The Front Runner

had migrated off to see their families. Vince and Jacques had gone home, and planned to tell their families that they were gay.
    Every morning John got up early to watch Billy work out. He sat shivering in his Cardin overcoat, a lone figure on the snowy bleachers, and his eyes never left Billy as the boy ripped off 57-second quarters.
    "It takes a lot of will, doesn't it?" John asked me.
    He had never run a step, but instinctively he understood.
    "Will is the main thing," I said. "But it takes other things too. Hard work gets you nowhere if you aren't naturally gifted. The lung capacity, the ability to tolerate high stress, that is partly hereditary, we know. Billy has some good genes in there somewhere. I've put him through the lab tests, and he definitely is international class, physically. Your genes, probably," I added jokingly.
    "Who knows?" said John. "Maybe they're his mother's genes."
    "I won't believe it," I said. "She crapped out."
    John grinned. "Well, I'd like to think that they're my genes."
    We both watched as Billy tore by again.
    "Billy has it upstairs, all right," I said. "I wish every American father could teach his son that kind of mental toughness. My congratulations."
    "Well, I taught him some of that," said John. "The rest he learned himself."
    "How did he get started running?"
    "Well, he was a weak kid. He was very small when he was born. He was sick a lot. I encouraged him to try sports because I hoped they would build him up a little. In grade school he played a lot of basketball, and he finally started to look healthy. Then in high school they had one of those age-group crosscountry programs. He tried it, and that was it. He never went near a basketball court again. He'd come home glowing and all excited, and I'd think, he's in love, but no—he'd just had a good run."
    We both laughed a little.
    "Then I changed him to another school, because the coach was putting too much pressure on him, and he didn't know how to handle pressure yet. He'd bomb out in the third quarter of a race." John had never run a step, but he understood the third quarter. I really admired that. "So his junior year I got him to Lou Rambo, and Rambo just let him come along easy, and discover self-discipline for himself. That was the main reason he did such good running his senior year..."
    We watched Billy's slender figure pass again and again, his Tiger flats making scarcely any noise on the frozen track.
    "I want him to be happy," said John softly. "I don't want him to go through what I did."
    "I know what you mean," I said.
    "You know," said John musingly, "I was never much of a sports fan till Billy started running. But I find myself fantasizing about a gold medal in Montreal. Of course I realize all the political obstacles in the way of that. And you've been frank with me— you're not even sure he has the speed to compete internationally. But . . . supposing it happens? I can see him standing on the podium with that medal on his neck and the band playing Oh Say Can You See. And you know, it's not the medal for its own sake, or just that I'm proud of Billy. I see it as propaganda too. It would be an incredible moral victory for us."
    He was articulating something that I had already thought many times. I hadn't dared to express the thought to Billy, but I knew that it was on his mind. It, precisely, was what drove him to strive for the trip to Montreal.
    I laughed a little. "The ironic thing is ... to make boys like Billy, we have to fool around with women."
    John laughed too, and lit a cigarette.
    "I've got two boys down in Pennsylvania," I said. "One is fifteen now, the other is thirteen. I haven't seen them since my wife divorced me. I'm thinking that one of these days I ought to go to court and demand my right to see them. I tried to visit them at first, but she made things so unpleasant that I stopped going. But it's probably too late now. I'd be a stranger. And she's probably taught them to hate me."
    John's smile vanished. He didn't look at me, but his eyes were squinting in the winter sunlight. They were full of pain as he watched Billy pass again:
    "What I don't want to be, though," he said, "is the father who pushes his son to achieve things for his own ego's sake."
    "Listen," I said, "you don't have to push this one to Montreal. I've got all I can do to hold him back. He's like a crazy young horse with the bit in his teeth. Do me a favor, and tell him to be more obedient with his training program, or we're