The Front Runner

ONE
    I can be precise about the day it began. It was December 10, 1974. That was the day I met Billy Sive, and he asked me to coach him.
    The night before, a heavy snowfall had blanketed New York State. Around eight that morning, I ate breakfast as usual in the college dining room. Then, whistling cheerfully, I walked over to the athletic building. The sun had already come out, and the white landscape of the campus was blinding. I stepped past the students shoveling snow.
    "Hi," I said to them. I smiled. I had no idea how my life was about to change.
    "Hi, Mr. Brown," they said. They smiled back.
    When I got to my office, I found the president and founder of Prescott College, Joseph A. Prescott, waiting for me by the locked door. He was wearing a sheepskin jacket, carrying his usual briefcase fat with papers, plus two steaming cups, one coffee, one tea.
    When Joe comes around early in the morning like that, I always know something is up.
    "Here's something to thaw you out," he said, giving me the tea.
    We went into the office. Joe hauled off his sheepskin and settled his lanky brown-suited frame into the battered oak armchair by my desk. I settled my lanky parkaed form into the creaky swivel desk-chair. On the desk, everything was neat, but very piled: students' papers, entry blanks for meets, track and field publications. On the raw concrete wall, the big bulletin board displayed schedules. Some framed photographs: myself in Marine dress uniform twenty years ago, myself as a Villanova miler, other runners I'd trained. A big bookshelf was stuffed with books on sports.
    "What's up, Joe?" I said, sipping my tea.
    Joe lit a cigarette, boldly facing down my frown. "Harlan," he said, "you know those three boys that were suspended from Oregon."
    I nodded. The track press had been full of it. Boys often get suspended from school teams these days. The youth revolution has hit track, and disciplinarian coaches have endless squabbles with their runners about late hours, hair styles, sex, drugs, etc. I had had a few of those squabbles myself. But the University of Oregon, the Jerusalem of U.S. track, had just unloaded three of its best senior-year runners. That was something else again. "Disciplinary reasons," head coach Gus Lind-quist had said. But he hadn't been specific. Everybody had been mystified by the biblical heat of Lindquist's wrath.
    "What do you know about the boys?" Joe asked.
    "Not much, Joe," I said. "I've never even seen them run."
    Joe's eyes sparkled wickedly. "Supposing I told you that they want to transfer here?"
    I slowly put down my cup of tea. I couldn't believe my ears. For a moment I couldn't speak. I hadn't coached big burners like those three since I'd been fired from my coaching job at Penn State six years ago. What I had on this campus was a nice group of kids coming along, but definitely the ruck of Eastern college runners. The big burners wouldn't be caught dead at a school like Prescott. They all wanted to run for Oregon, Villanova, UCLA.
    "Well," I said, "I'm not sure I want to have Lindquist's headaches."
    "The boys say they were unfairly treated. They say no one ever listened to their side of the story. They want to talk to you about it. They and I agree that the decision will be up to you."
    "You mean they're here?"
    Joe was doing the smoker's comedy act: he hunted automatically for an ashtray, didn't find one, tipped his ashes into the palm of his hand, finally put them in the empty wastebasket.
    "They showed up in the snowstorm late last night
    and knocked on my door," he said. "Marian put them up in the den. They hitchhiked all the way from Oregon. They ate everything in the house."
    I was beginning to be more puzzled. Their action sounded desperate. I could see the three of them half-frozen by the highway in the Dakotas somewhere, with their thumbs out and a hand-lettered sign reading NEW
    YORK.
    "But why here? I mean, there are big-time teams with permissive coaches who would snap them up."
    "Prescott has you, doesn't it?"
    "But I've been out of sight for years. Those kids wouldn't even know who I am."
    "I'm sure they'll tell you all about it," said Joe, getting up.
    "All right," I said. "I have classes at nine and ten, but I'm free between eleven and lunch. Why don't you send them over at eleven?"
    After Joe left, I sat a minute before I went to nine o'clock track practice. To have runners like those three on my little team had been the hurting dream ever since I'd left Penn State. I