Clarence Ross had not been alone in being affected by the London marathon of 1908, for the race had touched the hearts of the world. The marathon event was not, however, one of great athletic antiquity. The first Olympic marathon, in Athens in 1896, had been the creation of the Frenchman, Michel Breal, inspired by the feat of one Pheidippides who in 49 B.C. ran to Athens from the Plains of Marathon with news of the victorious battle with the Persians.
That first Olympic marathon of twenty-four and three quarter miles in Athens in 1896 had been contested by twenty-five athletes, mostly Greeks, most of whom had never competed beyond a mile. Some failed to survive the dust and heat and withdrew early in the race while others fell prey to the hospitality of villages they encountered on the route. Just beyond the village of Karvate, with only a quarter of the race to go, the French 1500 metre runner Lermusiaux was brought to a halt with crippling cramps, and was passed by an Australian, Flack. Behind Flack plodded a Greek shepherd, Spiridon Louis, who had doggedly threaded his way through a fading field.
Back on the marble terracing of the Averoff stadium the sixty-thousand crowd were ignorant of the progress of the race until the thirty-seventh kilometre, when a Greek cavalryman riding a white charger galloped into the stadium to announce that Louis was in the lead. Then, a few minutes later, the distant boom of cannons marked the arrival of the first runner at the outskirts of Athens.
Sixty thousand pairs of eyes strained to identify the leader as he entered the stadium. It was number seventeen – Louis! Pandemonium broke out, and men and women wept openly as the little shepherd trotted wearily towards the finish, dwarfed by the lanky Prince George of Greece, who had leapt from the royal box to run with Louis over part of the last lap.
It was only some years after the Paris Olympics marathon of 1900 that the runners realized that they had even competed in an Olympics; nothing on the medals they received gave any such indication. However, the Frenchman, Michel Théato, had chugged through the cobbled streets of Paris to win an undistinguished race.
The 1904 St Louis race turned out to be a mixture of drama and farce. The Cuban, Felix Carjaval, who had trotted across America after losing his stake money in a shipboard card game, turned up at the start dressed in boots, jacket and trousers. Only a pair of scissors wielded by some Irish-American throwers brought Carjaval’s apparel close to the athletic. The Cuban trotted off into the steamy heat and the carbon-monoxide fumes towards the St Louis World Fair, the site of the 1904 Olympics, to finish fourth.
The American, Fred Lorz, had been forced to stop running at ten miles because of cramps. He took a lift in a passing truck, and nine miles later, when the truck broke down, he jumped out, trotted into the stadium and was assumed by the crowd to be the winner. The American did nothing to disillusion the spectators and even paused to have his photograph taken with the President’s daughter, Alice Roosevelt. Ten minutes later, Hicks, the real leader, trudged into the arena and, when race-marshals later reported back, all hell was let loose on the wretched Lorz.
But it was the next Olympic marathon, in 1908, that captured the imagination of the world. Up till then the marathon had been contested over varying distances from twenty-four to twenty-six miles. In 1908, the distance was set at exactly twenty-six miles three hundred and eighty-five yards – from Windsor Castle to the newly-built White City stadium, Shepherd’s Bush, London. Legend has it that the three hundred and eighty-five yards was added so that the finish could be opposite the royal box. More likely, the extra yardage was simply the distance from the entry to the stadium round the track to the finish.
By this time, most Olympic nations held formal trials for their marathon entrants, and 1908 was the first Olympics in which athletes were entered as national teams. Thus the runners who faced the starter on the road beside the royal lawn at Windsor were worlds away from the untrained optimists of the 1896 Games or the rabble of St Louis. Dorando Pietri (Italy) had already run the equivalent of two hours forty minutes, the Indian Tewanima (USA) was renowned over shorter distances and his countryman, John Hayes, was an outstanding endurance-athlete. Tom Longboat (Canada), whom the Americans unsuccessfully claimed to be a professional, was a brilliant distance-runner and the Englishmen Price and Lord, products of the renowned English cross-country system, were hard and durable.
At the unsuitable time of 2.30 p.m. on a sweltering July day, fifty-six runners set off towards London. Price and Lord led an overfast opening ten miles, ahead of Hefferon (South Africa) and Dorando. Then Hefferon took the lead and by fifteen miles he had set up a three-hundred-yard lead over Lord and Dorando. By twenty miles, Hefferon had increased his lead over Dorando to over half a mile. Dorando had by now detached himself from Lord, who was himself under pressure from the
American Hayes. However, Dorando started to gobble up the yards between himself and Hefferon, and just before they reached twenty-five miles he passed the South African and began the final run in towards Shepherd’s Bush.
Unfortunately, the blistering heat and his effort to catch Hefferon had drained Dorando, and though he entered White City first he faced the crowd at the entrance to the stadium rubber-legged, and goggling with fatigue. He turned in the wrong direction and collapsed on to the track. There were sympathetic shouts for officials to pick him up and set Dorando in the right direction. The officials, bewildered, duly lifted the little Italian to his feet and pointed him towards the back straight. Four times more he dropped to the cinders, and each time he was lifted to his feet. He was finally half-carried across the finishing line.
The next man to enter the stadium was the American John Hayes, who had throughout run a solid, well-paced race. American team leaders immediately submitted a protest on behalf of Hayes, which was just as soon sustained. Dorando was taken to hospital, where he lay for days in a dangerous condition. However, the Italian’s efforts were not completely in vain, as he was later, at the prompting of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, presented with a cup by Queen Alexandra in recognition of his courage.
The Dorando marathon triggered off a professional marathon craze which was to suck Doc Cole and some of the world’s best long-distance runners into a whirligig of marathon races held over the years immediately preceding World War 1. Alas, with no central international governing body, the marathon boom faded just before the time of the Great War, leaving great runners like Cole, Longboat and Shrubb stranded in a sporting limbo.
The future of marathon running lay in the rapidly-developing amateur movement. But Clarence Ross, fired by the 1908 Games and by his own unsuccessful attempt in the 1909 Boston marathon, had little time for amateurs. Regularly, in his nationwide chain of country newspapers, he had denounced the follies of the AAU and the American Olympic Committee, to the bewilderment of farmers and housewives from Maine to Oregon, for whom these organizations had as much significance as Glasgow Rangers Football Club. Thus, when Carl Liebnitz had informed him that the Trans-America was up for grabs Ross needed little time to consider the position. His only proviso had been that sponsorship would only be for the magic twenty-six miles three hundred and eighty-five yards into Central Park and not for the full Trans-America distance. Ross wanted only one title, “Mr Marathon”; Flanagan and his Trans-Americans were happy enough to give him that.
8 p.m. Friday, 19 June 1931. Alexander “Doc” Cole sat on the edge of his bed in the Cranston Hotel, Denville, New Jersey, sandpapering his feet. Like many of the others he had forsaken the camp, for this final marathon stage required isolation, special preparation.
He looked across at his bedside table, stacked high with bundles of letters tied with string: his Trans-America mail had just caught up with him. Eighty-three offers of marriage, many of them from ladies old enough to be his mother or young enough to be his daughter, some suggesting activities which would have been far beyond his capacity even in his youth. Fifty-one offers of employment, ranging from radio announcer through salesman to college track and field coach. Whatever happened, he would never again want for work.
All day long he had been besieged by journalists. Naturally they wanted a prediction. Was he afraid of McPhail? Morgan? Perhaps Eskola or Bouin? Cole was afraid of none of them. He knew that in the end all sport was a contest against yourself. If you beat yourself you could walk away tall, no matter where you finished.
And yet behind this philosophy, which he knew to be sound and true, Doc knew that above all he wanted to prove that he was indeed one of the greats, fit to be mentioned in the same breath as Nurmi and Kohlemainen. Like most men, his ego required not only the present but the future to be marked by his acts. As he gently rubbed his feet he could already see himself in Central Park, feel himself break the tape, hear his own interviews with press, film and radio. It would be the Big Hello, the pay-off for all the years of running on forgotten roads.
He thought of the race ahead, a whole life to be compressed into just over two and a half hours. And yet it was no different from the races of his youth except that the ratios had changed. Then, ten hours’ training for each one of competition had always been his guideline, and it had been a demanding one. His years in the wilderness had simply changed the mathematics, and now it had to be about a hundred to one, perhaps a thousand. It didn’t bear thinking about.
Doc knew that he had run as many miles as any man in the race, and yet behind his thoughts lay that nagging doubt that plagues every athlete, whatever his abilities. He looked down at his legs. All the running, all the exercise, had not prevented that dry, crepe-like quality of the skin, that hint of a bubbly blue varicose vein on his right calf which he had for years tried to ignore.
He knew that there was only one strategy, to run evenly, aiming at just over six minutes a mile, peeling competitors off as he ran; for marathons offered no possibility for showy tactical bursts. And yet, no matter how evenly you ran, no matter what your experience, there was always the Wall to be breached at twenty miles. At that point, his medical friends had told him, blood-sugar started to run out and the body had to resort to other mechanisms. No matter how many marathons you had run, no matter how strong you were feeling, the Wall was always there, waiting for you.
The Wall. He felt a bitter taste in his mouth, a hollowness in the pit of his stomach. Doc finished off his feet, put the sandpaper on the small table beside his bed and lay back on the pillow for a moment, staring at the ceiling. Sometimes, he thought, ignorance was your best friend. Most of the men he would run with tomorrow knew nothing of the Wall, and that ignorance might be their strength.
He looked down at his wrist-watch: only 8.35 p.m. The nights before a race were always slow. He sat up and began to work again on his feet.
His concentration was broken by a knock at the door. Doc continued to sandpaper his feet without looking up.
“Come in,” he shouted.
Morgan and McPhail entered and closed the door behind them. They stood sheepishly at the entrance.
“What the hell is this?” said Doc, beckoning them in. “A staring competition? Sit down, both of you.”
They sat down on the edge of Doc’s bed as he continued to rub away with the sandpaper.
“You guys worked on your feet yet?” he asked, still without looking up.
Neither man answered.
“C’mon,” said Doc. “What’s the matter with you two? The cat got your tongues?”
“We’d like to thank you,” blurted out Hugh.
“Thank me? For what?” He fished out a bottle of olive oil from his bag on the floor. “We had ourselves a deal to share, to run as a team. Ross put the knockers on that yesterday, and I can’t say I blame him. He’s putting up the dough, and for that sort of money he’s entitled to his race into Central Park.”
He poured some oil on to his left palm, rubbed both hands together and, lifting his left foot across his right knee, started to massage it.
“It was more than just a deal,” said Morgan. “You know that.”
“Banana oil!” grinned Doc, lifting his right foot across his left knee and starting a similar massage. “We all had ourselves a good time. We picked up a few bucks. We’ll come out well, whatever happens. Me, I’m going to enjoy it. Hell, it’s taken me thirty years to become an overnight success.”
“So no hard feelings?” said Hugh.
“Hard feelings? No time for them. I got me a race on tomorrow. So have you. And there’s going to be some fancy running. Don’t forget this time we’re up against real marathon specialists. Eskola, Bouin, Mullins, Dasriaux – they all ran at the Olympics in twenty-eight, and all inside two hours forty.”
He stopped massaging his foot and looked up at them.
“Just what’s got into you guys? Have you forgotten everything I taught you? You are pros. Pros. Tomorrow it’s devil take the hindmost, dog eat dog. So if either of you aren’t after my balls – and each other’s – all the way into Central Park then I’ll be ashamed of you!”
Hugh looked across at Morgan.
“It’s just we didn’t want you to think we didn’t owe you,” said Morgan.
“Okay, so you owe me,” said Doc. “Now stop owing me and get the hell out of here and work on your feet.”
10 p.m. Friday, 19 June 1931. Hugh McPhail lay on his bed, face down in his pillow. He had left Morgan at the door of the bedroom which he and Kate Sheridan shared. Hugh could not understand Kate and Morgan being together the night before the marathon. It was contrary to all the tenets of the preparation, by which Scottish athletes had for over a century conditioned themselves for match-races. Still, he thought, Morgan probably knew his own business best.
He had not seen Dixie since midday. All of his trainers in Scotland had been strict, indeed puritanical, about women before big races. They were always on about “vital bodily fluids” and such things. Even Stevie, now with Packy in a Denville speakeasy, had spoken at length in the same vein. So Hugh had left Dixie to her duties at the camp and had returned to his hotel for a massage and an early night. They would have plenty of time together after the race, win or lose.
For Stevie, roped in to administer the massage, it was like the old days back at the mine.
“Of course you like Doc,” he had hissed. “I do. We all do. But tomorrow afternoon it’s eyeballs out. He’s quite right. No prisoners taken.”
“You’ve been seeing too many Hollywood pictures,” drawled Hugh sleepily.
“Think so? Then don’t forget there’s one hundred and fifty thousand dollars for the first runner past the post. Man, you could buy the Broo Park with that sort of money.”
But Hugh did not need Stevie to excite him or harden his will. He could no more dull his competitive desires than he could change the colour of his eyes. If Doc was the better man then so be it. But Hugh had learnt a lot in the three months of the Trans-America, much of it from Cole himself, and tomorrow he was going to put it to good use. If anyone else was going to get first to Central Park he was going to have to do some hard running.
10.30 p.m. Friday, 19 June 1931. Mike Morgan and Kate Sheridan lay naked, parallel to each other on single beds, each covered by a cool white sheet. Above them a fan whirred, stirring the heavy air. They lay still, like statues, the sweat beading on their sun-blackened arms and faces. They had not touched each other since the press conference.
“I feel sick,” she said.
“Me too,” replied Morgan. “So does every guy back in camp. You’re running for ten grand tomorrow. Me, I’m running for a hundred and fifty. We all feel sick. Me, I’d be worried if I didn’t.”
Kate closed her eyes.
“You know Glenda Farrell, the reporter from the Woman’s Home Journal? She’s going to keep me posted every five miles on my position.”
“You got a lot of men to beat,” observed Morgan.
“Over eight hundred,” said Kate.
“One thing,” said Morgan.
“Yes?”
“Back in the Mojave, when I bopped you. I’m sorry.”
Kate smiled. “You’ve taken a helluva long time to tell me.”
“And another thing.”
“Yes?”
“Tomorrow, when it’s all over – you fancy being a mother to a boy of two?”
“That a proposal?”
“It’s as close to one as I’m ever going to get,” said Morgan, turning on to his face.
Kate Sheridan smiled and closed her eyes.
“Reckon I do,” she said.
2.15 p.m. Saturday, 20 June 1931. It was a massive white clock-face, close on eight feet in diameter, its hands already set at the starting time of 2.30 p.m. Willard Clay had arranged that it be mounted on the back of a Trans-America truck and for it to start the moment that the crack of Will Rogers’ Winchester set them on their way. Thus all the leading runners could obtain an accurate account of their speed by checking the clock and relating it to the markers which Flanagan had arranged at one-mile intervals all the way into New York.
Ross had built temporary bleachers at the side of the fields on the road east of Denville, accommodating over two thousand spectators on each side of the road from the start to a hundred yards up the course. On the soft tar surface of the road itself eight hundred and twenty-one men and one woman now trotted, pranced, stretched and fidgeted in the humid afternoon atmosphere. To the sweating, excited spectators the Trans-Americans seemed almost like the inhabitants of some other world. Lean, sinewy, sunburnt, their vests and shorts cut as close as modesty would permit, the runners appeared to live in a private world of their own. Some wore sun-hats or caps, most wore wrist and head sweat-bands, all bore pinned cloth numbers on their upper bodies, back and front.
Flanagan, again dressed in his favourite Tom Mix outfit, his spurs jingling, strolled among the runners, addressing each one by his first name, shaking a hand here, patting a shoulder there. His Trans-America family was on the road again, for the last time. The red-bearded McGregor and his catering staff, their normal duties over, sat at trestle-tables at the side of the road, where they were to act as race-stewards. Tomorrow, in New York, they would collect their bets.
Another group was the many journalists, who mingled with the runners to secure last-minute stories, taking photographs of likely winners or of national or regional groups, anything that would fill the early evening editions. The leading runners flitted from one interview to the next, dutifully answering the same questions, while Kate Sheridan was followed everywhere by a swarm of journalists, radio interviewers and clicking cameramen.
2.20 p.m. Saturday, 20 June 1931. The competitors were already beginning to gather in rows of fifteen, across the soft tarmacadam road, with the leading Trans-Americans taking up the front rows. Willard Clay and other members of Flanagan’s staff passed between the rows, making their final checks.
About a hundred yards ahead, standing under the “start” banner, the Maxwell House Coffee Pot, the time-truck, the Trans-America van, the Press buses and a dozen support-trucks stood ready. Above them, like wheeling birds, circled news-planes and a massive silver-grey Tiffany’s airship in which the elite of Manhattan would dine from silver plate while they peered through binoculars at the runners toiling below.
Carl Liebnitz, perspiring on the bleachers in the crowd above the start, looked down on the throng of runners and sensed the change in atmosphere. Since Los Angeles, he felt, the Trans-America had been more like a tapestry unfolding than a race, and only in the battles for stage prizes had the racing element occasionally asserted itself. True, he had sensed the subtle daily struggles between Doc, Eskola, Morgan, Bouin, McPhail and the others, but there had been none of the quality of a real fight-to-the-finish race in these daily encounters.
Today was different. This was a marathon, the classic foot-race for the greatest prize in the history of the sport. In observing each man and in allowing himself to absorb into his pores the ambience of these pre-race moments, Carl Liebnitz experienced that same quiver of expectation that a competitive race triggers even in those who know nothing about sport.
The swarthy Frenchman, Bouin, prowled through the waiting competitors like a hungry cat. Eskola, the lean, blonde Finn, pranced on the spot or endlessly doubled over to touch his toes. Capaldi nervously blinked and drew his hands through his black, crinkly hair. A few yards behind the starting line, on the front rank of runners, Morgan stared down the long straight road to New York as if he could already see the finishing line. Beside him, Peter Thurleigh, clad in his ragged and faded blue-fringed Oxford vest and shorts, gnawed his knuckles or swung his arms in wide circles to loosen his shoulders. A few feet away, Hugh McPhail yawned the nervous yawn of the frightened athlete, while at his side Doc Cole was for once silent, lifting one knee after the other in front of him and hugging it to his chest, eyes closed. Twenty-five rows behind him Kate Sheridan nervously pushed back for the twentieth time an imaginary strand of hair from her tanned face.
Every man in the race went through his personal, private pre-race ritual, each, whatever his abilities, nursing the hope that this just might be that magic moment when he would run beyond himself. For most of the runners that was all they could hope for, for the prize money only went down to fiftieth place.
Liebnitz found Maurice Falconer standing beside him, mopping his brow with a handkerchief. The journalist looked around him and up at the cloudy sky. “What do you think of the weather, then, Maurice?” he asked.
Falconer scowled and shook his head. “At least eighty-five degrees down there on the road and over seventy per cent humidity – the worst we’ve had since Los Angeles.”
Liebnitz scribbled on his pad. “So how much body-weight will the boys down there lose by Central Park?”
Falconer wrinkled his nose, causing drops of sweat to drop on to his white summer suit.
“Up to ten per cent. Anything from six to fourteen pounds. Though some of those boys have lost so much weight since Los Angeles they’re going to have to go into overdraft.”
Liebnitz smiled. “How many feeding-stations?”
“Ten. I’ve made up a concoction of my own for the runners, a special saline drink which should help keep up body-fluids and cut down on leg-cramps.”
Liebnitz looked at the map pinned to a clipboard in his left hand and traced the course with his finger.
“Looks pretty straight to me, for once. No deviations for Flanagan’s ‘appropriations’ or Highland Games this time?”
Falconer smiled and shook his head.
“Not this time, Carl.”
Liebnitz continued to scrutinize the map. “Down Pallington Boulevard, then Little Falls, Clifton through West Paterson – I had an aunt lived there once – Teterboro, Lodi, then Ridgefield Park and across the Hackensack River.”
He adjusted his spectacles.
“Here’s where it’ll get tough – at Fort Lee,” he continued. “Then the Hudson and the George Washington Bridge, and into New York proper. Down Lenox Avenue and into Central Park. And that’s when it ends, for all of us.”
He looked up from the map and pointed into the mass of runners at Kate Sheridan.
“And what about her? Do you think she can make it into the top two hundred?”
Falconer unfastened the top button of his shirt and loosened his tie.
“A couple of months ago I’d have laid long odds against it,” he said. “But this Trans-America race, it’s been an education for me. If you want my professional opinion, I’d put Miss Sheridan’s chances at a good deal less than even. Carl, don’t forget there’s over eight hundred men down there. That’s a lot of heart, of pride, on the line today.”
Liebnitz nodded and pointed again, this time at Willard Clay.
“Looks as if they’re all set to get started,” he said, beginning to move off. “See you later in the bus.”
Willard was nodding at Flanagan, who in turn now beckoned with his right hand to Will Rogers standing at the microphone on a podium directly in line with the start. Rogers was the ideal man for this final stage. Acknowledged as the All-American of wit, Rogers’ homely, country-boy face was known and loved in every home in the land. Rogers had great respect for athletes, being himself one of America’s greatest exponents of the lasso. He cleared his throat and began.
“Ladies and gentlemen, I don’t reckon that there can be a single man, woman and child here who hasn’t followed Mr Flanagan’s Trans-Americans since they first left Los Angeles, way back on 21 March. They’ve been on show in Main Street, America for the past three months, and those of you who hadn’t seen them in person till today have most certainly done so on the silver screen.
“So here we are, on the final stage because of the generosity of possibly the world’s greatest follower of the marathon race, Mr Clarence Ross of Transcontinental Airlines. I only saw a marathon once myself, back in Boston in 1924. I always remember watching the runners at the finish. You know how tired them runners always are, hobbling in, crawling about on hands and knees. Well, there was these two prim ol’ Boston ladies sitting next to me at the finish. One says to the other, ‘what a lovely race’. ‘Yes,’ says the other, ‘I’m really looking forward to the finals.’ ”
The laughter came both from athletes and spectators, momentarily relaxing the tension.
“Well,” said Rogers, raising his Winchester with his right arm. “I won’t hold you folks up with my jawing much longer. The best of luck to each and every one of you.”
There was silence as Rogers increased his pressure on the trigger, the athletes on the road frozen as if in a tableau.
“Get to your marks . . .”
The engines of the trucks started up.
“Get set . . .”
The trucks slowly started to move off up the soft hot road.
Crack! The gun fired, and like a greyhound released from a trap the Trans-Americans surged along the road to New York to the roars of the crowd, the explosion of cameras and the din of low-flying airplanes zooming in to secure closer shots of the start. They were on their way, for the last time.
From the beginning it was fast. By three miles the race had divided into three leading groups. In the lead were Eskola, Bouin, Dasriaux, Capaldi, Mullins and Komar, and a dozen other hopefuls who had never previously featured in the top twenty at any time in the Trans-America. A hundred yards or so behind them came the second group, consisting of Brady, Lundberg, Brix, Quomawahu and eight others. A hundred and fifty yards back lay Doc, Thurleigh, McPhail and Morgan, together with the Australian Charles, a little Irishman Magill and an American Flynn. Three miles was run in a swift sixteen minutes twenty-one seconds, and Eskola’s group ran past the first feeding-station without stopping.
Doc eased off, drank a cardboard carton of fluid on the run then picked up a second from another table, again drinking it on the run and pouring the dregs over his head. “Drink,” he said, almost to himself. “Keep drinking.”
All along Pallington Boulevard crowds stood three or four deep, shouting and applauding, many of them in overalls and dungarees, all work having stopped along the route. Restraining them, beefy, grinning New Jersey cops, relieved to be coping with something other than strikers or rioting mobs, nodded and shouted encouragement as the runners streamed past.
Six miles in thirty-three minutes and nine seconds, and still Eskola’s group held the lead, though six of the optimists who had been sucked into the fast early pace were now plodding dourly, broken and sweat-sodden, two hundred yards behind Doc’s group and sinking steadily down the field. Behind them ran Brady’s pack, now reduced to six runners. Doc’s group remained unchanged, covering the first six miles almost three-quarters of a minute behind Eskola . . .
Another drama was being played over a mile behind the leaders. There Kate Sheridan fought her own war of attrition with the stream of runners stretching away from her into the distance.
As she passed down the crowd-lined avenue the cheers and shouting always took on a shriller note. Women and girls who had never in their lives run a mile screamed, whooped and applauded as Kate went past, their screams rising in pitch each time she overtook yet another male competitor. The “Lone Lady”, as the press corps had dubbed her, had started cautiously, as Doc had advised her; perhaps too cautiously. By six miles, run in just over forty-five minutes, she was in three hundred and ninth position, her body already drenched in sweat . . .
. . . At the front, Eskola’s pace was still remorseless; through Little Falls, down into Clifton, he continued to pump out mile after mile in just over five and a half minutes. By nine miles, achieved in fifty minutes fifty seconds, his group had been pared down to Bouin, Dasriaux, Capaldi, Mullins and Komar, with of the “unknowns” only the lean, turbaned Indian, Singh, hanging on. Those who had peeled off, their rhythm broken, now languished far down the field.
In the second group, a hundred and fifty yards behind, the little Indian Quomawahu was beginning to crumble, his feet now flapping on the soft tar road. But Brady, Lundberg and Brix stayed firm, having shrugged off the other earlier members of their pack.
Two hundred yards behind them it was now only Doc, Thurleigh, Morgan and McPhail, Charles and Magill, running in two lines through the cheering crowds. Behind them the field was strung out for well over two miles, back into the outskirts of West Paterson.
From the leading press bus Carl Liebnitz stood on the top deck with Bullard, Packy Paterson and Stevie McFarlane, scanning the race through binoculars. “Look,” he said, handing the binoculars to Bullard. “Eskola’s still piling it on. If he keeps this up what time will he run?”
“Close on two and a half hours,” said Bullard, peering through the glasses. “Hey!” he said, handing them on to Stevie. “Doc’s taking water again. That’s more time lost.”
Stevie took the glasses and scowled. “No, time drinking isn’t time lost. Not on a day like this.” He wiped the sweat from his brow and surveyed it on the back of his hand. “Have a look at this,” he said. “Just think what it must be like for those lads down there. Like a bloody Turkish bath.”
Liebnitz nodded and scribbled on the pad on his lap. “You may be right,” he said, looking at the race clock. “Twelve miles in one hour nine minutes exactly for Eskola and company. Doc and his pack must be close on two minutes down and we’re nearly half way. I hope the old pro hasn’t misjudged it.”
“I asked him last night if he had ever dreamed about this race,” said Bullard. “Know what he said? He said he’d run it so often in his dreams he’d have to get the sheets re-soled!”
Stevie grinned. “He’s a great old guy. A pity it’ll have to be a Scot who’ll beat him.”
“Or perhaps an American, a Finn or a Frenchman,” said Liebnitz, continuing to peer through his binoculars, but the drone of the news-planes above drowned his answer.
“Two hundred and fifty-first!” screamed a remarkably unladylike Glenda Farrell at Kate Sheridan as she loped past at fifteen miles on Sylvan Avenue on the outskirts of Teterboro. “Fifty-one to go!” she added, skipping to make herself visible over the heads of the crowds. Kate nodded weakly and took her drink and sponge as she went from the trestle-table at the feeding-station, squeezing the tepid contents of the sponge down the back of her neck. By drinking on the run, she passed three runners who had taken their drinks standing at the station. She was finding it hard, for, at just inside eight-minute miles, this was the fastest pace at which she had ever run. There was no breathlessness yet; just pain and heaviness all over, bringing her further and further down on to her heels . . .
. . . At the front, fifteen miles through Lodi in one hour and twenty-eight minutes. This time Bouin, Dasriaux and Mullins picked up drinks at the tables on the run, as did Eskola, Capaldi and Komar. Behind them Brady’s pack were wilting and were over two hundred yards behind, Singh and Quomawahu having been dropped at fourteen miles. All of Brady’s pack stopped at the refreshment table, their bodies spurting sweat. A mile further on, at sixteen miles, they were passed by Doc’s group, and Brady’s pack began to disintegrate.
In the lead, Eskola’s group pressed on through Ridgefield Park and across the Hackensack River and past the eighteen miles marker. Below, on the black, oily water, tugs and barges hooted as the runners crossed, unheeding, behind Flanagan’s trucks and buses. At the bridge, the Pole Komar suddenly dropped to a trot, clasping his right calf. The Wall had claimed its first victim.
Behind, Doc and the others had burnt off Magill and Charles, who laboured in a limbo a hundred yards ahead of Brady’s broken group, and it was now the old firm of Doc, McPhail, Thurleigh and Morgan, running in line together, their brown bodies streaming sweat. As they crossed the Hackensack River they knew from shouts from the crowd that they were pulling in Eskola’s pack and were less than two minutes behind the Finn. For the first time in the whole Trans-America Doc had said nothing to the others, but the four men ran as if driven by a single will – on, down, looping north-east through Fort Lee, towards the Hudson and the George Washington Bridge . . .
. . . Kate Sheridan saw the figures “220” on a large white card above the crowd at the bridge across the Hackensack as Glenda Farrell, holding the card aloft, shrieked above the noise of the milling mob. The sweat poured over Kate’s eyebrows, sending the bitter mascara down her bronzed cheeks and into her mouth. She cursed, regretting her vanity in using eye make-up for the first time since the Mojave. All elasticity had gone from her legs, but the men in front of her seemed to be fading even faster. “Got you, you bastard,” she growled under her breath each time she passed one . . .
In the press bus the journalists clustered at the end of the top deck. “Doc’s getting to them,” growled Liebnitz, standing as he looked at Doc’s group through his binoculars. “He’s pulling Eskola in on a long rope.”
Ernest Bullard put a hand on Liebnitz’s shoulder as he peered through his own binoculars at the race-leaders.
“You’re right,” he said. “But I never thought I’d see you this deep in a foot-race.”
Liebnitz turned to face him. “This isn’t a race, Ernest. It’s a goddam battle. That Finn’s thrown down the gauntlet and Doc and the boys have picked it up.” He returned to his binoculars and thumped the seat in front of his with his right fist.
“C’mon, Doc,” he said. “I’ve got five bucks right on your nose.”
The bus bumped and lurched as it crossed a level-crossing, causing Liebnitz to be thrown back on to his seat. Behind the bus, Eskola and his group passed across the rails and the gates clanged shut behind them. Over a quarter of a mile back, but catching Eskola with every stride, Doc and his pack were not immediately aware of what had happened. Then, two hundred yards from the crossing, as the clang of the approaching train was heard Doc realized what had occurred. When they reached the five-foot-high wooden barrier the train to New York stood hissing and steaming on the other side, barring their way onwards.
For a moment the four men, Cole, McPhail, Morgan and Thurleigh, stood irresolute. Then Doc started to climb up the white wooden gates, looking down over his left shoulder.
“Come on,” he growled. “Over.”
The others followed him, gasping as they scrambled untidily over on to the road beyond. Doc then turned right, followed by the others, up the soft cinders by the side of the line towards the engine, about a hundred yards back down the track. On reaching the front of the train Doc glanced up at the driver in his cabin above and winked. He looked up the line going in the other direction, and followed by the others crossed the rails and ran to his left towards the gates on the other side of the track. By the time the train began to ease out of the station they were already on their way. The pursuit was on.
With just over six miles to go they were just over three minutes down . . .
. . . Three miles back Kate Sheridan was fighting her own final lonely battle. With each mile she felt she had reached the limit of the pain which she could tolerate; then, that limit accepted, somehow a new limit was reached, broached and again accepted. Since the eighteenth mile she had been counting grimly; five more to go and she had made it. Five men to pass in eight miles . . .
The moment had come, the moment for which he had waited all his life, and Doc Cole sensed it. With six miles to go, he would have to go after Eskola and his group now or it would be too late. He was at the Wall, on the razor’s edge between success and failure. If he held back now Eskola might be able to hang in to win. If he went off too fast then he might blow up before the finish. It was a gamble, but one which he would have to take. Ahead he could hear the applause and the hooters of the boats on the Hudson signal the arrival of Eskola’s pack at the George Washington Bridge only half a mile ahead. He started to accelerate, feeling his leg cadence increase as his will expressed itself in movement.
The others sensed what had happened, sensed the decision that Doc was making for them. As the pace lifted they stayed locked together and pressed in on the George Washington Bridge. Across the Hudson they thudded, oblivious of the crowds behind and ahead, the tugs hooting below, their eyes fixed on Eskola’s group, whom they could see making their lonely way towards Lenox Avenue.
For a moment, Doc feared he was making no impression. Then he began to hear Capaldi’s grunts as he dropped back, and with five miles to go, just before the right turn down Lenox Avenue into Manhattan, they passed the swarthy American, leaving him to struggle on in their wake. At the front Eskola, Bouin, Dasriaux and Mullins had broken and were running in single file, about two hundred yards ahead.
The leaders were running in a tunnel of sound through the deep canyons of Manhattan, blind to the crowds massed thick on either sidewalk. Above them confetti and ticker-tape drifted down from offices, occasionally resting on their necks and shoulders.
Eskola still ran fluidly, eyes glazed and fixed. But he was slowing, and at the final feeding-station, at twenty-three miles, he again ignored the refreshment and kept on running, his stride growing increasingly choppy and laboured. Behind him Doc’s group had picked up Bouin, Dasriaux and Mullins and were making ground steadily. The Finn’s speed and his failure to take sufficient fluid were taking their toll: slowly he was grinding to a halt.
Eskola gave no sign of acknowledging their presence, but hung on, drawing on the rhythm of Doc and his group for strength. He locked in on Morgan’s left shoulder, on the outside of the group. But Doc continued to press, and suddenly Eskola grunted and dropped back. The Finn’s stride dropped to a forlorn, pecking action. He was beaten.
With two miles to go, at Lenox and 125th, Doc made his final decision. He would leave them . . .
. . . Six miles behind, Kate could see the turbanned Indian Singh, an early leader, now down to a hobbling walk-trot. It took her only another fifty yards to pull him in and pass him. He gave a toothy, broken grin as she passed and raised his right hand in acknowledgment.
She was beginning to feel her breathing weaken, the air coming through lungs that seemed hedged with thorns. Kate ran against the rhythm of this pain, fixing her eyes on the sweat-stained vest of the next runner, an Austrian, whom she slowly passed, hearing his grunt as she did so.
The next three ran together, the tall Texan, Kane, and two tiny Japanese, running in their now familiar split-toed shoes, a hundred-odd yards ahead. For a mile she did not seem to be gaining ground at all, could see no change in the space which separated her from them. Then she began to hear Kane’s monotonous, high-pitched wheeze, and suddenly the distance between them seemed to shrink. With five miles to go, as she crossed the George Washington Bridge, she drew level, then squeezed past. Kane put his hand to his forehead in salute, and brushed the sweat from his eyebrows. Kate nodded, feeling herself for the first time that day grow stronger as she ran on. Ahead, at the end of the bridge, a prim, angular woman stood holding aloft a large piece of cardboard. It was a jubilant Glenda Farrell.
The board read “200”.
Kate felt her leg cadence increase as she passed it, smiling. In the next mile, she passed three more men in the storm of confetti and ticker-tape that was now Lenox Avenue. She had made it . . .
. . . Each man felt it, felt his body protest as Doc placed new demands on bodies already screaming at their maximum. But they held firm, stayed glued to Doc’s sweat-drenched vest as he pushed ahead of them to go into a five-yard lead. Hugh felt as if he was being torn apart, his breath roaring through his lungs as he fixed his eyes on Doc’s back, picking up each infinitesimal flicker of muscle on its sweating surface. To his right Thurleigh and Morgan ran in step, Morgan low and flat-footed, Thurleigh’s legs bowed and buckling, his mouth flecked with foam.
Doc could feel their eyes boring into him, feel the thread which bound them – for that was what he had always told them to do. But Doc was deeply imbedded in this final moment, while the others were simply struggling to become part of it. So he kept pressing, feeling his strength and their weakness as he piled on yard after yard down the length of Lenox Avenue, towards Central Park.
The three runners continued to focus their gaze on his back, desperately hanging on. But Doc was getting away, gradually slipping from them. With just over a mile to go, and the entrance to Central Park in view, Doc knew that he had the race in his pocket. His lead had stretched to over a hundred yards. It had not been hard, despite the excessive heat. Like all things done well, it had come almost easily; the race had only released what had been lying dormant in him for twenty years.
He accelerated again, through the park gates and along to the left towards the finishing tape at the Obelisk, now just over half a mile away. He took a last look at the clock as the timing-truck and the press buses peeled off to get into position at the finish. Just over two hours thirty-six minutes: faster than he had expected.
Then he heard the crowds in the park.
“Doc! Doc Cole!” they roared, and as he passed through the park gates a beefy cop patted his shoulder.
Doc cruised easily through the park, passing the Lasker Pool Rink on his left, then curving down the left hand loop to Fort Fish, waving to acknowledge the crowd as he ran. Two hundred yards behind McPhail, Morgan and Thurleigh ran in line, still locked together.
He strode strongly down the cool, tree-lined shadows of East Drive past delirious crowds straining behind police cordons. All the years, all the miles, and now the big pay-off, the place in the history books. He had done it.
He had shown them who he was. Yet as he ran Doc felt a moment’s uncertainty. Hell, he knew who he was, had known for the past thirty-odd years. He had no need to prove it, to these people or to anyone else. Finally, in the Trans-America, he had got to the centre of himself, beyond the fairground huckstering, beyond even the lost records on forgotten roads . . .
As he ran along the left side of the Reservoir he could see the brown-painted Obelisk on his right, three hundred yards away, and the massive wooden VIP platform which straddled East Drive just beyond the finish and which was crowded with celebrities straining to catch a glimpse of the first Trans-American. He looked over his right shoulder. Two hundred yards behind him, hugging the side of the Reservoir, McPhail, Morgan and Thurleigh ran as if held together by a magnet: only feet divided each one from the other.
Only just over a hundred yards to go. The noise engulfed him, the goodwill and affection drenching him as he glided in towards the finish. He heard Flanagan’s voice on the microphone – “The leader is . . . Doc Cole, Doctor Alexander Cole!”
He was there, where he had for so long dreamed he would be. “Finish”, said the banner above the tape. Suddenly he realized that he was weeping, indeed had been since he had entered the park. A hundred yards . . .
Doc glanced behind him. Two hundred yards away Hugh McPhail had at last broken clear and was wobbling towards the tape, eyes glazed, his head already jutting forward in a grotesque memory of a dip finish. Five yards behind him came Mike Morgan, legs bowed, arms thrashing desperately, while behind him Peter Thurleigh, foaming at the mouth, his thighs beginning to cramp, struggled to maintain a dignity quite beyond his powers.
Doc flowed in easily to the tape and the crowded mass of dignitaries seated beyond it. Without losing rhythm he looked behind him again, and in a glance absorbed the final battle between the following trio. The white finishing tape just over sixty yards ahead was at least six inches broad, stretching the whole breadth of the road, and about fifty yards beyond it, was the VIP stand, on which the gathered luminaries were already on their feet, applauding, whooping and cheering.
With fifty yards to go Doc began to ease up – to the gasps of the crowds on each side of the park. Thirty yards from the tape he stopped completely, and the crowd suddenly became hushed. Doc slowly turned to face the oncoming runners, his palms uppermost. Hugh McPhail was the first to reach him, gasping as obediently he drew to a halt, to be followed by Morgan who, lungs heaving, draped his arms limply over Doc’s shoulders. A moment later a sobbing Peter Thurleigh struggled towards them, eyebrows raised in surprise. He stopped, wiped the white foam from his lips and looked at Doc, his hands on Hugh’s shoulders.
Doc looked ahead at the platform – to Flanagan, who had descended its steps to stand on the road, a few yards beyond the finish. He then linked hands with an uncomprehending McPhail and beckoned Morgan and Thurleigh to do the same. His and Flanagan’s eyes met, as Doc raised Hugh McPhail’s hands above his head. Morgan and Thurleigh, both still gasping, slowly raised their arms too, and the four men walked forward together in silence, across the finishing line. It was impossible to separate them.
Doc was the first to reach the microphone, set up on the road below the VIP platform. For a moment he stood savouring his triumph, as the silence around them was broken by a babble of excited talk. Then he seized the mike in one hand, and smiled.
“We just got in,” he said. “From L.A.”