WASHINGTON, D.C., 6:02 A.M.
On the day she was chosen for death, Dana Enfield rose early and
made coffee for her husband in the hushed November dawn. She had
slept badly the previous night, pummeling her pillow while George
looked in on three obligatory parties and made excuses for his wife.
The people standing around in little clusters against the
apricot-colored walls of Georgetown and Kalorama, drinks in their
hands, had joked with the Speaker of the House about this morning,
about the press buildup and the unseasonably warm weather and where
exactly he intended to stand. They had wished her luck, Dana thought
as she listened to the drip of the coffee and the creak of old
floorboards somewhere near Mallory’s bedroom that might or might not
mean that George was already awake-wished her luck and a great photo
op, with the mental kickback inevitable among politicians. Half of
them probably had money riding on the chance she’d never finish her
race.
She sniffed the aroma of fresh coffee as she poured it into George’s
mug, knowing she couldn’t take the caffeine’s dehydration this early
in the day but craving it all the same. Then- almost as an
afterthought-she reached for the sharp metal rod she kept on the
counter and slit the fleshy pad of her forefinger. A bead of blood
ballooned at her fingertip. She waited for the digital count to
flash on the screen of the insulin monitor: within normal range.
Comforting, she thought, to be offered that assurance at the start
of every new day. She lifted George’s mug to her lips and permitted
herself a single sip.
The Marine Corps Marathon is fortunate in possessing a remarkable
contingent of navy and civilian volunteers. Navy active duty and
reserve units as well as dedicated doctors, athletic advisors, and
Red Cross members from all over the country come together to ensure
that our race is one of the safest in the nation….
Daniel Becker had scrolled through the official marathon Web site at
least twenty times in the past few weeks, committing what was
essential to memory. The Marines who organized the event each year
called it “The People’s Race,” because nobody was forced to qualify
to enter. It was planned and executed with the efficiency of a
military operation; hundreds of Marines in field dress lined the
race course, handing off cups of water and bananas and protein bars
at two-mile intervals. They played music, clapped, cheered on their
buddies, and were extraordinarily courteous to the less athletic
hordes who invaded the event in increasing numbers. So many weekend
warriors had entered the lists over the years, in fact, that it was
impossible to accept them all. A lottery system capped the field at
fifteen thousand runners.
When Daniel closed his eyes at night, he could see the course
imprinted on his brain like a snake formed from fire. Between
seventy and a hundred thousand people would line the 26.2-mile race
as it wound from the Iwo Jima Memorial-the pride of Marine Corps
history-straight through Crystal City, past the Pentagon, across Key
Bridge into Georgetown and down to the John F. Kennedy Center for
the Performing Arts. It kicked by the Lincoln and Jefferson
monuments, the black wall commemorating Vietnam, the massive dome of
the Capitol building, and back again to Virginia across the
Fourteenth Street Bridge. The race had been delayed two weeks this
year by the terrorist kidnapping and murder of the vice president;
but with Sophie Payne’s body returned now to Washington and her
funeral scheduled for the following morning, the Marine Corps had
received the green light to run. Like thousands of others, Daniel
was ready.
He left Hillsboro, West Virginia, before dawn, and drove straight
east through Maryland until he reached the District border. He’d
shopped a downtown army-navy surplus place for the standard Marine
private’s uniform and peaked cap; he was wearing his black army
boots and dog tags. Rebekah had clipped and shaved his brown hair so
that the scalp shone through to the level of his ears. He’d strapped
a plastic armband to his right bicep with a label that read race
staff in big block capitals.
At five-thirty a.m., Hains Point in East Potomac Park was still open
to vehicular traffic. He drove his truck to a picnic area and killed
the engine, conscious of ghosts in the early morning darkness.
Once, when Dolf was maybe seven or eight, he’d driven into the city
as dusk fell and parked right about here. Put Bekah and the boy in
the pickup’s flatbed and tucked a blanket around them. They’d lain
there, watching the bellies of the great jets soar so close to their
faces in takeoff and landing that they could almost have touched the
blinking lights. The scream of turbo engines was deafening, the
closest thing to war Daniel could imagine. Young Dolf was
exhilarated-leaping up from his blanket as though he might catch a
plane’s wheel and sail off into the sky. He was always desperate to
go someplace else, Daniel thought. Desperate to fly.
He was sitting here now because of that boy and his clipped wings,
the wild animal joy of a child’s face when he believes his time is
never-ending. He was here for Dolf and the world that boy had lost.
Dana thrust her left foot against the base of the Iwo Jima Memorial
and leaned forward to stretch her calf muscles. She’d been training
for six months, gradually building her mileage each week despite the
injuries that plagued her body, aware that more than just her own
pride rode on the outcome of this race. She was the Speaker’s wife,
after all-the highly visible second wife of George Enfield, whom
pundits called the next presidential hopeful-and Washington society
columns followed her every move with thinly disguised malice. She
was thirty-seven years old, and the diabetes she calibrated
throughout the day had become as famous as her height or the
clothing designers she patronized fearlessly for every official
function. Dana was, by nature, a private person, but George’s
gradual rise to power in Congress had forced her to submit to the
press’s mania for detail. She found she could talk about her disease
more easily than her soul. Two years ago, she’d become a spokeswoman
for the Juvenile Diabetes Foundation.
She was a blunt advocate for stem-cell research, despite the
dictates of her husband’s party, which regarded every form of fetal
experimentation with horror and reproach. She flew in children with
diabetes from all over the country and led tours of Capitol Hill.
Sponsored hearings that supported research and put the kids front
and center. Today she was running in a JDF T-shirt imprinted with
the faces of those children. She’d won the signatures of ten
thousand people across the country: Each had pledged a dollar to the
JDF for every mile she managed to run.
You’re absolutely nuts, George had said heatedly when she began to
train six months ago. Do you know what you’ll do for your precious
cause if you collapse and die of insulin shock in front of a whole
platoon of Marines?
“They have medical stations,” she’d replied patiently. “I’m carrying
insulin in my fanny pack. I’ll eat the oranges. The protein bars.
You can meet me at certain points along the race with soda pop.”
In the end, he’d agreed to do it, and not just for the publicity
she’d begun to attract. He’d somehow managed to steal a few hours
from each weekend to stand vigil during her training runs, amusing
Mallory on her scooter and offering water to Mommy while she clocked
her miles. He’d told the press he believed in and supported his
wife. He rubbed liniment on her legs without a word, his fingertips
oddly gentle as they traced her hardening quadriceps. He did ask
repeatedly if she was determined to go through with it-and she
understood the fear that loomed in the back of his mind. He was
fifty-three years old. He’d already lost one woman he loved to an
untimely death. He would never tell Dana to stay home in bed at six
a.m. on race day, but he could not pretend what he did not feel.
Because parking was impossible to find that morning, even for a
Congressional limousine, they’d taken the Metro to Arlington like
any other marathon couple. The only difference in their situation,
Dana thought, was the photographers who’d tracked them from the
moment they’d left their front door in Kalorama, Mallory swinging
between them. She’d hoped that Sophie Payne’s funeral would deflect
attention from what some reporters were calling Dana Enfield’s Run
for Her Life. But Payne was last week’s story; she was today’s.
“Let me pin your number to your shirt,” George said quietly in her
ear. “It’s eight-twenty. Ten minutes to the start.”
As he stabbed a pin into her chest by mistake, four flashbulbs went
off in Dana’s eyes. She wondered fleetingly if any of the reporters
had trained enough to keep up with her.
Daniel lay flat on his back under the cover of some bushes, avoiding
the curious and trying to quell his own jitters. For the past hour
and a half he’d watched a group of Marines setting up the tables and
paraphernalia for Water Point 11 and Aid Station 7, as their signs
proclaimed them; about ten guys, as best he could judge from his
position a quarter-mile distant. They were spinning tunes and
working together like a well-oiled machine, their jacket sleeves
rolled high on the bicep. Confident in their sense of mission, as he
had been once.
A two-mile loop of the course skirted the river here at Hains Point,
just past the Jefferson Memorial. Planes from Reagan International
buzzed the landscape every few seconds. The air was fresh and clear:
Today’s crowd would be enormous. The runners who survived to reach
Daniel’s water station would already have clocked twenty miles. Some
of them would be staggering, their Achilles tendons on the point of
tearing. Others would be walking, too exhausted to run the last six
miles. Ahead of them would be the bridge-the Fourteenth Street
Bridge, where the wind off the Potomac would force the runners
backward as they struggled toward the finish. Those who limped past
Daniel would seize his cups of water gladly, and toss the contents
down their throats.
The first batch-called the Elite Group, the highest-seeded one
hundred fifty athletes from all over the world-would be clipping off
five-minute miles as though the pace were no more difficult than
bouncing a tennis ball. Most of them, Daniel knew, were Africans. It
was natural they could beat the pants off the rest-they’d been
running from something most of their lives. Somewhere behind them
would be the six-minute milers, the fleet-footed aspirants to Elite
glory. They’d reach his current position in the next ten to twenty
minutes. After them would come the rest of the fifteen thousand
weary runners, hour after hour: The eight-minute milers. The
ten-minute milers. The people whose best pace four hours out from
the start would be a walk or a crawl. The Marines gave them a total
of seven hours to complete a course the winner would finish in a
little over two; Daniel had to be ready for the long haul.
He glanced at his watch. Straight-up ten o’clock. He’d already
unloaded the plastic drums filled with water from the back of his
truck. The Marines were pouring a particular brand of purified stuff
that was heavily promoted on the race Web site. Daniel had about two
dozen bottles of Deer Creek Springs stacked up next to his coolers.
He broke the plastic sleeve on a stack of paper cups as the front
runner approached the entry to East Potomac Park just off
Independence Avenue, a skinny little black guy with a skull cropped
close as a pitted peach.
Daniel turned the tap on the water cooler and watched the liquid
spill into the cup. It was tinged faintly brown, as though it came
from rusted pipes; he thrust the paper cupful into the outstretched
hand of the frontrunner.
“Lookin’ good!” he cheered, clapping. “Lookin’ strong! You go, guy.”
The man tipped the water to his lips, crushed the cup in his hand,
and ran on. Another marathoner was right behind him, reaching for
Daniel’s water.
* * *
Dana Enfield was a ten-minute miler. She kept three things in mind
as she made her way toward Water Point 4 in Georgetown. She had to
keep running. She could not twist her ankle or fall over from low
blood sugar. And she had to see George and Mallory.
They’d told her they’d be waiting there, at mile marker 9. An hour
and a half into the race, and the day as bright as a new-minted
penny. She craned her head for a glimpse of her daughter’s face.
The crowd was heavier here on the narrow sidewalks, thrust back
against the old brick buildings by the police lines that marked off
the spectators from the swollen river of runners trundling down M
Street. For an anxious moment she thought she’d missed them, but
then somebody called out “Dana!” and she saw George’s black hair
above his suede jacket, Mallory hoisted on his shoulders. Her
daughter was waving a pennant with JDF printed on it in blood red
letters, and her mouth was open in a thrilled shriek. Her mom. Her
mom was running in the race!
Dana’s throat tightened and she drew a deliberate breath, waving to
the two people she loved most. The crowd carried her past. George
was trotting through the spectators, bumping them with his elbows
and Mallory’s feet as they dangled from his shoulders, his eyes
fixed on her face. Somewhere he’d lost the photographers. She
couldn’t tell from his expression whether she looked fine-or as
though she was going to collapse.
“Aid Station five’s at Rock Creek,” he shouted, “if you need it. Two
miles down! See you at the Reflecting Pool!”
She nodded, waved again, and then he was behind her, slipping back
like a stone in a rushing stream. The Reflecting Pool was mile
marker 14 or 15-she couldn’t recall-but it meant she’d be more than
halfway. She wanted to push on-wanted to pick up her pace if
possible-but she was aware of a singing sensation in her brain as
though her entire body was about to lift off the pavement. A warning
bell clanged in her mind. Too much insulin. It usually took her this
way, with a giddy abandon that could end in shock. She should have
eaten the orange at mile marker 6, but she hadn’t wanted it then.
Now she was past the Marines with their bananas.
She slowed her steps slightly and fumbled in her fanny pack for a
protein bar and juice pack. Glad, for once, that George wasn’t
watching.
Four hours into the race, Daniel had lost count of the cups he’d
poured and passed to runners of every description: women of fifty
shuffling toward the finish, young guys with buff shoulders and
sharp-prowed noses glistening with sweat; couples running together;
aging men stumbling through their last course. Hains Point was the
informal finish line for many of them who could manage twenty miles
but no further. After a bit of food and a visit to the aid station,
some of them packed it in. Others sat for a bit on the grassy spaces
of the park, which in Daniel’s opinion had to be a mistake. Once you
sat down on a marathon, you weren’t likely to start running again.
Continues…
Excerpted from Blown
by Francine Mathews
Copyright © 2005 by Francine Mathews.
Excerpted by permission.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
Bantam
Copyright © 2005
Francine Mathews
All right reserved.
ISBN: 0-553-80330-1
