Chip Newspickle was famous for having a hilarious name. He shared this distinction with a sad little girl named Amarylis Character and the irrepressible Richard “Dick” Hertz, the designated class clown since kindergarten.
But Chip Newspickle, in addition to his compelling moniker, was famous for being a fast runner. Astoundingly fast.
By the time he got to junior high school, Cassidy had gradually relinquished his illusions about being truly fleet of foot. Even Demski now found himself surrounded by kids who could leave him behind with ease. Cassidy turned his attention to basketball, at which he had shown some meager neighborhood-level ability, and Demski, lacking any kind of coordination whatsoever, was now much taken with model airplanes.
But everyone in school knew about the phenomenon that was Chip Newspickle. He was very low-key about it, but then again he could afford to be; he had newspaper clippings.
Despite being only an eighth grader, Chip held the school and county records for the fifty- and hundred-yard dashes. He was such a star on the track team people had forgotten how funny his name was; it now just seemed cool.
Quenton Cassidy had taken his share of grief over his own name and was envious of anyone who had done something noteworthy enough to make the transition from funny name to cool name. But he had a hard time believing Chip Newspickle had actually run that fast. Cassidy had seen him ambling along the sandy hallways of Glenridge Junior High, and while he seemed maybe a little cocky—who wouldn’t be?—he looked altogether mortal.
All of Cassidy’s friends knew their times for the fifty-yard dash. Cassidy’s was exactly 7.2 seconds, which had been one of the best in his gym class, though two of the ninth graders had gone under seven. To Cassidy, a time of 6.9 or 6.8 was comprehensible, but just barely. He had run enough time trials in phys ed to become familiar with what a tenth of a second meant on a running track, and he knew just how flat out he had had to run to get that 7.2. Moreover, when he ran it again at the end of the semester, he ran exactly the same time again, despite trying so hard he almost lost his Pop-Tarts on the infield.
Huffing and puffing, he walked back to where Coach Bickerstaff was studying the stopwatch.
“Seven point two. Good job, son,” said Bickerstaff, who had no idea why Cassidy walked away so unhappy.
For the first time in his life he was coming up against the cold, hard judgment of the stopwatch, and he now knew that his 7.2 represented the outer limits of his ability. It was disconcerting to think that some other mortal, some kid more or less his own age, could finish the same distance in “six something,” could simply fly on up ahead of him so many yards in such a short distance. But then he heard about Chip Newspickle and had to get his mind around the idea that there were human beings who not only ran in the sixes, but in the fives!
Chip Newspickle ran the fifty-yard dash in 5.8 seconds!
And now, this morning, in second-period gym class, there was Chip Newspickle in the flesh, sitting there doing butterfly stretches as Coach Bickerstaff took roll. He was dressed out, too, even though this was not his gym class. He wore red-and-green-plaid gym shorts and a Glenridge T-shirt, like nearly everyone else, but also something Cassidy had never seen before: tight-fitting bright white kangaroo-skin track slippers with wicked-looking long spikes and three perfectly spaced black stripes slanted on the sides. They were the most amazing shoes Cassidy had ever seen.
Coach Bickerstaff finally looked up from his clipboard. “All right, gentlemen, this morning we’re gonna be doing 440 time trials,” he said. “This is part of President Kennedy’s fitness program, like the sit-up and pull-up tests we did last week. We’ll do all this again at the end of the year, and your times will be recorded and compiled in a report that will go to the superintendent’s office, then to Tallahassee, and eventually on up to President Kennedy in Washington, D.C.”
That sobered everyone. No one wanted to let President Kennedy down. He had been on a PT boat that got sunk.
“Everyone will line up at the starting post and we’ve got two watches so we’ll run two at a time like we did last time. If you don’t already have a partner, Coach Burke will pair you up with someone close to your speed so you’ll have some competition.”
There was nervous grumbling. A 440 was a whole lap, and everyone could see what a long way that was. Even a 100 seemed like a fairly long race compared to the 50, and a 220 was way beyond that. Twice a 220 was hard to imagine.
“Oh, and before we get started, y’all probably noticed Chip here. He needs to get his 440 done this period because he has a dentist appointment this afternoon. So, who wants to run with Chip?”
Everyone laughed. Exactly nobody wanted to run with Chip Newspickle.
“All right, settle down. Hohlmeister, Castleberry, you’re the fastest guys in class. How about it, one of you?” They were the two ninth graders who were under seven seconds. They were both on the football team, but neither of them wanted any part of Chip Newspickle in a foot race.
“Uh, we’re running with each other.” Castleberry pointed to Hohlmeister sitting next to him. Hohlmeister nodded vigorously. “We already decided,” he said.
Bickerstaff looked at the group and suppressed a sigh. He couldn’t really blame them. He was about to announce that Chip would run by himself when he heard a thin voice from the back of the throng.
“I’ll run.”
Everyone turned to look. Bickerstaff smiled. Of course. The skinny kid who kept trying out for the basketball team. Everyone was craning around to look, and the laughter was starting already.
“All right, fair enough, Mr. Kissam Building Supply,” he said, referring to Cassidy’s T-shirt, a freebie from last weekend’s Bargain Days Lumber Sale his father had taken him to. “The rest of you, shut up. At least he has some gumption. Now, up and at ’em. Two lines at the start. Coach Burke will arrange you into pairs if you haven’t already found somebody. I’ll be in the middle of the field so I can give you the split at the 220 mark. Coach Burke will give you a three command start. He’ll say ‘Ready, set . . . ,’ and then the whistle. Okay, that’s it. Start lining up. Chip, you and your opponent go first so you can get changed and go meet your mom.” Most were already clambering to their feet.
“And boys, one more thing. The 440 is a long race. I repeat, a long race,” Bickerstaff said. “It’s a whole lap, one quarter of a mile around. Do yourselves a favor and pace yourselves. Do not, I repeat, do not blast out and think you can run full speed the whole way. I promise you that you can’t do it.” He began walking toward the middle of the field.
As they were all milling around the white starting post at the middle of the straightaway, Cassidy noticed that Chip Newspickle—who had hardly even looked at him—was about his same height, not very tall, and though he was a bit more muscular and moved with an athlete’s slightly pigeon-toed grace, there didn’t seem to be anything special about him, nothing to hint at the 5.8 that he was supposedly capable of.
Maybe I’m crazy, Cassidy thought. Certainly his friends told him he was. But Cassidy knew something the rest of them didn’t. Most days after school he and Stiggs and Randleman had been biking or running over to their old elementary school, Fern Creek. There they played basketball and did fifty-yard dashes until they got bored. Stiggs and Randleman always got bored before Cassidy did, so he would do a few more while they horsed around on the jungle bars. After a while, Cassidy noticed a pattern. On the first sprint, he would finish five yards ahead of Randleman, who would be a yard or two ahead of the gangly Stiggs.
By their fourth or fifth repeat, when the other two would usually quit, Cassidy was finishing ten or fifteen yards in front. Cassidy accused them of goldbricking, which just made them mad.
And after several weeks, when they would jog the mile and a half to Fern Creek, Cassidy would have to stop several times to wait for them. This would tick them off, particularly when Cassidy called them “lard asses” or “Mother Hubbards.”
One Friday afternoon as they were huffing and puffing to keep up, he began to literally run circles around them, which he kept up all the rest of the way to the school. He ended up regretting it because it was much harder to do than he thought it would be, and also because after they arrived at the playground and rested a few minutes they pounced on him and administered a red belly.
It finally dawned on Cassidy that the longer the distance, the better he did and the worse everyone else did. In gym class he got killed in the 50 by the fastest guys, but he was at least among the top handful in the 220.
He had never raced a 440 before, but the prospect didn’t intimidate him in the least.
Still, it was a long way around. Even now as they lined up he had a hard time taking in the entire quarter-mile oval at once.
Coach Bickerstaff stood in the middle of the field, his red brush cut visible beneath a battered Red Sox baseball cap. He held up his clipboard to signal to Coach Burke that he was ready.
“Go get him, skinny,” someone called. More laughs.
“Eat me,” Cassidy muttered. Hell, they were all skinny except for Billy Parish. What did that have to do with anything?
Coach Burke smiled sympathetically at Cassidy and told them to get ready. Chip Newspickle dropped down to his hands and knees, digging the beautiful spikes into the clay, right foot slightly in front of the left, fingertips spread flat against the chalk line. He looked like he knew exactly what he was doing. Cassidy didn’t have a clue about a sprinter’s crouch, so when Coach Burke rather sharply reminded him again to get ready, he nervously toed the line with his left canvas tennis shoe, leaning forward loosely from the waist, the way he always did. Chip Newspickle, he saw, was poised like a cat.
“Get ready . . . set . . .” The blast of the whistle was so shrill Cassidy actually flinched. When he gathered himself and pushed off from the starting line, his left tennis shoe slipped and his first three strides were so off balance he thought he was going to go right down on his face. More hoots from the crowd.
Getting control of his panic, he concentrated on the ground a few yards in front of him and finally felt his familiar stride settling in beneath him. But when he looked up, he saw Chip Newspickle’s backside all but disappearing up the track.
He could hear the growing glee behind him as the knot of humiliation grew in the pit of his stomach. He now understood that the 5.8 was no myth and that Chip Newspickle was in fact some kind of freak of nature. And this also occurred to him: most likely, Quenton Cassidy was an ordinary fool with some very silly ideas.
He tried to put Chip Newspickle out of his mind and simply concentrate on running smoothly. He didn’t have anywhere near that amazing leg speed, but he was still running well. His stride was longer than Chip’s and the ground was passing quickly beneath him. More than that, he was feeling comfortable despite running almost flat out. It occurred to him that he was merely doing something he was used to and that he in fact enjoyed.
He consciously loosened his shoulders and relaxed the rest of his body and noticed that he actually began to go a little faster.
Something else was odd. As they neared the middle of the turn at the 110 post, Chip Newspickle was no farther ahead than he had been at the end of the first fifty yards. He had fifteen yards on Cassidy, which seemed like a very long way, but at least he was not gaining anymore. Was the laughter from the crowd subsiding a little?
When Chip hit the straightaway at the end of the first curve, Cassidy was now matching him stride for stride, though still far behind. For the first time it seemed to Cassidy that he was not really flat out yet. He was probably at ninety percent, but that felt reasonable. He was keenly aware of how much ground his strides were eating up.
At the 220 mark, halfway through the back straightaway, Bickerstaff called out, “Twenty-seven! Twenty-eight! Twenty-nine! Thirty flat, thirty-one, thirty-two . . .”
Chip Newspickle was just under twenty-eight seconds, Cassidy three seconds back, but he had gained five yards. And he could see something familiar happening up ahead. Chip Newspickle’s back and shoulders were slightly arched and he was carrying his arms wider and more stiffly, like he saw Stiggs and especially Randleman do. Chip was still moving fast but no longer looked invincible. A shiver ran up Cassidy’s spine and tingled the hair on the back of his neck, and he thought, I can beat him.
He concentrated on his stride and tried to imagine himself floating over the track, eating up the yards as effortlessly as he could. At the 330 post, Cassidy had gained back another five yards. It was obvious to everyone now that they were watching a real race. There was no laughter from the crowd, just a single pleading call: “Come on, Chip!”
But Chip’s form continued to degenerate; he began to arch backward and his arms and shoulders were now moving as a solid unit, rotating awkwardly around his trunk instead of pumping up and down like pistons.
Sensing the other boy’s vulnerability, Cassidy bore down around the final curve, pulling him back with every stride. He kept his eyes fixed on those beautiful spiked shoes flashing in front of him and concentrated on relaxing and extending his stride.
As they came out of the turn with fifty-five yards to go, he was just off Chip’s shoulder and Cassidy saw his quick, panic-stricken glance. Chip turned grimly back to his task, bore down as he had been trained to do. At the finish line he willed himself into a lean.
That lean saved Chip Newspickle from the ignominy of losing a race to a skinny nobody in second-period gym class.
“Sixty flat point three!” shouted Coach Bickerstaff, hurrying over in his stiff-legged gait. “Dead heat!” He looked at Burke, who nodded, a tight smile on his face.
A stunned group milled around the finish line, looking at each other and at the runners in disbelief. The laws of the universe had been turned upside down before their eyes, and they were still trying to make sense of it.
Bickerstaff and Burke began shooing them back onto the track, trying to get them organized.
“All right, all right, knock it off!” said Bickerstaff. “Get ready, the rest of you. And let’s see more of the kind of effort we just saw there!” But no one was paying much attention. They were still wandering around and gawking at the two red-faced, completely blown-out runners.
Bickerstaff walked back to the infield where Cassidy and Chip Newspickle were still wobbling, bent over at the waist, hands on knees, elbows touching in a kind of sympathetic camaraderie, rasping in the air with a desperation that bordered on panic.
“What’s your name, son?” he asked.
“Cass . . .” he said. “Cass . . . Cassidy.”
“After you’ve changed, come on by my office.”