Light Lifting Read online

  We’d drive Burner’s car over to the American side, we’d hop the fence and then we’d just watch and wait for about fifteen minutes, trying to estimate how long it would be before the next train set out. We always went one guy at a time because there wasn’t enough space between the side of the track and the wall of the tunnel and you couldn’t risk getting tangled up. It was pitch black in there so we took these little flashlights that we wouldn’t turn on until we were inside and even then you could only get a quick look at where you were and where you were headed. Once, I remember that Burner tried to tape one of those lights to his head so he could be like a miner and see everything more clearly, but he said that the light wouldn’t stay where he needed it and that he had to rip it off after only a few steps.

  When you think about what could have happened but didn’t, it makes you wonder why we weren’t more strategic or careful. We should have timed everything right down to the second, but back then it seemed so easy. We’d crouch down in the shadows beside the tunnel and then if everything looked okay, we’d shake hands and say something like “see you on the other side.” Then the guy going second, the guy left behind, would count it down – three, two, one, go – and that would be it. The first guy would just take off.

  We were always good runners, but ninety percent of racing the trains is just learning to deal with straight fear and the sensation you get from that hot surge of adrenaline flowing through you. It was all about going forward and just trying to stay up on your feet. If you did go down and you felt your leg brush against that damp fur of a rat or you caught your arm on some chunk of metal or got scraped up against the exposed wall of the tunnel, there was no time to even think about it. You just got up as quickly as you could and even though you could feel your pulse beating through an open cut and you might have wrenched your ankle pretty bad, you still had to go on as if everything was working perfectly according to plan.

  It wasn’t really racing at all. There’s no way to actually win in a contest like that and you could never go head-to-head with the trains. This was more about just trying to stay ahead and that’s something completely different. When they set off and they’re just chugging out of the gate, those trains look slow and heavy and it seems like it should be easy to stay out front, especially when you’re working with such a big head start. It doesn’t work like that though. The trains pick up their momentum on the way down into the tunnel. They used to say that once you were in there running, if you ever heard the train coming up from behind, or if you even just caught the sound of that first echo, then that meant you had something like three minutes before it caught up and pulled you under. The other thing they always talked about was the light. They said that if the light ever touched you, if that big glare of the freighter ever landed right on you, then that was supposed to be the end. By that time the rig would be going too fast and even if he saw you the engineer wouldn’t have time to shut everything down and stop. That’s what happened to the kid who lost his arm and leg. By the time they radioed and got the paramedics and the stretchers all the way down there, the kid nearly bled to death in the dark. Then they had to go searching for his missing limbs and I guess they found one on the track and the other one, I think it was the leg, caught up underneath the train. Even after all that, he somehow pulled through.

  Nothing ever happened to me. I must have run the tunnel half a dozen times, but I never heard or saw the train and the only thing that ever pushed me along was the need to get out. It just kept you going faster than you thought you could go and it kept you rolling right up until you felt the ground leaning up again, climbing out. In the dark, just that little shift in the angle of the earth under your feet would be enough to tell you that you were getting closer and you’d probably make it.

  The worst time was the last time. It was my turn to go first and when I came through I was so messed up I knew I would never do it again. As soon as I made it out, I kind of collapsed off to the side, just one step beyond the tunnel. I must have fallen two or three times in there and I had a pretty nasty gash oozing down the front of my shin. I don’t know why, but when I got out, I started throwing up and I couldn’t make it stop. I thought I might pass out because I couldn’t get a clean breath and my stomach was kind of convulsing and dry-heaving. My vision went all blurry and I couldn’t see anything.

  I was laying there in the scrub grass beside the tunnel, kind of curled up in the fetal position when I heard it – that long slow regular blast of the train. Usually Burner and I left a five minute gap between the first guy and the next guy and I was sure that much time had already passed. When I heard the horn again, I knew I’d been waiting too long. There was nothing I could do so I just pulled myself up and tried to peek around the corner of the concrete as best I could. I kept staring down into the dark and I was shaking and shivering now because I was so scared and the sweat was turning cold on my skin. I wasn’t sure if I should try and find some official person and tell them to radio in and watch for Burner, but there was no one around. I was actually hoping that he’d been caught on the other side, or that he’d chickened out, or come to his senses. I didn’t want to think about the other possibility but it still came flashing into my head. For one second I imagined how even at top speed, there would still have to be this one moment, just before the full impact, when Burner would feel only the beginning of it, just that slight little nudge of cold metal pressing up against his skin.

  When I heard the sound of his feet banging on the gravel, coming closer, I thought I must have been making it up. I couldn’t see anything, but I stood in the opening and waved my light around anyway, shouting his name. For a second I thought I could just make him out in the distance, maybe a hundred yards away but then the sound of the train blast rose up again and the whole rig came rolling around the last corner of the tunnel. I saw the big round light and it touched me and filled up the whole space, illuminating everything. I put my hand up like you do when you’re trying to block out the sun and I saw him. Burner was there charging toward me, the only dark space in front of the light. He had this long line of spit hanging out of his mouth like a dog and the look on his face wasn’t fear but something more like rage. The gap kept closing and it seemed to me like the big light was almost pushing him out. I emptied out my lungs yelling up against that bigger noise. I said “Come on, come on,” and I waved my whole arm in a big circle, as if I could scoop out the space between us and reel him in.

  In the end, it wasn’t as close as it seemed. Burner came up and around the corner and he kind of ran me over as I tried to catch him. We had about ten or fifteen seconds to spare before the train came roaring through and that was enough time for us to take off and scramble through the hole in the fence. We knew they’d be making their calls and trying to track us down so we spent the next half hour running and hiding behind a few dumpsters and trying to make our way back to my car. We never had any time to talk about it until later that night when it became, like everything else in our pasts, a kind of joke. We called it “The night Burner pulled a train out of his ass.”

  But that’s the image I keep of him – Burner running in the light and getting away. That’s the one I keep. For those few seconds, he was like one of those fugitives trying to break out of prison and they just couldn’t catch him. The train kept coming down on him like some massive predator and he shouldn’t have had a chance, but he was like that one stupid gazelle on the nature show, the one who somehow gets away even though the cheetahs or lions or hyenas should already be feasting. Burner was one of those fine-limbed lucky bastards, but he was still here and his life, like mine, kept rolling along, filling in all this extra time.

  WE GOT OUR STUFF TOGETHER and left the hotel at around four o’clock with our bags slung over our shoulders. We took a shuttle bus, one of those big coaches with dark tinted windows that ferried the athletes back and forth. On the day of any big race, those buses are tough places, crowded with all kinds of people who just want to be alone. The big-shou
ldered sprinters are the worst. You don’t want to be anywhere near them in the last hours. For them it’s going to be over in ten seconds, good or bad, so they don’t have room to negotiate. You’ve seen them – some of those hundred-metre guys are built up like superheroes or like those stone statues that are supposed to represent the perfect human form, but when the race gets close, every one of them is scared. As Burner and I squeezed our way down the aisle, we passed this big black guy sitting by himself, completely cut off from everything else. He had dark glasses on and big headphones so that nothing could get in or out and he just kept rocking back and forth, slow and silent and always on the beat so you could almost see the music he was listening to. He looked like one of those oriental monks, swaying and praying and perfectly out of it.

  Burner was at the jumpy stage now and he was nearly shaking because we were on our way and it seemed like things had already started. We dumped ourselves into an unoccupied row and right away he started drumming his hands on the seat in front of us.

  “I am feeling it, feeling it,” he said, almost singing, and he had this big goofy grin on his face. It was impossible for him to be still even for a second and he kept drumming along on the seat, hands blurring.

  “It’s the big one today, boys,” he shouted, revving it up.

  “Got to bring everything you got.” Again, way too loud.

  “No tomorrow.”

  The clichés dribbled out of him, but this wasn’t the place for it. There were too many other people around and they all had their own things to take care of. After about a minute, the tall, long-haired javelin guy who’d been sitting in front of us got up and turned around like an angry bear up on his hind legs.

  “You touch this chair again,” he said, and he put his finger directly on the spot where Burner had been banging away on the back of his head.

  “You touch this chair again, and I swear to God, I will twist that skinny piece of shit neck right off your skinny piece of shit body.”

  You could tell this guy wasn’t one of those macho, body builder, roid-raging throwers. He just wanted his quiet and needed his time like everybody else. You wouldn’t know it by looking at them, but most of the throwers are like that, quiet and turned in. They try to make it look easy and some of them can spin a discus on their pinky finger like it’s as light as a basketball, but if you watch you see they never let it go. Some of the others just sit there, rolling the shot from hand to hand, getting the feel for its heaviness as it thuds down into their chalky palms. Those guys are faster and smarter than you think. I heard someone say that all the best throwing performances come from guys with good feet and good heads. I bet the bear in front was one of the good ones. Burner couldn’t retreat fast enough.

  “I didn’t think, man,” he sort of stammered.

  “I didn’t know you were there. Sorry. Sorry.”

  I looked the bear right in the eye, just like you’re supposed to, and I tried to show him that I sympathized and understood. I said “Nerves” as if that single word could explain everything about Burner.

  The guy nodded and he said he knew all about that, but come on. He wasn’t happy, but eventually he settled back down, sort of deflating back into his seat.

  When it was over, Burner gave me this wide-eyed look of relief and pretended to wipe the sweat off his forehead and fling it to the side. Then he rested his head against the window and just watched the traffic going by.

  I looked over at him and thought about all the buses we’d been on together. Almost since the early days as juniors, he’d been on every trip I had ever taken. At first, it was only short hops up to London and back or maybe Toronto, but after a while, as we kept at it and got better and better, we eventually hit the bigger circuits. Now we were only home four or five weekends a year and the rest of the time we were exactly like this, squished up against each other on a bus or on a plane, trying to sleep sitting up or trying to read our books under those little circular lights in the ceiling and always waiting for the next fast-food stop or bathroom break.

  I used to think that a bus full of track people on their way to a meet was like one of those old fashioned circus trains, the kind that used to roll into a small town carrying the big top tent and pulling a bunch of different crazy looking cars, each one painted with curly red and gold swirls. You know the one I mean? In the Fisher-Price version of that train, every animal gets his own car and the necks of the giraffes stick out through a hole in the roof. All the freak show people live in that train: the strongman with his curly moustache and Tarzan outfit; the little-girl contortionist who can roll herself into a perfect circle; the guy who can take anybody’s punch and never get hurt. I used to think that’s what we were like, the track people. Each of us had one of those strange bodies designed to do only one thing. The lunatic high jumpers who talked to themselves could leap over their own heads and if you gave the pole vaulters a good, strong stick, they could put themselves through a third story window. The long jumpers could leap over a mid-sized station wagon and the shot putters could bench press it. Even the fragile looking, super-thin girls with their hair tied back in harmless looking ponytails. Those distance girls might be iron deficient and anorexic and maybe none of them have had a regular period in years, but they could all run a hundred and twenty miles in a week, almost a marathon a day. Those girls had pain thresholds that hadn’t been discovered yet and if they tried they could slow their heart rates down so far you’d actually have to wait between the beats. We all had our special skills, our fascinating powers and we just barnstormed from city to city, performing them again and again in front of different people. Back when Burner and I started with this, every trip seemed like it was part of the tour, part of this bigger adventure, but I wasn’t sure anymore. Sometimes I thought it might be better to be able to eat fire, or swallow a sword or hang upside down on the trapeze and catch my cousin as he flung himself through the air.

  The hydraulic door hissed open when we got to the stadium and everybody bounced off and split-up into their natural groups. Burner and I blended in with a bunch of distance people we knew from other clubs and we checked the schedule to see if everything was running on time. The air was perfectly still and the temperature was right where we wanted it, just inching its way over toward cool. Burner breathed it in deeply through his nose and I caught the way he smiled his small, secret smile.

  “You’re going to have a good one today,” I told him. Sometimes you can just recognize it in other people.

  “Wait and see,” he said. “I guess we’ll find out soon enough.”

  That’s what it’s like when you taper down your training in the right way. There’s just this weird feeling you get when you’re finally ready to race. It’s like you can barely keep your own body under control. In the beginning, when you’re pounding through those early weeks of training and building up your base, you can never get away from the ache of being so deep-down tired and you feel like you’re slowly breaking down, right to the core of your last, smashed cell. Eventually though, time passes and you get used to it. Everything balances out and you can kind of reset yourself on this new, higher level. Then, when you get close to the competition, you cut your mileage right back almost to nothing and start sharpening up and taking lots of rest. It’s the trickiest thing to do correctly but if you can lighten up at exactly the right time, then it all kind of reverses and the hurt you put in earlier comes back out as strength. All of a sudden you feel like you have more energy than you need and everything seems easier than it should be. That’s where Burner was now. I could see it. You maybe get that feeling three or four times in your life, if you’re lucky.

  IF I EVER HAVE A KID, I think I’ll let them participate in the grade-school track meets when they’re little, but that’s it. Before it gets too serious, I’ll move them over to something else like soccer, or basketball, or table tennis. Something with a team or something where you can put the blame on your equipment if it all goes wrong. But when my child is still lit
tle, I’m definitely going to push for the grade-school track meet because it never gets better than that. In the grade-school track meet, you give the kids one of those lumpy polyester uniforms and they turn all excited. They get the day off school and they get to cheer for their friends and maybe they get picked to be one of the four that runs the shiny baton all the way around the circle without dropping it. At the grade-school track meet, they give out ribbons that go all the way down to the “participant” level and if you do well, they read your name over the announcements at school so everybody will know about it. You get to pull on a borrowed pair of spikes and go pounding down that long runway before you jump into the sand. It’s always hot and sunny and maybe your parents let you buy a drumstick or one of those over-priced red-white-and-blue popsicles from the acne-scarred high-school kid who has to ride around on a solid steel bicycle with a big yellow cooler stuck on the front. Maybe the girl with the red hair is there, the girl from the other school, the girl who wins all the longer races like you do. Maybe the newspaper takes a picture, you and the red-haired girl, standing on the top step of a plywood podium, holding all your first-place ribbons in the middle of a weedy field while all the dandelions are blowing their fuzzy heads off.

  That’s how it should always be. The stands should always be full of parents who don’t know anything – people who can’t tell the difference between what is really good and what is really bad – but they’re there anyway, clapping and shouting their children’s names, telling them to “go” and “go” and “go.” You see why it’s so nice. The lanes are crowded with kids clunking their way home to the finish line and trying so hard. They go sailing way over the high jump bar – it looks so easy – and they come down on the other side, rolling softly into those big, blue fluffy mats. It’s sunny and everybody’s laughing and everything is still new.