4 : 0 5 . 9 6

(Excerpt from “Running Boy” — working title for a work in progress)

“It’s going to hurt whether I run fast or slow, so I might as well run fast.”

Sukhi Khosla ran the fastest 1600 US high school time for the season on May 3rd 2014, a perfect day made much more perfect because it had been so ugly minutes before, a dreary rainy cold Florida day. Felt more like November than May. And just in time for the 1600, the clouds were emptied, the air was cool, and I thought of those words he had said to me, in a different time, a different context.

At the end of those four minutes and five seconds, he bent over and touched the blue track with his fingertips. I saw uncertainty in the body which had looked so powerful seconds before, and my stomach clenched. He had never, never hit the track after any race. But today, for a few moments, I thought he might. I wondered how far he had pushed himself. This was not a four minute mile by any stretch, of course, but it occurred to me: Before Roger Bannister and John Landy actually did it, doctors, runners, and the public believed that it would be fatal for a human being to run a mile in under four minutes.

To make it clear, again, 1600 meters is not quite a mile, by a hair (and no, “hair” is not a unit of distance.)This is not a world record, or even an all-time high school record. High school runners have even run sub-four miles. But I’m not a runner, or a running fan, or a sports writer. There are many many people much better qualified than I am to write about those things. Herb Wills, for one. On the weekend before this one, when I had been in a similar state of amazement because this same boy had run the US #1 time for the first time, Herb said, “there’s a boy in California running a faster time right now.” He was right, Sukhi’s first reign as #1 lasted a day and a half. And there are many people more qualified than I am who can quote statistics, history, progression, they can make predictions and analyse and talk about form and pacing and splits. I can’t. I can only talk about this kid. This driven, intense, hard-working, foul mouthed kid, who lives in my house and complains about my cooking and sleeps on the couch and forgets to take out the trash. And is a practicing atheist.

Seventeen years of his life, and mine with him have gone by. New country, new home, new friends became old beloved ones, a dog, cats, divorce, death of a parent, new love, books published, one child grown and gone, seventeen years. As we watched the stupid-fast race one more time, my sister turned to me with a funny look on her face. “Remember the fucked up foot?” she asked me.

Sukhi was premature by six or seven weeks, I was told the bones in the right foot of my new baby boy were soft still, and fifteen minutes of daily massage would fix it. I was doubtful. It didn’t look right, to put it mildly. It twisted too much to the right, I imagined operations and braces and maybe even crutches. I massaged and pushed it incessantly, way more than the fifteen minutes the neo-natal pediatrician had recommended. In fact I worked it at least every waking hour. I hadn’t thought of that foot for seventeen years.

My sister and I watched the race. the announcer was a bit high-pitched from excitement. “Sukhi Khosla breaks the meet record, unofficially the fastest time in the US, and he’s only a junior.” We began to laugh.

(I wrote this last year, Sukhi is in his final high school season now, and has made that difficult college decision.)