His suffering led Stephen to believe the best reaction to this moment was to strike from his estate anyone and everyone who had ever encouraged him to run this stupid race. His mind barely lingered off the cliff long enough to prevent him from seeking a piece of chalk to draft a provisional will into the road to inscribe his imprecatory intent. Stephen lifted his head and took a deep breath.
“This sucks. This really… really… sucks,” he exhaled with the faint voice of pure exhaustion.
Stephen focused his mind on getting his ragged body moving in a forward motion again. His legs felt burdened by 30 pound sandbags added to every attempted step. Each time he tried to fight the stiffness, his entire body resisted and threw him into another fit of agony. The lower back felt like it had been dipped in concrete and was shifting lower to the ground. Every single joint in his body was in flames and waves of nausea continuously passed over him. The only thing masking the pounding of his chest was the constant and thunderous throbbing from within his head. Dried blood stained the bottom of the shirt where Stephen had earlier wiped his scratched hand after falling. His knees were also skinned and he was pretty sure the maroon discoloration on his left shoe suggested that his volcanic blister had erupted sometime during the misery of the past mile. For the next five minutes he practically crawled his way across another tenth of a mile. With another four or five miles ahead of him, there was no relief in sight.
Still fighting a full body breakdown and cognitive deterioration, Stephen wasn’t completely sure of himself when he looked ahead and saw the elderly man leaning against the opposite side of a street barricade. He squinted and shook the sweat from his eyes to get a better look. Leaning on a wooden, orange and white crowd control barrier alongside the road, carefully examining the sparse few passing marathoners with a determined stare stood Stephen’s father.
Mile 23
Tom stood by himself, his one capable hand locked for balance on the reflective barricade which kept pedestrians separated from the runners. Clearly looking for Stephen, Tom squinted his eyes to visually interview each distant runner as they came within his view. When Stephen emerged from the road close enough to be seen, Tom slowly raised his arm to ensure his son spotted him.
Balancing between physical agony and the cognitive disconnect of seeing his father, Stephen was disoriented by his own confusion. It was a welcome confusion as the sight of his father gave a brief moment of distracted relief from the pain, but it was very brief. Looking at his father in such an out-of-sort context left Stephen bewildered and he half expected to see his mother. Aware that he wasn’t hallucinating, the pain returned to his lower back and each step emphasized the miserable condition of his broken and deteriorating body. He looked around to search for the person who would have driven his father to this isolated location along the race path. Drifting the unseaworthy craft of his body closer to the curbside, Stephen wondered how his father could be there completely alone. He did his best to fight off the pain coursing through his body and hobbled towards Tom’s location.
“Dad!” Stephen called out as he continued to fight the constant rebuttal of every joint and muscle he had. “Dad; what are you doing here?” Tom looked back with the same blank stare he had held for the past dozen years. “Did Sarah drop you off?” He pleaded for an answer, for some response from his father’s stroke impaired body. Looking past Tom’s oversized frame and broad shoulders was challenging enough, but it didn’t help that Stephen was hunching over. He peered past Tom’s torso to try and get a look for Sarah or a helpful neighbor who may have driven his father. Seeing no one else but Tom in sight, Stephen looked toward the pocket of his father’s khaki pants and saw the unmistakable outline of car keys.
“You drove?” he chided. Relief was disruptively replaced with a hot frustration and an awareness of just how unworkable the situation was. He immediately knew his father’s insistence on driving would once again require his intervention. Working from a fuse which was already less than a quarter of its normal quick length, Stephen had no patience left for the man who repeatedly and willingly endangered and inconvenienced others.
Stephen popped off, “Dad! Do you still not realize how dangerous it is for you to drive? What were you thinking?”
Stephen’s rising inflection was filled with an unnatural condemnation and heavy with the condescending emphasis one typically reserved for a misbehaving child. After years of accommodating and nurturing his father, it was apparent the inevitable completion of role reversals had finally arrived. Stephen knew his loose encouraging of his father needed to be replaced with an instructive and firm parental authority. In a series of consequential thoughts that did not pause for serious consideration, Stephen irrationally decided that if Tom could no longer respect the rules, living at home would cease to be an option. Tom would spend his remaining days in a nursing home.
“That’s it, Dad! That’s the last time! You know you can’t drive and the fact that you would just ignore that is completely irresponsible. You can’t do the things you used to do and at some point you’re going to have to come to grips with that!” His emotions were entirely unchecked as he grit his jaw and raised a finger to the withered but steadfast oak who had taught him what it meant to be a man.
“I’m selling the car!” Stephen had no idea where that one came from. Self-actualization began to peer through the fog of his mind and he slowly became conscience of his surroundings.
“Maybe.”
Stephen let out a deep breath while Tom remained stoic and expressionless. A trickle of steadily paced runners passed through Stephen’s peripheral. The chastisement of his father had been exhausting. With muscles aching and twitching uncontrollably throughout his body, Stephen returned to the former empty shell of himself. With a broken body and a spent mind, Stephen mentally prepared to gather the keys from his father and drive Tom home.
He would figure the rest out later but today’s run was finished. This race was over for him. He knew it. Stephen had known it from the very beginning. He hadn’t trained enough. He hadn’t slept enough. He hadn’t planned enough. When excuses and justifications could no longer walk alongside him, Stephen had to admit to himself that he simply hadn’t been good enough to take on this challenge. And now, it was over.
Stephen’s head dipped towards the ground, his eyes catching a glance at his stained and saturated shoes. He rested an aching palm against the road barrier inches away from his father’s hand. Head hanging low, he winced not from the pain of exhaustion, but from the familiar chest tightening of disappointment and guilt as the twin oppressors reminded him that he was, after all that had happened, once again standing before his father, another failure in hand.
Tom released the barrier and gently clenched his son’s forearm. The old man leaned his head down to look into his son’s disheartened gaze.
Without meeting his father’s eyes Stephen mustered, “Dad, I’ve got to take you home.”
Stephen knew taking his father home had less to do with Tom’s safety. It was his escape. His shoulders slouched and the air trickled from his lungs. The hot air flowing across his lips left Stephen nauseous. He couldn’t think entirely straight but he felt certain everything in his body caused him pain. But he knew it wasn’t just his body which was afflicted. The dam of his willingness had finally given way and he knew he had been beaten. Any shred of motivation capable of keeping him in the fight had abandoned his body and his mind. The miles of this road had been more than he could bear. Beyond the wear of the race, Stephen felt the burden of the miles he had yet to leave behind. The miles of a desert war he didn’t know how to leave. The miles of a long road back to a home he hadn’t known how to return to. The miles of hurt and helplessness as he had watched his daughter suffer beneath an enemy he had no ability to confront. The miles of grief from the devastating abruptness of his mother’s death. The miles of struggling to work so hard to provide for his family. Even the miles of finding his way back to a marriage he was now willing to fight for and honor. There were simply too many miles and they had taken too much of a toll. Stephen had gone as far as he could and now there was nothing left for the remaining miles ahead. Whatever he had to give lay exhausted on the road behind him buried under his burdens. With every sense of who he was, he realized the distance of his race had been too long.