When Gene made it out to the track, he found Will bent low dragging a chunk of chalk along the faded line, following the old with the new. The track sloped downward on one side, thanks to the curvature of the yard. It had been measured out one afternoon a few summers ago, when Will decided they needed more precise distance markers than the landmarks they’d been using. They could only run so many times around the tennis court before they lost count. So Will had measured his steps, one hundred large paces from one end of the straight to the other, then one hundred paces in a graceful arc.
The track still had remnants from when it was relined a few days ago, but winds and animals had left their mark on it, scattering the chalk.
Now that Mrs. Hinton had given her reluctant approval for it to become a regular fixture in the yard, Will made a point of keeping it well drawn. Even though he passed his other chores on to Gene, drawing the track was something he never let anyone else touch. It was too important and had to be precise. In their wild land, something so precise and well cared for looked like it didn’t belong. Still, it offered something to do on these long, dusty days. The lines gleamed white, three lanes drawn evenly together. When Gene had asked why there wasn’t a fourth for him, Will had said, “You’ve got to earn it.”
Soon enough they began warming up. Will kicked his knees up like a soldier, with nothing less than military precision: toes pointed, knees at ninety-degree angles, back perpendicular with the ground, chin level, eyes on the horizon. His hands were rigid straight, fingers glued together. It was like admiring a war horse; Gene felt conscious of his own ungainliness.
In the very center of the track sat John, stretching his arms. Gene never really made sense of this. Wasn’t running all about the legs?
“OK, I’m ready,” John called.
Will answered right away. “Right. Let’s go.”
Ignoring Gene, who was not at all ready, they bounced over to the far end of the track, where Will had nailed wooden blocks into the ground. They were custom fit to their starting positions, which was fine for Will and John, who had stopped growing. The blocks in the outer lane didn’t fit Lee anymore, but they looked like they might be right for Gene. With his muscles still tight, he lowered into them, staggered behind his brothers. Just jog this one, he thought to himself.
“Aww, we have to wait for Lee to start us,” John realized, rising from his blocks. He shook out his legs.
“Gene can do it,” Will said. “He’s not warmed up, anyway.”
“I’m fine,” Gene said, irritated. He hated when his brothers spoke for him. “We’ll wait.”
Suddenly, a voice boomed at them from the direction of the house. “What are you doing just milling about? Get on with it!” The judge walked toward them, his giant form standing out among the tall grass and shrubs.
“Care for a run yourself, Uncle Ellis?” John called. Gene thought he was joking, but his brother’s face looked so hopeful, it unsettled him. He shook his head and stared at his mark in the dirt, making sure his fingers were right on the line.
“Ah, I don’t think I’ve run in twenty years,” the judge said, adjusting his trousers.
“We use the boards over there to start. Just clap them together—”
“Nonsense. Only one way to start a race off properly.” He pulled the pistol out of his waistband and stepped across the chalk lines to stand inside the track. With a grunt, he planted both feet and stood straight on, his crisp linen suit almost blending in with the dust. It was Sunday, and even though he hadn’t come to the sermon this morning, he still looked more dressed up than usual. Although, Gene didn’t really know what usual was for the judge. Everything about him seemed unusual.
“Right then, let’s get on with it. On your marks.”
Gene teetered on his fingertips, the hot dirt burning underneath. He could feel a pebble below his kneecap; he wished he could move it or shift his position, but he knew Will would get annoyed if he delayed the start for even one second. He waited in pain for the judge to say the next word.
“Set.”
The boys rose onto their toes. The movement loosened a drop of sweat from Gene’s brow. It fell onto the line of chalk with an audible splat, turning it a milky white. As his fingers began to weaken and shake, he felt his stomach rumble, and he realized he hadn’t eaten anything since the day before.
With his arms shaking, Gene listened for the gun to break the silence. Straining his head up, he peeked at his brothers, their tensed calf muscles ready for the start. He didn’t even know what distance they were running.
Bang! And the boys exploded forward. Gene snapped off from the blocks, straightening his back too soon, all the way upright before he even came to pass John’s starting blocks. Already, a dull pain bit at his heel, on the ridge of his left Achilles tendon. With every step, it grew, and his brothers pulled away more and more.
He felt a drowning sensation in his lungs after only a few strides. Every inhale was a gasp, every exhale not long enough. His breathing and the pounding in his ears were all that he could hear, and as he rounded the curve to the straight, he shut his eyes against the pangs in his chest and imagined how effortless running must be for his brothers. Will probably didn’t even think about it. His legs just moved of their own accord, at top speed, no pain, fluid like man’s worthy answer to wings.
He opened his eyes and saw that the judge had moved to their side of the track, cheering John and Will as they sped past him and entered the next curve.
“Catch him, John! Catch him!” the judge barked, swinging his arms as if he could wind them up to make the boys go faster. Something terrifying lurked in the judge’s motion, his animation, so enthusiastic and intense. Gene ran harder.
Will had passed John, who was losing form quickly. John’s head bobbled on his shoulders, which tensed up and restricted his arms from swinging back and forth, which in turn prevented his legs from moving any faster. Before this, Gene didn’t pay much attention to the way his brothers raced. He always assumed that John and Will were equally fast, but now that he was racing just the two of them, he could see the difference clearer than ever. Will ran like it wasn’t hard at all, like his lungs never knew the drowning sensation, like this pulsing and whirring was the natural state of his muscles and being at rest was the true pain for him. John, on the other hand, obviously tried harder than any of them. But the more he tensed up in an effort to run faster, the more it actually slowed him down. The way Gene saw it, the harder he tried, the slower he ran.
As Gene rounded the next curve, he tried to mimic Will’s form. He unclenched his fists and flattened them like blades, then lowered his chin. He imagined himself as a machine, with a metal breastplate attached to his chest keeping it stable, his legs reinforced with iron rods as bones, a motor whirring faster and faster on his back, his gasps no longer the breathing of a weak boy but the turning of hundreds of tiny gears inside his body. And machines didn’t feel pain.
Remarkably, he was closing the gap between himself and John. He tried to not think about it as the two of them barreled out of the curve and into the home stretch, with Will already halfway down. Gene pushed on harder, feeling like he’d never felt before when running, that it could actually be fun. He shut his eyes and tried to think like Will. This is nothing. I’m not even running.
Then out of the darkness of his mind, he saw the backs of the thieves running away with his and Lee’s bikes. The bazaar came to life in his memory, the people who didn’t see, the boy kicking Lee on the ground, the old shopkeeper drinking his tea. He wanted to run and run and run, back in time to that day to prevent it from happening, to turn it back and never go to the bazaar, never question the judge, never care about things that shouldn’t concern him.
His eyes flashed open, and he saw his toes suddenly at John’s heels. He swerved to keep from tripping, and as he stumbled to the side, the machine turned back into a boy. His armor crumbled and fell away all around him, and he threw his arms forward to break his fall. Rolling in the dirt, he saw his brothers upside-down, pushing through the finish line and slowing to an easy jog.
“All right, sis?” John called.
Gene brushed himself off and sprinted the last fifty meters to the finish line like it still mattered. “Don’t call me that.”
“Whatever you say, sis.”
“Let’s jog around, then go again. Eight hundred this time,” said Will.
Whatever strength or hope Gene felt before had fallen away with the armor. The pain in his Achilles tendon flared up again, and his lungs felt stretched out. The little toe poking out of his left shoe was covered in dirt. He wiggled it to make sure it was still attached.
“Again,” said Will.
And so they passed the day. Gene didn’t come close to John again, and Will stayed out in front on every interval. Uncle Ellis’s voice whipped them along as they moved round and round the track like hands on a clock. If Will was the second hand, Gene was the hour. As he watched his brothers slip farther and farther ahead of him, he simply couldn’t make himself go any faster.
Their last interval was a 200-meter dash. When Ellis fired the gun, Gene’s thighs seared in pain as he lurched forward from the blocks. Will’s pace remained immaculate, keeping long strides and even breaths.
“That’s it, John, catch him! Catch him!” Ellis bellowed again from behind them. But Gene could see John’s head wobble back and forth as he dropped his discipline and his form. His hands flopped loosely as if the tendons were just barely holding on to the bones, the opposite of Will’s razor-straight hands.
“Use your arms, Gene!” A different voice. From the corner of his eye, he spotted Lee, walking up the hill from the house. Lee was right; his shoulders were tensed up and his arms stayed close to his body. He wasn’t using them at all, really. As he swung his arms farther back and farther forward, he found that his legs did the same, lengthening their strides to match his arms. The faster he moved his arms, the faster his legs would go.
And then, as they came out of the curve and into the straightaway, Gene realized he was gaining on John. It was all the encouragement he needed, to know that what he was doing was actually working, actually making him run faster. A fire burned in his chest, yet he drove through the pain. Will was practically at the finish line by now, but there was still enough space to catch John. He pumped his arms, punching the air in front of him as if breaking down a wall with every step. Drowning out the cheers of Lee and Uncle Ellis, his rapid breaths sounded more like the whirring of heavy machinery at full power than a twelve-year-old boy’s lungs. But he was so close. Just a few more steps and he would be on his brother, and for one frightening moment, he had the animal instinct that he was actually chasing John, hunting him rather than racing alongside him. Could he smell John’s skin? Feel his body heat? Gene didn’t know if he was imagining it, but something was overriding his human mind and taking control of his body. He’d never run this fast. He’d never thought it was possible. He was so close, just a few more strides until—
Suddenly, a blur of fur darted in and out of his peripheral vision. He didn’t register what it was, but it was enough to snap him out of, well, whatever place his mind had gone off to. Then he felt a nip at his pant leg, the cloth tugging him back and causing him to stumble. He put his hands out to stop the fall, but instead of dry dust, his touch met brown fur and slobbery tongue.
A pariah dog had stormed the track and seemed to think she could herd Gene into a game of chase, by the looks of her playful bouncing and feinting. Half catching himself, half fending her off, Gene reeled to a halt as John slipped away, running to the finish line, unaware.
“Get off!” Gene stood with one knee up like a shield to protect against the dog’s jumps. He was pretty sure she was only being playful, but it seemed her idea of play involved nips and clawing all the same. He looked wildly about for some fallen branch to distract her; spotting one to his right, he risked letting his guard down just long enough to lunge for it. In one swift movement, he snagged the branch from the dust and flung it as far away from himself as he could, and she was off like a bullet after it.
“Bloody hell!” Uncle Ellis shouted as he marched toward Gene.
“I’m all right—” Gene began to say, lifting up his unscathed arms as proof, but Uncle Ellis didn’t even look at him. He walked right past, and Gene realized the dog was his real target. The dog, who had caught the branch and was now trotting back to them, the dog not knowing or understanding what Uncle Ellis still had in his left hand.
The gun.
Gene’s eyes grew wide at the realization. He scrambled in the dirt, crawling like some pathetic insect, powerless against the judge’s forceful footsteps, which shook the earth.
“No! Don’t!” Gene’s voice was so feeble, it couldn’t have possibly carried to the judge’s ears, let alone stopped him.
The dog had switched her attention from the branch to the man who was approaching her. Her tail wagged with aching eagerness at this new human playmate. Gene saw the gun twitch in Uncle Ellis’s hand, and turned his face away, bracing for the bang. He looked for his brothers, who all stood still as stone at the finish line, the same shock on their faces. Nothing could be done. Gene, still in his cowardly crouch in the dirt, squeezed his eyes shut and waited for—
Laughter.
Uncle Ellis’s gruff yet jovial voice, cackling with joy. Gene dared to look, and there was Uncle Ellis on one knee in front of the dog, an arm hugged round her head, the other tugging the branch from her. The gun was tucked in the back of his waistband, decommissioned. The look on Uncle Ellis’s face was so disarmingly soft. Boyish. Innocent.
“Ha ha! She’s a firecracker, isn’t she?” Ellis said. He finally snatched the branch out of the dog’s jaws and teased her with it along the ground. “Yoohoo! That’s it! Fetch!”
He tossed it, and she chased it happily. When she returned with it, she bounded straight to Ellis’s feet and dropped the branch, waiting.
“She’s played this game before, looks like,” John said, running over.
Gene’s brothers had shaken off their shock and approached. Gene stood up and brushed the dirt off his clothes. As he looked more closely, he realized this must be the same dog he and Will had seen in the woods on the way back from the sermon.
“I wonder . . .,” Uncle Ellis said. He took the branch up and dangled it just out of her reach.
“Sit,” he said. The dog did nothing. “Betth,” he tried again. And she sat back on her haunches.
“Oh!” Lee said. “Someone must have trained her.”
“Perhaps she belongs to someone, then,” Gene said. “If someone cared enough to train her?”
“Doubt it,” Will said. “Look how dirty she is. I’ll bet she sleeps on the streets.”
Gene watched as Uncle Ellis pulled something out of his pocket. It was a tea biscuit, the kind his mother had been making every morning since the judge arrived. The judge snapped off a piece and tossed it in the air. The dog jumped gracefully and caught it, crunching merrily.
“I worked with dogs in the army, ages ago. Ha! I was practically as young as you,” he clamped a meaty hand down on Gene’s shoulder. “Marvelous minds, they have. And they’ll reward you if you put in the work with them. In fact, I have half a mind to work on her . . .”
He patted the dog on her head and brushed his fingers along one floppy ear. She responded with licks and wagging tail.
Something about the sweetness of that gesture made Gene uneasy. He looked away, back at the house. In the shade of the verandah, he spotted Arthur, running a rag along the banister. He looked not at all concentrated on his task but rather wore a look of concern on his face as he witnessed what was happening on the track.
“In fact, I think I shall.” Uncle Ellis’s voice brought Gene back. “We’ll clean her up, give her a proper rags-to-riches life. I’ll name her Ella. What do you think, boys? She’s bold like me, so she may as well be named after me!”
“Fine choice, Uncle Ellis,” John said.
As his brothers all crowded around the dog as if she weren’t a flea-infested stray only a moment before, Gene glanced again in the direction of the house. Arthur was still watching, and Gene couldn’t mistake the darkness in his face.