Thomas Ray Garcia lives in Pharr, Texas.  See his website

Seventh Man

The boys and I used to run all over the Rio Grande Valley like Road Kings until the “easy twelve” at the Santa Ana Wildlife Refuge taught me what it meant to roam.

There we were, half-naked and sweating even before the sun rose above the flatland horizon, sneaking under tollbooth gates and over chained fences until we reached the Malachite Trail. Although it was an hour until opening, who would kick out six cross-country runners cutting across trails and roads and brushlands? And if we were caught, that middle-aged, mafia-hat-wearing, goatee uneven and gray bastard of a coach would do anything to bail us out.

Even in the twilight, I admired my hodgepodge of a team. Who could forget Beans’ telenovela celebrity chin, scarred from his monthly trips across the river? And Russian, who was as white as you could get, was probably more Mexican than all of us combined, but he was pale and his middle name was “Ivan,” and that was all that mattered to Coach Austin while bestowing his nicknames. And then there was Danny Bear, the darkest runner Coach Austin had ever had, and so his nickname followed suit. Julian and Josh, keeping their real names because they transcended the nickname game, were the two self-appointed team leaders and traitors to that necessary tranquility before a run; they ran ahead without telling anyone else. Only Russian and I had Garmins, and this sole fact made us saviors, so we caught up in haste.

“Too fast,” Russian said under a mutter. Those two words slowed us down.

And who would want to rush past the scenery of Santa Ana with its cracked soil and brown plants and suffocating paths winding past one another, a road here and a trail there, all leading in circles until our twelve miles were over and we returned home with nothing to do but wait until the next run? In the middle of a heartbeat, we sunk into a rhythm led by pattering shoes three hundred miles overworn.

“Russian, let’s go sub-six on the last mile, or what?” Danny Bear asked.

No reply, only breathing, and so Danny Bear made the first move: A jerk to the right to escape the pack, and then a surge forward to interrupt Russian’s stride. No good, for the pack sided with Russian, and we answered Danny Bear’s treason with a turn into a clearing off the main trail.

After a silent minute, Danny Bear caught the back end with Beans, Julian and Josh remained in the middle, and Russian and I led the pack with a tinge of reluctance since both of us were beat after a long week of studying English and Biology and whatever else we thought would help us escape this never-ending run. How many miles now? My Garmin sounded off in reply: One. One out of twelve, twelve out of sixty-five or sixty-six that week. We were only sixteen years old, and there were only six of us. We were like the Spartans of the Southmost South, where the weight of Texas crushes the upheaving Mexico, and we’re caught in the middle, trying to hold one up while pushing the other down.

If only I had known the struggle going on in their minds at that moment, whether they realized it or not. They wanted to escape. Their futures foretold it: Russian with his unfulfilled PhD dreams, and Julian—the MIT bright-child of Pharr or Donna or whatever town he put down on the school form, who threw out his back and joined a frat and fell in love with a brunette back home—who left Texas and came back to Texas and never went anywhere but Texas. For love, he said. For fear, I said. Josh joined the Border Patrol (told you he was a traitor), while Danny Bear disappeared into who knows where—some obscure mechanic shop down by Las Milpas most likely—I probably drive past him every day. And Beans? He overdosed the night after graduation.

We all yearned for that salvation from our duties as citizens of the Rio Grande Valley, and my words fail to capture the torpor that hung in our minds every day until I left and “became a writer like Jack London” like my dreams told me I would; and I still run (six days a week in fact) to fulfill my duty, but to jump so far ahead of my story would do injustice to the immediacy of the moment—we were six runners then.

Six was an odd number. This revelation struck me as I fell back with Beans and Danny Bear and watched as we stomped our souls into the dead earth. I saw ten soleless shoes rising and falling in unison, then discordant, then both, and then I stopped staring at the legs and looked at the bare backs. Josh must have been whipped by his abuelo last night. Russian with his acned back didn’t mind, neither did Josh with his suntanned, blotched, bronze shoulders pumping him forward. I fell into Beans’ rhythm, a slow steady pace, relaxed with the world, not resisting the inevitable. Danny Bear followed.

“Who’s gonna be our seventh man?” I asked, tired of the silence. “We can’t compete without him. Ricky, Gecko, or Takis?”

“No seas mamón, Tommy,” Beans said. “Focus on yourself.”

That’s the way it was in the Rio Grande Valley. Think about yourself, forget about the next guy, and don’t give out free rides. I remembered joining this team as an overweight, idealistic cheerleader spouting spirit and teamwork and goodwill to those who would take it. But no one did; we ran as a pack but lived in our minds. We woke up before our parents rose and ran before the sun rose and showered naked (hiding our roses) and learned how not to learn and ran again after the sun set; we were miserable but reassured in our cycle of sleep, run, school, run, sleep. And here we were, at the edge of the nation, running away from it all, together but separated by that invisible border of human disconnection.

The loneliness of the long-distance runner was real.

The sun remembered to rise by mile four, and all attempts at connection were replaced by the gasping of humid air. We were lost. Even if Beans knew the routes, he refused to pick up the pace and lead the pack, so we ran through trails overlapping and never-ending. Thickets surrounded us, but I could still make out the breaks in the trees and bushes to where the river rushed by. I could hear it gurgling. I’d never seen the river, but it was right there. Momma told me to stay away from it. But it’s beyond the trees and right there, separating two worlds, bleeding with foreign blood, and I was the only one who was thinking this as we turned into a new trail, the Bobcat Trail of all names, and we left behind the wonder of that false placidity with no reflection whatsoever.

I had it. I ran past them all. No one protested as I swung my arms in a frenzy brought upon by delusions of the rut I was in. Their route was now my whim, and they struggled to follow me as I circled back toward treaded paths and unfamiliar branches glowing with light. I was drawn to the sound of the river that was a border and a border that was natural in essence yet unnatural all the same.

And there was the river, calm and turquoise, no hints of life anywhere, hidden by encroaching branches and bent-over trees that seemed to return to the land. I stopped. My chest heaved in tune with my mind, pulsing with adrenaline, and I felt like crossing the Rio Grande and disappearing into nowhere.

“If you’re tired, then don’t pick up the pace,” Julian said, annoyed.

I turned to face him, but in my rush my eyes caught a shirt thrown across a nearby trunk. I approached it. It was wet.

“Watch out for beaners,” Josh said.

Only Russian joined me in my quest to retrace wet spots in the soil back toward an incline leading out of the river, and then follow the faint traces of footprints that were separated by two-foot-long strides. Bursting into a sprint, I ignored the protests behind me, my eyes on the trail, discovering discarded candy boxes and empty prescription bottles until they stopped appearing, and I was at a loss until I saw him.

A tall, shirtless teen with a thick bigote stood hunched over, hiding the scar across his chest. His shorts revealed his darkened thighs, not unaccustomed to sunlight. His calf muscles tightened as if in constant alertness, ready to flee, but he remained staring absently at the six sweaty bodies circled together facing him, the singular, beaten stranger.

“Pinche Tommy,” Beans said. Our breathing had subsided. The four miles, and all the miles we had run, meant nothing standing face-to-face with a true lonesome traveler.

After a light tap on my shoulder, Julian ran back through the woods. The pack followed him. I, too, followed, shocked at the nonchalant encounter until I realized he was following us; he ran, long legs pushing off the same ground we treaded, keeping a considerable distance away but still maintaining a pace only conditioned runners could match. Julian and the others had dashed away, pretending they saw nothing, and let the dust left by their soles remain as the only evidence they had seen of the teen that now neared us, gaining momentum without breaking a sweat, determined to join this solitary band of runners.

Waiting for him to catch up, I remained behind. What was there to fear but a possible escape from this heat-infested land? Would he attack me, steal the shorts and shoes that composed my identity, run far and away until he was me and I was dead?

Laughter erupted from him, and I was sure a mania had burst forth from his body as he exaggerated his arm movements, contorted his face so his lips pushed forward and his eyes widened. Then he stopped goofing, and then he started up again, never breaking his gaze with me.

“Want to run with us?” I asked. A naïve hope had kindled in me, and despite the improbability of it all, I hoped he would say yes. No reply. He just pushed forward, looking back as if expecting me to respond in turn, and I did, extending my stride and quickening my pace until our legs chugged in a silent harmony disturbed only by our breathing.

The pack lay ahead. From afar, I noticed how they composed a morphing vehicle of bodies that worked separately for a common good, that is, a physical reminder of human existence that many take for granted, but its absence can easily de-motivate the long-distance runner stuck in the never-ending step, step, breathe, step, step, breathe cycle that both prolongs and invites suffering. And here I shared this experience with the teen beside me, matching my movements limb by limb, never daring to move ahead or shrink back, content with his newfound position.

The long-distance runner never questions why, but always asks how things happen or how things will end up, and I asked myself the same questions until the teen suddenly sprinted forward, catching up with the pack. Russian and Julian and Josh and Danny Bear and Beans ran on. They knew, or maybe they really didn’t know, about the seventh man in their midst; a new breathing pattern and running gait had to have registered in their unconscious, sharpened only by miles of thoughtlessness, but I realized that it didn’t matter whether they thought the teen was he or me. He could run with the pack if he could keep up with the pack, and that was that.

How he could run like that after trekking who knows how many miles and living off scraps and swimming across that divisive river I will never know, but I did know he wanted to be one with the world, or to put it in layman terms, one with the pack of runners that provided anonymity, protection, and freedom, despite it not offering any of these things.

Of course, I didn’t arrive at this conclusion until we ran alongside the scenic road and passed a trolley full of workers and visitors reveling in its shade. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw a transformation in the teen’s face—it was done, it was over, the journey had ended, and it was time to go home. I knew this because those eyes betrayed any and all traces of fear. He held his breath mid-stride. But the trolley passed. Only waves from tourists had graced our group of seven runners, all apparently coming from the same place and going to the same place, all one entity in the eyes of a stranger. The teen’s shoulders eased.

We turned off the road and into a path that ran along a dried-up lake. Its red soil cooked in the heat, as did our bodies as we silently yearned for water and relief from the remaining three miles. Where we were headed, I had no idea, and this fact bothered me until a swell of anger rushed from my head to my feet, and I ran up to the front with Russian and Julian, dominant in my ambitions to take control of this lost vehicle. The teen must have felt the same, for he joined me, and I remained quiet until the urge not to ask was overcome by my curiosity.

“Your name?” I asked between breaths.

“Jesse,” he said. And that was all he ever said.

So Jesse and I took the lead, Russian and Julian following, Danny Bear and Josh straggling behind, and Beans behind them ensuring we stay together, yet this was the last thought on the rest of our minds as all we thought was run, run, run, don’t look back, just move on, go past that tree over there that looks burnt from the South Texas sun, jump over that fallen branch, watch out for that dip in the trail, don’t stop.

My Garmin beeped mile ten, and against the wall I went, feeling a growing heaviness in my legs and fatigue burning my chest. Everything slowed down, from the birds crisscrossing the laneless sky and the leaves drooping down, and I even blinked and breathed slower, believing the whole world had joined me in my madness, until I looked over to Jesse who ran straight and tall and confident, those lean arms swaying in rhythmic motion, hypnotic to someone as exhausted as me, and I couldn’t help letting him gain distance on me, so I could watch that body defy time, motion, and the stifling existence we all suffered.

The pack stayed with me, I was the new leader, but Jesse was the true alpha, running at least fifty meters ahead, directing our path on his impulse. I questioned none of it. I followed blindly, his movements inspiring my own, knowing that I couldn’t quit; and despite the quickening pace, I refused to look down at my Garmin to know how many minutes were left because I didn’t want it to be over.

If I had known how it would all go after this run and all our other runs, I would have said, don’t bury your nose in the books, Russian, it’s all worthless; go find your voice like Julian, except he found love instead, and not even in Massachusetts, but right under his nose here in the lowland Rio Grande. And Beans? Don’t die, Beans. Go work with Danny Bear, go make that engine scream, go follow Josh on his travails with forlorn Mexicans. Remember the miles, remember them all, and although we will never run together again, my words will never let your spirits die.

In the final moments of that run, the pack surrounded me like never before. I was propelled forward by an unexplainable force from the energy emanating from their muscles and mouths. We were six, but we were one. We were six minds, six souls, twelve legs that pushed beyond the limits that the world placed on us. We infiltrated this refuge, we ran the miles the way we wanted to run them. We found someone as lost as ourselves and we followed him, he who had transcended it all, and we thought nothing.

I extended my stride to catch up to Jesse, and in this impossible task, I found myself smiling, chasing after a long-forgotten desire I thought I had lost somewhere along the way. I laughed like a child.

The trees and trails looked familiar again, and a sign indicated the beginning of the Malachite Trail up ahead. The fence appeared in the distance, and as we slowed down, Jesse sped on, heaving his whole body onto the wire, until he climbed up and out and ran past Coach Austin’s mini-van and toward the rest of Texas.

“Who was that?” Coach Austin asked us while we climbed over.

“Jesse,” I said.

“He can run.” And that’s all that he ever said about that day.

Now, whenever I wake up early enough to see the sun rise over the Rio Grande Valley and spot a long-distance runner hiding in its shadows, in his eyes all that road behind and beyond him suddenly gone as if my gaze could pierce diamonds and pick his soul out and deport his dreams, I remember Jesse, who could have been Jesus for all we knew, and I look the other way.

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