LONG TIME GONE: AN EXCERPT FROM AGAIN TO CARTHAGE

Quenton Cassidy was once a runner--a great one. Now he was something else. Fortunately, he had always believed in comebacks and second chances. By John Parker PUBLISHED 10/23/2007

He finished, as usual, going hard down the last perfectly straight row of Sidecar Doobey's pecan grove, the flat grass inviting speed and bringing on the old fantasy of being in the final straight of the Olympic 1500, straining to reach the leader, leaning for the tape, and reminding oneself over and over: Go through the tape, go all the way through it, with nothing held back. Just like the old days when he would be out there with Mizner and the guys, running along the sidewalks of Kernsville in pretend slow motion as the half-miler Benny Vaughn did his mock-serious announcer, giving them all funny foreignized names to make them sound more glamorous, doing the play-by-play as they made agonistic faces and leaned histrionically toward the imaginary finish line. Benny had named him Quintus Cassadamius, the famous Greek miler. It struck him for the first time just now--and with a quick flare of pride--that a new generation of dreamy kids might now accord him his own name. In these mock race scenarios Bruce Denton had no glitzed-up fantasy name, a gold medal being about as glamorous as you could get in their little world. Cassidy wondered now if maybe a near miss was worth something, too.

Funny, he thought, I was there in real life, yet running down this lane I go back to the same old fantasy. We few who get to experience both eventually find out that the real thing and the fantasy can coexist in your head. He would love to tell the undergraduates about that. It was the kind of thing they would talk about for hours on training runs. Mize, Nubbins, Burr, Atkinson, Schiller. Old dour Hosford. They were mostly gone now, graduated or otherwise scattered. Off to wars, other schools, wives. Where, oh, where, he wondered, are my light-foot lads? What has become of the old team?

He jogged in from the highway, using the long driveway as a cooldown and was glad he had left the porch light on, dark as it was getting. He toed off the muddy shoes and left them outside, fetching a dry towel from the bedroom but returning to the porch to continue dripping. It wouldn't do any good to shower yet; he would just start sweating again, so he plopped down in an aluminum lawn chair and watched the rainy night come on. He had been wet so long his fingertips were wrinkled. Steam rose from his skin.

He didn't know if it was... Buy it at Amazon.com