SPECIALBOOKBONUS

And They’re Off! On the Greatest Footrace in History. Part 3.

The first four chapters of Flanagan’s Run were published in our last two issues.

Chapter 5 THE START

“Ladies and gentlemen!” Charles C. Flanagan cleared his throat and boomed into the microphone. The sound set a flock of pigeons fluttering above the Roman pillars of the Los Angeles Coliseum. He was standing on a wood dais in the center of the stand in the home stretch. Beneath him, in the bright spring sun, were over two thousand runners circling the track and stretching far out into the stadium parking lot. The Coliseum, which for the past hour had been entertained by an endless succession of acrobats, clowns, and brass bands, was full to the brim.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” Flanagan roared again. “This is indeed a historic moment.” He looked across at the stadium clock. “In ten minutes there will be set in motion the greatest professional long-distance race in the history of mankind, a race in which the cream of the world’s athletes will set out to cross the great continent of America. Each man is a Columbus, for he steps into the unknown, attempting to achieve a conquest that has never before been attempted by any athlete. I wish all of you, each man and woman among you, good fortune. My task is to ensure a fair and honest race. This I will endeavor to do.”

Flanagan half turned toward the celebrities seated behind him on the dais. “Some of you will already have recognized the distinguished celebrities who have consented to grace this occasion . . .

“Mr. Buster Keaton!” All eyes focused on a glum little man on Flanagan’s right.

“Miss Mary Pickford!” There was a ripple of applause as Flanagan moved to one side to reveal America’s darling.

“That great athlete, the fastest man in the world, Charley Paddock!” Paddock, now a plump, moon-faced man, stood up and nodded to the runners.

“The former world’s heavyweight boxing champion, Mr. Jack Dempsey!” Dempsey, lean and bronzed, stood up and clasped both hands above his head, boxing-style, turning to left and right.

“And finally, a man I am privileged to count as a friend, a man who is both great actor and great athlete, the man who is today going to set you all on your way across America… Mr. Douglas Fairbanks!”

Waves of applause broke out on all sides. Fairbanks was well known as a fitness fanatic, an actor who insisted on performing his own stunts. Though the advent of the talkies had caused his star to wane he was still immensely popular: the world’s Mr. America.

Looking up, Hugh McPhail thought Fairbanks much smaller than he had expected. Plumper too; Fairbanks was already showing a second chin, and his double-breasted suit strained at its pearl buttons. However, as he stood with both arms out, his teeth flashing in a wide smile, Fairbanks exuded glowing animal fitness.

“My friends,” he said, stilling the applause with raised hands. “When I first heard about Mr. Flanagan’s race my first thought was to enter myself.” There was laughter. Fairbanks waited until the stadium was again silent. “Happily, wiser counsels prevailed. Sure, I’m an athlete, I love athletics, but long-distance running was never my strong suit. Jumping, vaulting, capturing pirate ships, rescuing maidens in distress”—he gave a sidelong glance at Mary Pickford—“that’s my bag. Even now I’m just off the set of Around the World in Eighty Minutes. I guess you fellas will take just a little longer to reach New York!” Again there was laughter, and again Fairbanks raised his hands and shook his head. “Seriously, I feel deeply honored to be here. I suppose in some way this race represents the Great American Dream. Sure, many of you guys and gals have seen hard times. But now, with one throw of the dice, you can change it all, here in the Trans-America.

“As Mr. Flanagan has just said, this is the greatest footrace of all time and it is both my pleasure and my privilege to start the competition.” He lifted from a table a massive double-barreled shotgun. “So: ladies and gentlemen, get to your marks…”

Every muscle in the throng before him was tense, the Coliseum quiet but for the shrill cries of wheeling Pacific gulls skimming through its Roman pillars. Fairbanks looked down at the cinder track below him, at the runners coiled in row upon row around the green infield. They reminded him of some still, vital creature waiting to be unleashed.

On the track below, Doc Cole likewise looked around him. Two thousand men and women waiting, poised, to rush across a continent . . . Just behind him were the swarthy Scot, McPhail, the strange limey, Lord Thurleigh, and the lean,

impassive Finn, Eskola. A few rows farther back stood four of Williams’ All-Americans, dressed in white silk stars-and-stripes shirts, and in front of them four crewcut, sun-blackened young Germans. In the same row crouched the British veteran, Charles Fox, wrinkled and white, eyes almost closed, waiting for the start.

Standing beside him was a slim, attractive young woman, wearing a white shirt with the words NEw york printed in black front and back. The girl looked poised and confident, and Doc wondered how many other women were sprinkled throughout the field. Whatever the number, he could not see any of them making it as far as Las Vegas, let alone New York.

“Get set…” Fairbanks played the moment to the hilt, sensing the tension. His finger tightened on the trigger of the Winchester.

“~.. Go!” The explosion of the gun, the roar of the crowd and the din of the massed infield bands seemed to come as one. Immediately the runners started to move, like lava pouring down a mountainside. Some runners, excited by the dramatic preliminaries, sprinted through the crowds, skidding, stumbling and falling as they bumped into slower, more cautious runners ahead of them. Others simply stood still waiting for space to open up in front of them. Yet others set off in a jaunty, hip-wobbling walk which drew raucous jeers from the crowd. For thirty minutes the mob streamed around the stadium waving and shouting to spectators as they covered two miles of the track before leaving for the open road. Then they moved out into the parking lot, through the noisy jangle of Flanagan’s carnival, out into the crowded car-lined streets of Los Angeles.

Doc waited till the group ahead of him had departed, then launched into a bandy-legged jog trot. He looked at his watch. Twenty-nine miles to go: that meant about five hours of running. He wore no socks and his shorts were brief and wide. On his head he wore a sweatband and a peaked white cap. In his right hand he carried a white handkerchief, which he had knotted around his wrist. Hooked to his waist was a small water bottle. It was a long, long way to New York, and it would be a long time before he would give any thought to racing. For the present it was a matter of getting out of L.A., and of running at steady ten-minute miles today and every day. If he could keep doing that he would be around somewhere at the finish.

Ahead and around him Finns, Scots, Americans and English mingled and jostled with Turks, Africans, Chinese and Samoans. Bearded, long-legged Sikhs strode beside tiny, pattering Japanese; slim, brown Californian women beside men from the industrial towns of northern England. On their shirts were advertised the wares of Hull, Calcutta, San Francisco, Budapest and Edinburgh. Some ran in modern shorts and shirts, others in equipment that had not seen the light of day since the turn of the century. Others ran in track suits, walked in ordinary daytime clothes, or even carried sticks. Doc saw at least one blind man and two men without arms.

The variation in speed was remarkable, ranging from fully dressed walkers striding out at a sedate 4 M.p.H. through to trained athletes running over twice as fast. There was no way that could be kept up, thought Doc; not for sixteen miles, let alone twenty-nine.

He hardly seemed to be moving, pegging along at a steady chugging gait, heel first, his nut-brown bandy legs gobbling up the rutted, dusty road. Yet all around him runners were already falling back, some dropping to a jog trot, others to a walk. Some, having completed less than five miles, stopped and simply sat by the roadside, sobbing with fatigue, gaping at the stream of runners that poured through the crowded sidewalks east out of the city.

Doc had anticipated neither the dense traffic nor the crowds. For the first ten miles cars were parked two or three deep, and thousands of clapping, cheering spectators lined the route, leaving only a narrow channel for the runners. Ahead, forging a path for them, were Flanagan’s Trans-America bus, the Maxwell House Coffee Pot—a grotesque jug-shaped refreshment van—and a train of press buses.

Hugh McPhail had been sucked in by the early pace, and had gone eight miles through the channel of cheering crowds, also running in the wake of the Coffee Pot, before he realized that he was running much too fast. He dropped back and joined a lean, tanned runner, attired in silk shirt and shorts.

“How goes it?” he asked.

There was no reply.

“Suit yourself,” said Hugh, continuing to run at the same even pace, and the two men pressed on in silent tandem. Behind him the four young German runners flowed on like so many smoothly oiled pieces of machinery. None was much older than twenty-one. All were burned black with the sun. At their side, on a motorcycle, cruised their team coach, a bull-necked German with a stopwatch looped on a cord round his neck. “Langsam,” he shouted. “Langsam!” and the young Germans obediently slowed.

Not far behind were the Williams’ All-Americans. Like the Germans, they ran as a team, their fat coach behind them in the back of an open Ford, shouting out instructions on a megaphone. “Relax,” he bellowed, as they made their way up a slight incline. “Stay loose.”

Close on the heels of the All-Americans was little Martinez, clad in close-cut shorts and white shirt, flowing along with light, springy strides. He was hardly breathing. Just ahead of him was the Pennsylvanian, Mike Morgan.

At a hundred and fifty-five pounds, Morgan was heavy for a distance runner. He had a dark, copper-colored body, with clearly defined musculature. Martinez watched the muscles of Morgan’s back flutter and ripple as he ran, flexing and relaxing on each stride: the Pennsylvanian ran impassively, no sign of effort on his face, its only hint showing in the tiny streams of sweat which ran in rivulets

down the muscles of his chest and back. Morgan checked his wristwatch. Twenty miles to go. No problems.

They were out in the country now, between Montebello and La Puente. The crowds had thinned and the only immediate problem was the exhaust fumes of the surrounding cars. Doc wiped his handkerchief across his face. All around him men were fading. On the side of the road a man sat whimpering, his bare feet ripped and bloody.

The race had already divided into four identifiable groups. First, there were the trained athletes, men with thousands of miles in their legs, running to their trainers’ orders or to the metronome of past experience, steadily making their way through the twenty-nine miles to Pomona. Behind and among them ran fit, hard men who had little experience of competitive racing, men who hoped to flower into athletes in the weeks to come. At the back of the field two other groups emerged. Both were novices, but the members of the first, driven by desperation and strength of will, somehow dragged themselves through the long miles of the first stage. Those in the second group, mind and body shocked even by the efforts of the first five miles, were broken before the field had even pierced the suburbs of Los Angeles.

The Trans-America was thus already spreadeagled along the road east from Los Angeles. From above, in the buzzing Pathé and March of Time newsplanes, the field could be seen, even after only fifteen miles, to stretch over a distance of six miles, snakelike, hardly seeming to move.

* Eo *

For Doc it was an easy run. Twenty-nine miles, no big hills, no real problems. Ten miles from home he cruised past the Germans and the All-Americans, dragging with him Morgan, the broad-shouldered, flat-nosed man he had noted the day before in the hotel. With a mile to go, Doc had passed all but a runner in tartan shorts and his companion, Lord Peter Thurleigh. Together Doc and Morgan pressed on toward the finish of the first stage.

From the brow of the hill they could see laid out on the dry, broken plain the vast tented camp that Flanagan had built for the race: twenty separate dwellings, each capable of holding one hundred runners, and in the center a giant food tent. Doc and Morgan trotted down the hill, happy to come in half a minute or so behind the two leaders.

Doc checked his wristwatch as they passed the finish.

“T reckon we made around five hours,” he said, easing down as he approached the rows of notice boards which detailed the accommodation arrangements. Doc and Morgan together scanned the boards and finally located their tent.

“Looks as though we’re bunking down together,” said Doc.

Together they walked through the rows of tents, finally picking out the one allocated to them. Beside it, in a separate tent, the washing facilities were primitive.

There were only a dozen buckets of cold water and a number of rough blue towels. However, Doc had earlier noticed a river a few hundreds yards beyond the camp.

“Looks like there’s a creek nearby,” he said to Morgan, picking up his towel. Morgan nodded, and a moment later had joined Doc on the walk across the rocky plain toward the creek. Once there, Doc sat down on a rock, put his towel around his neck and let the water splash over his feet. He put out his hand to Morgan. “Name’s Alexander Cole,” he said formally, then added: “Most folks call me Doc.”

Morgan responded with a firm grip. “Mike Morgan,” he said, kneeling down and cupping the clear water in his hands and lapping it like a dog.

Their bodies streamed with sweat, and the taste of the water from the stream came as a pleasant shock.

“You run long distances before?” asked Doc.

“Not much.”

“Me, I been running most of my life, one way or t’other,” said Doc. He took hold of one of his feet, rotating it so that the sole was upwards. “Reckon these feet have done one hundred thousand miles. Time for a new pair.”

They sat in silence, relishing the cool water flowing over their feet and legs. Then they walked back from the creek together, their towels draped over their shoulders. The elder man felt uneasy in Morgan’s company. Morgan was not exactly unfriendly, yet he made no positive response. Doc always felt uncomfortable during silences, feeling obliged to fill them with speech, however inconsequential.

He looked up the hill, now dotted with runners descending on the camp.

“Poor devils,” he said. “First day, last day, for most of ’em.”

As the two men came nearer to the camp they were able to view more closely the condition of the latest arrivals. Some, the trained athletes, had experienced no problems and mostly stood drinking and chatting at the Maxwell House Coffee Pot, the sweat streaming from their lean bodies. Others sat on the ground, propped on their hands and knees, gasping, while others lay on all fours, like dying animals, groaning and sobbing. Some were carried off on stretchers by the waiting medical staff. Others simply limped off to their tents.

“Like Bull Run,” said Doc. Indeed, the scene was much like a battleground. Runners continued to trickle from the hill above, but these were no longer competitors, no longer even runners. They either walked, limped or staggered. Some came in by truck or car, to be immediately disqualified.

“One thousand eight hundred and twenty-three,” boomed Flanagan through his megaphone. “One hundred and eighty-nine to come!”

Flanagan’s bellowed instructions continued to fill the evening air. The area beyond the bannered finish was now littered with men and women, the broken remnants of the first thirty miles of C. C. Flanagan’s Trans-America. Doc threaded

Andy Yelenak

his way between the sobbing casualties toward the tent marked “Fizz,” the name of the root beer company which had supplied it.

On reaching it he pointed toward a roped-off area fronted by a notice board bearing a list of names. He squinted at the list.

“Cole, Morgan—that’s us. McPhail, Martinez, Lord Thurleigh,” he read. He paused, bringing his face closer to the paper. “Jesus, what in God’s name’s a Lord Thurleigh?”

From inside the tent an arm rose languidly from a bed. “Peter Thurleigh. I don’t believe we’ve been formally introduced.”

A man in silk shorts and shirt rose and offered his hand. He was blond and tanned and had piercing blue eyes.

“Alexander Augustus Cole,” said Doc, introducing himself yet again.

Thurleigh’s grip was weak. He did not shake hands, rather he allowed his hand to be shaken. He ignored Morgan altogether and resumed his seat, lying back with his head pillowed in his hands.

“You spoke last week to the press,” he said. “Aren’t you some sort of doctor?”

Doc nodded sourly. “Some sort of.”

“Good,” drawled Thurleigh. “Might come in handy later.”

The British runner turned over in his bed with his back to Doc, the interview over. Doc shook his head and moved on to his bunk, a rough camp bed. On the bed next to him lay Martinez, mouth open, snoring. On the other side Hugh McPhail was peeling off his shoes.

“Evening,” said Doc. “Name’s Cole, Alexander Cole.” McPhail looked around, lifting his hand to grasp that of his companion. “Hugh McPhail.” He stood to greet Morgan.

The Pennsylvanian introduced himself, shook hands, and moved over to his bed.

Doc looked around him. “Looks like this is going to be our little family for the next three thousand miles. God willing.”

“What’s God got to do with it?” asked Morgan tersely.

“God sure as hell didn’t intend the human foot to hit the ground six million times in two months,” Doc replied. “Stands to reason we’ll all need His help if we’re going to reach New York.”

There was no reply.

“Time for the trough,” said Doc at last, rising. Morgan and McPhail rose with him, and Martinez, jerking himself to the vertical as if being snapped out of an hypnotic trance, scampered behind. Peter Thurleigh lay still, as though he had not heard.

The tent stank, as the men divested themselves of shirts and shorts. It was an exotic aroma, compounded of sweat, feces, urine and grass, with just a hint of vomit. It was the air they were going to breathe for the next three months.

In the vast refreshment tent about a thousand men and women ate, their utensils clinking noisily on tin plates. They sat on benches, eating from wooden trestle tables set in long rows.

“Sure ain’t the Ritz, but itll serve,” said Doc, sitting down with his food, and flanked by Morgan and McPhail.

True, the fare was not princely. Hamburger and beans, followed by the obligatory apple pie, washed down by hot coffee.

Morgan said nothing, eating his food with almost a cold fury. McPhail gobbled his, hardly pausing between one gulp and the next. Martinez held his face close to his plate, using his fork as a shovel. In the middle of mouthfuls he gulped down his coffee, sloshing both food and liquid into his mouth before swallowing it all like a seal.

Doc watched his companions without comment. It was clear to him that for them even such a meal was rare. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “Looks like that’s dinner,” he said, looking around him. The men finished their meal and walked to the tent exit.

They blinked as they came from the gloom of the tent into the thin evening sun. “Jesus H. Christ,” said Doc, stopping, hands on hips. “I’ll be damned.”

On an open patch of grass stood a black Rolls-Royce. Beside it was a wooden table. On the table stood a gleaming silver salver, plates and silverware, while in an ice bucket stood a bottle of champagne. At the side of the table a butler stood stiffly, impeccable in black evening dress, a white towel across his right arm. On a wood camp chair sat Lord Thurleigh, dressed in a dark business suit, sipping wine and calmly dissecting what appeared to be roast turkey.

* Eo *

Dixie Williams stood by Flanagan’s massive, gaudy Trans-America trailer and watched the runners come in. She had been watching for almost two hours. Never had she imagined it would be anything like this. Indeed, she had given no thought to the nature of the Trans-America when she had won first prize in a “Miss Trans-America” competition and found that it constituted an “advisory” position in the footrace. If she had imagined anything at all it was that the TransAmerica would be a form of high school dash, with the competitors coming in at the end of each stage breathing heavily, but a few minutes later sipping Coke with the girls at the soda fountain. But never this.

True, some runners came in fresh after the thirty-mile stint, and it surprised her how old many of these men were. They were almost skeletal, the muscles of their thighs standing out like those in drawings from an anatomical chart. She wondered how such sinewy bodies even managed to exude sweat, for they seemed to be entirely composed of muscle and bone. Yet sweat they did, and in profusion, as they stood talking together at the Coffee Pot, drinking endless containers of iced coffee.

Oddly enough, they did not act like competitors, but more like friends who had simply been out together for a long run on the road. There they stood in the thin evening sun, chatting easily, stripped to the waist, their abdominals rippling like washboards, their bodies still winter-white, while the remaining competitors continued to stream down the hill into Flanaganville.

As her gaze wandered she could see too that the condition of many of the competitors was desperate. Some staggered or walked in, their shirts clotted with sweat, jackets and jerseys draped over their shoulders or around their necks. Some had taken off their shoes and had walked or limped the last miles, their bare feet or stockinged soles now caked with blood. Littered across the vast field competitors lay on their backs, knees bent and chests heaving, or, like animals, propped themselves on knees and hands, coughing and spitting. Dixie felt tears well in her eyes, and then, turning, was surprised to find the journalist Carl Liebnitz standing beside her. He took off his steel-rimmed glasses, polished them and finally replaced them on his nose.

“IT wonder if your boss Charles Flanagan really knows what he’s gotten himself into,” he said. “Some of these poor souls have come straight from the soup kitchens. They won’t make it as far as Barstow, let alone New York.”

Dixie did not know how to respond. “At least they’ll be better fed here,” she said defensively, wiping her eyes with her handkerchief.

“Yes,” said Liebnitz. “Perhaps they will.” He gazed for a moment without speaking, then excused himself and walked off, picking his way between the prostrate bodies of exhausted runners until he had reached the press tent.

Dixie looked across the vast field. On her right were the twenty massive white tents that housed the Trans-America athletes. She walked idly between them and half glimpsed, in the dim gloom, naked men sponging themselves down from buckets of cold water.

She passed two hysterical, weeping women, supported by attendants, and a moment later saw she had reached the circus trailers. Madame La Zonga, standing outside her trailer, was slowly unwrapping a snake from her neck. She paid no attention to the runners limping in and out of the first-aid tent. She had spent her life in the company of the strange and stricken, and Flanagan’s runners came as no surprise to her. Close by, Fritz, the talking mule, was silently munching grass.

“Hi,” said Dixie.

Fritz looked up, bared his teeth, and returned to his meal. It was evidently not talking time.

Just beyond Fritz’s paddock an elderly man in white tights was juggling with five golden Indian clubs, while behind him two young men trembled delicately in a hand-to-hand balance. To their right a great bull of a man, dressed as a Roman gladiator, grunted as he heaved aloft massive barbells.

Asmall, middle-aged man—the one who had spoken at Flanagan’s press conference—passed her in the company of a lean, somber companion. They both had towels over their shoulders, and had obviously come from washing in the river. The elder man nodded cheerfully to her as they passed, but the younger runner gave no sign that he had noticed her.

She watched them both pass. The young man’s body was bronzed and hard and looked as if it had been sculpted: hard defined shoulders, sharp horizontal slivers of muscle across his chest, the flesh of his ribs flickering like tiny fish. Dixie could not understand how a little old man like Doc Cole could possibly challenge such an athlete. And yet she knew from what she had read and heard that Cole was the most experienced runner in the race. She shook her head and made her way back to her trailer.

* Eo *

Carl Liebnitz sat on a camp chair in the press tent, engulfed in the clatter of typewriters.

“Great day,” said Frank Pollard, tapping out his report on two fingers at the desk beside him.

“Sure,” growled Liebnitz. “Stupendous.” In truth, he did not know quite how to respond to what he had seen.

True, he had seen the Dorando Marathon at the 1908 London Olympics and had endured the stupefying boredom of the first dance marathons of the twenties. But the former had been controlled within the limits of a sports stadium and the latter had been a harmless, if sickly, flower of the period. But the human debris now scattered on the edge of the Mojave as a result of Flanagan’s call to arms—that was a human tragedy of a different dimension.

Most of the people littering the ground outside the press tent were not athletes. Liebnitz had seen their like at strikes, soup kitchens and Salvation Army shelters all over the nation. They had no more chance of making it on foot to New York than he had. No, the Trans-America looked to him like just another sad, seamy story of the twenties, to be filed away with pole-sitting, marathon dancing and all the other sports mutations of the period.

“Great day,” Pollard growled again, engaging a fresh sheet of paper on his machine. “Bring on Madame La Zonga and the talking mule.”

* Eo *

AMERICANA DATELINE FLANAGANVILLE MARCH 21, 1931 Charles C. Flanagan’s two-thousand-man caravan is now making its broken way toward San Bernardino. A crowded Coliseum, after a couple of hours of carnival high-jinks, saw Douglas Fairbanks, the increasingly portly spring-heeled jack of the

silver screen, fire the Winchester that set Flanagan’s hordes surging toward New York. Sadly there were falls, sprained ankles and bruises for many competitors even before the Coliseum exit was reached, as hundreds of Trans-Americans, clearly misjudging the distance between Los Angeles and New York by an odd three thousand miles, bolted from the stadium. On and over the bodies of their prostrate comrades they surged; on, ever on, toward their distant goal.

As early as ten miles out, around San Gabriel, the sidewalks were littered with the flotsam of Mr. Flanagan’s enterprise. Your correspondent counted at least forty women sitting distraught by the road by the time the press bus had reached Montebello, coughing as they inhaled the exhaust

Pomona Hill (29 miles)

Hrs. Mins. Secs.

1 H.McPhail Great Britain) 4 43 12 P. Thurleigh 3 A.Cole USA) 4 46 50 M. Morgan 5 Williams’ All-Americans USA) 4 48 10 Brix, Hall, Capaldi, Flynn) 9 Hitler Youth Team Germany) 4 49 30 Muller, Stock, Woellke, Strattmann) 13. J. Martinez Mexico) 4 51 35 14 P.Eskola Finland) 4 51 55 15 J.Bouin France) 4 51 56 16 P.Dasriaux France) 4 52 10 P. O’Grady Ireland) 18 C.Charles Australia) 4 52 30 19 K.Lutz USA) 4 54 10 20 L.Svoboda Austria) 4 54 20 21. +C.Montes (Cuba) 4 55 40 22 ~~ P. Maffei Italy) 5 06 05 23 +R. Desruelles Belgium) 5 07 01 24 P.Coghlan New Zealand) 5 08 40 25 J. Schmidt Poland) 5 09 01

1st Lady: (729) K. Sheridan (USA) Number of finishers: 1821 Average speed (leader): 9 mins. 46 secs. per mile

fumes of passing cars. Others staggered on for another six miles or so toward Pomona before collapsing into Mr. Flanagan’s following trucks. Close on two hundred failed to complete the first stage to Pomona Hill, just outside Pomona, where a camp, immediately dubbed “Flanaganville” by its weary residents, has been set up.

There was little in the way of competition over the first stage. The Scots runner Hugh McPhail trotted in first, with the English aristocrat Lord Thurleigh, followed by Alexander Doc Cole, the fifty-four-year-old former fairground huckster, and the Pennsylvanian Michael Morgan, in that order. Close behind them came the German and All-American teams.

Flanaganville more closely resembles a Gettysburg casualty station than the finish of a footrace, with its medical tents choked with injured competitors. It remains to be seen if Mr. Flanagan’s Trans-America footrace is a genuine athletics competition or merely another mad little, sad little sports saga of our times. So far, the only person in the money is Mr. Flanagan, who is $40,000 the richer from the failure of two-hundred-odd competitors to finish the course.

—Carl C. Liebnitz

Chapter 6 THE GIRL FROM MINSKY’S

From the window of his trailer, Flanagan had watched the finish with mixed feelings. True, every tramp out of the race made him two hundred dollars richer, but it was essential that none of his “stars” be injured, and also vital that he keep his numbers reasonably high. He was delighted to see Cole and Morgan trot in together, and to see Lord Thurleigh and Hugh McPhail come in ahead of the Williams’ All-Americans and the German team. Thurleigh was both a pleasure and a problem: a pleasure, because Thurleigh’s presence gave the race unique news value, and a problem because Flanagan had no real idea how to deal with an English lord. For days he had practiced what he imagined to be an English accent, based on a Noel Coward play which he had seen on Broadway and on a slight knowledge of the New England bourgeoisie. But it was no use. Flanagan was New York Irish through and through.

He also had no notion how to address Thurleigh. “Your highness” or “your worship” sounded too formal. He settled for “‘your lordship,” though he hoped he would not have to say it too often.

The question of Thurleigh’s feeding and accommodation was more complex. Thurleigh had asked for separate feeding and accommodation arrangements to be made for him, and indeed had offered to provide his own trailer. Flanagan had

agreed to Thurleigh’s having separate food; diet was, after all, a personal matter. He had, however, refused to allow Thurleigh separate living quarters, for if the Englishman had a trailer to himself so would dozens of other sponsored athletes, and the Trans-America would soon begin to resemble a vast, sluggish wagon train, moving at the speed of the slowest vehicle.

He turned away from the window. His own trailer had been sumptuously furnished by the Ford Corporation and contained bath and shower, radio and telephone communication systems, and a superb Bechstein piano, which Flanagan could not play. In a corner, on the right of the refrigerator, stood three large black tin drums marked “molasses.” These contained the nine gallons of bootleg whiskey which would sustain Flanagan and Willard Clay through the long miles ahead. It had come by fishing boat from Cuba, via Hennessey’s warehouse, New York, to join the millions of gallons of bootleg booze in which the country had been illicitly wallowing since 1921. The Cuban stuff was the real McCoy, vastly superior to the Japanese brew, Queen James Scotch Whiskey, which they had been uneasily drinking in Los Angeles.

Willard Clay was typing furiously. He stopped and looked up at his employer.

“Tt’s a great start,” he said. “Paramount will have the finished film to use by the time we reach Vegas. Doc Cole, that Scots guy McPhail, Lord Thurleigh, Eskola the Finn, the little Mex Martinez, the Kraut team, the All-Americans—they all finished well up. And that little doll, Sheridan, was a real bonus . . .”

“Doll?” asked Flanagan.

Willard ran his finger down the list of finishers. “Kate Sheridan from New York. She came in at seven hundred and twenty-nine, fresh as paint and pretty as a picture.”

“Pretty?” asked Flanagan. “Real good-looking?”

“See for yourself,” said Willard, pointing out of the trailer window. A barefoot brunette was coming out of the press tent accompanied by Pollard and Kowalski.

Flanagan eyed the girl carefully. Like most athletic women, she had small breasts, but the nipples showed up sharp and clear beneath her shirt. The girl’s main physical quality lay in her lean-hipped athleticism, thighs long, toned and muscular, ankles neat and well shaped. However, these qualities alone did not add up to Kate Sheridan. The runner exuded a vital, glowing sexuality that derived from a complete certainty of who and what she was. Flanagan turned to face Willard.

“Ask Miss Sheridan to come and see me,” he ordered.

He watched Kate Sheridan for a few more moments as she stood chatting to a journalist just outside his trailer. She smiled as Willard approached her, and Flanagan noted that it was a warm, womanly smile. He had seen a few female athletes in his time, most of them hairy, thick-thighed viragos. But Sheridan was

a woman all right—perhaps even a star? Together she and Willard walked toward the trailer.

When Kate Sheridan entered, Flanagan beckoned Willard to leave, but his deputy stayed by the door, fascinated.

“Sit down, Miss . . . ?” said Flanagan.

“Sheridan,” said Kate. “Kate Sheridan.”

“Care for some refreshment?” a

Andy Yelenak WM

Kate nodded and looked around her at the lush furnishings. Finally she sank into a soft armchair. Flanagan passed her a glass of lemonade.

“What do you think?” he asked, turning toward the back of the trailer. “Classy, eh?”

The girl looked around her and nodded. Flanagan flushed as he caught sight of her tiny feet and her neatly painted toenails, wondering how such perfect feet had survived the first stage. She trapped his glance.

“Your feet…” said Flanagan.

“They’re fine,” said the girl, enjoying his embarrassment. “I’ve trained for a year for this race. They can take it.”

“Were you a track and field athlete at college?”

“No,” said Kate. “Never even went to college. Never ran track either. That’s for serious female athletes.” She returned to her lemonade.

“Then—then how come you’re here?”

“Simple: money. This time last year I was in burlesque at Minsky’s. Three shows a night, twenty bucks a week. Then I read about the Trans-America, and about you putting up two hundred and fifty thousand dollars for staying on my feet for three months—”

“But only if you get in the frame,” interrupted Flanagan.

“Yes. Only if I win,” said Kate, crossing her legs. “At first I couldn’t run the length of the block, but after a month’s practice I could run eight miles without stopping. Not fast, mind you, but then the Trans-America isn’t a dash either. At the end of nine months I could cover over fifteen miles in two hours. So here’s the way I see it. No man runs much more than fifteen miles in training or more than twenty-six miles in competition, so why shouldn’t I have a chance?”

“But…” Flanagan began.

“But what?” asked Kate. “But I’m only a girl. That’s what you’re really trying to say, Mr. Flanagan, isn’t it? Well, let me put you straight, sir. I’ve taken a little trouble to set myself up for this race. I’ve been to the library and I’ve checked all the anatomy books and there’s no physical reason why a woman shouldn’t be as good as most men over three thousand miles. Mr. Flanagan, when it comes to taking pain we women have had plenty of practice.”

“No offense meant, Miss Sheridan,” interjected Willard. “It’s just that we ain’t ever heard of no lady running in long-distance races.”

“Well, you sure got one now,” said Kate, standing up and turning to the door. “Anything more, Mr. Flanagan?” Flanagan shook his head. Kate winked at Willard and went out.

Flanagan flopped back in his red-velvet rocking chair, and reached to his desk for a cigar.

“What the hell do you make of that?” he asked, spitting the plug into the wastebasket.

“Tl tell you what I think,” replied Willard. “I think we got a star, boss. If she can just stay on her feet.”

“We got to make sure she stays on her feet, Willard,” said Flanagan, lighting his Havana. “She’s money in the bank, man, money in the bank: so is any goodlooking broad. Just make sure you take real good care of those ladies.”

“Okay, boss,” said Willard. “Back to business. The marshals have completed the first day’s count.”

“How many finishers?”

Willard sucked on his pencil. “At the last count, one thousand eight hundred and twenty-one,” he said. “One hundred and eighty-one picked up in the trucks or disqualified, thirty still out there somewhere.”

“Jesus!” said Flanagan, looking out of the window into the gathering gloom.

“Tt might not be so bad,” said Willard. “They might have flunked out way back in L.A. Hell, some guys gave up after about three miles. Our first pickup trucks lay five miles out from the Coliseum, so anyone dropping out before that …” He shook his head.

“Jesus,” said Flanagan again, chewing on his cigar.

“But what about those guys, the ones who can’t go on?” asked Willard.

“How do you mean?”

“T mean, what do we do with them? How do they get back?”

“How the hell do I know?” exploded Flanagan, throwing out his arms. “They all knew the rules when they started out. Sink or swim, kill or be killed, that’s what it’s all about. If you drop out of a track meet you don’t expect the referee to see you back home.”

“But this ain’t no track meet,” Willard persisted. “Some of these people are hurt bad. Some are back with the medics, sick as dogs.”

“No!” said Flanagan. “ I don’t want to hear about it. They got here, they can find their way back, and there’s an end of it.”

There was a knock at the trailer door. Willard opened it. One of the runners, a balding man in late middle age, timidly entered.

Flanagan swore under his breath.

The man’s feet were a mess, one toenail ripped off and another dangling. He had obviously fallen more than once, for both elbows and chest were badly grazed. His right temple bled and his right cheek looked as if it had been rubbed with sandpaper. He looked more like a losing prizefighter than a runner.

“My name’s McCoy,” he said. “County Limerick. The guys who were picked up in the trucks, they’ve asked me to speak for them.”

“Yes, Mr. McCoy,” said Flanagan quietly.

“Some of the boys back in the tent are in a pretty bad way. We was wondering how we’d get back to Los Angeles.”

“Where do you hail from, Mr. McCoy?” said Flanagan, beckoning the uncertain athlete to a seat and uncorking a bottle of whiskey with his teeth.

“You probably never heard of it, Mr. Flanagan,” said McCoy. “A little place name of Kilmoy, County Limerick.”

“Yes,” said Flanagan. “I’ve heard of it.” He handed the Irishman a glass of whiskey. “And how did you get all the way out here to Los Angeles?”

McCoy’s face relaxed and he gulped down the whiskey, its rawness bringing tears to his eyes.

He sniffed. “Back in March last year. The Limerick Star set up a trial race over fifteen miles.” He sniffed again and laid down his glass. “The winner got the trip out here to the Trans-America.””

Flanagan slowly poured out two further glasses of whiskey and drew one to his lips.

“So you traveled out all this way, and now it’s all over for you in the first day?”

McCoy nodded, picking up his glass again and looking down into its contents, before swallowing the remainder. “Still,” he said, “we didn’t have much back in Kilmoy. At least I got to see California. Man, in this life you’ve got to take a chance, haven’t you?”

“Yes, Mr. McCoy,” said Flanagan. ““You’ve got to take a chance.”

Flanagan sipped his own drink slowly. “How many people do you reckon need transportation back to Los Angeles?”

McCoy shook his head. “Difficult to say, Mr. Flanagan. Must be over a hundred. The rest have had friends and relatives pick them up and take them back.”

Flanagan nodded, detaching a loose flake of cigar from his tongue.

“Let me ask you one final question, Mr. McCoy,” he said, looking the Irishman straight in the eye. “Coming all this way, then out of the race on the first day—was it all worth it?”

“Definitely,” said McCoy, standing up as he drained the last of his drink. “If I had my chance, I’d do it again, only better.” Flanagan smiled and looked at Willard, who looked back blankly.

“The trucks will take you back to L.A. in the morning,” said Flanagan. “Anyone requiring hospital treatment will be treated for the first seven days entirely at my expense. Does that answer your question?”

McCoy finally lost his shyness and smiled. “I told the boys you wouldn’t let us down, Mr. Flanagan.”

“But…” said Willard. “You just said—”

“Willard,” said Flanagan. “You just heard what I said. See to it!”

Eo * *

Next morning the first casualties of the Trans-America were taken by truck back to Los Angeles, while the remaining runners made their way past San Bernardino in two twenty-four-mile stages, out on the edge of the Mojave Desert,

leaving one hundred and ten competitors to be returned to Los Angeles. The Trans-America was shedding fat. * Eo *

7:30 a.m., March 24, 1931. One hundred and twenty-six miles on; the town that Flanagan had built was being dismantled for the third time.

The athletes’ tents had come down at seven o’clock and only the massive refreshment tent still stood erect. The last of the trucks taking the sick and disabled back to Los Angeles was disappearing over the brow of the hill. Madame La Zonga and her colleagues had left early and were now ten miles up the road, nearing the Mojave, moving toward Barstow. The runners were either finishing breakfast, washing at the river or chatting in small groups.

The German team stood away from the others in a tight semicircle, listening to their coach, Volkner.

Acouple of hundred yards away Williams’ All-Americans sat on an upturned log. Their irate coach’s admonitions could be heard all the way across the flat, cactus-stubbled field.

At the river a number of runners, clad only in their underpants, were washing themselves down.

“Hell,” said Doc, pulling open the top of his pants and pouring water down onto his genitals. “No profit in being Caspar Milquetoast here.”

Kate Sheridan came over by Doc’s group and McPhail and Morgan made desperate attempts to retreat across the pebbled brook to their shirts. Doc stood his ground, holding open his shorts and continuing to splash water down between his legs.

“Don’t fret on my account,” said Kate, hands on hips. “You boys aren’t going to give me any big surprises.” Her eyes settled for a moment on Morgan, his body wet and shining in the weak morning sun.

“My name’s Doc Cole,” said Doc, offering his hand. He gestured toward the others. ““That’s Hugh McPhail, a Scotsman. The little un’s Juan Martinez—he’s Mexican. The gabby one,” he wryly noted her interest in Morgan, “he’s called Morgan.”

The girl nodded, then introduced herself.

“You the last lady in the race?” asked Doc.

“No. Some came in after me last night. I don’t know if they’ll stay with it, though.”

“Sponsored?”

“Nope. New York City backed two men but wouldn’t put a cent on a woman. The pair of them finished up in the truck yesterday, so maybe I got the last laugh.”

“How far’ve you ever run at one time?” Doc persisted, drying his chest vigorously with a rough towel.

“Fifteen miles.”

“We reckon two and a half times your training distance, then it’s Goodnight Vienna,” said Doc.

“How do you mean?” asked Hugh, finally stepping out of the brook and pulling his towel from the top of a yucca tree.

“Tt’s just a rule-of-thumb guide we use in marathon running,” said Doc. “If your normal training mileage is, say, twelve miles, then you should just be able to handle a twenty-six-mile marathon. It’ll be tough over the last six miles, but you should make it if you take it steady. If you’ve run fifteen miles regularly, then you might be able to handle thirty miles, with an outside range of forty-five miles. Whether or not you can do it day in, day out for three months—well, that’s another ball game.”

“Are any of you really sure of that?” asked Kate, glancing from Doc to the others.

“A good question,” said Doc, rubbing the back of his neck. “And the answer is ‘no’—sure as heck we ain’t. That’s what makes it all so interesting. What do you think, Juan?”

The little Mexican spread out both hands and showed his white teeth in a childlike smile. “You’re right, Mr. Doc. I sure never run no fifty miles in a day, not six days a week.”

“Well, that’s reassuring,” said Kate, feeling suddenly embarrassed. The men found it difficult to avoid staring at her, a slim feminine intruder in an all-male group of runners.

“Well,” said Doc at last. “You certainly do have the legs for it.” He was using the cloak of his age to put words to what the other men were feeling. Morgan and McPhail stood by uneasily, toweling themselves down.

“Yes,” she said. “Six hours a day at Minsky’s burlesque.”

“You really danced at Minsky’s?” asked Doc, as he accompanied her back toward the Trans-America center, the three other men following.

“If you can call it dancing,” said Kate. “Running fifty miles a day can’t be much worse.”

“Tt can,” said Doc quietly. “You can lay bets on it.”

“You mean you don’t think I can do it?” asked Kate sharply.

“Don’t get me wrong, lady,” said Doc, raising his hands to placate her. “You made nearly thirty miles in under seven hours on the first day. Ma’am, that’s fancy running in my book. Every day completed in a race like this is some kind of victory. But, lady, it’s early days yet. None of us knows who’s going to see Madison Square Garden in June.”

“Sorry I barked at you,” said Kate, conscious of her quick temper.

“No offense taken,” said Doc, smiling. “Looks as though we may travel together quite a piece. We all swim in the same water. May as well get to like each other.”

They were now some yards ahead of Morgan and the others. Kate nodded back toward the Pennsylvanian.

“Where does that guy Morgan come from?” she asked, trying to appear indifferent.

Doc simply shrugged. “Don’t rightly know,” he said. “He canrun some, though. Back at training camp the other guys called him the ‘Iron Man.’ Not an ounce of fat on him. Morgan’s made for running. He’ll take some beating.”

“Not much of a talker, though, is he?” asked Kate.

“Not much,” said Doc. “But then this ain’t no debating competition. Still, we’ve got over ten weeks on the road together. One way or the other, we’ll all get closer in the next three thousand miles.”

Kate hoped so. She looked back and saw McPhail and Martinez in earnest conversation, with Morgan walking a few yards behind them. She wondered if these men felt as she did. They all looked so lean, so strong. For her even the first hundred and twenty miles had been tough, and now she faced the start of the fourth stage, on the fringe of over two hundred miles of desert: endless stretches of sandy road, hills, cacti, Joshua trees and brown dust. Already she seemed to be among the last women in the race, for she could not see many of the whimpering, broken ladies from her tent reappearing to take on another forty miles of punishment. Earlier that morning she had looked beyond the hill out into the desert. It was almost completely flat, stretching endlessly toward distant brown hills. She felt the same flutter in her stomach as she had that first night at Minsky’s when she had danced, spangled and half naked, exposing herself to a thousand strangers. Kate bit her lip. She had beaten that. She could beat this.

Men were being slowly sucked toward the Trans-America center, drawn by Willard’s amplified voice. Before long most of the eighteen-hundred-odd survivors had seated themselves on the rough broken ground in front of the loudspeakers.

“Can you all hear?” shouted Willard.

“Yeah, but I’m sure willing to move somewhere where I can’t,” shouted back a thin white-bearded man. There was scattered laughter.

Flanagan stood at a microphone beside Willard and in front of the TransAmerica trailer, dressed in his favorite Tom Mix cowboy outfit.

“This is Charles C. Flanagan again. My congratulations to all of you for qualifying for the next stage.” He paused and scanned the crowd. “May I offer my particular compliments to our leading lady competitor, Miss Kate Sheridan, from New York. Could you please stand up, Miss Sheridan?”

Kate Sheridan stood up and was greeted by scattered applause and wolf whistles.

Flanagan raised his hands for silence, and continued. “I’d like also to mention Miss Jane Connolly from Nebraska, Miss Kathy McGuire from Kansas City and Mrs. Patricia Paish from San Francisco, all of whom figure in the first-half-ofthe-race finishers. Could you stand up, ladies?”

One by one the ladies rose to their feet, to be met with similar cheers, shouts and catcalls.

“And now to our youngest competitor,” said Flanagan. “Seventeen-year-old Jim Pierce from San Bernardino High School, now in seven hundredth place. To my recollection, no high school boy has ever achieved such performances over these distances. So show yourself, Jim.” A slim, blond youth shyly stood up to further cheers and clapping.

“And finally,” said Flanagan, “to our oldest competitor all the way from Southampton, England, Mr. Charles C. Fox now in four hundred and first place. Sixty-six years old tomorrow.” The white-bearded old man stood up, to be greeted with unreserved applause, and several of the more mature runners stood up in appreciation. The cheers lasted for over a minute.

“Okay, gentlemen, quiet down.” Flanagan raised his hands. “Now to the main business. Today we have two separate stages of twenty miles. The CocaCola Company has generously put up prizes of five hundred, three hundred, one hundred, and fifty dollars for the first stage; Ford Motors the same prizes for the second stage. Today we will have the first ‘cut.’ Any competitor running outside eight hours total time for the complete forty miles is out of the race. That means an average speed of about twelve-minute miles. Any questions?”

“Tf you please, Mr. Flanagan,” said Volkner, the German trainer, getting to his feet. “You have rests between the two stages?”

“Yes, four hours, so that we miss the noon sun.”

“And what of water and feeding points?”

“Ten per stage.”

A gray-bearded Texan, McGraw, was next to his feet. “We camping out again?” he asked.

“Yes,” said Flanagan.

“Well, kin I have another blanket?”

For the first time Flanagan was lost for words, and he turned away from the microphone to Willard, smiling. Regaining his composure, he turned back to his laughing audience. “My assistant, Mr. Clay, will deal with your request, Mr. McGraw,” he said. “I appreciate you Texans have mighty thin skins.”

There was a cluster of questions relating to feeding and medical matters and the meeting broke up fifteen minutes later.

Morgan walked away from the crowd out to the fringe of the camp and sat down on a rock. Five hundred dollars: it had to be his.

After only one twenty-mile stint he could send back six months’ money to his son Michael in Elmira. Back there lay the focus of his life, gurgling happily in his crib, oblivious of his father three thousand miles away in the Mojave Desert…

Flanagan’s Run will continue in our next issue.