The Front Runner

gracefully to the track.
    As he hit the red tartan, the jolt snapped through his
    body. He slid a little on his left side, his right leg
    sliding forward as if to take one last stride. His head
    struck heavily against the low board rim on the inside
    -of the track.
    Actually, it happened so fast that the crowd didn't burst its lungs with a huge scream until it was over.
    On the videotape, you could see Armas, dazed, glancing down at Billy as he passed him. "I thought it was luck," Armas would say later. Then he gathered himself and ran heavily on, easing the pace sharply because he didn't have to worry about anybody catch-ing him. When he hit the tape, he was staggering.
    Back up the straight, Billy lay sprawled by the board, in lane 1. He didn't move. The other runners were skirting him, looking at him, running on.
    I was horrified, not even thinking of the lost medal. What could have happened? All kinds of crazy possibilities ran through my mind. At the least, a terrible muscle pull. A concussion as his head hit the board. A massive leg cramp. A heart attack.
    Beyond the finish line, Armas was on his hands and
    knees, looking more like a spent decathlete. Officials were running toward Billy. I also saw the U.S. team doctor and distance coach Taplinger running toward him. The stadium was a sea of babbling and comment. Many people were applauding Armas' victory, but just as many were standing, their eyes fixed on Billy.
    He did not move.
    I was already scrambling down to the track, pushing and shoving blindly. Vince and Mike were behind me.
    We were on the track. Several officials tried to stop us. I shouldered one out of the way. Vince punched one. Three of them caught Mike and held him.
    Vince and I ran up the track.
    A number of people were already bending around Billy. Tay Parker was kneeling by his head, and motioning them back. "Give him air," he said. "Get away."
    Billy lay on his left side, with his left arm flung forward on the track, the gold ring glinting on it. His face was turned down and his hair fell forward, hiding it. He had fallen with such force that his glasses had been jolted off. They lay just ahead of him, shattered. The only motion in him was the sweat trickling earthward on his limbs. It seemed incredible that this body, which seconds ago had been moving as fast as a distance-running man is capable, could be so still.
    "He may have hit his head on the board there," Tay Parker was saying.
    Then we saw a little pool of blood spreading from under his hair. It was the darkish blood of a runner deep in oxygen debt. I told myself that I didn't see it.
    "Christ," said Parker. "He couldn't have hit himself that hard."
    The officials, bug-eyed, were crowding around. Parker motioned them away again. Vince was kneeling by Billy's feet.
    Gently Parker turned Billy over. Then we saw what his hair had hid. The whole left temple and part of his forehead was gone. In their place was a pink and white bleeding crater. Bits of bone, blood and brain had ex-
    ploded down his face and into his hair. Pieces of bone, with hair attached, came away in Parker's hands.
    I told myself that I did not see this.
    Parker was shaking his head, dazed. He was feeling in Billy's hair on the other side of his head.
    "I can't believe this," he said. "It's a bullet wound."
    "A bullet wound?" I repeated stupidly.
    "I was a medic in Nam, I've seen plenty of them," said Parker. "Look, here's where it went in." He showed us the small, dark red hole, parting Billy's hair so that the sunlight hit it.
    I was kneeling there clutching Billy's warm, limp hand as he lay there with his head on Parker's knees. It was beginning to occur to me that that hand would never squeeze mine again.
    I looked dumbly up at all their faces. They were all silent, stunned, not reacting yet. Gus Lindquist had just come up and shouldered through the group, and was getting his first look at Billy's bloody head. Our eyes met. At that minute, I think, Lindquist began to understand the tragedy that he had participated in.
    It was Vince who cried the unutterable cry for me. He bent down over Billy's feet, his head almost touching them, and he gave a sound like an animal being crushed to death in a press. He stayed there like that, holding Billy's spiked feet, and sobbing in that suffocated way, as if there were no air in his lungs.
    Slowly I let Billy's hand go. I picked up his broken glasses and my fingers closed around them so hard that the glass crackled. On the