Mike Melick
I was a freshman. He was a senior. The first party was at his house, a few blocks east of campus. One of those decrepit houses men who aren’t quite slum lords rent to college kids. My first college party. How shy I must have been. Another freshman, Tim Hachmeister – we’d eventually room together, he never wasn’t wearing a white t-shirt and blue mesh shorts, even in winter, he’d ask me to check if he was right as he recited hundreds of numbers of pi, I hear he’s a priest now – somehow learned that Joe Binder – lab nerd, ran wearing glasses as if he might stumble upon some homework on the course – could drink a stupendous amount of milk. Hachmeister challenged Binder. Gallons were procured. I don’t remember who won, only that they sat on Mike Melick’s couch, chugging and throwing up into big silver salad bowls that were later carried outside ceremoniously and poured out into the dark September grass like ablutions. Who else would have been there? Colby Geiser, a townie, who, along with running one of the fastest two-miles in the state of Illinois the previous year, ran his own lawncare company. He would show up to his first class without shirt or shoes, whereupon he would be informed of something that must have been hard for him to believe – that he was in college. He had bad teeth, smelled always of grass, and could outrun anyone out of sheer guts. He dropped out halfway through the fall, but still appeared at parties, his glory secured by the fact that it had never been tested. Then there was Van, somehow from Southern California even though he was from Illinois. By which I mean he looked like a surfer or a skater, the sort who spend so much time focused on an inner compass that keeps them oriented and upright on their board that they seem always half-turned inward, though Van neither skated, nor, of course, surfed, being as we were as far inland as it is possible to be, not only in the middle of America, but in the middle of Illinois. There was Chip Corwin, also a freshman, tall, red-headed, with a sense of humor it would take me years to understand, like one of those military codes finally broken because someone thought to turn the page upside-down. And Mike Elwood, gangly and pale, with long oily locks, obsessed with Bowie. Years later I would order a beer at a bar in Brooklyn and hear, as the bartender handed me the pint, “Austin fucking Smith.” It was Elwood, having ended up precisely where I would have expected he’d end up – bartending at a bar in Brooklyn. Probably there were others, but this was the gist of us. After the milk debacle, it was declared that we’d be paired off to play euchre, seniors versus freshmen, and the losers had to run (no problem, we were runners) naked across the Quad (oh) of that small liberal arts college I had just begun attending. And though the Quad was surely dark and empty at that hour, I still would have preferred not to have to run across it naked, a futile desire, considering that neither I nor Chip Corwin had ever played euchre before. When we inevitably lost, Mike Melick stepped forward and declared that we didn’t have to run naked across the Quad after all - this time. I loved him for that, and for being so kind to me when he had every reason not to be. He was the sort of young man other young men follow to their deaths because they would rather die with him than survive alone. He was more coach than teammate. Our actual coach was a joke. A sprinter in college, he didn’t give a damn about distance, which meant it fell to Mike Melick to tell us what to do. There was also a guy with a problematic nickname, accurate as it was – Whitey – who worked at a factory but ran with us, and, occasionally, drank with us, and during races screamed out our splits. But mostly it was Mike Melick. Hence the party. Us freshmen had to be taught that Joe Binder could drink a lot of milk, and how to play euchre. We’d already been running together for two weeks, and we had to love one another in order to be able to run against one another. Mike Melick ran with his bronze chest thrust out, muscular and vulnerable as St. Sebastian. The only rule was to follow him, even if he ran through fountains at Illinois State to astonish the girls at that adjacent institution, as if to shake things up in a town named Normal. If Colby Geiser or Tim Hachmeister tried to take the lead, he only smiled softly, then took a sudden turn which the others, more devoted to Melick, took as well, leaving the freshman running by himself. His girlfriend showed up towards the end of the party, turning us freshmen instantly shy. Someone told me she was a dancer. I asked what kind of dance she did. “It involves a pole.” Hearing “pool,” I said, to great laughter, “Synchronized swimming?” Yes, Mike Melick was dating a stripper. We were struck dumb in her presence. It was like when you’re a kid and you encounter your beautiful teacher in town. It made Melick more mysterious. The difference was I was still a boy and he was a man. He was beyond college. He would marry the dancer and move back to the little town he was from and teach and coach and have kids. But when I knew him, all he cared about was running. He held a time in his mind, a time he knew he had to run that spring or he’d never run it, which I think was what gave him that hallowed look, like a matador who’s had a dream of being gored, but steps into the ring anyway. I don’t know whether he ran the time he so desperately wanted to run, but I remember him racing, his body seizing up with lactic acid and falling over the finish line into our arms. I knew then that he was tougher than I would ever be. He was one of those fearless runners the Midwest produces, who run for little schools, and for nothing but the glory of it, doomed in time to beer bellies and thinning hair. In a shoebox somewhere, the old sweat-stiffened race bibs they can’t bear to throw away. Mike Melick, wherever you are, if you were to arise from your couch and begin, awkwardly, to run, I would follow you through field and fountain, and never pass you.