Full Cry

CHAPTER 34

“Are you dog tired and ready to bite?”

“Tired. No biting. Not you, anyway.” Walter gratefully accepted the hot soup Sister placed before him. He’d had an emergency call with a patient at four in the morning, Monday. He had finally reached home at eleven to find Sister waiting for him with food.

Tonto, a bundle of energy, ran laps in the big old kitchen as Rooster and Raleigh watched. Bessie stayed in her carpet-covered box. She didn’t like Raleigh and Rooster.

“You’ve transformed this kitchen. I wish Peter could see it.” She admired the patina of the hand-polished maple cabinets, the granite-topped counters, the built-in appliances, unobtrusive except for the huge Wolf stove, gleaming in stainless steel. A welling of lust for this stove filled her.

“Maybe he can.” Walter waited for Sister to sit before putting the large spoon in the chicken rice soup. “This is exactly what I needed.”

From the small bowl in front of her she tested the soup, which she made last night. “Not bad. Soups seem perfect in the winter. This has been one hell of a winter.”

“The roads are bad. I sure appreciate your coming here.”

“Drove slow. It’s four-wheel drive, not four-wheel stop.”

He broke off a bit of pumpernickel from the fresh loaf.

“Do you have a bread oven?” she asked.

“No.” He pointed to a square machine, two feet high and built in flush with the wall. “I put the ingredients in, set the timer, the bread is ready. It’s remarkable.”

“What’s remarkable is that you think of it.”

“I like cooking. A transitory art form.”

She smiled. “Extremely transitory. Well, I am in love with your stove. Forgive me, it’s rude to ask prices, but how much is that thing? I mean, it has six gas burners, a griddle, which is perfect for me, a big oven. It’s really impressive.”

“That particular model was nine thousand dollars. There are less-expensive models, four burners instead of six.”

“Good God.”

“A lot of money, but it should last generations, and you saw how wonderful it is to work on. You can get them without griddles, but you like the griddle.”

“I do.” She drummed her fingers on the farm table. “Nine thousand dollars. And where does one purchase this thing?”

“You can go online or shop around, but I wasted too much time doing that. I finally went down to Ron Martin and got it. They delivered, installed it, the gas company came and hooked up the line after burying the gas tank. It wasn’t nearly as big a mess as I thought it would be. Kind of like plumbing. You know, I fooled around and then woke up and went down to Maddox in Charlottesville, bought my shower, hot tub, old restored 1930s sinks. Had some of the sinks and johns that were here rebuilt for me. They stand behind what they do. That’s the problem with online shopping. The only person you can call when something goes wrong is the manufacturer, and he’ll bounce you to the dealer, and, if the dealer is in Minnesota, you’re cooked. Forgive the pun.”

She smiled. “I agree. Always do business locally. Nothing can replace that connection to another person.” She scratched Tonto’s head as he bounced over, sat down, then put a paw on her thigh.

“Too cute,” Raleigh sneered.

“Gag me,” Rooster coughed.

“I love everyone in the world!” The half-grown Welsh terrier cocked his head as Sister scratched him.

“Terriers are mental.” Rooster closed his eyes, feigning boredom.

“Born to dig. That’s it. Dig.” Raleigh felt his calling in life of far more importance than ridding the world of vermin.

“Tonto is a most engaging creature.”

“I’m a terrier man,” Walter said, then hastily added, “hounds first though, I know that.”

She laughed. “Working with a pack is different. But yes, I love foxhounds. I’ve spent most of my life studying them, and I’ll still never know as much as the late Dickie Bywaters.” She looked up from the dog and beamed at Walter. “Wonder if Rooster likes being back here?”

“I do, but I miss Peter,” Rooster replied.

The two humans looked at the harrier.

“Maybe he heard you,” Walter said.

“I expect they know a great deal more than we give them credit for knowing. Which is one of the reasons I’m here— not about dogs, I mean.” She leaned forward. “Tell me about athletes and drugs.”

“How much time do you have?” He rose to ladle more soup in his bowl.

“I made it. I should have done that.”

“Miss Manners isn’t here.” Walter pointed to the pot of soup on the stove. “More?”

“Yes.” She handed him her bowl.

As they started on their second bowls of soup, Walter tried to answer her broad question. “Football, basketball, baseball, weight-lifting, and track and field would collapse without drugs. For runners or endurance sports, um, not as prevalent. Well, let me put it this way: they aren’t on steroids or human growth hormone. Those are the drugs of choice.”

“What about women’s sports?”

“To be competitive, you’ve got to be strong and fast, as strong and as fast as your competition. Gender is irrelevant.”

“Do these drugs really work?”

He put his spoon down. “Without a doubt.”

“I see. So if you truly want to compete at the highest levels, it’s better living through chemistry?”

He nodded. “If you’re the defensive tackle for the Oak-land Raiders, facing someone in the trenches, and you haven’t taken drugs and he has, he’ll beat you seven out of ten times—or more. For one thing, his ligaments will be stronger.”

“Bigger muscles?”

“Yes, though that can be a disadvantage. One of the problems we’re now seeing, especially in football, is the number of injuries has escalated because these men now have bodies that are so big and heavy, they slam into one another like a train wreck! Three hundred and twenty pounds of lineman beef, say, a center, crashing into two hundred and eighty-nine pounds of defensive guard. And they’re quick. Big as they are, they’re quick. They’re slamming into each other at speed. And then if one of the linebackers really clocks a halfback, it’s ugly.”

“Do they take painkillers to play?”

“Yes, legal and illegal.”

“And the efforts of the governing bodies are ineffective?”

He nodded. “The coaches are scientists. And then again, let’s lay it on the line, Sister, the American public craves violence. If the mayhem dries up, there go the advertising revenues; there goes the ticket sales to say nothing of all those empty skyboxes. I don’t think the commissioners of any of the professional sports—men’s or women’s—are going to try too awfully hard, although they’ll talk a good game. Again, forgive the pun.”

“Was that a true pun?” Her brow furrowed.

“Uh.” He wondered now, too.

“No matter. Okay, next question. As profit has transformed professional sports, what about college sports?”

“College sports are nurseries for professional sports. Only baseball supports and pays for minor leagues. For the rest of them, they siphon the players right out of college without pouring money into the colleges. A good deal for the NFL and NBA.”

“Why is baseball different in your opinion?”

“It’s such a difficult game to play well. Apart from the phenomenal hand-eye coordination, for every situation there are maybe three possibilities. You really have to think in baseball. It’s not enough to learn your position. I love baseball.”

“Thought you were the halfback on Cornell’s football team?”

“I was, but I played center field for the baseball team. Love baseball.”

“Actually, I do, too.” She sipped her tea. “So the college athletes are taking steroids and whatever?”

“You bet. The coaches are right in there with it or turning a blind eye. You can’t have a kid go home during the summer of his sophomore year, return for football practice thirty pounds of muscle heavier without drugs. Just throwing hay bales on the farm isn’t going to do it, although, truthfully, it will give you a better body.”

“Really?”

“Sure. More flexible. Natural muscle is different than muscle enhanced by steroids. Once you get used to looking for it, you can always tell the difference.”

“Why so?”

“An athlete who has taken steroids has a rounder, fuller look. Essentially, the muscle cell has been pumped up with fluid. I won’t bore you with a long explanation. You and I don’t have muscles like that. Our muscles are less full but have a harder, almost shredded look.”

“I thought the bodybuilders were the ones who got shredded.”

“They do. Lots of purging water from their systems before a contest, but you can still see the difference. The only way I can explain it is those steroid bodies have a real roundness to the muscle.”

“Dangerous?”

“Sure. In excess, the drugs can shut down the liver, shrink the testicles on a man, give men what they call ‘bitch tits.’ For women, we know much less. In fact, we know much less about women on so many levels of medicine that it’s a sin. Man has been the measure of all things.”

“This is fascinating. I had no idea.”

“Sister, kids are using steroids in high school. A kid wants to make All State and then wants to play for Nebraska. He starts shooting up.”

“With the help of the coach or the trainer?”

Walter shrugged. “I really hope that a high school coach knows better, acts as a father to those kids, but,” he said, holding up his hands, “a high school coach is under pressure, too. Although not nearly as severe as the college coach at a PAC Ten school who makes one million dollars a year in salary and God knows how much in benefits.”

“Good Lord, I picked the wrong sport.”

“Far from it.” He patted Tonto, who now pestered him. “One of the things I most love about foxhunting is that it can’t be corrupted by money.”

“But racing can. Three-day eventing. Show jumping. Drugs?”

He shrugged. “Not steroids. Not for people, anyway. You know more about the horse end of it than I do. I know some racehorses have been loaded with the stuff. Saddlebreds, too. But the drugs in the horse world for humans are almost always alcohol, cocaine, or some kind of pain-killer.”

“Makes sense.”

“I have yet to meet a horseman without broken bones.”

“Me, neither.” She sat for a moment. “You haven’t asked why I’m on this track.”

“You’re the master.” He grinned, his white teeth straight, although a few had ragged edges from his playing days.

“Before I get to why, what about human growth hormone? What’s the deal there?”

“It’s extremely important. It may be able to dramatically slow aging. I personally think it needs to come onto the market. We have done enough testing on the stuff. But it is abused by athletes because it will grow muscle and it is theoretically safer, in large doses, than steroids. Some people react to steroid abuse with rages, ’roid rage. Taking HGH doesn’t produce rages. It builds a stronger body, stronger ligaments, which are more important than bulk, as I said before. If abused, the taker will get a lantern jaw, larger hands and feet. You know the look.”

“I do. Acromegaly.”

“HGH is gold on the black market, pure gold.”

“If HGH and steroids create better bodies, what about plain old testosterone?”

“Up to a point, that will help. The body has its limits. You can go over the limit, but you aren’t going to get the kind of dramatic, rapid gain you’ll get with isolated steroids—think of them as turbo testosterone. And all this stuff affects one’s cholesterol levels and liver. There is no free ride.”

“These drugs are on the black market, I suppose, along with mood elevators and stuff like that?”

Again, he nodded. “The odd thing is, Sister, every single person is a different cocktail. Let’s throw out numbers: not real but as examples. Let’s say the so-called average woman pumps out ten cc’s of estrogen and one cc of testosterone. Okay? The so-called average male pumps out ten cc’s of testosterone and one cc of estrogen. If I pulled blood from every member of our hunt club, I probably wouldn’t find one person with an average ratio. Okay, that ratio is made up, but you know what I mean. We really don’t know nearly enough about the human body as an individual unit. You pick up the newspapers or listen to TV and hear the latest scientific study,” he paused, “be wary. You can’t make policy or prescriptions based on tests of even ten thousand people. Yet this is done regularly and on test groups of far fewer numbers. It’s insane. I’m a physician, and I’m telling you it’s utterly insane.”

“Why is it done?”

“Money. Mostly it’s the drug company’s hot desire for ever-escalating profits, but also it’s from public pressure. They want instant answers and easy answers. There is nothing easy about it. One tiny example, the human heart. It’s supposed to be here, right?” He tapped the left side of his chest. “Well, most of the time, it’s actually here.” He tapped just to the left of the breastplate. “Often it’s here.” He tapped his chest, dead center, a bit high. “And you’d be amazed how many times I find it over here.” He tapped the right side of his chest just off center line.

“Amazing.”

“Circadian rhythms. You’re a hunter. You know how important the diurnal rhythms are, the seasonal rhythms, even the phases of the moon. Right?”

“Right. I live by them.”

“Medicine reacts differently in the body according to the time when it is administered. But you’re instructed to take a pill in the morning or three times a day. The truth is, that might not be the optimum time to administer that drug, a drug, prescribed by your physician, that you’ve just spent hard-earned money buying from your pharmacist. And we sure don’t know enough to make the kind of outrageous pronouncements and promises you see every day in advertisements.”

“Now, would you like to know why I’ve asked you these questions, which have nothing to do with horses, hounds, or the weather for Tuesday’s hunt?”

“I would.” He smiled.

“A stray fact wandered in through someone Sam Lorillard knows, one of the alcoholics who hangs around the station. Ben Sidell told me this. When Mitch and Anthony picked up odd jobs delivering furniture for Berry Storage, Donnie Sweigert always drove the truck. Nothing too strange about that, but what is interesting is that those men only made deliveries to coaches or trainers.”

“Ah.” He held his breath for a moment. “You’re thinking this has to do with performance-enhancing drugs, maybe even recreational drugs. Have you said anything to Ben?”

“He’s smart. I expect he’s there ahead of me.”

“It’s deeply disturbing. Not only are three people dead, but other lives are being ruined. The chances of a high school athlete and then a college athlete making it to the pros are tiny, infinitesimal. But every kid thinks he can do it. Even more damaging, less than twenty-five percent of black male basketball players at Division 1A schools graduate. Graduate!” He exhaled loudly, which made Tonto stand up on his hind paws to make sure Walter was okay. “Here, bud.” Walter gave him a small piece of pumpernickel. “I guess every one of us needs a dream. I don’t mean to sound negative, but more than a dream, they need a degree.”

“Not negative, just realistic. I probably have this fact wrong, but I remember reading somewhere that of all the college male basketball players, less than three percent will make it to the pros, and out of that percentage, most will wash out in five years.”

“Sounds close enough to me.”

“I don’t know what to do. I don’t want to say anything. That would be stupid, kind of showing my hand too early. This is inside our tent, I think. The finger points at Clay Berry or Xavier. Possibly Sam, because of his connection to the railroad station gang. From time to time Sam would help deliver furniture. I guess those who had any muscle power left took a job with Berry Storage from time to time. Makes me sick to think of it. I’ve racked my brain to see if anyone else could be doing this, using the Berry Storage as a distribution point. When you think about it, it’s pretty smart. Furniture with drugs hidden inside.”

His voice remained even, then rose. “Hard to think of Clay or X being involved in drug sales.”

“Yes. Well, I don’t know anything, but I have this instinct, like when I know where my fox is.”

“Your instincts have kept us all going.”

“And now I know something else.”

“What?”

“Professional athletes are on everything but roller skates.”