gotten longer. Don’t stop. Don’t let the word stop exist.

The Madison Avenue Bridge was coming. Now, the legs would feel even the slightest incline. It would burn as she came up the bridge’s elevation, but she would be back in Manhattan for the final time. Clark tried to keep her head up as she passed through the bridge, looking at the people cheering, pushing, and prodding her on. They were generous. She could feel their energy.

A man stood next to the bridge abutment on the Manhattan side. She glanced at him, but when she looked up again he was gone.

No, it can’t be. God, I’m losing it.

It was then that the pain began to worsen. Her pace was slowing down now as she crossed into Central Park. The trees were such a change. It reminded her of the runs on their hill trail.

I’m going to make it. She was getting close.

Marker twenty-five was just ahead, with water and ice, but Clark knew now she was in the danger zone. A stop, even for a split second, for a cup of ice-cold water or Powerade could result in her stopping for good. Like an ocean liner that comes to rest, the force of energy required to move again could be unattainable.

No, Clark Ashby would not stop. Never. One foot would move in front of the other. Now it took too much effort to look up. She stared at the pavement in a continuous trance, watching her feet, in a trance, moving forward one at a time, one after another.

It was then that she heard the noise. A band was playing and thousands of people were yelling. The crowds on both sides were now layers and layers deep. Little children held signs for their mothers or fathers. No, stopping now was not an option.

God, I am going to make it!

Clark barely noticed the finish. It was the broad stripe on the ground and the sudden stopping of movement. In a moment, the people that had surrounded her for hours now had come to a stop. A stranger wrapped her in a silver thermal blanket. Another gave her a frozen Gatorade. She inhaled it, took another, and tried to slow it down to sips.

Clark walked toward the trees. The salt on her skin felt like a dry powder. She needed some grass and something to lean up against. She knew that if she lay down, it might be hours before she would ever get up, but who cared? Clark Ashby had finished a marathon! The New York Marathon! She was a marathoner! She would go to parties years from now. The conversation would wander around, and then she would work it in. Yes, I ran New York. Her dad would be beaming.

She slid down at the trunk of an oak, feeling the cold, damp grass under her butt. It was a mistake. Her body would become glued to the ground. Her sweats were in a basket somewhere on the other side of the finish line. They would have to wait. Clark wasn’t moving for anything.

A man with a Yankees cap pulled down, sunglasses, and a new beard sat down next to her on the grass. Clark pulled back from the stranger who suddenly appeared in her space and then looked up.

“Hey. I’m proud of you.”

Clark couldn’t get out any words.

“William?” Tears suddenly flooded her eyes. The exhaustion, the pain, and then this.

“Can you walk?”

She would be stiff, especially by making the mistake of sitting down. The muscles quickly froze up after hours of constant motion.

“I think so. The hotel is just across the park.” Despite the pain, Clark was now riding an endorphin high. She felt euphoric. William had come!

“We’ll get you to a hot shower. I’ll get your sweats.” He smiled at her, kissed her on the forehead, and then looked into her eyes. “Your arms full, and your hair wet . . . I was neither living nor dead, and I knew nothing, looking into the heart of light . . .”

“Who’s that?”

“T. S. Eliot.”

“You remembered that one just for me, didn’t you?”

“Especially the wet hair part.”

She laughed, then winced.

“Oh, my God, I’m too tired to laugh!”

Her running mate had made New York after all.

If it weren’t for the other runners crowded into the lobby of the Carlyle, the two would have been an odd sight. Only on the weekend of the New York Marathon. Even the rich, the famous, and the well known could enter the hotel dressed in Gore-Tex and Nikes.

They were in the elevator alone.

“You’ll like the room,” William said.

She nodded, resting her head on his chest. They’d made the reservation months ago. She had stayed at the Carlyle once as a child on a trip with her father. Her memory was of a palace with crystal chandeliers and fresh-cut flowers in crystal vases. She remembered the starched hand towels and the sweet soap.

“Clark, I don’t have long.”

The smile left her face. “How did you get here?”

“I had the most expensive seat in transatlantic travel.” The F/A-18 jet fighter flew the Atlantic in half the time of a commercial jet. Scott hadn’t liked having to put in the request.

The elevator opened and they walked slowly toward their room.

“I only have a few hours.”

“Okay.”

“You remember Mack Dennson at the sheriff’s office?”

“The one who had the baby last year.”

“Yes.” He handed her a piece of paper. “You’ve got Stidham, but it could take him an hour or more to get to you. Just in case you need someone quicker who can also call in the cavalry, I want you to have Mack’s number. Put this in your cell. Put it as the first listing. He knows your number, and if he sees it, he will come. He owes me.”

“What’s wrong?”

“Nothing. I just found out that this may go all the way back to Pan Am.”

“Oh, God.”

“It’s okay. It’s going to be fine. But like I said, we live out in the middle of nowhere. It could even take Dennson half an hour or more to get there. If it comes to that, you get out of there any way you can, you hear?”

She nodded.

“Good.” He opened the door to the room. “These men don’t play.”