to cheat me out of my medal! That’s not fair! You bastards, I’ll see you burn in hell if I don’t get my medal!”
Not—definitely not—the Olympic spirit.
I move in to hustle Bonita away, but she’s already moving back toward the group home on her own, spouting as she goes, me trying to catch up.
“I know my rights. They can’t treat me this way. I’m going to tell Miss Pettigrew.” (Bonita has never mastered the “miss/ms.” distinction and I’m not going to be the one to correct her.) “She’ll fix their asses. They won’t get pop for a year! Ten years! Things are going to change around here or somebody’s going to hear from me!”
I’ve heard it all from Bonita myself any number of times. It’s her standard rant against the universe. Losing your pop privileges is the ultimate expression of the problem of evil—and the ultimate grounds for revenge.
Halfway back to the house we run into Bo Springer. He’s familiar enough with Bonita to know not to ask any questions when she has that carnivorous look. I have to get back to the field to help monitor things, so I enlist his help.
“Bo, can you take Bonita here and get her some pop? Then bring her back to the field after she’s cooled off a bit?”
“Sure. No problem. Come on Bonita. Let’s get some pop.”
Bonita brightens and heads off with Bo. I head back to the field.
Coming down the hill, I see they are about to run a heat of the fifty-yard dash. Ronnie, the young kid from the football game, is in lane three, wearing a cape. He looks to be about twelve—physical age of course—and I call him the Black Proteus. I call him that because, well, he’s black—which is to say, African American—and because, like Proteus of Greek myth, he is a shape-changer. One day he presents himself as a superhero, the next as a movie star, the third as a sports icon. He fully inhabits the character of the day (or month) and expects you to respond to him as such. I once greeted him outside the main building with a “How are you doing, President Lincoln?”—the character he had been for weeks before. He looked at me solemnly and stuck out his hand for a shake, “Cash is the name. Johnny Cash.”
Mrs. Francis, the crafts teacher, is watching the race from a distance. I walk up to her and ask, “What’s up with Ronnie’s cape? Superman?”
She laughs.
“Oh no. Wonder Woman.”
“Wonder Woman doesn’t have a cape.”
“She does in Ronnie’s version. And you don’t mess with Ronnie’s version of anything.”
Good for you, Ronnie, I think—gender-bender, all-inclusive, be-whatever-you-want-to-be, All-American boy.
The race starter claps two big wooden blocks together and they’re off. (No starter pistols allowed in Minnesota Special Olympics. Another blow against militarism and the NRA.) Off, yes, but at greatly different speeds. Three actually run at a pretty good clip, heads back, eyeing the finish line ahead. A couple more, bent at the waist and staring at the ground as they move, are mostly stamping the grass, a lot of energy going up and down with the legs, not so much going forward with the body. And then there is one fellow, a teenager, for whom the concept of “race” seems rather obscure. He is on a stroll, waving to the crowd, smiling, wandering back and forth across two or three lanes, but heading roughly toward the finish line—a crowd favorite.
Ronnie is in the first group. He knows how to run and he is leading the race until he starts to notice his cape flapping behind him. He tries to look at it and run at the same time, quite conscious of the profound effect the cape must be making, perhaps wondering if he is going to fly. Looking slows down running, and he is passed near the tape. But no one really cares, including Ronnie. Because each runner is engulfed by a hugger as he or she crosses the line. There hasn’t been this much public excitement since the moon landing. Whoops and hollers and hugs and high-fives all around, for the stroller as much as for the winner. And this was just the first of many heats. Six new huggers wait in the wings for heat number two. If we had more huggers—say at the United Nations, for instance— the world would be a happier place.
I look over and see that Bo is back, sans Bonita. He is talking to Cassandra, whose anxiety is evident even from a distance. This is a big day for New Directions—lots of donors, parents and grandparents, local media, the entire board, heads of local government agencies, corporate sponsors, a celebrity athlete or two, and, of course, clients galore from various organizations. Abby’s disappearance has cast a pall over the event for New Directions folks, but most of the people here haven’t even heard about it yet. Bo puts his hand on Cassandra’s shoulder in a gesture of support, but she sort of pulls away and goes to talk to a couple of parents with their client-child.
I decide to check in on Ralph. They’ve set up the lifting events in the center of the field. His event—the deadlift—is almost over by the time I get there. The deadlift is the most cognitively straightforward activity imaginable: here is something on the ground, pick it up, then put it down. Take turns. Keep picking it up and putting it down until someone tells you to stop. Right up Ralph’s alley. Rarely does life match need with gift so perfectly. God should have made me a deadlifter. (Maybe he did.)
By the time I get there, the ninety-pound weaklings have been eliminated (weaklings being a seriously inappropriate word that I would never utter aloud). It’s just Ralph and one enormous black kid about eighteen years old. (Should I have noticed that he’s black? If so, should I have said it to you? It’s a tough call. Let’s just pretend I didn’t bring it up.)
Anyway, this kid is huge and he looks like he could deadlift the Great Sphinx of Giza. I think that for once Ralph has come across someone who is stronger than he is, and I don’t know how he’ll handle it. He’s pretty much as silent as that Sphinx most of the time and not one to tune in to any particular emotion, but he does have his pride and losing here might chip it some.
What I didn’t figure in were their respective amygdalas—you know, the part of the brain they say deals with aggression and competitiveness. It’s not how you were raised that determines what pisses you off or how much you want to win; it’s electricity moving through that particular neighborhood of the brain. (Bonita must have constant thunderheads in that huge amygdala of hers!) Ralph is not aggressive at all in the usual sense, but apparently he doesn’t mind a little competition.
So they both struggle pretty hard to lift the barbell with three big plates on each end. But when they add two smaller plates for the next round, the kid waves his hand.
“No way. That’s enough for me.”
So they ask Ralph if he wants to try it. He chuckles his contentedness chirp and walks up to the bar. Jimmy and Billy are in the crowd watching (if you can describe Billy as ever genuinely watching anything) and Jimmy shouts out encouragement.
“Go gettem, Ralph. You’re the best! Pick that sucker up!”
Ralph bends down and grabs the bar, bends his knees and keeps his back straight, just like Bo taught him. “Da dooey!” he yells as he pulls the bar up and arches his back, legs shaking. The small crowd erupts in applause.
Da dooey power!
That’s when the trouble starts. They come trooping down the hill with their signs and placards, singing “We Shall Overcome.” The activists have arrived.
Their signs are professionally printed and come in rainbow
