For the first part of Chapter One, click here.
“And away they go,” the race announcer yells over the public address system. Billy Brailes, as he likes to be called, has practiced this race call for weeks. Forever after, he will be part of the pantheon of great race narrators once Dash Thorogood breaks four. Brailes is in the middle of a lackluster career calling horse races. Nine to an afternoon. Sometime after the seventh the bottle comes out. But not today. The failed stage actor is sharp as a tack.
Dash Thorogood goes straight into the lead. The stadium erupts into a wave of noise that builds as he extends the gap over the first half-lap. A giant clock with a sweep second hand decorates the upper corner of the stadium wall at the end of the backstretch. Dash needs four laps of 60 seconds each to break four. He sneaks a peak at the clock as he comes around the far turn and sees that the first 220 yards — a half-lap — was a quick 27 seconds.
“Ease up,” Dash thinks. Going out full gas has long been his tactical weakness. Ever so carefully he backs off the pace. He knows there are eight runners chasing him, including that appalling German. What’s his name, Dash wonders, passing through the first lap in a smooth 58 seconds.
Dash is 24, an American from Chicago raised and schooled in England. He is tall for a distance runner, an inch over six feet. He is lean, of course, but not bony. Hair wavy brown. Eyes robin’s egg blue. White cotton singlet with the diagonal royal blue stripe matching blue shorts. Black kangaroo leather racing flats with inch-long spikes.
Dash hears footsteps on the cinders behind him. Based on the short, choppy gait, he knows it’s that arrogant German whose name still eludes him.
“Luther closes ground on Thorogood,” intones Bill Brailes. He has wisely let the race play out in silence, letting Dash unfold the narrative. But now he jumps back into the discussion. “And the question remains: can Dashiell Thorogood break the four-minute mile, or will the best laid plans fall to pieces?”
Luther. That’s the Nazi’s name, Dash remembers. Wolf Luther. Or is it Luther Wolf? Either way, how German.
He realizes the nervous crowd has been quieted by Luther’s comeback. They do not cheer as a united stadium anymore, but in sections, roaring as Dash and Luther pass their rows.
Dash peeks again at the clock. 1:28 for 600 yards. Still faster than four-minute pace. Yet his Aryan shadow draws closer.
And Luther is Aryan. In every way. Tall, blond hair, blue eyes. Almost albino. His only flaw is that sloppy stride: knees not coming quite high enough, hands coming across the midline of his chest, the right arm flopping wildly outside like he’s conducting a symphony. Dash doesn’t judge a man based on his character so much as his gait. Supinating is a sign of personal weakness. Those busy arms show a lack of running economy. Absolutely nothing about Wolf Luther scares Dash.
Dash passes two laps in 1:59. Still on pace. He doesn’t look over to the right, where his father scrutinizes the stopwatch in his fist. Nor does he listen for the sound of Luther’s footfalls. He knows what to do and when to do it. Today he will make history.
“Halfway to immortality,” celebrates Bill Brailes, his voice almost lost as the crowd once again makes their presence known.
***
Tim Thorogood is a man of many secrets. Dalliances, assassinations, money with no history. It seems impossible that misdeeds committed in his early 20’s still haunt him. There should be a statute of limitations on sin. The women he has slept with when he knew better and the men he has killed in the name of career advancement live in his head, waking him up most mornings at 3 am., torso soaked in sweat. He never talks about them and they never go away. It doesn’t matter that he is wealthy and powerful. These miscalculations of the moral compass burden his thoughts as he tries to keep out the world.
Other times, like right now, watching his only son striding confidently around this beautiful palace of sport, he is firmly in the present. Clear and focused. He does not think about the men he has murdered, marriage he is trying to save, or the arduous mission he is soon to undertake – a foolish escapade, if Tim is to be honest.
All that matters now is his beloved Dash, and the once-impossible task at hand. Should Dash break the code he will be immortal.
Tim sucks on his pipe as Dash passes two-and-a-half laps in precisely 2:30. He marvels that this child of his own loins, born to a mother whose father almost won Olympic gold, goes through life as such an innocent, devoted completely to a sport requiring enormous self-discipline rather than dallying in the loose morals and easy pleasure of these pacifist times.
“Crush him, Dashiell,” Tim yells across the track as Dash powers through three laps. His voice is so loud and his tone so inappropriate that several working men nearby glare at this posh gentleman as if he needs to behave himself.
Starter Dickie Gardner rings the bell signifying one lap to go. The entire stadium rises to its feet and roars as one, trying to bring Dash Thorogood home.
“Three minutes on the dot,” intones Billy Brailes, though absolutely no one hears him. “Four-minute pace. Spot on.”
The German — Luther, was it? — has fallen far behind.
***
Dash Thorogood hears nothing.
Blood pulses in his ears and narrows his vision, shutting out the world. He has been in this place many times before — this pain cave, as he likes to call it. Dash knows the next minute will require complete focus about bursting through the finish tape stretched across the track by two young women chosen at random from the crowd for their wholesome beauty. He will ignore the burning in his lungs, the lead in his quadriceps, and that piano just now settling onto his back.
Some call it a gorilla. Dash prefers the ungainly heft of a piano — the right angles, the hard wood, that piano wire stretched taut within its body — as his own personal analogy for severe discomfort.
Dash has performed thousands of similar repetitions in those long miles of practice. By rote, he presses his hips forward, keeps his chin up, forces his foot strike to remain just below his center of gravity. He feels an imaginary rope pulling upward from the top of his head, making him run taller, allowing higher knee lift.
Dash does not glance at the clock.
From some other dimension, Dash hears women old enough to know better joining the screaming teenaged girls in slapping their open palms down on the tin siding selling shaving cream and cold beer lining the homestretch.
Dash sprints, though he is already running so fast that he can barely feel the acceleration.
The slender white string denoting the finish line is stretched across first four lanes of the track. It snaps against his chest. Dash raises his arms in triumph.
The crowd is going berserk. He thinks he might have done it. Dash leans over and puts his hands on his knees, unable to catch his breath. The two wholesome beauties holding the finish string bend down next to the miler. “Give us a kiss,” shouts a photographer and they do so, ignoring the sweat and deep breaths as Dash straightens for the photo.
Dash finally looks at the clock. 3:59. He’s done it. An enormous lightness fills his being. To work toward a goal for so long, to sacrifice and struggle, then to see it come true. He thinks there’s no better feeling on earth. He lacks the wartime horrors of Dickie Gardner. The cautionary hover just one iota above disgrace of Billy Brailes.
The haunted past of his father.
Dash Thorogood has only known goodness. He now basks in that sensation.
As bedlam fills the stadium, Dash glances for Tim Thorogood. The two men have worked together for years — not just as father and son, but as dad and coach. Dash knows pure happiness when he sees it, even as Tim Thorogood puffs on the brier pipe and nods his head in approval. No smile. No cheer. But Tim is a crier, as Dash well knows. The taut lips and stifled tears give him away.
The crowd will not sit down, clapping their hands and grinning and looking at each other with amazement. They’ve seen it. They’ve actually seen it in person. What a moment to be at Wembley, witnessing an event unlike anything else they’ve seen in this lifetime.
“He’s done it,” cries Billy Brailes. “There is nothing left to be done but ride his vapor into history.”
Brailes wonders where that comparison came from. Vapor. At first, he is dismayed, thinking he’s shown some form of ignorance or lack of erudition under pressure. The entire stadium heard this gaffe. But then Billy Brailes lightens, reminding himself that quirky sayings are long remembered after an important moment like this. Vapor will become a catch-phrase, he is suddenly sure. Other announcers will copy him. Runners will describe their faster moments as “riding the vapor.” He takes a quick hit on the thimble of rye to his side and basks in his brilliance.
One by one, Dash receives a cordial handshake from the other runners.
No one pays attention to the small group of timers huddled on the infield grass. Their black leather dress shoes are dusted in the chalk of the football pitch. Each man peers closely at their Omega, counting tenths of seconds. An impatient Dickie Gardner saunters over.
“Let’s get on with it. Make it official.”
The starter is handed a clipboard showing the official finish time, compiled through the aggregate times recorded by these six white-haired men in their 60’s and 70’s. Their reaction times have been slowed by age and declining vision. Whether or not Dash’s final time makes history is entirely up to these pensioners, some too proud to wear eyeglasses.
“Four minutes and point-oh-two seconds,” announces their spokesman. James Clifton is almost defiant, believing he should have been assigned the role of starter today. He also knows that the timers must all make a quick trot to their cars before disappointed and besotted members of the crowd find them.
The crowd sees the huddle on the infield. The cheering slowly fades. They witness Dickie Gardner walking over to Dash and shaking his head as he delivers the news. A volunteer can be seen quickly climbing the steps up to the press box carrying a scrap of paper.
Billy Brailes is handed the note. The BBC has patched in a line to relay the winning mark to all of England and ships at sea. “The final time for today’s mile run is” — and here Brailes pauses, not for dramatic effect but because he knows the news will not be well received — “is four…”
In the heart of London, at the Reform Club on Pall Mall, a butler hands an aging lifelong politician a small, folded piece of engraved white card stock. Winston Churchill opens the note and shakes his head. “A pity,” he laments, sipping a glass of champagne.
At Wembley, the collective disappointment of the 35,000 in attendance cuts off everything else Billy Brailes has to say. The boos are not directed at Dash, but at the official timers who have already scurried away from the infield, seeking police protection for the journey through the car park – only to find none.
Dash and Tim find each other. “Chin up,” says father to son. “There will be other races to come.”
Dash heads for the changing room. Pretty girls reach out to him, touching his shoulder in consolation. A brave few lean in and kiss him on his sweaty cheek. He remains gracious, not pushing them away.
Suddenly, Dash feels an arm grabbing his waist and spinning him around. “You’re mine next time,” Wolf Luther spits in a heavy German accent.
“I firmly doubt it,” replies Dash, pulling away and moving on through the crowd.