I Want to Show You More (9780802193742) Read Online Free PDF

anchorman begins to weep.
    â€œThey’ll hear you,” I say; but it’s too late, already a man wearing an orange Race Staff T-shirt is pulling up in a golf cart.
    The anchorman rises to a kneel. He unzips the backpack and takes out a glossy white horse the size of a Pekinese. The rainbow stripes on the wings are uneven, the colors blurred together as if smeared on by a child. “Take it!” he yells. He throws the statue against the side of the golf cart, where it shatters. One of the wings, intact, lands in the driver’s lap.
    The anchorman stands. He climbs into the cart, leaving the empty backpack on the ground behind the monument.
    â€œNever wanted to be a runner anyhow,” I hear him say as they drive off. “Absolutely detest the sport.”
    I rejoin the race. According to my watch, I’ve lost three minutes, forty-two seconds.
    Breathing, coughing, hacking, and spitting. The thumping of shoes on pavement. Above these sounds, birdsong. By mile four the sky has turned a pale blue and the tops of the highest trees are in sunlight. There aren’t many spectators on this part of the course, but the few who are out here clap as we pass. “Keep it up!” they yell. “Keep those statues ON!”
    I’ve settled into my pace, a solid 8:30 mile. I start to pick people off.
    â€œHe was out of shape,” I hear a woman say to her friend as I pass them on mile five. “But his statue. Jesus, you almost had to bow.”
    â€œNever the athletes who get the Art anymore,” her friend says. “Never the ones who deserve it.”
    â€œWhole system’s corrupt,” the first woman says.
    People get chatty in the early miles. You don’t hear much talk after mile sixteen, when the real pain starts.
    At mile six I hit the first water station. Folding tables are set up in front of a battery of green howitzers. The volunteers handing out filled cups lunge toward the racers, arms stretched in front of them, backs to the mouths of the cannons. From a distance, they look like they’re fleeing artillery fire.
    The water stations are where quitters start to congregate, usually folks who stop running to get a drink. Their heart rates drop, they decide to sit for a minute to rest. Maybe they untie their shoes, massage their calves, strike up conversations. Eventually, large groups of dropouts are lounging all over the grass—awkwardly, with their backpacks on.
    In past races I have been a lounger. Loungers stretch their hamstrings and posit questions. What are we trying to accomplish here? Do we want to run a marathon statue-free? Isn’t it the statueitself that engenders the desire to run marathons in the first place? Indeed, could the euphoric—might we say, poetic—feeling in the soul of the distance runner exist without the statue-bearing system? Wouldn’t it, in fact, be unnatural to run without one?
    If not for our statues, would there be anything left to distinguish us as individuals?
    A dissenter will point out the obvious: Statue-free is faster. If you ran statue-free, you would set a personal record.
    To which the loungers will respond, If that matters to you.
    A mile past the water station is a tent with a sign: Race Counselors . Around the tent are men and women wearing orange staff T-shirts that say Stay In To Win! If you feel like you want to quit, or—worse—take off your statue, the counselors are there to help. They will run alongside you and try to talk you out of it.
    On mile seven a young woman in front of me—long-legged, lean, mid- twenties—is trying to wriggle out of her mesh backpack. Through the fabric I can see a blown-glass penis. It’s about a foot long, transparent, really quite lovely for a standard-issue phallus. Running beside her is a counselor who seems ill-matched to this girl; he’s short with stocky legs and dark hair. His torso is rotated toward her, which makes his pacing awkward. He