Carolina Red

Hardly anyone in the Rathskeller knew that Vivaldi’s Four Seasons had finished playing. Or, that the overture to one of his operas had started. The crowd was not raucous. They were simply young and excited and glad to be back at the University after the long Christmas holiday. The patrons were on the move, pausing at the bar only long enough to get a refill. Sweatshirts over button-downs, jeans or skirts, hiking boots: how much they all looked alike. The bartenders knew which ones were the young Chapel Hill faculty and which were the Carolina students. They knew who could be served a second beer and who would have to settle for a soda. It seemed that everybody knew everybody.

Except for Jay, that is. Jay was sure that he didn’t know a single person in the room. The Rathskeller had not been his kind of place the previous three years and he was remembering why. He decided that on the next Saturday, he would return to one of the bars in Carrboro. There, the beer was cheaper, and the music had a beat. How stupid he had been to think that someone was going to remember him, to ask if he was going to have another good year. He leaned toward the bartender. “Another Budweiser, please.”

“Did I card you already?” the bartender asked as he refilled Jay’s glass.

Fifteen minutes later, he knew he should have eaten something. Two more swallows. Then, he would go back to the cold cabin.

Rather than hearing her, he felt her as she stepped close. Close, but not touching. One of her hands was on the bar next to his beer and the other was on her hip. She didn’t turn away when their eyes met in the reflection in the mirror. For sure, she wasn’t wearing a sweatshirt and jeans. Her dress was black. Solid black. Up to her neck in the front with a turtle-neck kind of collar. Jay stepped away from the bar and her mirrored reflection. Her back was bare from that collar all the way to below her waist. He had a strong impulse to touch the muscles that ran down her back, to put his fingers into the small indention where her backbone lay. His fingers imagined how she would feel. Smooth as velvet. Her hair was so black that it seemed to absorb light. He was sure that no comb could scratch its way through that mane, but his fingers could. He looked again to the mirror. Jay liked the way she looked at him, hoping she liked what she saw, hoping she would say something.

She did. “You’re the runner.” It wasn’t a question. She was telling him. “You’re the runner.”

It had been a long time since Jay had felt his heart jump a beat, then stop, kick twice, and start the regular thumping again. What could he say so that she would not laugh and walk away?

“Hey!” she said.

“Oh, yeah. Hey.” He was sure that she already knew that he was a tongue-tied, inept, social misfit. He extended his hand.

She looked down at it, laughed gently, and took his in her left hand. And she continued to hold it.

His face felt hot. “Everybody here know that? That I’m the runner?” he asked.

She nodded toward the other bar patrons. “What do you see?” she asked.

He started to say he saw her hair caressing her back. “People talking. Telling where they went for the holidays, what they’re taking this semester.” He waited. “Well?”

“Well, then. Where did you go during the holidays?” Her eyes laughed. “I heard that Coach Blackwell had a new runner training for the London Olympics.”

“I’m not new, but I am going to London. And I was about the only student in town during the Christmas holidays. Coach wanted me to stay and start on his schedule. How’d you find out? Do you know somebody on the track team?”

“Hmm.” She pulled her hair over her right shoulder. “I looked around the room for the man who didn’t have much meat on his bones.”

Jay looked at his reflection in the mirror. His sun-bleached hair was curling over his ears. He ran both hands through the sides, pulling his hair back, then a smile formed on his face. “My legs are big. You want to see?”

“Sometime.” She picked up his beer and took a sip. “Budweiser.”

“Yeah.”

“I hear one of the dancers out at Carrboro got you onto the stage with her. How come you wouldn’t show her your legs?”

“Ah, shit!” He turned and looked out over the room. “That was the stupidest thing I’ve ever done. Thank God I was sober enough not to give her my pants, too.” Jay turned back to the bar. “Since the end of fall semester, I sometimes go for a whole week without saying a single word to nobody. Not until I come into town on Saturday.” He paused. She didn’t say anything. “Coach set me up in a cabin on Armstrong Ridge over near Durham. It’s lonely out there.” Jay looked at her, waiting. Then, “Pretty damn lonely. But, there’s a quarter mile track right outside the door. And I figure that makes it worth living there. Twice a day, I run. Hard, in the mornings. Every night, I email him stuff. Distances. Speed. Heart rate. And the next morning … . Well, Coach sends me new running schedules.”

“No schedules for the nights?”

He laughed, leaned onto the bar with both elbows, then turned his head toward her. “No. There’s me, a vintage boom box, and his music. And, books. His books. He comes out on Sunday afternoon or evening with food. He left me a beat up old jeep. I freeze my tail off on Saturday evenings when I come into town. Mostly, I go to Carrboro. Except tonight. And I’m glad I’m here.” He turned to her with a big grin on his face.

She turned and leaned against the bar. “What’s your name, Runner?”

He snorted. “Jonathan, but I’ve been Jay since grammar school. Yours?”

“They say your pulse rate is only in the low forties per minute. Can I feel?”

“What? Who told you that?”

She reached up with both hands and started to unbutton his shirt. There was nothing he could do but watch. She put both hands under his shirt, fingers on each side of his chest. “It doesn’t seem so slow. Beats hard.”

“God!” Jay gasped. “You keep that up and … .”

“You’re perspiring.” She was watching her hands as they slid over his chest.

Jay shook his head. “That’s sweat. Pure, jumping out, man sweat.”

She laughed as she buttoned his shirt. “See the guy over by the door with his back to us and talking to the blonde? Long reddish-brown hair?”

Jay looked. There was a guy with auburn colored hair tied near the back of his neck. The shadow of a beard accented his sharp cheek bones. “And a ring in his ear?”

She nodded, “Rusty. He’s my brother. He’s taking me to a party at his fraternity.”

“Your brother?” Jay looked at the guy for a moment. “You don’t take after him.”

“His daddy was red headed. Not mine.” She reached over to his beer, dipped her finger in, and held it to his lips. He took her finger into his mouth. For a moment, she left it there as he caressed it with his tongue. It tasted like more than beer.

“I want to watch you run,” she said as she pulled her finger from his mouth. She nodded and turned, leaving him staring.

“Say when,” he called after her. Her brother stood as she walked up. Broad shouldered, looked like a swimmer. The girl, she didn’t look back as her brother helped her put on a coat. Then, just as the two of them were about to step out the door, she said something that made both of them turn. Jay nodded. Her brother had no smile on his face. Instead, it was bared teeth, a snarl, a warning.

Even though the door was across the bar, Jay jerked backwards, his fists balled. “Hey! Come on!” He whispered as the door closed behind them. “Your sister came onto me.” Jay picked up the mug, downed the rest of the Budweiser, watching himself in the mirror. Then, he smiled at his reflection. “Don’t say you didn’t like it, you horny son-of-a-bitch.”

The jeep was cold. The fan in the little heater put out more noise than warmth. He got the jeep up to its maximum speed as he drove off The Hill, heading back to the cabin in the woods. He smiled as he thought of sliding his hands down her bare back. He’d pull her to him as his fingers fumbled with whatever clasps were at the back of that turtleneck. She would be firm, soft, warm. It wasn’t her finger he wanted to caress.

He stripped his shirt off before he started the blaze in the fireplace. Then slow and easy, she would undress him, too. That’s the way it could be.

Jay was still in bed Monday morning when he heard a car door slam. The hinges on the cabin door screeched. Jay listened for Coach Blackwell’s booming voice. But it was not Blackwell that walked across the cabin to Jay’s room. She was wearing ski pants, a multicolored wool jacket, and a knit cap.

“Hey,” she said.

“You? How’d you know where I live? And how’d you get here?” Jay asked.

“Four-wheel drive, Runner,” she laughed. “What did you think? Come on. Get up.” She pulled off her knit cap and shook her head. The mass of curls fell around her shoulders. “Blackwell sent you this week’s food supply. And you’ve got miles to run.”

Jay sat up, pulling the cover around his waist. “What do you know?”

“Blackwell told me.”

“Yeah? And did he tell you why he didn’t come yesterday?” He ran his right hand over his head, pulling his hair off his face.

“He met with the new track guys. You getting up, or do I have to snatch the cover off you?”

A smile played across Jay’s face. “Come on, but I’m not dressed.”

“I knew it smelled like a man cave in here. You need a shower.” She turned and called over her shoulder. “My name is Dee. I’m fixing you sausage and pancakes.”

“Sausage?” Jay answered as he unwrapped the sheet from his waist. “I usually eat after I run and never eat greasy sausage.”

“Shower, Runner. And don’t be hanging out in there!”

Jay was dressed only in running shorts, drops of water still falling out of his hair when he walked into the kitchen.

Dee looked over her shoulder toward Jay as she was cutting open a package of sausage. Then, “Damn!” She dropped the knife and held up her left index finger. “See what you made me do!” She squeezed the finger as a drop of blood puckered up.

“What I made you do?” Jay frowned and walked over. “Here, wash it.”

She turned to Jay, extended her finger to his mouth. “Make it well,” she whispered.

Jay hesitated, looked at her finger, and then into her eyes. One was Carolina blue and the other brown. He started to ask if she was wearing contact lens, but her finger was in his mouth. There was a puzzling taste. She tapped her finger on his tongue.

Jay pulled his head away. “What? Are you clean?”

She turned back to the sausage. “Don’t you worry, Runner. You won’t get HIV from me.” Then, she turned to him again. “Here! Give me your hand.”

“What?”

She took his hand and scraped the knife over his palm.

“Shit! What did you do that for?” He tried to pull back, but she held onto his fingers, pulled his palm to her mouth and licked the cut. He quit pulling away, instead watched as an urgent stirring filled his body.

She turned her eyes from his hand and smiled as though she knew what she had done. “Don’t just stand there.” She pointed the knife toward the microwave. “Get started on that first batch of store-bought pancakes.”

For a moment, Jay stood watching her, wondering. He looked at his hand; it was just a scrape, hardly bleeding. He licked the cut himself, twice, then shrugged. “I’ve never had anybody lick my hand. It felt … .” He hesitated. “It felt primitive.”

“Pancakes,” was all she said as she handed him a cup of coffee.

“I like mine black.”

“I figured.”

He finished the first six pancakes while Dee sipped coffee across the counter. When his plate was empty, she served him sausage slices and another three pancakes.

“One might think,” Jay started, “That if a gal showed up at a guy’s place unannounced, but welcome … welcome, you understand … one might think that she was going to do more for him than fix breakfast.”

“Could be,” she said without turning, “What more I’m going to do is watch you run. And then, I am going to make my nine o’clock class.”

“I’d be quick.”

“Probably. But not this morning. Get your running shoes on. The track out there is waiting.”

“I need my sweat suit,” he was walking toward the bedroom.

“You don’t need sweats,” she said.

“Hey, it’s below freezing out there. There’s ice.”

“Are you an animal?”

“What? Sure! A human animal. What are you talking about?”

“Animals grow a thick pelt when they get cold. Any wild animal would know you’ve been running barelegged. Just look. Look at your legs.”

Jay glanced down. “A runner’s muscles and bones,” he said.

“And curly yellow hair.”

“Men do that, you know. It’s not ‘cause I run barelegged.”

Dee started to put on her jacket. “Get your shoes on. I’m going to watch.”

“You’re going to watch me freeze my tail off,” but he got his shoes and a stopwatch. When they stepped outside, he wrapped his arms around his bare chest, shivering.

“Okay, go!” she said. “Go, before you really do freeze!”

He jogged out to the track, fiddled with his watch for a moment, did a slow jog for one lap, and then ran. Fast. At the end of each lap, he glanced at his watch, not stopping until he finished three. He was panting.

“Cold?” she called.

“Not really!” He started a slow jog. As he rounded the corner at the far end, he heard her car start and saw she was leaving. He was disappointed. But he was pleased with his speed. All morning, he was fast, even after eating all that sausage and pancakes.

Jay went to the Ratskeller the next Saturday, hoping to see Dee. He had been sitting on a barstool almost a half hour and was nearly finished with the first beer when the bartender placed a glass of wine on the bar in front of him.

Jay looked up. “Whoops! Wrong guy. Beer for me.”

The bartender picked up Jay’s mug and wiped the counter. “Tell her.” He said nodding toward the front of the room. “She ordered it.”

Jay turned. He hadn’t seen them come in. Dee and her red-headed brother were in a booth near the door. Her brother was wearing a black sports coat over a shirt that was exactly the same shade of light blue as Dee’s turtleneck sweater. The brother might have intended that his hair be held by a clasp in the nape of his neck as Dee’s was, but his wild tangle was not to be confined by any cuff. Brother and sister? Did they live together?

Dee looked toward him. Jay raised the glass and mouthed thanks. He turned back to the bar and watched her in the mirror. The dark red wine smelled like blackberries and cherries. He figured it might be sweet, but it wasn’t. It had a rich taste. A little tart. The bartender came over. “You like it?”

“The wine? Sure. What is it?”

“It’s called Carolina Red. It’s from a local winery. Expensive.”

“Expensive?” Jay asked. “And what’s she and her brother drinking?”

The bartender wiped the counter and leaned toward Jay. “I was going to tell you. The guy ordered Carolina Red. She got a Budweiser. She said you’d pay for her beer.”

“Really?” Jay looked at her in the mirror. She was holding the glass as though about to take a swallow. Instead, she put her finger into the glass and then into her mouth.

The brother was looking at him, nodded, and then pulled Dee to him and kissed her on the lips. The skin on the back of Jay’s neck prickled and crawled, and the muscles across his chest and shoulders tightened. That kiss was a challenge; he knew it. He should leave.

There was a surprise waiting for Jay in the jeep: a package of sausage and six small bottles of wine. A note, too. “Don’t wolf all the sausage in one breakfast, and no more than one bottle of wine per night! Only one, Runner!”

Jay stood beside the jeep for a minute looking at the wine. Expensive? And she’s giving this away? “I wonder,” he thought as he started the jeep, “I wonder if her brother … or rather that guy with her … I wonder if he knows she came out to the cabin and is now giving me this wine.” He picked up one of the packages of sausage as he drove toward the cabin. “Am I going to eat this?” He brought the package to his nose. “Smells better than the kind of sausage I used to eat.” Jay snorted. “Expensive wine. Expensive sausage. I wouldn’t be surprised if it doesn’t turn out that she’s expensive, too. So, I may have to decide what I’m willing to hock. Every race. Every win. All for her. I’ll whisper that to her that.” The jeep groaned as it pulled up the switchbacks to the top of the ridge. Jay cut of the motor and looked toward the dark cabin. “Love or lust? It sure as hell is lust and right now, but I’d give my soul to have her with me right now.”

When he slid out of the jeep, he was surprised at how bright it was. There was only a sliver of a moon, but he could see even into the edge of the woods. Across the way, the track seemed empty, waiting. And, he had that same antsy feeling that he has at races. Run! Run! “What the hell!” He pulled his sweater over his head, unbuttoned his shirt, and dropped them both onto the ground. He snatched off his shoes and slid out of his pants. Barefoot, dressed only in briefs, he walked out onto the track and ran. He had no idea how fast he was doing the laps, but he was fast and he knew it.

Finally, he stopped, threw up his head, curled his fingers as though to grasp the stars, and yelled. Then he laughed. Where did that come from? He didn’t pick up his clothes as he trotted back to the cabin.

Coach Blackwell must have come while he was on the Sunday afternoon long run. There were sacks of groceries and a new training schedule on the porch. For the first time, steaks were included in his week’s rations.

Jay was itching to start his training run the next morning. The outdoor thermometer registering 42 degrees was not what surprised him. The surprise was the large dog lying at the edge of the yard. He stepped out the front door, “Hey, you! Scram!”

The dog lifted its head. Its fur was more reddish than brown and mottled with streaks of black. Its muzzle seemed longer than most dogs. The animal stood, its tail sticking straight up, unmoving. One ear had a gold tag, both were pricked forward.

“Go on! Git! Go home, dog!”

The dog stretched, first lowering its head, pushing its rump high in the air, then raising its head and stretching forward. It sat back on the ground, its head erect, and its deep black eyes watching. Then, it stood and gracefully trotted toward the track.

Jay picked up a rock and threw it toward the dog. “Go home! Scram! You don’t belong here!”

The dog turned toward Jay and growled, then trotted onto the track.

Damn the dog. Jay was going to run. His watch would ping every three minutes. He would run two laps fast, then jog until the watch sounded. As he started running, so did the dog. All through that three-minute set, the dog stayed ten or fifteen yards ahead. When the watch pinged, Jay paused, pulled off the sweatshirt, and threw it to the edge of the track. The sun was bright; the temperature was up to the middle forties. And the cool felt good on his perspiring skin.

Jay continued the three-minute interval training, finding that he could make the two laps faster than called for by his schedule. In fact, he caught himself competing with the dog. And the dog must have felt it. He would turn and bark if Jay got behind, pulling him on, seeming to issue a challenge.

The reddish dog was waiting at the edge of the woods again on Tuesday. Jay whistled and snapped his fingers. The dog started trotting toward the track.

“Okay, dog. Let’s do it.” Jay laughed. “Hey! You need a name. You look like a brute. I’m going to call you Brute. You like that?” As soon as Jay started walking behind him, the dog began a smooth lope, his shoulders rising and falling. “Hold on, Brute – Brutus.” Jay yelled. “Brutus? That’s better. You’re a big, ugly, son-of-a-bitch, but I like running with you!” And that’s what they did. They ran. Fast.

Each morning for the rest of the week, Brutus was waiting. Always, he set a pace for Jay. Somehow, Brutus knew when three hours were up. He simply trotted off the track and disappeared into the woods. “What about afternoon runs?” Jay had yelled as they finished the three-hour set on Thursday. The dog turned, looked at Jay, and then trotted off. “I’d let you go first,” Jay called. Then, quieter, “Yeah. See you whenever you take a notion.”

For all that week, Jay had done his rigorous morning runs with Brutus with only a glass of orange juice in his belly. Lunch was light, too before the long afternoon runs off the ridge, through the woodlands and around the lake. Suppers were the high calorie meals. He ate heaping plates of potatoes and vegetables each night. The sausage, too. While he usually had two beers with that evening meal, the wine came later while reading or just staring into the flickering light of the fireplace.

Coach Blackwell had warned him about the importance of straightening his upper body. The high level training he was doing required core body strength to prevent back injury, coach said.

And while Jay had followed the weight lifting regime that Blackwell had recommended all during Christmas holidays, the intensity with which he lifted weights and the number of sit-up repetitions increased. Anybody who saw him without his shirt might still say that he didn’t have much meat on his ribs or hips, but the musculature of his chest and belly had become sharply defined. Jay took note of these changes happening in this body. No longer did he have the appearance of a male teenager. His was now the body of a mature young man. And he was aware of the not unpleasant tingling that came with the hair that had spread over his chest and crawled up his belly.

Blackwell gave him reading assignments associated with the internet class in which Jay was registered. High intensity training in the mornings, with long, slow runs in the afternoons, then relaxation for an hour before sleep: that was the prescription for successful competitive racing the reading material emphasized. Jay found the evening relaxation in a warm shower, his hands filled with liquid soap. There would be a rush not unlike an 800-meter race, a gasping climax, and then the relaxation that let to a deep sleep.

Jay would wake the next morning, stretch, and go out, eager for another day filled with the pleasure of an athlete at his prime, eager to take on the pace set by the damn dog.

The rising moon was showing through the trees just as Jay was about to prepare supper the next Friday night. He stepped out onto the porch, attracted to the darkness creeping in from the edge of the woods, aware of a physical tension that tightened in his guts.

What if he did another long run? There was that urge. Jay pulled off his shirt and jeans. Then, in briefs and shoes, even sockless, he ran through those dark shadows, dropping off the ridge and following along the whispering creek. He smelled the sweet, musky odor of the wildness and the startling clarity of his own footfall. Though he never saw it, he was sure that some animal was running only a little in front of him. There was an unmistakable spoor and a shadow that never quite materialized. Brutus. He knew it had to be Brutus. The damn dog was there.

Jay raced in an exhibition run on January 14. He easily outran the teams from Duke, State, and Wake Forest at 1500 meters and at 5000 meters. A representative from the Apple Corporation offered to sponsor him through the remaining spring races and the Olympic trials. That would mean money for travel, gear, and food. His obligation would be to wear the Apple logo as a temporary tattoo on his shoulder at all races. Jay looked to Coach Blackwell. “This fits within the Olympic rules for amateurs,” Coach nodded. It was agreed. Blackwell would get the papers within a week and Jay could sign the agreement with Blackwell and his secretary as witnesses.

The rest of the team applauded when Jay got on the UNC Track Team after the exhibition races. “Good run, man! Good run!” Jay nodded. It was a good run. He had found his place.

That evening, he grilled three pork chops, ate two of them and a half a loaf of unsliced bread, and brought in firewood. After a fire was going, he searched for a book in Blackwell’s collection. Someone had turned down a corner about halfway through Pat Conroy’s The Prince of Tides. That’s where he started with the book and where he started with the first beer.

By eleven o’clock, crushed beer cans littered the floor around his chair. He was drunk, and he knew it. He hauled himself upright, staggered to the refrigerator, and pulled out two small bottles of Carolina Red. He guzzled the first in one upturning. “Only one a day?” he mumbled as he unscrewed the second cap. “One bottle a day, my ass! I deserve more of your damn expensive wine. ‘Specially today! In celebration,” Jay raised both arms. “In celebration of two wins, dammit!” He held onto the counter as he waved the second bottle above his head. “I ran those bastards into the ground. And this one, this pretty, little sip of ... of Carolina Red? I’d say it’s Blood Red!” He laughed. “Whatever the hell it is, I paid for it!” He put the bottle to his mouth and emptied it. “And I am the Prince of …,” he laughed again, swinging his arm around as though claiming his domain, “I am the Prince of whatever the hell this ridge is called!”

His skin prickled as though a thousand ants were crawling over his body. He wobbled to the fire, stripped off his clothes, and pitched them toward the chair. For a while, he leaned against the brick mantle and watched the flickering light dance across his nakedness. He ran his fingers over his chest. Every rib hurt as though whatever was inside him was pushing, trying to get out. The skin over those bare ribs was stretched tight, exposing even the texture of his bones. If his rib cage was expanding, the opposite was true of his hips. His back cracked and popped as it seemed to be shifting its shape, his vertebrae realigning to accommodate a narrower waist, a sunken belly, and protruding hipbones.

He fell to the floor and curled into a ball. Part of his brain told him that this was a drunken dream. Men’s bodies don’t change like this. Jay massaged his legs. If he had ever had big thighs and calves, now they were simply tendons, sinews, and bunched, hard muscles covered with coarse yellow hair, coarse curls that ran in a line up his belly and coated the muscles across his chest.

He heard the oak tree next to the cabin creak as a breeze swirled through its branches. Something was creeping through the thicket out near the drive. He raised his head, sniffing.

His legs and arms jerked. He was running through a dark forest. Not alone. Something big, something dark, behind him. Not chasing. Following. There was a clearing. A fire. A skinned boar hog on a spit, blackened, burned, seared. He knew it was for him. A sacrifice for him. With a slap of his hand, he knocked the carcass tumbling onto the ground, the juices bubbling through the charred skin and gathering in the crevices of the animal’s muscles. Jay was on his hands, biting into the pig’s chest, tearing away chunks. A circle of wolves were around him, snarling, watching, waiting.

Jay stirred. A dream. A weird dream. Something had waked him. It was a racket from outside the cabin. He groaned and pushed up. It was almost morning. When he opened the front door, there were animals. Dogs. “What the hell?” He could see Brutus lying under his usual tree. Two others, one silvery grey and the other brown. They were playing, running in circles, barking, growling, all the while wagging their tails. A mock fight, a puppyish fight. The two stopped when Jay stepped off the porch.

Brutus stood and barked; the other two ran toward the track, then stopped and looked back. Brutus barked again.

“No way!” Jay laughed. “I’d puke after one lap.” The two standing near the track barked, their tails wagging, watching Jay. “You’re crazy! I’m not running naked out there in the dark with a pack of wolves!”

Brutus’s tail barely wagged. He stepped closer. Jay squatted and held out his hand, palm up. “Come on,” he whispered. “Don’t you need your ears scratched?” The dog eased up to Jay. Sniffed and then moved still closer. He bumped Jay with his nose. Hard. Jay fell backwards, catching himself with both hands. Brutus put his nose onto Jay’s chest, sniffing down his belly. Jay’s heart was pounding, “Stay away from there,” he whispered.

Brutus stepped back. It was bared teeth, a snarl, a warning. Then, he turned and seemingly bounded toward the track.

Jay laughed. “You crazy animals! You’ve decided you’d rather run than rip me apart. I’ll buy that. Let's go, you bastards!”

And they did. Brutus was in front setting the pace. The other two were a little ahead of Jay, one on either side, and Jay was laughing. Then the pace picked up, faster than he and Brutus usually ran. By the fourth lap, Jay knew they were running faster than he had at the exhibition race.

Brutus stopped, his tail up. One of the dogs crossed in front of Jay and, before Jay could stop, he ran into the damn animal. Jay cursed as he sprawled onto the track, scraping the bare skin on his hip. He rolled onto his back and looked at the abrasion.

The dogs were facing the woods. They saw the new black dog before Jay did. It was the not an unpleasant smell that came with this animal. In fact, it about the way she smelled that attracted him toward her. Yes. It was a she-dog. He knew that. A she-dog on the prowl.

She walked into the clearing, her tail in the air, her ears standing straight up. Brutus walked toward the newcomer. The bitch growled. Jay wondered if there would be a fight, but the bitch let Brutus walk up to her. They touched noses. Jay heard a rumble. She was tense, warning.

Jay grunted as he got up, dusted off his hands, and watched the newcomer walking around the other three. They turned as she moved. “So! I’ve been running with the boys and now this she-dog comes onto the field. That changes everything. Every damn thing.”

She was black and, while the moon was low behind the trees, her black coat glistened as she walked toward Jay. He was still, his hands cupped over his crotch. She sniffed at his feet, moved to the side, and licked the abrasion on his hip.

“Easy, girl. I’d swear you’re a wolf. A female wolf,” Jay whispered. “How’d I get here in the middle of a wolf pack, and the damn female licking at the blood on my leg is about to get me going?”

She looked up. Their eyes met. Jay shook his head. With the early morning light, he saw that her eyes were different colors. One eye blue? “Crazy,” he whispered. She moved before him and sniffed his hands still covering his crotch.

“Easy, Girl” he said again. “Yep. You know what I want. Don’t you, Girl?”

She walked away, back into the woods. The other three followed. The run was over. Jay shook his head in disbelief and turned toward the cabin. Inside, he couldn’t help it. He simply laughed. “Pretty desperate when I let a damn female dog get me going. Pretty damn desperate.” He put another log on the fire, and took a lingering shower. He felt a pleasant exhaustion as he toweled off. Then, put on boxer shorts, a tee-shirt, and fell across the bed.

It was almost noon before he got up and slipped on some jeans. There were no dogs outside. Maybe all of it had been a drunken dream. He brought in a load of firewood, stirred the embers, and put a few pieces of kindling on top. When the blaze caught up, he dropped two logs onto the fire and looked out the window again. “Drunk! Totally wasted,” he laughed.

Jay was almost finished with his breakfast when he heard a vehicle drive up. It was Coach Blackwell and another guy. It looked like Dee’s brother! “Hey,” he called as he stepped out onto the porch. “If you had told me you were coming, I’d have made a larger pot of coffee.” He hugged his chest, shivering, “And put on a damn sweater,” he whispered.

“Good morning,” Blackwell answered. Dee’s brother’s hair was not pulled back like he usually wore it, but hung long at the edges of his face. His eyebrows were sharp arches over the dark holes in which his eyes were buried. “You haven’t met Rusty Gorski,” Blackwell called. Gorski was wearing jeans and only a tee shirt, in spite of the cold February morning. He was lean and, beneath the UNC shirt, was all angles, edges, and planes. There was a bottle of wine in his hands.

Jay felt a shiver of tension spread across his back. He extended his hand. “We’ve not met. Not really.” He paused. Then, “Gorski? Mikiel Gorski? Is that you?”

Rusty took Jay’s hand. “That’s right. I am Mikiel. I prefer Rusty.”

“Hurdles, 2008 Olympics in Beijing. Right? But not from Chapel Hill.”

“No.”

Jay waited, shrugged, then said, “Dee. Dee Gorski. That’s your sister?”

Rusty didn’t answer. Rather, he pushed the door open and stepped into the cabin. Jay looked at Blackwell, surprised at what seemed presumptuous. Then, he understood. “You’ve lived here before me?”

Rusty looked around. “The others, too,” he answered as he walked to the kitchen area and put the bottle of wine on the kitchen island. He opened the refrigerator and looked inside. “While I was here, Dee would come out. Bring me food.” He turned back and touched the bottle of wine. “She sent this. Said it’s special for you.”

Jay was frowning. “She brought you food back when you were training, when you were here?” Jay waited. There was no response. He walked over and picked up the bottle. “Carolina Red? She brought wine back then for you?”

Blackwell was standing in front of the fireplace. “Carolina Red, Jay. I don’t think you know that I have a farm out past Carrboro. I took on Rusty as a full partner ten years ago. The Carolina Red is from him, actually.”

Jay looked at Rusty. “That’s where your sister gets the bottles she brings me?”

Rusty walked over to the fireplace, reached over and stirred the fire with the poker. “You’re running fast I hear.”

Jay looked at Blackwell. “That’s right. Coach has me training hard.”

“Looks like you’ve been lifting weights.”

Jay frowned, folded his arms across his chest, and shook his head. “Not really.”

“You like running fast?”

Jay turned toward the window when there was the sound of another vehicle coming onto the ridge. “Sure,” he answered as he walked toward the window. “Somebody else has driven up. Who now?”

“Eddie,” Blackwell said.

“A pickup,” Jay walked to the door and stepped onto the porch. There was a cage in the back of the truck.

Blackwell came out onto the porch with him. “We raise goats, too,”

“Goats,” Jay echoed. He wiped his nose. “Funny. I can smell the damn thing.” He watched as the driver got out. “The bartender! Hey, man,” he called. “You know this place?”

The bartender waved. Jay watched as Rusty and Coach Blackwell walked to the truck. For a moment they talked and then Blackwell came back to the porch. “It’s Ed Mosley.”

“Damn. He got gold for the long jump in Beijing. Didn’t he?”

Blackwell leaned against the porch rail. “You can have your gold, too.”

Rusty was hammering a metal stake into the ground, as the bartender was pulling the goat out of the cage. Jay stared, frowning. “You’ve had five Olympians. Where are the others?”

“I don’t know. Scattered up and down the Rocky Mountains. Maybe in Canada.”

The bartender had unbuttoned his shirt and thrown it into the truck. Jay shook his head and stepped backwards toward the cabin door. He watched as Rusty pulled his tee shirt over his head. “My God!”

“Come inside, Jay,” Blackwell put his hand on Jay’s shoulder, pushing him into the cabin and shutting the door. Even inside the cabin they could hear the goat bleating.

Jay was shaking his head. “What’s going on, Coach?” His voice was trembling.

“You’re a smart guy. I think you’ve got it.”

“Come on! There’s no such thing! This can’t be real!” He looked toward the window.

“Listen to me, Jay. You can get gold in London and in Rio if you want it. In London as a Carolina student. In Rio as an independent. But, after London, you can’t stay in North Carolina. I let Rusty and Eddie stay, but not you. Rusty won’t allow it. You try to do that and … . Well, don’t. He’s the alpha male now. You’ve got to go, say, to Montana. Around Missoula. You can farm like I do, or just stay in the national forests.”

Jay turned away. “This is crazy!” He was shaking his head. He could feel his heart beating wildly.

“Now listen. There’ll be no more small bottles. Without them, your immune system is going to kick out all the cells with the new DNA. In a word, you’ll revert. Jay. Listen. I can’t control Rusty much longer. Choose to run. Then, you and Dee should leave.” He walked over to the counter and picked up the bottle of Carolina Red. “There’s no alcohol in here. Drink the whole bottle. The first time, it hurts a bit, but … well, I’ve become addicted. So much power. And everything, Jay. Everything is better.”

Blackwell unbuttoned his shirt and flung it toward the kitchen island.

“Holy shit!” Jay backed away as Blackwell walked to the door, stepped outside, and closed the door. Jay was shaking. He walked to the window. The goat was sprawled on the ground, three dogs … no, three wolves … they were tearing at the body.

A movement to the side caught Jay’s eye. It was the black dog, the black wolf. The bitch. She sat at the edge of the woods, watching. The rusty brown wolf – Brutus – looked up, turned toward her, then back toward the cabin. He uttered a short howl.

“Oh, shit. Shit!” Jay backed away from the window. Then, walked to the kitchen counter, picked up the bottle and put it down again. He rubbed his hands through his hair as he looked out the window. “Two gold medals. Dee. Living wild. ” He took off his shirt and rubbed his hands over his chest and stomach. His skin was prickling, itching. His spine popping. “This place needs a new damn alpha!” He unscrewed the top on the bottle.