Tuesday, October 5, 2010

Glory, Athlete: opening section

The Penn Relays have been held annually at the University of Pennsylvania’s Franklin Field along the banks of the Schukyll River for 112 years running. It is both the oldest and the largest track and field relay meet in the world.

On April 24th, 2010, an estimated record crowd of 54,000 watched Olympic gold medalist and world record holder Usain Bolt anchor home the Jamaican 4x100 to a victory in the USA vs. the World event. He won by a lot and looked damn good doing it. Further details of the other events that week have been greatly obscured.


I

Wind whisks park leaves wet and orange through the streets, a city hallow. By the failing light of a dying streetlamp Speedy wipes clean the fatoil from the burners in his cheesesteak stand. A bright red cap with a stitched P glimmers atop his skull. The hour is long past midnight and little sound comes from the darkened streets but his curse with each premonitory fizzle of the lamp. The leaves make but a whistling scratch as they touch and dance off the empty streets. Somewhere far off the banks of the Schukyll slurp murkily beneath the midnight birdseye of this everlit city.

Ahead and out of those darkened mercurial depths comes a sound of scraping and dragging along the cement clipping nearer by the moment. Speedy looks up and sees hobbling just out of the light of the nearing streetlamp a small and illconceived thing of dubious form. Something ragged beyond all description and seeming not so much to move as to be moved by the broken tethers of a lazy puppeteer. In his background the great brick arches of Franklin Field loom stately and silent and cast a strange colonial context for this meeting imminent upon its proper.

You gettin ready for Bolt tomorrow? the night emits its cackled inquiry. The outline of its shape is but a rumor by the edges of moonlight. Something short and illbalanced, emanating a foul stench of alcohol and subway-piss from the leeward breeze.

I’m gettin ready for everyone, Speedy says.

The shape hobbles a step closer and by moonlight Speedy can trace the lines of the figure. Skin that is darker than his own deep chocolate hue. Broken aviators perch crookedly on a puff of wild unwashed hair. A tattered Phillies jacket bearing the old maroon eighties logo hangs over a bony frame. The figure seems not of a piece but rather a collection of garbaged tangibles, relics sought out from a collective runoff that was better left to run its rotting course undisturbed.

But Bolt's the biggun, says the drunk. And comin here too. I ain't never think I'd a see the day.

I sell cheesesteaks to everyone, Speedy says. He turns on the little faucet and collects water in the rag and then turns off the faucet and wipes down the bleached surfaces.

I'm talkin for your business and shit, man. I'm talkin, like, Bolt, man. They say he's the fastest man on the planet. And we earned him, mayun. This city earned him. Dat's the troof. You think for one second Bolt woulda come here four years ago? Forget that shit, mayun.

Bolt did come here four years ago, Speedy says, and pauses midrub to look up at the figure that has creeped even closer to the stand. And five years ago too. He was on a Jamaican schoolboy relay team.

If the drunk hears any of this he gives no indication of it. Speedy understands that such men are of no caliber or condition to admit mistake or reconsider principles and opinions which they have so firmly established and so clearly professed. Their convictions are the product of a lonesome hour's philosophy and to that hour they pay an eternal and unwavering devotion.

I mean take this city as of recent years, the drunk goes on. It earned that shit. Changes is goin down. Changes has gone down. Two straight pennants for the Phils. A black man in the White House. This city won rights to Bolt.

Speedy starts to inquire as to what one of those might have to do with the other. The drunk speaks cryptically and does not give any real response at all and Speedy understands that for this man it does not matter what the relation is or even if there is any relation beyond coincidental timing. All that matters is what is.

Now tell me somethin son, he slurs, and looks Speedy up and down with a dissaproving smugness that seems eased by an apparent goodwill. Where was you on the night of the twentyninth of October, 2008?

I was right here.

The hell you doing here?

I wasn't doin nothin but sellin cheesesteaks.

You was sellin cheesesteaks? The drunk pschooshes him and sucks his teeth. Lifts his brows, turns his chin in what amounts to a grimace. His voice takes on a highpitched whine before demuring into a terse, wicked, whistling teapot of a cough. Christ man. Do you know what happened in this city on the thirtyninth of October? Of 2008?

Not off top of my head, sir, naw. I don't know no specific dates too well really. I could venture you a guess.

You could venture me a guess. Jesus H. Christ. Then how'd you know what you was doin?

Speedy scratches beneath his cap and then along his beard. His own fur of a dubious caretaking. The faintest hint of what might be silver probing at the edges of his mustache.

Cause I don't do but one thing, he says.

Christ man. That was the night everything changed. That was the night that brought Bolt here. The night the Phils won the series.

He places his greasy palms on the tin counter, fingers a bag of unclaimed Lays dangling by the side. Up closer his stench is refined. Both whiskey and malt liquor to be distilled from within liberal radii of his person.

I was right here, Speedy says. I listened to the whole thing on the radio. Afterwards the people came through the streets.

Youse damn straight they did, comes the guttural response. And he leans forward again so that his metal orbs all crazed and crossed seem to peer out at random angles, as though sighting in those atmospheres events of an equal and terrible exigency. Things only reckonable on a certain wavelength to which he alone is privy. Everything changed that night, he said. After that night we got pride. We got respect.

He proceeds to tell Speedy a story. It is a story of a city not only spited by fate but teased by the promise of it. In the year 1980 all four major Philadelphia sports teams won championships. This was a misjudgement of the deus ex machina according to the drunk. An importunate random coincidence. He said that most of the universe existed on a scale of equality which constantly corrected itself and that most of the twenty-eight years following 1980 were of just such a correction. A measuring of karma. To lose was not enough. The losses must be tortured ones, salted by glimmers of hope and promise. This promise manifested in the form of men. Men like Greg Jefferies. Men like Scott Rolen. Men like Kevin Millwood. Men like Bobby Abreu. Men like Pat Burrell. And yet in each case an agony of failure swept the Delaware Valley with an increasing severity.

Ain't that a bit harsh? Speedy says. Jefferies, Rolen, they were MVP candidates. And Burrell was just overhyped. Ain't his own fault. We just wanted him to make J.D. Drew look bad.

The drunk says that men such as these are best left forgotten. That it doesn't matter what stats they had or how they did at the plate or what they did in the clubhouse. No one cares and no one remembers if they have ever known. The Phillies did not exist in those years nor did the city, not truly. The twentyninth of October in 2008 marked not just the end of that period of nonexistence but the beginning of a new age. The creation of a thing which many are too young to have ever been graced by had they been graced by it at all. All the years of failures and all the agents of those failures swept away by an 0-2 Brad Lidge splitter to Eric Hinske.

The burner has been long clean and Speedy finally ceases to rub its spotless exterior. He excuses himself and pulls down the gate over the counter and latches the gate to the metal U inside and then steps outside the stand and begins to arrange the padlock on the door. He then asks the drunk if the accomplishments of those who had gone before might not even be respected the greater due to their insignificance. That to perservere against impossible odds and without hope of the reward of glory demonstrated a respect for the Phillies uniform. For the sport itself. For the very idea of athletics in broad. For the qualities inherent in a true man which no situation regardless how adverse can exorcise.

We brought them sons of bitches here to win ball games, the drunk says. And we didn't. That's what you call failure. End of story.

Speedy eases shut the padlock to his stand and looks the drunk in the eye. Naught to see there save perhaps the same thoughtless degeneration which cohabitates with him the sweating backalleys and dumpster-shelters and birdshat parkbenches he calls his home. Somewhere off in that vast city gone a train grumbles through the night.

You didn't bring no one nowhere, Speedy says quietly. He tries to explain that failure is not an absolute term as the drunk has suggested. He says that losing and failure are two different things and that to win is not the important thing but rather how the winning is done that truly matters. He asks the drunk if you could really say failure to be defined by things such as wins and losses? He believed the word deeper. To signify not just the lack of an exterior result but rather an internal despair. A loss of faith. He says that you can look at some men and see whether they still believe in their cause and if they do they have not failed. After all he asks the drunk could you say that a man who dies attempting to protect his family from a murderer - and is ultimately unsuccessful in preventing their deaths - is truly a failure?

The drunk heaves into another great teapot coughing fit and Speedy shifts awkwardly beside his stand and looks off into the night. To where and for what he does not know. They stand for a time longer and then Speedy jerks his head to the side.

Gotta catch a train, he says, and starts to move off.

The drunk holds a hand up and bends over again to his knees in the throes of his fit. Speedy halts and then goes again and then halts once more.

Another man, says the drunk, and heaves in again. Another man might find that cough a mine staged.

Another man might keep on walkin to wherever it is he's suppose a go.

I ain't another man, Speedy says.

I know it, says the drunk. You ain't from around here at all.

Sure I am, says Speedy. He looks at his hairy wrist upon which there is no watch but only the lightened skin that still remembers its sunless years. He starts walking and the drunk comes along.

They come to the corner of Walnut Street and and Speedy turns right and the drunk stumbles a correction to his course so that he may follow. They pass the ice skating center and the bank and the the business towers that line the roads penultimate to center city. To the left they pass small alleys with porchlights and garbage bins standing plump and sedate on the curbedges. Off to the south the sidewalk drops off into old trainyards and empty lots that loom filthy and dangerous in the night. The lamplight burns orange on the walk and the drunk peers steadily at his companion.

Hey man, the drunk says. Hey man, now. I rec-erg-nize you, now.

I doubt it.

Fer real man, he says. I ain’t playin. You go to Overbrook High?

Speedy looks away. Looks off to darker side of the street. The stray cats peering yelloweyed like homeless lions into the night. The lights of the cars zipping away on the highway distant. I don’t deal no more, he says.

The drunk shucks his teeth.

Homie. I mean, homie. Cool it man. I mean just cool it, man. I seen your face before is all, man. Like in the newspaper. Fer track. Back in the day.

Oh.

Whats yer name, man?

Speedy looks at the drunk closer. Squints by moonlight to perhaps reread something kindred in his eyes, something overlooked or gone unseen upon first appraisal. They continue down Walnut and under the train bridge to the stoplight at 30th. Two cars zip past. A small liquor store spills a ghastly working class glow out into the night. Atop the door a rusted sign says LIQUOR-SHOP-SNACKS-GOOD EALS with a busted out D. A Coca-Cola sign is the predominant feature of the corner. Speedy looks around for oncoming traffic and then into the store and up at the starless sky and everywhere but the face of the reeking form at his shoulder.

Some people used to call me Speedy, he finally says.

It's chill, it's chill dog, says the drunk, and casts his ragged arms out before him as if to surrender any illdeed to Speedy's plain sight. Hey man, listen. You got seventy cent?

Speedy digs from his pocket eighty-seven cents in change and puts it in the dry pink cup of the drunk's proferred palm. His nails are untrimmed and long like a witch's and curve from his bent fingers across the length of his hand and Speedy can hear the coins crackle against the manacled keratin.

You got fortyfive more cent? the drunk asks.

No, says Speedy.

It's chill, it's chill.

The light changes and the drunk comes with Speedy across the street and towards the bridge. With a bend in the street they can see the river and the skyscrapers of center city beyond it. Great rectangles with rows and rows of lights extending back into lines like metal dominos. Infinite caverns and hollows to be read in the spaces between. At their foot the Schukyll runs black and strong in its cleaving of the city. The lamps along its bankpaths make a shimmer of its surfaces. Its depths plain and frightful in the empty darkness, tamed now by neither traffic nor sunlight.

Hey man, the drunk says. What ever happened to you? What'd you stop runnin for? You was good right?

They walk in silence to where Walnut crosses 76. The drunk halts to a stop.

Wasn't never my choice to stop, Speedy says. He tightens his coat around his neck. He nods forward. I'll see you later.

He walks a few steps. The drunks does not acknowlege his farewell in any shape. Then he calls out.

You ain't got too much Philly pride, he calls. His voice seems to whisper up from the streets, as if made of sentiments coagulated from the urban distances and reprised to his ear.

Does you, he calls again.

Speedy ignores him and walks ahead with a quickened gate. At this harried shuffle a favoring of his right leg is plain to see. Near the center of the bridge he turns.

The drunk stands beneath the blinking yellow traffic light. Lit at intervals and at intervals invisible so as to protect half the world half the time from that paupered nightmare. His eyes wordlessly and shapelessly monitor Speedy's progress. He stands as if he has not spoken at all but rather is audience to something else altogether. Of his calling. To which he is but symbol and soothsayer and no more.

No one wears a redder cap than me, Speedy calls to him. We just ain't rootin for the same thing. I'll tell you that much right now. I may not know much but I can tell you that right now. We sure as hell ain't rootin for the same thing.

The drunk gives no indication that he has heard nor that he has even noticed Speedy turn. As if he had crossed not just a bridge but breached some liminal oratory spectrum in that crossing. As if the looming towers framing in dark pastels that lonely scene rendered null his senses, forbade his comprehension. Speedy continues on farther into the city and does not look back again.

***

Now he moves along the streets alone as is his custom with balled fists in the sidepockets of his jacket and the vicarcollar pulled up around his nape. The burning calentured embers of a city night brushing his coattails and carrying him forth. Though his speed betrays his catch it exudes a vigor altogether unknown to this part of town and to this time of night. The streets become pliable, bend to his will. Cars speed up to pass by him in the road. Bikers do not stop at stop signs and continue on with their helmeted heads down to the spokes of their wheels as if safeguarding their eyes from some harmful visage in that focus. Women cross the road to avoid close contact. Other haggard men approach him with all the diplomacy of a foreign delegate, eyes eager to seek armistice already at ten paces afoot, holding up their hands as if to disavow themselves of illdoing, haggling for crack and pixie dust and mescaline and worse yet. An elderly genderless hunchback stooping in the lee of a stoop makes for a narrow alleyway from which it tracks his passing across the alleymouth with a full ninety-degree turn of its neck. Its eyes set deeply back in the skull and black and unreadable beneath folds of ribbed flesh and a torn fedora. Movements which betray a certain prejudice, an unspoken suspicion. A city which fears him because he does not fear it.

At Rittenhouse Square a policeman casts his light across the dewy grass and follows Speedy's movements with the temerity of a searchlight prowling the seas it has been charged with keeping. The white sphere of hallogen covers his back like a target until he moves out of range across 18th. The parkbenches are empty and beneath the white lamplights in the park moths aspire heavenward. Relentless, colliding, seeking to become undisturbed. Speedy tucks his fists closer together from within his jacket and tigthens his shoulders and limpstrides on.

The PATCO is off of 16th street. By the little firered bannister heading underground there is camped a denizen of homeless on a ratty afghan unrolled to accomadate their streetwise flanks. Their eyes dimly ruminate something mirthworthy and a few them emit toothless and worn out bursts of sounds that could be construed as chuckling. The one nearest the entry as if fulfilling an ageless tradition or ritual holds up sullenly and hopelessly a foam cup in which chatter a few sad nickels and pennies. Speedy finds a dollar bill in his wallet inside his coatpocket and removes it from the fold without exposing the wallet to the pathogen that is the air and drops it into the foam cup.

God bless you, the homeless manages, and a small impoverished chorus echoes, echoes his footfalls down the long dank stairway and into the hollow keepings of the subway. The hall at the foot of the stairs is long and well lit and tenanted by nothing save an overstuffed trash can that spills haphazard from its appointed nook into the hall. Onelegged pigeons and blind pigeons and tarstained pigeons and pigeons without toes forage therein. Some follow him partway down the hall to the next set of steps yet lose their ambition when he turns back to regard them expressionless, oiled, sweating. As if they too had come to see whatever it was the aboveground had seen in him and judged him accordingly better left companionless.

The PATCO train is huffing and hissing in wait and the platform stands dusty and cavernous smelling and absent of a single soul. On board there are a few drunk college girls huddled together in the back laughing about something and when Speedy comes aboard they cease their laughter. As if his presence had brought with it a gust of something to water all fires of mirth. He limps quickly to a seat near the front and lays his head back upon the plastic pukecolored headrest and lets out a deep sigh over his beard and shuts his eyes.




Song of the Day: Bruce Springsteen's The Wrestler










© Justin Heinze 2010