Race

Abstract

Race Kent Nelson (bio) Click for larger view View full resolution Photographs: bird by Mike Baird , hand with stopwatch by Rodrigo Vieira, landscape by Nick Busse Hakim woke early the morning of the half-marathon—six A.M.—the last Saturday in August, though the race didn't start until seven thirty. Sarah, his renter, had to be at the Yeast-I-Can-Do at five, so she made coffee before she left, though never strong enough, and he added a spoonful of instant to the carafe. Sarah had an upstairs room—renting, for Hakim, was an experiment whose verdict was still out. The house was too big for one person, and Hakim liked having the extra money for utilities, which in a small town were expensive. He didn't mind Sarah's peculiarities. She kept an odd schedule, sometimes in bed at seven, sometimes going out with friends and staying out all night. She [End Page 69] was tall and had wild red hair and had come from Vermont to ice climb, though it was summer when people got work and fall when rooms and apartments opened up. She had broken up with her boyfriend, with whom she'd been camping, and maybe because she was twenty-six, half as old as he was, he found himself focusing on her comings and goings more than he wished to. Mornings except Sundays, Hakim drove his truck the three blocks to Main Street, turned on his furnace and annealing oven—it took a couple of hours for them to mount sufficient heat—and came home again for breakfast. That morning of the race, Nia was going to open the shop, though Hakim was scheduled to be back at one for a glassblowing demo. It was almost Labor Day, and he was low on vases, Christmas bulbs, ashtrays and other souvenirs. The opening of school was the end of the tourist season, but it was also the beginning of the doldrums. He needed to do whatever he could before then. He sprinkled shredded wheat into a bowl, cut up a banana and poured in half-and-half and sugar, though he felt guilty for the cream. He had on his lucky red shorts and a T-shirt that had on it a picture of his daughter, Phoebe—eight years old when the photo was made but twelve now—under which were the words I AM A GOOD FATHER. Phoebe was in Tucson with her mother, all of them two years removed from the divorce. In between bites, Hakim tied his shoes, stretched his quads and lifted his hands to the ceiling. On the sill of the bay window above the sink were an assortment of vases he'd made, in which he'd stuck feathers of flickers, jays and owls that he'd picked up on trails, and a gaudy ceramic bird an ex-girlfriend—his first love—had given him years ago in a college art class. Out the window the branches of a leafy apricot tree that never blossomed hung down over the wires from the alley, and against the wall in back, hollyhocks were blooming bright pink, white and fuchsia. A blue, cloudless sky haloed the Amphitheater Cirque above town. Hakim wasn't going to win or place in his age group, but he'd finished two 10Ks earlier in the summer—one at seven thousand feet and with hills—and he'd run trails. The year before he'd done this same half-marathon in 2:11, but though he hadn't trained a lot, his ambition for this race was to break two hours. He punched in Phoebe's cell-phone number and was surprised when she answered. "I was going to leave you a message," he said. "I thought you'd be asleep." [End Page 70] "I was going to call you," Phoebe said. "I set my alarm for seven. Good luck in the race. I know you can do it." "I can do it," Hakim said, "but can I do it in under two hours?" "You will blaze to victory." "I am slow but persistent," Hakim said. "What are you doing today?" "Mom's taking...