The Front Runner

bent at the line. My tattooed shoulder brushes
    the arm of the man in Lane 2. The old lion is fulfilling his destiny. These days I constantly have a feeling of coming full circle. God has been good. For every bitter cup He gave me to drink, He has later given me a sweeter one.
    The gun fires, and we roll off the line.
    As we sprint down the straight, everybody nips to the inside. Just as I feared, I am neatly boxed in. They'll keep me in this box, impotent, as long as they can. And it's a scorching pace. The others seem to feel that this is a 60-yard dash.
    Now if I were Billy, I'd be going out of my mind in this box. But I'm a kicker, and I like running in the pack till my moment comes. I'm not afraid of their elbows and spikes, and I know how to use my own.
    With the box and the crazy pace, I make my final decision on tactics. I decide to gamble. If I lose the gamble, it won't be a public loss of masculinity, because my enemies are sure I don't have any anyway and my friends will still love me.
    I decide to stay there in the box and let them carry the pace and carry me along. If I try to maneuver out of the box, dropping back or cutting through, I might lose time and/or foul somebody. I know they can't hold this pace, and sometime in the third quarter they'll start dying and dropping off. The field will open up, and I'll be out of the box the easy way.
    So we go through the first quarter like it is the Kentucky Derby and I am walled up in fourth place, just concentrating on staying loose and not getting my spikes tangled with anybody else's. But I am hooked onto the front runners and they feel it. I am pushing them, making them set themselves up for my kill.
    In the turn the man next to me leans on me, and I barely miss putting my foot off the track and breaking stride. It's a nervous moment, but I throw him off. We hit the 440 at 61.2 seconds, which is not bad for a bunch of invalids. The Garden is a well of noise—focused as I am on the race, I can feel it. There's that mass of people out there yelling for me.
    As we whip through the second quarter, I am running easily, teeth gritted. I am into Billy's controlled
    motion, with that grim joy pushing me, that sweet angry peace. I am five pounds lighter than I ever was, around 150, and feel so light.
    One man has moved up on the outside, putting me into fifth place, but we are still tightly bunched at the front. I'm not worried. Any time now that pace is going to start tearing the field apart. We are jostling and bumping shoulders, and somebody elbows me, and I hold him off. Somebody's going to get disqualified for sure. Maybe me. Oh well. Worse things have happened to me.
    At the half-mile, we are at 2:02. This pace is insanity. We've all lost our heads. One of the four ahead of me is already letting go. Slowly he drifts back past me and the man beside me, and I am fourth again. Back behind me, there are two big kickers. I know the pace must be getting to them too, because I am now feeling it myself. Sometime in the next minute, all three of us are going to make our move, and it'll be a question of who is deader than who.
    Death is setting in now. The third quarter is going to be a shade slower. We're dragging a little, paying the price. I'm feeling just a little heavy, but I tell myself that I'm feeling light and effortless.
    As we're coming toward the three-quarter mark, the man beside me lets go and drops back, opening up my right side. Immediately I shift out in the clear. I'm dangerous. As we go into the last quarter, the old lion is opening up into his killing sprint.
    The race breaks wide open. The other two kickers are blasting toward the front too. But I'm in front of them. Through the effort and the final rush of adrenalin, I can feel the hysteria of the crowd. They're screaming for everybody to kill everybody else. But the only voices I hear are "Smoke 'em, Harlan!" "Hang in there, Harlan!"
    I am an animal now, Billy the animal. I am running all out, the way Billy taught me can be done. I am not afraid to hang out my soul and my blood and my veins and my lungs and my balls. I kill off the third man, then the second.
    Then I surge past the first man, and I'm out in front. I'm free.
    About a hundred yards to go. We are practically sprinting. I can hear the other two kickers hauling me down. I have control enough that I don't turn my head to look, but I feel them hooked on me. I'm in oxygen debt. I'm hurting. My shoulders are heavy. My body and soul hurt.