Just Deserts (11 page)

“No! I mean, someday he might be … I mean, I think he
will
be.”

“And crossing the desert is part of that?” I questioned.

“Part of it,” she said.

“Great people. So who would you consider to be a great person?” I asked.

“Martin Luther King, Gandhi, Mother Teresa and Nelson Mandela,” Kajsa said without hesitation.

“Those people, of course,” Connor agreed. “But also people like Jackie Robinson, Muhammad Ali and Roger Bannister.”

“The first two I know, but who is Bannister?”

“He was the first person to break the four-minute mile. He's one of my heroes.”

“I see, and Andy, who do you want to put on that list?” I asked.

“Henry Ford, Thomas Edison and Bill Gates.”

One picked humanitarians; the other, sports figures; and the third, people who made a lot of money from their inventiveness. My father would have approved of those last choices for sure.

“Those are amazing people, no question, but as far as I can tell, none of them ever crossed a desert.”

“What?” Connor asked.

“They all did amazing things, but none of them, if I'm not mistaken, ever walked across a desert. Maybe the key is if you want to be great, you should spend your time doing something important instead of walking across a desert. Come to think of it, I can't think of even
one
great person in the history of the planet who ever walked across a desert. Can any of you name anybody?”

“Um … not really,” Connor said.

“Moses,” Andy said.

“Moses?”

“He was a great person. He led his people across the desert to the promised land.”

“He's got you there, Ethan!” Connor exclaimed.

“Do you think so?” I asked.

“I wouldn't have mentioned him if I didn't think so,” Andy said.

“If I recall the story, Moses spent forty years in the desert, sort of wandering around until finally he died
before
they reached the promised land. So if you think about it, not only did he not cross the desert, he died in the desert.”

They looked at Andy for a reaction.

“At least he died trying. That says something about the man,” he said.

“Yeah, it says he
died
. Is that really the role model you're going for?”

We walked along in silence for a while. I figured I'd won our little war of words.

“So if you don't see the point in all this, why are you here?” Kajsa asked.

“First off, you all know that I'm here against my will, and that I'm walking for one simple, pure reason. Money.”

“Money is a pure reason?”

“More pure than anything else I know.”

“And if you do manage to cross the desert—”

“Oh, I
will
cross the desert. There's too much money at stake for me not to.”

“Okay, are you telling me that
when
you cross the desert, you're not going to feel just a little bit proud?” Connor asked.

“I will,” I agreed. “I'll be proud that I got the money.”

Kajsa slowed down and came to a stop, and the three of us did the same.

“I'm afraid I have to … you know.”

“I'll see you three in Tunis.” I started walking again.

CHAPTER TWELVE

THE SUN WAS LOW ENOUGH
in the sky that we were now in the shadows cast by the dunes. I was so grateful for the shade, so grateful that the sun was going to set. I'd never looked forward to dusk so much before. My mind drifted back to that little oasis—really just a small puddle of blue with a few dashes of green. Larson has said we had to travel farther that day; otherwise we could have stayed there. It wasn't much, but compared to the rest of the landscape, it was a little piece of heaven. Walking away from that had been the hardest thing I'd had to do so far.

“You should come and get some food,” Larson said.

He offered me his hand. Slowly, unaided, I got to my feet and limped away, leaving him behind.

“Feet or legs?” he asked as he trailed after me.

“What do you mean?”

“Is it mainly your feet that hurt or your legs?”

“Both, but mainly my feet. Blisters.”

“Are they bad?” he asked.

“Is there such a thing as a
good
blister?”

“Some are worse than others.”

I came up to where the other three were sitting, starting to eat. More white bread was being passed around. In the middle was a steaming pot of something. Larson lifted up the lid and started ladling it out into waiting bowls.

“Grab a bowl,” he said.

“What is it?” I asked.

“Does it matter?”

I shook my head. “Just wondering.”

“Try it.” He offered me a bowl and a spoon.

For a half second I thought about refusing it, the way I'd refused his hand in getting up, but that would have hurt nobody but me. I took it and shovelled down a big spoonful.

“This is good.”

“When you're hungry enough, everything is good. Come and join us.” He patted the mat between him and Kajsa. She moved slightly to the side and smiled.

Carefully I settled in, my knees almost buckling under me as I sat down.

“So I wanted to let you know how well you all did today, especially you, Ethan,” Larson said.

“Why me? We all walked the same distance.”

“But the others are all endurance athletes who followed a specific training plan for months prior to coming here.”

“That's right,” Connor said. “Since you didn't know anything about being out here, you couldn't have done any training.”

I nodded my head in agreement, although I felt like saying, “Way to go, genius.”

“Then you're doing incredibly well,” Kajsa said. “You should feel proud!”

“Not yet. Still no money, so still no pride.” I paused. “I guess in some ways, all that training you three did wasn't really necessary.”

“We won't know about that until we reach Tunis,” Larson said. “But first things first: let me look at your feet.”

“First you want to know about my urine, and now you want to look at my feet. You're into some pretty kinky stuff,” I said, trying to sound funny, but just sounding sad.

“Urine and feet are in the same category. Both involve keeping you moving forward. Take off your shoes and let me look at your blisters.”

“What good will that do?” I asked.

“I can take care of them. Make sure they don't get infected. That would do a lot of good,” Larson said.

“Really?”

“It helped with my feet,” Kajsa said.

“You got blisters?”

“We all got blisters the first day,” she said.

I wanted to say something about Andy's skin being too tough to blister, but thought I'd keep that to myself.

“If he doesn't want his feet looked at, you can fix up mine,” Andy said.

“You all eat and I'll get the first-aid kit. Best we take care of this before it gets dark.”

He got up, and all three of them started taking off their shoes and peeling off their socks.

I put down my bowl and did the same. As soon as my socks were off, the damage was pretty obvious. In spite of the fancy socks with individual toes, there were large, puffy red balloons between both of my big toes and the middle toes.

“That is nasty looking,” Connor said.

“Way worse than my little blisters,” Kajsa said.

I couldn't even see any blisters on her feet. I guess they were hidden underneath the little bandage on the back of her foot.

“Maybe that's one of the advantages of training,” Andy said.

Larson returned with the first-aid kit. “Blisters are not bad,” he offered. He pulled a small knife out of the kit. “I'm going to slice them open to allow them to drain. It won't hurt … well, not nearly as much as the blisters do.”

“Whatever. Do what you need to do.”

He took the tip of the knife and made an incision
along the length of the first blister. It oozed out clear liquid.

“Blisters are just the way your body protects itself. It builds a cushion to protect you. And then that blister, once it's been burst, like this, becomes a callus, and calluses are stronger, tougher than the original skin,” he explained.

I chuckled. “Just what I need, a little philosophy class.”

“What do you mean?” he asked, trying to sound innocent.

“I get it. I understand the point you're trying to make.”

“And what point is that?”

“You're saying that getting hurt makes you stronger and tougher. And because I've been hurt, that should make me tougher … right?” I scoffed. “You're trying to say that the difficulty of completing this trip will make me tougher and stronger.”

“I was talking about your
feet,
” he said. “Blisters becoming calluses. That's all I was talking about. Really.” He paused. “But what you're saying does make sense. You're pretty insightful.”

I didn't feel insightful. I just felt stupid.

He took the knife and made an incision on the second blister, and it burst open, practically spraying out clear liquid.

“But if you want philosophy, I'll give you the most
important piece of philosophy I know.
Moderation in all things,
” Larson said.

“That sounds like something Aristotle would say,” Andy remarked. “He taught the doctrine of the mean.”

“Very impressive,” Larson said.

I wasn't impressed so much as nauseated.

“I took a course in philosophy because I thought it would look good when I applied to medical school,” Andy added.

“Philosophy is useful in all walks of life,” Larson said. He held up a little bottle. “Now this might hurt a little.”

“What is it?”

“Iodine. It will stop the blisters from getting infected and dry them up so the calluses can form.”

He uncapped the bottle. It had a little brushlike applicator, and with it he began painting my blisters. The orange liquid stung. I tried not to show any reaction.

“Aristotle believed in a golden mean that is the desirable middle point between two extremes,” Andy continued. “Courage is a desirable trait, but too much courage produces reckless behaviour, whereas too little results in cowardice.”

I glanced over at Andy, who was looking sickly smug. Okay, we all got it, you know, who Aristotle was. Was he hoping for a cookie?

“Although that specific quote was actually
not
from Aristotle,” Larson put in, and Andy looked a little deflated, which, I've got to say, made me pretty happy.

“It's attributed to the ancient Roman playwright Terence, who was alive about two hundred years after the time of Aristotle, so perhaps he was influenced by him.”

“He probably was,” Andy said, looking to save face.

“But it is a common belief. Buddhists believe in the middle way, while Confucian thought extols the moderate. And of course, carved on the Temple of Delphi are three simple words:
Excess in Nothing
.”

“That's all pretty amazing,” I said, “but has anybody thought about the fact that there's nothing moderate, no middle way, in walking across the desert?”

“You're right, and that's why I personally believe in the second part of the saying:
Moderation in all things, including moderation
.”

“So what exactly does that mean?” I asked.

“It means that if you're moderate in all things, that would be extreme or excess moderation. So you have to have some things you're
not
moderate about, one or two things in which you're extreme, about which you're passionate.”

“And that's why we're here,” Connor said. “Because we're passionate about pushing ourselves.”

“That's why
you four
are here. That's not why I'm here.”

“But you must be passionate about something, right?” Kajsa said.

“Um … sure … of course … everybody is.” I paused. “I'm passionate about getting out of the desert and making it to Tunis.”

“Nothing else?” she asked.

“Nothing else that I want to talk about.”

“There, all done,” Larson said. “You're probably going to lose a couple of those toenails.”

I looked down at my feet. They were orange all around the two toes. I couldn't wait to show L'Orange.

“I used to have a lot of problems with my toenails. I'd lose them all the time,” Larson said.

“But you don't now, right?” Connor asked.

“You can't lose what you don't have. I had them removed.”

“You
what
?” I exclaimed.

“I had them surgically removed. I have no toenails.”

“But that … that's … so
not
moderate.”

He laughed. “It is a little excessive, and in hind-sight, I wish I hadn't done it.”

“Enough about your toenails,” Kajsa asked. “How about if you tell us a story.”

He got up. “My stories aren't that exciting.”

“How can climbing Mount Everest or running across the Sahara Desert not be exciting?” Connor asked.

“You ran across the Sahara?”

“Not all at once.”

“I don't know what that means. Did you do it in stages?” I asked.

“In a way. There were three of us, and we started in the west at the Atlantic Ocean and ran until we reached the Red Sea. It took us over one hundred and fifteen days.”

“In a row?”

He nodded.

“They averaged over seventy-five kilometres a day for those days,” Connor said.

“Come on, that's impossible. Nobody can run seventy-five kilometres a day … any day … let alone for a hundred and fifteen days in a row, across a desert,” I said.

“It does sound impossible, but we made it possible,” Larson said. “Still, it's not much of a story. We just ran, step after step, day after day. Very boring. How about if I tell you about the very first marathon? Does anybody know that story?”