"Robert Reed - X-Country" - читать интересную книгу автора (Reed Robert)

cropped up a few years ago, and he’d patched the gaps with an implanted carpet.
As for his age, I think it’s safe to say that Kip looked like a youthful man-child of
forty or forty-one. In other words, he was a spectacularly well-preserved creature
greatly enjoying his middle fifties.

I’ve spoken to a few local race directors about old Kip. Entry forms have
certain mandatory details: You supply your name and address, phone numbers and
T-shirt size. And you have to admit your age on race day, plus give your date of
birth. Why both figures are necessary, I’m not sure. Maybe it’s to keep clumsy liars
out of the mix. But I’ve studied a few of Kip’s old entry forms, and in every case,
the man was precisely twenty-three days younger than me.

Whenever we raced, Kip beat me, and not just by a little bit. Which meant that
he had a chokehold on our age group, plus all of the gift certificates and little
gold-painted medals that come with that rarified distinction.

Waivers are another common feature in race entries. And there is always a
single line at the bottom where you supply your signature and the date. To what
degree a waiver matters, I don’t know. I’ve endured in some horrendously organized
events, and if somebody had died because of the lousy traffic control or the lack of
paramedics, I’m sure somebody else’s ass would have been sued, regardless of any
name scribbled as an afterthought.

For thirty-some years, I have run competitive races, and easily, Kip’s waiver
was the best that I’ve ever read:

“Cross country is a brutal sport meant for self-abusive personalities,” he
wrote, “and I, the undersigned, am a major-league idiot for trying this damned thing.
If anything bad should happen to me, and it probably will, I have nobody to blame
but my stupid self. And with that in mind, I promise to expect the unexpected, and I
will tolerate the miserable, and if I die on the course, I would prefer to be buried
exactly where I fall....”

****

Kip told it this way: After thirty-five years spent in other places, he came home
again. By home, he didn’t mean the town where he grew up, since that tiny
crossroads had just about expired. No, he moved to our city, purchasing a baby
mansion on the rich-person’s boulevard. Paying for it in cash, one persistent rumor
would claim. Where that money came from was always a puzzler. On occasion, Kip
mentioned working overseas for some obscure Dutch corporation. Malaysia and
Brazil played roles in the occasional aside. And more than once, he muttered a few
words about investments in real estate and stocks, smiling in a beguiling fashion
whenever he admitted, “My guesses did a little bit better than average.”

Kip was an immediate force in the local running scene. He entered every race
at our end of the state, always placing among the top ten or fifteen males—a
tremendous achievement for a citizen who could see Social Security looming. He
worked out with the fast groups as well as linking up with a few notable talents who
usually trained by themselves. And he began showing up at track club meetings and