Stephen Scott Whitaker
Ostrich Derby took place every year on the same day as the Kentucky Derby, starting approximately an hour after the winning horse made his/her triumphant cross over the finish line. Ostrich Derby took place on Mung’s Farm, about four and a half hours north of the Hayes farm and environs. Jeffery Mung and his wife Fay raised ostriches, two and a half dozen of them usually, sometimes as many as three dozen on a sizable chunk of land on Maryland’s Eastern Shore. Mung had begun commercial ostrich farming for eggs, not the actual bird themselves, but the leather, the yolk, the albumin, the shell, the whole of the egg. Ostrich eggs retail somewhere in the high teens, sometimes twenties. There’s been rumor that Mung has branched out into farming the birds for meat, which he has yet to publicly confirm, or deny. All in all, it’s a labor of love, and Jeff Mung charges admission to local school kids to come to see the ostriches. Mr. Bill often reflects on the day he drove through the lazy Maryland countryside, almost identical to Virginia’s Eastern Shore in terms of vegetation, animal wildlife, etc., when he saw out the passenger’s window a large almost saurian looking bird running at high speeds round and round a fenced section of land. Mulch had casually remarked, “Oh yeah, ostriches,” and slowed so Mr. Bill could see the birds. Then even more casually Mulch remarked, “We’re coming here next weekend for the derby.” But Bill hadn’t heard that remark, he had been too busy admiring the stride of the birds, the large nine-foot body, the long sloping necks, and the head which reminded him of an old balding man. Bill then saw several other birds in orbit inside the black screened fence, high as an elephant’s eye. Bill, for a second, was transported somewhere else, a real honest to god mind-warp. Mr. Bill never forgot that moment, the odd, but quick black and white cartoon-like bird cutting, zipping across the long stretch of fenced-in green yard, backed by a row of large blocky shed-like things, which housed the dinosaur’s closest relative. For a moment Bill thought he was in another country. Where was the desert savanna, the palm trees, the Egyptian oasis? There was only Maryland humidity and hot summer sun.
Since then, Mr. Bill looks forward to Ostrich Derby the way most people look forward to the Super Bowl. He’s got a special black baseball cap adorned with a white silhouette of an ostrich, head in the proverbial sand, one leg kicking back the way a dancer might kick a leg back for balance. Mr. Bill’s also got a special cooler, also black, with special deep drink holders that hold four specially treated ostrich egg cups that he drinks beer out of. Ostrich derby is in fact the only day Mr. Bill will drink what he still refers to secretly as firewater, a word he learned from westerns, mind you. For Bill, it is a day of relaxation and a chance for him to admire one of nature’s strangest birds. Ostrich Derby was also Bill’s first real meeting with Pembroke, Mulch’s distant cousin, and the brother of Cilia.
Jeffery and Fay Mung spend weeks preparing for Ostrich Derby. It’s a huge event for them, profit-wise. They give over most of their farm to it. People start coming in on Thursday night, camping in one of the Mung’s fields, and by Saturday, Kentucky Derby time, the Mung Farm has somewhere between five hundred and a thousand residents. At ten dollars a pop for the derby, plus the ten-dollar fee to camp per tent – (camper vans are 25, RVs 50) and a BYOCD/CB rule (bring your own covered dish and case of beer), it all adds up to make Ostrich Derby a pretty profitable weekend for the Mungs. On top of that Jeff runs the betting circle and takes a straight 10% vig off every bet.
The Mung’s farmhouse is a quaint ranch-style house located next to pen number one, where the ostriches eat, sleep, defecate, make eggs, etc. About a half-mile away there’s a huge field with a football-sized track in the middle of it. Around the track, Jeff and Fay set up portable bleachers and folding deck chairs, of which they have hundreds because so many drunken revelers leave their chairs behind year after year, as well as underpants, hats, shirts, dishes of all shapes and sizes, baseball gloves, whiffle balls, a merry widow and horse crop, and countless other items that adorn the Mung barn wall of shame and forgetfulness which is kind of a museum for die-hard fans of Ostrich Derby.
The racetrack isn’t tended to very well, but it is serviceable. Race fans can also set up their chairs, coolers, etc if they wish, but it’s not necessary, the Mungs are exceptional hosts. Behind the portable bleachers rest a volleyball net. Down the way, a badminton net, and farther down, near the edge of the racetrack, horseshoe sand pits. On the other side of the track, opposite from the portable bleachers are the tents and tarps Jeff sets up late Friday night, usually with the help of one of the racing fans. The tents are where you put your food, where the kegs are crowned, usually twenty kegs, light and regular, (paid for by Jeff), the t-shirt bins (one for every race, complete with this year’s ostriches listed on the back and the list of winners from last year, plus stats like time, number of times the ostrich lays down and hides, etc.), the bar (unmanned – it’s pour it yourself– mix it yourself), the bong and about two pounds of Maryland’s finest, home-grown weed. There’s another gigantic field adjacent to the field where the race is set up, twice the size of the other fields where the people camp, eat, fornicate, and set up many varied musical jams which last late into Sunday morning.
Up at the ranch house, behind the barn, is a newer barn, used only for one thing, Ping-Bong, which begins right after the Ostrich Derby finishes. Ping-Bong is a separate sporting tournament altogether, conceived by Jeff after the first Ostrich Derby ended in two minutes flat when all the birds lay down in the middle of the track and hid, refusing to move when prodded. Ostriches, according to popular myth and paraphernalia from the first Derby, do not bury their head in the sand, instead, Ostriches lay down, to hide.
Ping Bong goes like this: There are four ping pong tables in the barn and you have to sign up in advance to play. There’s a whole separate t-shirt involved and whole separate food and drink/pot table. The only rule is you must take either a shot of liquor or a bong hit before you play. Thus the name. Other than that, it’s a standard table tennis tournament. Losers are shuffled off to play for the loser’s cup, the winners advance and compete until around five in the morning when somebody emerges victorious. It’s interesting to note that winners have only ever taken bong hits before a match. Those that go out early have usually opted for the shot. Only about fifty or so people participate in Ping Bong, though its numbers grow by a few each year.
The nice thing about the Mung farm is that it’s isolated, right on a neck, on the water, you have to hike through woods to see the water, so there’s never a problem with any cops and the nearest neighbors are six miles in any direction. 90% of the spectators are influential businessmen, respectable lawyers, cops, family men and women, teachers, principals, farmers, contractors, veterinarians, watermen, restaurateurs, waitresses, waiters, pilots, doctors on vacation (an entire family practitioner’s office shuts down for two days just to attend the event), doctors on call, nurses, and pretty much the entire spectrum of respectable jobs on the Eastern Shore of both Virginia and Maryland who do not wish to have themselves arrested, jailed, or warned by any kind of lawman. This is why fishing and hunting, and firearms are strictly prohibited. Maryland’s department of fish and wildlife are rabid compared to Virginia’s department of fish and wildlife.
So what generally happens is that around midnight Friday, before the races, most of the campers have arrived. At that time, a few campfires burn, and the people around them sing drunken frat songs. Many joints are rolled and smoked, though not of Jeff ’s homegrown, – he doesn’t set that up till Sat. morning. Bottles are passed, and birds are toasted. Arguments and discussion groups meet and pass e-mail addresses and social media handles and talk into the night about the strange land bird.
Jeff mysteriously doesn’t sleep all weekend. His paunchy face and beer belly jiggle as he jogs back and forth between the barn, the racetrack, and the ostrich house. Saturday mornings are spent with the birds, he and Fay coo in their ears and coax them with food. They have to be taken two at a time, by ostrich trailer, which is basically a large horse trailer, to a temporary holding pen at the head of the track. There Fay’s niece and daughter, 23 & 18 respectfully, coo and coax the birds and keep them company until all the runners arrive. In the second year of Ostrich Derby, the Mungs tried to use horse jockeys. Horse jockeys would, in the Mung’s mind, keep the birds from laying down, and ending the race prematurely. Horse jockeys, appalled at the idea, turned their nose up at the Mung’s request. One by the name of Sammy Seward, hooked up with about a dozen jockeys in training, in someplace like Montana, and agreed to jockey the birds for the hell of it. During the first leg of the race one of the jockeys, a Spaniard, was thrown from his bird and run over by the lapping, aging Road Runner (a three-time jockey-less champion). The Spaniard suffered a broken leg, and three cracked ribs, and got a face full of ostrich feces. During the last leg of the race, Sammy was thrown from his bird and was dragged for the last leg. Luckily, a doctor in the stands was able to set the Spaniard’s leg and pump him full of morphine. Sammy spent the next week getting a skin graft on his back, which had been completely stripped of skin. For a while, the whole jockey idea was in jeopardy. Sammy’s speedy recovery and the Spaniard’s endorsement of the wildest ride a jockey could ever hope for kept the torch burning. Only once has a near fatality occurred, when one jockey, a New Yorker, kicked his bird in the shin. The bird replied with a kick of its own that sent the jockey flying back fifteen feet into a wooden fence, which splintered. The jockey suffered six broken ribs, and a punctured lung, and nearly had a heart attack on the way to the hospital, fifteen miles away. Now, it’s impossible to say, year to year, how many birds will run. It was Fay who decided that only eight jockeys would be used, as handicaps, so to speak, on the younger, faster birds. Older birds would run jockey-less, which makes the whole betting system a nightmare for Jeff. And for the last seven years, Sammy Seward and seven jockeys in training (sometimes there’s a retiree in the mix, too) arrive at the Mung Ranch house, for which Jeff has built a special room equipped with eight jockey bunks stacked four by four in the room, which also includes a television and an entire library of ostrich videos, books, etc. The jockeys are not permitted to practice with the birds, which adds a whole other element to the race, plus a new whole thing spectators can bet on. But Jeff has generously set up an ostrich simulation for the jockeys. The simulator is a stuffed ostrich that’s hooked up to a system like that of a bucking bull machine, just like you might see on TV, or say Urban Cowboy. The jockeys get to spend an hour each on the machine. Usually, the jockeys are whipped around like a lasso, their arms like an umbilical cord connecting them to the simulator. Lots of bets get passed on the sim too.
Overall, Ostrich Derby is a wild and exciting weekend. Mulch likes to go for Ping-Bong, while Mr. Bill likes to watch the birds, which he’s decided are his public trans-continental spirit guide (his real one is a secret). Mr. Bill sits in one of the Mung’s folding chairs and smokes his own homegrown and watches with fascination the birds’ swift running. The race is three miles long and takes about fifteen minutes give or take. What Bill likes is the unpredictability of the race. The derby should take less than two minutes, but it doesn’t. The birds stop and feed off spectators’ plates, dig holes, snip and bite at jockeys, and some even lay down and hide. Bill has witnessed six of the fifteen races, and once watched Road Runner and Lola, a virgin runner, run neck and neck, angling their sides enough so that their jockeys knocked skulls and eventually keeled over and off the birds. There’s always something unusual happening, and Bill likes a front seat to it all.
It was during the most recent Ostrich Derby that Bill had his first mournful look at his relationship with the Hayes family, one that has spanned over seventy years. Mr. Bill sat in a gray and white folding chair, the newest Derby t-shirt pulled over his plaid long-sleeve button-down, his first Budweiser popped and poured into his ostrich egg cup, his special ball cap riding a little back on his head, when he looked over at Mulch sporting his fake work smile he reserved for the feed store and sometimes his daughters. As Mulch chatted up another spectator, he gently rubbed his finger against the side of a baby’s face saying something cute and trite about his brood. Watching this, Mr. Bill’s head filled with Mulch’s lascivious thoughts about the mother’s breast, swelling with milk, and how the baby in just a few years would be as fuckable as the mother. For some reason, that one particular thought jerked Mr. Bill’s brain into depression. Eb, Mulch’s father, had also been one ornery son of a bitch, ruthless, heartless, and evil. Mulch was twice the bastard as his father, and Mr. Bill had seen Mulch do worse things. For one, Mulch had deep issues with women. But, if Mr. Bill had to choose between the two evils, he would have chosen Mulch over Eb, for at least Mulch had heart. It was the way Mulch’s index fingers poked the pudgy cheek of the baby girl, like the way he poked at the meat to check its freshness, Bill thought. Just like the way he touched Virginia sometimes, usually after he’d snuck in through the house’s hidden passageway and watched Virginia undress, or dress, or fall asleep, sometimes sneaking into Virginia’s room to poke and caress her face, wishing the face of his daughter was the face of his mother. Mr. Bill knew by the way Mulch eyed the young mother and baby girl that he wished he could watch them bathe together, watch the young mother’s face turn gooey and sweet as she washed her child. Mulch’s fetish with young women’s faces, his daughter’s in particular, during coitus, or post-coitus was alien to Bill. He didn’t understand it and it was then for the first time he thought that perhaps he should pack his bags and hike it out for greener pastures. It wasn’t normal for any man to be like that, not that Bill knew anything about normal.
Bill had finally jerked out of his depression when one of the ostriches bucked his or her jockey off his or her back and into a huddle of young adults, giving them an up-close eye-full of the fastest land bird in the world. The jockey screamed something in Italian and landed on top of a large blonde sporting a bedazzled cowboy hat. Once the jockey mastered his bird again, Jeff and Fay Mung stepped onto a set of portable stairs, not unlike the typical high school band directors use, and spoke into their megaphone.
“Um, uh, hello race fans.”
A big cheer went up from the crowd. Fans at the food, drink, and drug tables turned and raised a glass, plate, or joint. A few Frisbee throwers raised their Frisbees.
Jeff handed the megaphone over to Fay.
“We’ve got a new jockey this year. Sammy’s brought this one in from Italy!” Fay gestured to the jockey who’d just been bucked, who was still rubbing his lower back, mumbling to himself. “And I see he already had his first taste of spunky Os.” The crowd laughed. Fay often referred to the birds as spunky Os. “Let’s hear it for Giacamo Fortelli!” The crowd gave Giacamo a warm rowdy race applause. A lady wearing a bright yellow sundress yelled out something in Italian that made Giacamo blush.
“This year we’ve had to retire Road Runner from the race.” Many of the crowd booed and hissed and more concerned noises echoed from around the track. Bill, grimaced, he liked the old bird who always seemed to come in either second or third, jockey or no. “No worries. He’ll be back next year. Slight infection of the beak is all.” Fay’s high and sweet voice cheered the fans up.
Jeff took the megaphone from Fay’s hand. “All bets are in, just so you know. I see you, Johnny, over there, trying to make it to my son, but you’re too late Johnny, Benny’s closed up.” Johnny’s face, already sunburned, wrung with disappointment.
“For all you first timers out there,” Jeff continued before Fay took the megaphone out of his hand.
“For all you virgins in the audience.” This remark always induced a low-level groaning that Mr. Bill did not think of as sexual in any way shape or form. “We want you to know that our Ostriches are egg layers, period. Of course, we do pluck their feathers out from time to time. None of the racers are farmed for food.” Fay continued. “Just so you know. We have started farming ostrich meat, but those birds don’t race, only our layers do.”
Jeff hoisted the megaphone out of Fay’s hand. “You’ll find that and all sorts of other fascinating facts about ostriches on the back of your program.”
Mr. Bill’s favorite facts are that it takes two hours to boil an ostrich egg and that a single ostrich mother can lay up to one hundred eggs a mating season.
Fay took the megaphone back. “This year we’ve think we finally figured out how to keep the numbers to stay on the birds, for the entirety of the race. No more confusion as to who wins.” To this, the crowd cheered louder. Many fans, presumably bet holders, nodded their heads with pleasure.
“If you’re all ready to go, and you’ve got your programs, which I must add, my youngest daughter designed this year while at Delaware State.”
Again the crowd cheered, and Bill even offered a mild hand clap.
“If you’re ready....” Jeff raised the starting gun over his head. “On your mark.... get set.... go!” And he fired the gun.
With a slam, Jeff and Fay’s niece and daughter opened the gates and the birds and jockeys bolted out of the doors.
There’s not an official sports commentator at the races, however, Jeff and Fay have encouraged their nephew, a budding broadcast journalist, to run commentary throughout the race, although it’s very hard to hear exactly what’s being said because there’s so much ooing and awwing over the birds as they make their way around the track. The commentator’s voice always sounds tinny and remote.
From where he’s seated, Bill spied the back of Mulch’s head as he leaned over the folding chair of a young woman whose sundress was open enough to reveal the tops of her pearly bosom. Part of the reason Mulch comes year after year is to hob-nob with some old family friends, cohorts from an earlier age in the Hayes dynasty.
Mr. Bill saw the eighteen birds fly out of the gate, three jockeyless birds leading the pack, racing at top speed, at at least forty miles an hour. To Mr. Bill, the ostriches always looked hungry, something about the way their camel-like faces hung slack-jawed and how they ate up the wind when they ran.
Mulch moved on to the right, shaking hands with a beefy-looking Italian in a sports coat. Mulch had hinted that perhaps his cousin, a very distant Dutch cousin, would be in attendance.
So far none of the jockey-laden ostriches have made it up to top speed. The one called Desert Storm whipped his jockey about, bee-lining towards a twenty-something blonde guy who was eating a leafy sandwich. Sammy’s bird, Jackie O moved at a slow trot.
Mr. Bill met Pembroke, Mulch’s cousin, only once before, and Pembroke’s skin, when Mr. Bill shook it, had been covered in a slick oil that chilled Mr. Bill’s spine.
The lead ostrich, Johnny Gentle, came to a dead stop in the middle of the field, commonly called no-man’s land. Sammy, with a chance to take the lead, heeled Jackie O into a light trot, lapping Sid Viscous, who nibbled at a waffle ice cream cone he snatched out of a spectator’s hand.
Mulch and the Italian exchanged grins before sitting down to what appeared to be Sambucas.
Desert Storm won the sandwich and chased the young blonde kid off as the jockey desperately tried to heel Desert Storm back onto the track.
From behind Mr. Bill came sighs and gasps.
Johnny Gentle lay down face first in the dirt, spreading its legs and oblong body into the ground. Mr. Bill can’t see why the ostrich would think it was hiding, laying down like that, especially with the fat, egg-like body it’s got. Susan B. Anthony now led the pack and had lapped both Sid Viscous and Jackie O. Bill Gates was clocking in second, at what Mr. Bill was pretty sure he heard to be 46 mph over the loudspeaker. Jockey’s Gift, jockeyless since he kicked the New Yorker, was running a close third.
From behind him the sighs and gasps ran over Mr. Bill’s head and ears, and he looked back, unable to resist the commotion behind him because who knew what was going to happen at the Ostrich Derby, and walking very high over the audience came Pembroke, wearing an all-black suit, and a monocle, his wild hair tossed and flipped like it had been combed with salad forks. The last time Mr. Bill saw Pembroke van Hazen was in Pembroke’s newly acquired townhouse on Monument Avenue. The house, Bill recalled, vibrated and hummed and replayed sound and sight memories recorded in the wood and marble over and over again, like a record or a DVD, the house’s memories visible and audible to one sensitive to them. The house had given Mr. Bill a headache, so many noises overlapping and sights replaying, hundreds of apparitions haunting you at once. The last time Bill saw Pembroke van Hazen he hadn’t walked on his toes as he did now.
Pembroke moved through the throngs of spectators eyeballing Sid Viscous chasing Desert Storm, who chased a young man with the leafy sandwich around the perimeter of the track, of which Mr. Bill wondered how that was going to wash when the bets were finally tabled. The crowd simply parted for Pembroke as if he emanated some kind of psychic wave about his person. A few gasped and awed at his feet, which were taffy-like. The toes stretched out like ungainly poison sacks. The nails, hard and talon-like, moved with the rubbery, spider-like toes so that his feet appeared to snake along, which they did. Mr. Bill noticed that his legs remained still and that the spidery toes, each at least three feet in length, propelled Pembroke above the crowd.
“Good afternoon, William.” Pembroke looked out to where Sid Viscous nipped the tail feathers of Desert Storm. Sammy had tempted Jackie O into a full-blown run, Sammy’s head bent forward, mouth flapping in the air.
“Pembroke.” Bill’s head tended to swell when he was around Pembroke. He had so much energy, kind of like being around Marina for too long; one felt drained.
“Not exactly the Kentucky Derby?”
“Better,” Mr. Bill replied as he looked up at Pembroke, his icy face concealed in a glare. “Have a seat.”
“My pleasure.” Someone behind them uttered something obscene about how Pembroke’s toes could substitute as a male sexual organ.
Out on the track, Randy New Newman and The Boss ran neck and neck, their jockey’s dangerously close to each other.
“Where is your master?” Pembroke settled himself in a wicker chair Mr. Bill wasn’t so sure had been there before.
“I prefer employer,” Mr. Bill said.
“Do you?” Pembroke scanned the audience, nodding to those few who stared at him. Mr. Bill remembered admiring a fake leather plastic weave chair that looked very comfortable, definitely not a wicker chair. And he was pretty sure it was four feet away, not right next to him.
“Don’t bother, Pembroke, you’ll get a headache trying to read him in this mess.” Mr. Bill pointed over to his right to where Mulch moved very slowly towards the food and drink tables.
“He’s got you trained well.”
“Now I remember why I don’t like you.”
“Now, now, William. We’re of different times.”
“You mean ages.”
“If you prefer.”
Randy New Newman and The Boss’s jockey pushed each other away from each other, but their legs seemed to be entangled. Jackie O was way ahead of both Desert Storm and Sid Viscous.
The blonde kid had disappeared into the crowd.
Bill couldn’t tell if Susan B. Anthony or Bill Gates was ahead, Jockey’s Gift danced above Johnny Gentle’s splayed body in no man’s land. All the birds’ numbers, apparently safety-pinned to clumps of feathers, flapped in the wind.
“So what did you drag yourself here for?” Mr. Bill knew deep down he could take Pembroke in a fight.
“I’m here to talk about taking Virginia off your hands,” Pembroke’s voice seethed ice.
“I thought that was all arranged. Changing your mind?”
“William, William, William, why the distasteful sheen to your voice? Are you not your master’s henchman?”
Mr. Bill didn’t respond and stared off at Bill Gates and Susan B. Anthony heading into their third and final lap. Jackie O had been heeled up to what must be about forty miles an hour.
“William, just so you know, it isn’t my idea to, how should we say? Train? Yes, train Virginia. Take it up with your employer if you don’t approve.”
Mr. Bill looked down at Pembroke’s toes, which snaked around in the grass like blood worms after a rain.
“Pembroke, would you like a drink?” Mr. Bill opened his cooler.
“Sure, but what I like is one of those fetching T-shirts.” Pembroke laughed and tossed his head back, his toes stretched up and wrapped around the cold can of beer, bringing it to his thin, almost feminine lips.
Just as Susan B. Anthony leap-frogged Bill Gates, Johnny Gentle arose from hiding and leaped the fence into the crowd, running for the food table. Spectators shouted and shoved each other out of the way to avoid the crazed bird.
Mr. Bill had stood and moved away from Pembroke, who was giving him a headache. He didn’t feel like being caught in conversation with Mulch and Pembroke, who would no doubt pour over the seedy details of Virginia’s personal life. It was his day off, for Christ’s sake. When Bill looked behind him, Pembroke had followed him, thinking Bill was going to report to Mulch. The crowd didn’t seem to care that Pembroke walked on his toes, or that his toes hissed through their rubbery nails. Mr. Bill got as many stares as Mulch’s nearly seven-foot “cousin”.
Susan B. Anthony crossed the finish line two feet ahead of Bill Gates. Several of the birds milled around the fences, which Bill had noticed had been added on the betting sheets as an option to bet on, that the bird would fence, instead of race.
Mr. Bill felt Pembroke’s mind edging into his mind. Mr. Bill thought only of frost. Pembroke wouldn’t be able to read much of his thoughts, Bill had a strong defense system of his own. Pembroke was about ten feet behind him, and Bill could tell Pembroke was trying to read him, not Mulch. Mr. Bill sat down at an empty lawn chair, some fifteen feet back from the tracks, and took out a quill pen.
“From one of the birds?” Pembroke appeared at his side instantly, his toes hissing like snakes.
Mr. Bill didn’t answer the Dutchman.
“William, we must talk, sooner or later, about Virginia. I will need your assistance.”
“I’m too involved with the other sister to offer any help,” Bill replied as he removed a small bottle of ink from his jeans.
“Yes, I’m aware. Cilia is seething at the thought.”
“I bet.” Mr. Bill dipped his quill pen into a bottle of India ink and began to draw on the flesh above his ankle.
“Mulch and I are going to hammer out the details today.”
“I bet.”
“We will be ready for the box later this spring.”
“Good for you.”
“What are you drawing on your ankle?”
“Wings.”
“In tribute to the feathered, but flightless birds here on display?” Pembroke’s head was again mired in a glare.
“Not exactly.”
“What are you doing then?”
“I’m going to draw these wings on my ankles and then run with the birds, to get away from you and Mulch, for a while.”
“I see,” Pembroke’s head nodded.
Mr. Bill could barely see Mulch’s John Deere ball cap in the crowds. On the track, Susan B. Anthony was about halfway through her fourth, and unnecessary lap. Bill Gates had laid down on the ground, shying away from countless flashes from cameras and phones of all sizes.
“I don’t think you do,” Bill replied, standing up. He ran in place for a second before vaulting away from Pembroke at an easy 30mph. Mr. Bill leaped the fence easily, considering his age, and kicked up dust, running to catch up to Susan B. Anthony, who didn’t seem surprised at all to be running neck and neck with a man holding his black and white baseball cap to his head, the hand-drawn wings on his ankles flapping and giving Bill flight.
