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in the city at taking care of racial issues, and though there aren’t all that many blacks in Spokane, Frost has by far the majority of them.
    Mrs. Stevens is black.
    We weren’t back in the cafeteria five minutes before Lion was there, stuffing his face as though nothing had happened. “Can’t let that stuff get out of hand,” he said. “Boy, I like that Mrs. Stevens.”
    I looked to Jeff. “Well, I guess that takes care of racial tension,” I said.
    He shrugged and raised his eyebrows. “We’ll see,” he said. “You know, those are printed locally, over in Falls Lake. Those guys have been there quite a while, but it looks like they’re trying to get something started. You’d be surprised how many people believe that crap even though they’re not in the inner circle.”
    Lion took another huge bite and said, “I better not see any more of them.”
    Elaine got up to get another burger and I remember feeling a little self-conscious about watching her butt move toward the counter like the flanks of a thoroughbred racehorse. Old Elaine wears some fairly tight britches and she’s real muscular. She’s always been one of the guys, so it feels a little like incest, but she’s beenwedging herself into my dreams lately, and there’s not much a guy can do about that. That’s not information I’m ready to put out for group discussion, but that’s the way it is. It doesn’t help that I already have a girlfriend.
    â€œSo tell me, O wise red peckerhead,” I said to Jeff, in a futile effort to banish Elaine from my lunchtime fantasies, “what’s today’s little teaser on Stotan Week?”
    â€œYou didn’t check out Herb Elliot, did you?”
    I had to admit I hadn’t.
    â€œI have to know you really want this information, Walk,” he said. “I just can’t give it out. I have to feel needed.”
    Elaine sat down again. “A Stotan is a cross between a Stoic and a Spartan,” she said, and Jeff’s chin dropped to his pecs. “The term was coined by Percy Cerruti, coach of the great Australian miler Herb Elliot in the late fifties and early sixties.” She ran it off with encyclopedic brilliance. “Cerruti used that term to describe Elliot in his single-minded determination to be the greatest miler of all time. Elliot would do his regular workouts, which were considerable, then throw off his clothes to run dune after dune on the Australian beaches, driving himself to the brink of exhausted ecstasy. Herb Elliot thought American athletes were wussies. Percy Cerruti thought Herb Elliot was aStotan.” She chomped down on her burger.
    â€œSlime-bag,” Jeff said. “Scuzz-ball.”
    Elaine went on, seemingly delighted by Jeff’s epithet. “I would imagine that Stotan Week will be a week in which Max asks you to put forth Stotanic efforts to make yourselves less like wussies and more like Herb Elliot.”
    Lion’s eyes lit up; you could see his mind whipping along ahead of Elaine, visions of himself and Herb charging over an infinity of Australian sand dunes, then diving into the surf and swimming to New Zealand.
    Jeff was pissed at having been scooped.

CHAPTER 4
    November 23
    Well, Thanksgiving was yesterday and I have a pound or two to swim off. It shouldn’t be too bad, though. We went over to the pool in the morning and put in about 4,000 yards before going home and putting in about 4,000 calories. Actually, I didn’t do that at my home. I did it at Elaine’s. That’s right, this smooth captain wangled an invite to her place for Thanksgiving dinner and didn’t even do a whole lot of damage to his relationship with his parents in the process. My folks had planned for several months to go to my dad’s sister’s place in Seattle for Thanksgiving and I was able to convince them that if I didn’t work out Thursday and Friday