OLLIE’S WISE WORDS

Mile 97, 5:06 a.m.

SYDNEY WATSON WALTERS: Your father served in Afghanistan, isn’t that right?

QUINN: Yeah. He was on his third tour of duty.

SYDNEY WATSON WALTERS: Do you remember the day that he left?

QUINN: Sort of. I thought his bus was coming at eight, not at six. Mom kept yelling at me to get up, get up.

Ollie came into my room. “Hurry up!” he pleaded. “He’s leaving soon!” He sounded kind of choked up.

“Get lost,” I said.

A few minutes later Dad came and sat on the edge of my bed. We’d fought the night before, so I pretended to be asleep. I heard the clomp of his boots and the rustle of his pants. “Gotta go, kiddo,” he said and he leaned down and kissed my head.

Then he went. Climbed onto the bus and was gone.

SYDNEY WATSON WALTERS: What had you been fighting about the night before?

QUINN: Afghanistan. He’d already gone there twice. I didn’t get why he had to go back.

“If you were a real father,” I’d told him, “you’d stay with us.”

SYDNEY WATSON WALTERS: What did he say to that?

QUINN: He kept talking about all the kids over there. How they had no food, no water, no education.

“How about dads?” I asked him. “Do they have any of those?”

“A lot of them don’t,” he said.

I said, “I know how they feel.”

Dad counted to five beneath his breath.

“I watch the news, you know,” I told him. “A lot of people think we shouldn’t even be in Afghanistan.”

“A lot of people are wrong,” he said.

“Maybe you’re the one who’s wrong,” I said.

SYDNEY WATSON WALTERS: It’s been a terrible war. No one can argue with that. And it’s the families of the soldiers who have sacrificed the most.

(Audience applauds)

QUINN: Okay, fine. But do you know how many times Afghanistan has been invaded? Dozens of times. Russia, Britain, Genghis Khan, the United States, they all invaded Afghanistan at one time or another.

Now — do you know how many of those invaders won? None of them. Not a single one. That’s because Afghanistan is unwinnable. It doesn’t take a lot of brains to figure that out.

(Long silence; audience fidgets)

I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said that. Do you need to go to a commercial now?

SYDNEY WATSON WALTERS: No, this is important. Your story is important.

QUINN: It’s just that, in Afghanistan, everyone loses. Especially my family. We lost a lot.

SYDNEY WATSON WALTERS: Your dad was driving over a bridge outside of Kandahar …

QUINN: It was an IED — you know, Improvised Explosive Device. The whole right side of the carrier was blown in. Both of his legs were torn off.

(Long silence)

SYDNEY WATSON WALTERS: Take as much time as you need. Would you like a glass of water?

QUINN: Don’t you get it, he lost his LEGS! The legs he used to go running with!

(Long silence)

SYDNEY WATSON WALTERS: It’s okay, Quinn. It’s not your fault. It’s most definitely not your fault.

QUINN: But it is, don’t you see? I pretended to be asleep. I never said goodbye. I never told him —

SYDNEY WATSON WALTERS: What? What didn’t you tell your father?

QUINN: I never told him … that I love him.

Ollie was still quiet. Fingernails of light glimmered behind the hills.

“He’s only been gone since November,” Ollie said finally. “But I’m already starting to forget what he was like.”

“That’s not true,” I said. “You remember his jokes. You’ve been telling them to me all through this race.”

Ollie clicked his tongue like a tree frog.

“You also remember his stories,” I said. “That one you told me last night, about Dad running the New York Marathon.”

I rubbed my feet. The duct tape was peeling at the edges. Somewhere above me, an airplane rumbled through the sky.

“I remember something else about him,” said Ollie.

“What’s that?”

“Sometimes at night, when Mom had her book club over, Dad came into my room and played his ukulele.”

“What songs did he play?” I asked.

“Songs he made up himself. He had this one about a whale who wishes he could fly.”

“Do you remember how it went?” I said.

“I think so.” And he sang:

Say hello!

Wave goodbye!

Swim today!

Tomorrow we’ll fly!

I leaned back against the pile of rocks and listened to the water dripping from the trees. A burst of static hissed down the line, and I could hear Mom telling Ollie to hurry up and get dressed.

“How’s Mom?” I said.

“Not so great,” Ollie said. “I don’t think she slept very much last night.”

I could hear Ollie pulling open his dresser. Suddenly he said, “You should be nicer to her, you know.”

“You think?” I said.

“Yeah. She misses Daddy too.”

Snot was leaking out of my nose. I wiped it off on the back of my sleeve. I thought of Ollie, sitting in his bed, and the liquid light of his aquarium, and the sound of electric bubbles. Down the hall, in the fridge, cherry yogurt and cheese sticks. It all seemed a million miles away.

“I’m not really cheering you up, am I?” said Ollie.

“In some ways you are,” I said. “But my feet are toast. I can’t finish this race.”

“You only have three more miles,” said Ollie.

“In this mud,” I said, “that’s two hours of running.”

“You’ve still got an hour before the cut-off,” said Ollie.

“I don’t care about the cut-off,” I said.

“I know,” Ollie said sadly. And then he said, “I always knew you wouldn’t finish.”

“What?” I said.

“I always knew you wouldn’t finish.”

There are only six words in the entire English language that are guaranteed to get an exhausted runner up and moving again. And Ollie had just said those six little words.

“Everyone else knows it too,” Ollie said. “Grandma Sue, Auntie Lauren. Even Mom thinks you’ll quit.”

“You’re wrong,” I said.

“Want the GPS coordinates?” Ollie asked.

“Yes, go ahead.”