There were six of us, and the plan was to meet at Matt's house about 7:00 pm up there in Auburn. We'd pile into a couple cars out front and drive to Green Gate and sorta just run on back to Matt's house, about twenty some odd miles between. Idea was to get some training in on the trail at night. More than a few of us were preparing to run one of those long races which finds a person tumbling along the trail for some portion of the dark; really I think for most of us, it'll be all the dark available. In my case, I think we can add grim even. My goal race starts on May 19th and May 19th is going to be a bad day as near as I can tell.

Everything started out fine. Six guys running down the trail at night, naturally there's going to be some earthy discussion, the noises and rich fragrance of men at ease. Whereas I'd had a bean burrito for dinner, Matt required no special boost, casually displaying a tonal range which put me in mind of the great French-Canadian chanteuse, Celine Dion. It's a rich world we live in if talent like that can be left to wallow in anonymity. The first hint of trouble came early: I was running point. We'd separate a bit, then every twenty or thirty minutes, regroup. It was during one of these regroupings that Derek asked about the two streams we'd crossed a ways back, mentioned it seemed to him like those two streams were not ever on this particular trail, leastways not that he could recall. I proposed that the streams had maybe been moved from their original location, mentioned that I'd read an interesting wikipedia article on stream migration, stream wanderlust. Someone else offered that while yeah, it was plausible that the streams had moved two miles in a week, it was not common stream behavior absent a temblor or two. I said you know everybody thinks they're a stream expert and I got told back that it was not a matter of expertise so much as it was a matter of perspective — that in a narrow view, it could be that the streams had wandered, whereas a broader view held that we ourselves had wandered. Stream bias. I recognized it immediately. I asked what on earth made him think it was us what had wandered and not the streams. He said it was probability mostly: the streams didn't have an idiot running point. Matt farted. Derek said a few extra miles wasn't any big deal, given our robustness. There was some grunting, some scratching followed by general agreement about no big deals, agreement about robustness. I thought I was acquitted, but Shane asked a question, which was didn't finding ourselves at the bottom of Dead Truck Trail necessarily meant that we'd have to climb up Ball Bearing Hill? A Man Council was hastily convened, during which I heard my name and the phrase, "damned idiot" spoken very close together a number of times. Then I heard someone farting the tune to the Grammy award-winning My Heart Will Go On . The decision was that yes, we were all very studly for running an extra four miles, including even a saunter up Ball Bearing Hill, but that I was really an unmitigated bastard for having missed a turn. I kept my Man Card on a technicality: six guys could not admit to being lost, not even briefly. I was relegated to the fumes in the back, chastened.

How it was that I found myself up front again is anyone's guess, but an hour later, there Craig and I were, banging along the trail and with nary a soul before us. We could still hear Shane's voice, and although we could still make out the tune (It's All Coming Back To Me Now, from Celine's 1996 album Falling Into You — clearly a reference to Matt's gift), it was growing more faint. As we'd been doing all night, we stopped to have some GU and regroup. I hate GU. I heard a thing, which was a Low Growl in the brush above us. All casual-like, I turned to Craig and asked him did he hear a Low Growl himself because I just heard one. I very much wanted him to say he heard an airplane, maybe a distant train. Instead, Craig said that yes he did hear a Low Growl. This came as a disappointment to both of us and I took that moment to reflect on the cruel nature of fanged fate. Having now been Low Growled at, we would almost certainly be Pounced Upon, Bit Altogether Deeply, and there's no point in doing any of that without it being followed by Chewed and Digested and eventually, Pooped Back Out. Craig and I started singing I Drove All Night (from 2003's, One Heart), thinking this'd discourage anything in the immediate vicinity, and I added some improvised lines after the first chorus about how I was just chock full of GU at the moment and that made me toxic. Craig switched his adjustable light beam from the medium setting he'd been using all the way up to the bold, light-of-a-thousand-suns setting. Twelve seconds later, I had third degree burns on my back, Craig's head was smoking and his batteries were dead, leaving us in total darkness as our eyes adjusted to the dim light of my four pale LEDs. It must have been during this brief period of darkness that the creature made off with Craig's left arm. Craig said it's nothing really, that he'd like to carry on in hopes that maybe we'd find his arm up the trail and really, there wasn't a thing to do about it here in the woods. Brave guy, that Craig. Semi-armed, but brave.

We carried on, him and me; carried on down the trail, himself listing to the right. We'd got maybe 15 minutes behind us when I stopped to get a rock out of my shoe and there was that Low Growl again. I stood up to discover Craig totally armless, and we watched a grayish, brown shadowy thing bounding down the trail almost gleefully. Craig's left arm dangled from its mouth, the hand still holding a GU. Calmly, he said this was, you know, a good thing in the near-term, what with his tilt to the right gone now. Still, I couldn't help but be concerned about the blood loss. Craig told me not to be so fussy, asked me to reach into his backpack and retrieve The North Face Trail Transfusion Kit (ZombieRunner, $12.53 + s/h) and would I mind very much helping him out with a pint? It was the least I could do. With the color returned to Craig's face, he insisted we press on. We'd got maybe half a mile further when I was suddenly struck with one of those existential crises so common to trail running — you know, when you realize how unrealistic it is to hope Celine has lifted the restraining order and will finally give you a real shot at being a back up singer at the Caesar's Palace show? Craig said that if he had the arms, he'd give me the supportive hug I needed. As we stood there, we heard a series of Low Growls in addition to a fart from up in the bushes. Seconds later, I heard a sickening crunch and the sound of sinews snapping, followed by Craig's voice saying "Oh dear." I told Craig — now balancing on one leg — that I thought they were toying with us and he said it didn't seem much like toying as he'd always thought of it, but rather it felt a lot like he'd imagined it would feel to be eaten incrementally, you know, one bit at a time. Now even Craig had to admit we were in some kind of trouble. I pulled out my cell phone and made a call:

Dad?
I know, but we're three hours behind you, so it's only midnight here.
Oh no, I'm fine. Deanne and the kids're fine, Dad. Craig's not, though. Listen, is Mom there?
One of my running buddies.
Stone cold sober, Dad. Look, I need to talk to Mom.
Hi, Mom. Listen, I'm here on the trail with my friend Craig and he's lost a lot of blood, but he wants to keep going. Some animal which makes a Low Growl has been eating bits of him over the last few miles. Arms, legs, that kind of thing.
Because you're English, Mom.
Of course it's relevant. Craig's English too, Mom! He's got an accent and everything. Well, because I was born in Ohio, right? I don't know how to treat a European, do I?
No, this is NOT one of my running stories...yet. C'mon, Mom! What would Roger Bannister say?
St. Bernadette's, yes. Look, no time for reminiscing, Mom!
Well put Dad on then.
Because he's Irish and that's almost the same thing.
Scottish, Irish, Welsh, whatever, Mom. You all talk funny and drive on the wrong side of the road.
Well tell him to hurry up!
Dad, Mom's no help with this. I've got an English guy on the trail here who's lost both arms and one leg...oh, nope...nope, make that two legs. I can see that Low Growl thing's been by again and chewed off Craig's other leg.
A tourniquet and John McCormack's 1930 recording of The Garden Where the Praties Grow? Yeah, yeah, I remember it. "La la la... and I met her in the garden where the praties grow." Dad, what the hell are praties anyway? I never kne...
Oh, so NOW she wants to help. Tourniquet, cup of tea, and anything by Vera Lynn? 1940's (There'll Be Bluebirds Over) The White Cliffs of Dover?
Aren't tourniquets French?
Some help you two are. I have no idea what brought you two to Ohio, Dad, but I'm glad you did. I can't imagine what it'd been like growing up foreign, talking funny.
I do not talk funny, Dad.
No, it is not relative.
Hey Dad, you know how Mom came over in '54? She flew over, didn't she? You didn't fly over, though, did you? No, you came over on a boat, right?
You know what Mom calls you when you aren't there, Dad?
Boat people. That's right. She calls you boat people. And after all you've done for her.
Well, we're both trophy husbands, I guess.
I am too.
I can get a DNA test if you like.
You're still going to crew for me in May, right?

I apologized to Craig that my parents were not more helpful and he admitted to being skeptical that nationality had anything at all to do with first aid, but I gave White Cliffs of Dover a shot. It turns out Craig was right. Well, that or Vera Lynn has absolutely no medicinal quality whatsoever. I began to worry — not just about getting back to Matt's house, but beyond that. How would Craig drive home like this? Just as I began to lose hope, I heard the marvelous duet, Tell Him, with Derek singing Barbra Streisand's part divinely. The guys came up and Dan was holding Craig's limbs like an armful of wood. This is where all that GU I'd been carrying came in handy. It has a surprising adhesive quality and in no time at all, we'd managed to patch Craig back together again. Matt learned not to call him "Frankencraig" and Craig learned not to take a swing at Matt before the GU had set. Fortunately, we had more GU. Matt farted. The Low Growler farted somewhere up in the bushes. We ran on, there being nothing under the sun or moon so much like a run through the woods at night in good company.

So we made it back after all that; made it back to Matt's house at about 2:00 am. We squeezed our stinky selves all into his dining room and dipped into an ice cream buffet; got to talking about what all, I don't remember. It was all of it in hushed tones at any rate; hushed like tired muscles, soreness; hushed like a long past bedtime. There's some folks you look at and you can just see them looking past to the next thing, but I sat there with a group of guys with nary a care or need between them. There were no next things that I could see, just bowls of ice cream. There's a quiet I can get to only after I've bled off the electrical current which has me buzzing and crackling inside and out most times. I'd managed that and I sat quiet, finally. Things at 2:00 am were once very different for me. Like I'd done this night, I would've spent those six hours trying to untie all my knots, but I would have only found myself in my cups, temporarily anaesthetized. I would have been unsafe, wayward of the law and late, suspected of violating any trust I hadn't already abused. Yet on this night, I had called my wife and told her we'd finished the run and I'd be home in a couple hours. When I got there, I'd be welcome. I'm not sure what those guys were thinking, but what was going through my mind is how fortunate a thing a bowl of ice cream can be. Really, the damn thing's a miracle. Sure, it's not Celine's timeless rendition of the AC/DC classic, You Shook Me All Night Long, but it is a miracle nonetheless.