Stotan! (12 page)

February 2

I qualified for State out of state—in Havre, Montana. Fourth meet of the year and I'm in—at least in the 500. I've never been this strong or in this good a shape. I just keep getting faster and there's no limit. I'm not lifting weights now, or doing any workouts other than in the water, and I've increased my daily mileage by about half. At the beginning of the year all I wanted to do was qualify again, or maybe dare to hope to make it to the consolation finals, but now I don't know; anything could happen.

Before my race in Havre, Max told me that after ten laps I should shoot for the level of fatigue I reached during the worst parts of Stotan Week. I didn't even get
close—the race isn't long enough—but my time was more than three seconds below State qualifying time.

And it may not even matter.

This weekend I got a good look at a rough side of being a human being on this planet, and things may never be the same again.

 

I said the Montana road trip is a bear, but we love it. Last year, even though he was out of school and not swimming, Jeff worked a way to get emergency weekend leave from his Reserve training to go along because it's such a good trip. It's the longest of the season, an infinity of driving and swimming and putting up with each other. Thursday afternoon we begin the 500-mile drive east to swim against the two high schools in Billings on Friday, then shoot another 400 miles north to take on the high school in Havre on Saturday. Sunday it's a straight shot back to Spokane. Most of the traffic we see is snowplows and sanding trucks; we could make the trip faster on a five-passenger dogsled, but the school doesn't have a dogsled, so we fill up the back of the van with oranges and candy bars and head for cowboy country.

Thursday we left an hour later than planned—Cerruti the rat got an extra hour of The Game of Life,
which is what Nortie now calls the Skinner Box—in cold, clear, sunny weather amid high hopes of winning lots of races and losing two meets. Lion had T-shirts made up that said:

 

FROST
SWIMMING

WE'RE NUMBER THREE

 

because there are usually two other teams at each meet.

We barely cross the border into the Idaho panhandle, headed up into the Rockies, before Jeff moves to the portable seat across from Nortie in the back of the van, takes Nortie's book out of his hand, closes it and starts to deal.

Nortie utters a weak “Help, help, save me,” but three years of road-trip tradition will not be denied. There is no escape. Jeff has already informed Nortie they will be attending the same college so Jeff can work his way through playing Gin Rummy with him. It's doubly hard on Nortie because, besides losing nearly every hand, he has to suffer Jeff's derision every time he lays down a card that he'd have known better
than to play had he been paying attention. Nortie never pays attention. “Were you gone to the bathroom when I played that?” Jeff says, or “Good to see you're saving threes. There's two more of them in the discard pile.” Then when Jeff slaps his hand down on the seat, yelling, “Gin!” he sucks his tooth. Nortie dives for his coat, but if he makes it, Jeff blows the ill wind down the sleeve.

Lion's been quiet on this trip. He sketches most of the time we ride and comes to only when we stop to eat, though sometimes you can get him started on a monologue as he draws. Tonight he's not talking much. One of the Billings swimmers is a top-notch butterflyer and Lion is going to have to haul it out to beat him. His silence is a psych-up, though he'll get plenty verbal just before the race. We know he's feeling okay because he packs away everyone's extra fries and pickles and any other tidbit left unattended. He's also stocked the jukebox—a vintage Rock-Ola—with quarters and punched up every rock song in sight, some of them twice, in an effort to block out the other customers' selections, which seem to lean heavily to Tammy Wynette, George Jones and even Gene Autry. Some of the records were in there when this machine was made.

In an hour we're back in the parking lot, ready to
forge on. Snow falls in tiny, feathery flakes and light wind sways the tall lodgepoles back and forth just at the edge of our vision behind the parking-lot spotlights. Off behind the restaurant somewhere a stream, surely outlined in icy white, tumbles over frozen rocks. Max stands beside the van, head cocked, listening and watching; this is home for him. He looks like he'd just as soon head into the little bar, order up a pitcher of beer and sit the rest of the night in front of the big stone fireplace that takes up most of one wall. But he makes a quick phone call on the pay phone just inside the door and we're off. We got places to go, butts to kick.

A half-hour back on the road, I offer Max a breather at the wheel so he can catch a little shut-eye and drive late. He decides it's a good idea and pulls over so we can switch. The snow isn't real bad, but it slows us some because I don't know the road as well as Max and I don't want to be the reason the Frost swimming team disappears from the face of the earth before achieving its appointed destiny.

The light in the back of the van is on and Lion still sketches, calling up to me to change the radio station once in a while and occasionally setting his work aside to stare out the back window into the snowy darkness.
Nortie owes his net worth plus in gambling debts to Jeff, so they've shut down the game for the night. Max is supposed to be sleeping, but I see his reflection in the windshield, and he's awake, staring silently into the snow flying into our headlights, almost hypnotized. Who knows what he's thinking?

About three quarters down the east side of the mountains Max takes over again. I'm pretty sure he hasn't slept, but he says he's rested and wants me to get some sleep for the meet tomorrow. I settle in comfortably, back against the door, feet on the engine cover, and close my eyes. But it just ain't time for the kid to nod off. Watching Max's reflection in the windshield off the greenish glow of the panel lights, I notice what a handsome man he is. He's not classic, certainly not in our culture, but his look is strong—easily powerful. It's the handsomeness of wisdom and self-assurance. I find myself wishing I knew him better.

My wish is granted in a way I would never have expected. Somewhere in the eastern foothills, just before spilling out onto the Great Plains to begin the longest, flattest, most boring ride known to Western man, Max takes a sudden left onto a side road and drives about three miles till we come in sight of a small farmhouse. He turns again into the long driveway and
pulls up next to the snowy front yard. Lion has long since hung up his sketching and sacked out. He sits up and looks around, then drops like a rock without even asking.

The living-room curtains part and a woman's face appears in the window; then below her, in the same window, a child peers out through cupped hands. Max reaches into the glove compartment, removes a pair of mittens and says, “Hang tough, I'll be back in a few minutes.” It doesn't even occur to me to ask what we're doing here. Nortie wakes up and asks where we are and I tell him to go back to sleep. Jeff doesn't stir.

As Max approaches the house, the woman, dressed in a blue velour robe and sheepskin slippers, opens the front door and the little girl shoots past her and down the sidewalk in her snowsuit, arms wide open, takes a flying leap and engulfs Max. The woman disappears back inside, and for the next fifteen or twenty minutes I watch a different Max than I've ever seen. They romp in the snow, throw snowballs—only hers connect—make snow angels. Max carries her around the yard on his back, throws her into the snowbank and tickles her, all to the tune of her delighted squeals. Then they roll up three gigantic snowballs for a snowman, and when it's together, with two really stupid rocks for eyes and
sticks for arms, Max lifts her up to put his hat on the snowman's head.

I'm completely struck that I'm watching Max Il Song romping and playing in the snow with a six-year-old girl in the wee hours of the morning in the middle of nowhere; and somehow I know it's important.

The door to the house opens and the woman stands in the doorway, arms folded, looking patient. Max and the little girl hug and he walks her back to the porch, exchanges a few words with the woman and turns to come back down the sidewalk as the two disappear. The little girl appears in the front window again and waves; Max waves back from the door of the van.

“Thanks for waiting,” he says, sliding back into the driver's seat, like maybe I had a choice; like maybe I was going to drive off and leave him out there in the dead of night at the foot of the Rocky Mountains.

We drive in silence for the next half-hour or so. I wish I knew what I just saw, wish I could find a way to talk to him; but if he wanted to talk, he would. He just watches the snow-covered road and pushes on. He looks sad.

 

“That's what I like about athletics,” Max said after a while, as if continuing a conversation we'd been
having all along. “The rules are so clear. You know the consequences of every act: exactly how many fouls you get; what makes you a player and what takes you out of the game.”

I didn't know what to say, so I nodded.

“That was my daughter,” he went on, and I said, “Oh.”

He was quiet a second, then he gave me a glimpse of what I might be in for if I want to grow up with anything that resembles grace. He said, “You know, Walker, I've worked real hard in my life to make sense of things. I studied Tai Kwan Do for years and years to teach myself discipline; spent a lot of time in the Orient trying to get some different perspectives—my ancestors' perspectives—and I think I've done a pretty good job of becoming conscious.” He was quiet again and I thought I saw a tear in his eye. “I love Allysia like fury,” he said; then with a half-smile. “Even more than her mother hates me. And it kills me that I can't be there for her during this time in her life, while she's growing up and changing every day and trying to make sense of things for herself.”

I said, “I guess you don't get to see her very much.”

“I see her when her mother says I can see her,” he said, and obviously wasn't going into it further.

Max was quiet another mile or two, tapping his fingers against the wheel with a clicking sound I recognized—it was the first time I noticed he had bought himself a Stotan ring too—then he said, “You know, Walker, I'm not a bad man. I try to be straight and I think I'm pretty decent. But no matter how decent you are, no matter how intensely you work toward the light, nothing changes the past. This is a world where you pay for everything you do. Remember that. Life doesn't forgive you because you're young and ignorant. Life only has to be true to itself.”

He looked over at me and smiled. “That doesn't mean you're supposed to live in fear. Just be sure to consider what you do.”

 

“We're going to mix it up in Billings,” Max announces about 10:30 Friday morning as we shoot east across the plains, having spent maybe three and a half hours in the Butte TraveLodge before getting up at 7:00 to push on. We're down out of the Rockies, we've had a good breakfast and we're making good time, with the sky only spitting and the loose snow swirling behind the van as we zero in on Billings. “Walker, you'll do the sprints.”

I cheer. Trading the 50 and the 100 for the 200 and
the 500 gives me a net gain of 550 yards.

“We swim at the college in Havre, and they've got the faster pool,” Max goes on. “I want to rest you a little to hit the qualifying time there. Lion, you'll stay with the 'fly in Billings. Collins will push you good there.” He smiles. “Now we need a volunteer for the distances.”

“Jeff will do them,” Nortie says.

Jeff looks asleep, but he squints one eye open and shakes his head slowly.

I say to Nortie, “If you want me to qualify on Saturday, you got to make sacrifices.”

“You're right,” Nortie says. “I'll sacrifice Jeff.”

Jeff sucks his tooth. Nortie will swim the distances.

We talk strategy for a few miles. We'll swim the freestyle relay, forfeit the medley. Once again we'll lose the meet on second and third places, but we'll show well in our events.

We go back to what we were doing, the interior of the van bright from the reflection of the snow outside. Though the sky is still gray, you almost need sunglasses to watch the road or read.

Nortie explains to Jeff that if he could figure out what reinforces Jeff, he could train him to do anything Nortie wants. “You'd be my slave,” he says. “No more
of this big-red-bully stuff, no more Gin Rummy. You'd be licking my boots.” Jeff sucks his tooth again and blows Nortie over. Lion draws a quick sketch of that, only in the picture Jeff's breath is a surly dragon, and Nortie applauds.

 

We drop the meet to both high schools in Billings, as expected, and blow them away doing it. Lion wins the 100 'fly and is within eight tenths of a second of qualifying time. We're in Billings long enough to swim, shower and get back on the road north to Havre. Jeff is down because his times were slower than last week, so there's no Rummy game. Darkness has already closed in as we pass the city limits and we figure we need to make it at least halfway before stopping. It's more two-lane highway a good deal of the way, but it's mostly flat and straight, so we make reasonable time. Max wants to give us a couple hours to stretch and warm up in Havre tomorrow, so we'll have another quick stay in some cowboy motel along the way and head out early.

I'm up front again with Max, and as we work our way north through the snowy night, I can't help wishing we could get back to that level of intimacy I felt with him last night. But that's over. There's no denial; Max isn't embarrassed or anything, just back to dealing with
what's immediate. I can't help feeling privileged to have been given that glimpse through the window of his life.