Iron Gut, Golden Lung Pt. 10

33

His punishment came an hour later.

First to the indoor track, Jeremiah listened on his phone to audio from his old sprints, noting places for improvement. He greeted the captains as they arrived, each hauling a duffel bag stuffed with equipment. Unsurprisingly Katie was the sole captain who didn’t arrive early. Jeremiah hugged Jules Downing, one of the leading NCAA marathoners, a wiry and handsome senior who’d grown some chin hair over the summer. Together they brought folding chairs from the closet and assembled them in groups of six around the vulcanized rubber track. Then he helped Ariel inflate mattresses for the Wavers as players, med students, assistant coaches, a neurologist and nutritionist filled the vaulted ceiling with howdy-y’all and how-was-your-summer.

The immensity of the track highlighted their painfully small roster. He counted thirty-two players in groups of half a dozen, give or take; Folliclers combing their hair on the west end of the oval; Salivaters on the high jump runway; Wavers at the north end; Lidders at the horizontal jump runway; setting up their box seats in the throw circle were Donyelle, Latoilas and two freshmen, a small enough Tracter squad for Jeremiah to reach out his hand and pretend to snatch them up. He imagined the other schools laughing at their undermanned team.

Lastly Coach Guidry arrived with his trademark clipboard and wooden crate, accompanied by his wife Miss Krissy. Smiling, he announced, “Let’s start with some sparring!”

So, Jeremiah ended up in a chair directly six feet across from Ty. The freshman had his feet planted on the rubber, anger from the basketball game simmering in eyes that were long-lashed, hazel and rimmed in gold like wedding bands. Clearly, the kid had mastery over his levator palpebrae superioris, because he wouldn’t blink.

Good—this might be a real contest. Jeremiah sat still under the neurotic probing of meds taking his pulse, temperature, and blood pressure. At last, Coach Guidry lowered a hairy-knuckled hand like a blade into the space between combatants.

“Respirater ready?”

“Yes.”

“Lidder ready?”

“Yes.”

“Get it on!”

Jeremiah hit him with Pepperdeen out the gate. Sharp inhales and exhales to intimidate Ty with noise that, in a sprinting contest, would panic the rival into overexertion. Before long they would grow cocky, thinking Jeremiah had worn himself out before he switched to kundalini and buried them under panting breaths. Other than his addition of kundalini, it was the same bullish strategy Coach had taught for decades. He called it the Louisiana Special.

Minutes dragged on but, unlike a timed sprint, this battle called for endurance. From a distance, Jeremiah could hear the sticky splash of meibum in the boy’s flickering eyelids. All that fluid told him Ty kept up his vitamin A supplements. He could hear the team evenly split in their cheers. Nothing official rested on this match, but the superstitious side of him needed to set the tone for the year—triumph or mediocrity.

Breathing came hard. He had to reach in his diaphragm for every inhale. But he knew enough about their craft to know the Lidder had it worse—retinas siphoning pain from his eyelids, blood vessels straining, foolish pride his ally in pushing his oculomotor nerve to the limit on a doomed mission to defeat the Respirater. Jeremiah redoubled his efforts with methodical Pepperdeen.

At last Ty hunched forward in his chair, moaning, pressing the heels of both palms into his eyes. Victorious Jeremiah tried to stand but collapsed in Donyelle’s arms. His heart bucked in his chest like a spooked horse. Convinced against all logic he was having a heart attack, he punched his left fist on the nerveless meat of his right forearm, again and again, until a med stabbed him in the deltoid with a syringe. Into his bloodstream slipped benzodiazepine, a left hook of relaxation that knocked his jaw loose and sent spittle flying.

Other meds checked his vitals, all with a hurried manner. When they retreated, Donyelle grabbed him and Ty by the wrists to raise their arms.

“Good job, Lungs! And good job, Ty!”

A demolished groan emanated from the airless apparatus Jeremiah called a throat. Coach Guidry strutted from the sidelines with a satisfied expression and the meds followed behind him like baby quail; armed with digital pencils, they e-scribbled notes on their black iPads.

“Does it hurt?” Coach asked Ty.

From the starched comfort of Donyelle’s shoulder joint, where Ty pressed his aching eyeballs, he growled an affirmative.

“Course it does,” said Coach with a beatific smile. “Bio Sports requires pain. Some might say that’s why it’s the best sport. Those football guys are afraid to get hurt. ‘Wah, I got a concussion.’ We get hurt for a living. Remember that you are always in control. Sympathetic nervous system? Parasympathetic? It’s all pathetic!

“Even you, Donny. You gotta feel it when you digest.” He drilled the tip of his sausagey finger into Donyelle’s kidney. Strange to hear a man so large yelp so high. “Feel it right here in the gastric fundus!”

Jeremiah would have laughed had he the air for it. Delirious, he heard Coach’s voice from four directions, the joy with which he hurled the term gastric fundus. Coach clapped his meaty palms. “Drills!”