1 comments/ 16281 views/ 6 favorites 7. The Patriots Ch. 10-12 By: inspirixis1 CHAPTER TEN He had been hoping it was just nerves and excitement, but as soon as Micah woke up he knew it wasn't. He'd been poisoned with gluten. His gut twisted and burned and screamed at him in anger. He got up at 4 am and sat on the toilet for two and a half hours. When his roommate Danilo finally got up he told him to go use someone else's bathroom. He was lucky that Danilo was so understanding. He went to Ellia's room at the time he usually collected his breakfast, even though he knew he wouldn't eat anything all day. Her smile quickly faded when she saw him. "What's wrong?" "I must have eaten something with gluten in it by accident yesterday." He didn't want to accuse her of poisoning him even though that was the most likely explanation. "Did you eat anything other than what I gave you?" He shook his head. She looked crest-fallen. Her brow creased and her head tilted to the side. "I can't see how that could have happened. I'm always so careful." "It's not your fault," he assured her. "But if you didn't eat anything else it must be my fault. How can I prevent it from happening again if I don't know what went wrong?" It was a good question, but it was one that there was no answer to. This happened sometimes. He would mysteriously have a reaction even though he was pretty sure he hadn't eaten anything bad. He thought about it all day. Had he eaten something different yesterday? Was there something that could have been contaminated? He was lucky in that it was a flat stage so he could sit in the middle of the peloton and concentrate on just making it through the day without shitting his pants. He lost the yellow jersey, but he wasn't expecting to keep it so he didn't really care. For a minute he thought he might be spared the embarrassment of having to go up to the podium, but then he got word that he would be awarded the white jersey for being the fastest rookie. He wasn't excited. He didn't want to stand in front of the crowd and have to kiss the girls cheeks. There was something that just felt so weird about it to him. And then it struck him. He hadn't eaten something different, but he had done something different. He had been kissing Ellia, and Ellia wore makeup. Not as much makeup as the girls on the stage, but every day she went to work her lips were shiny and her face was all the same color. Maybe her makeup had gluten in it. When he asked her about it at dinner that night her mouth fell open. "I didn't even think of that. I'll write to the company and ask." The next day he was starting to feel a bit better. When he went to get his breakfast she wasn't wearing makeup and he kissed her again. She was so much more beautiful when she didn't cover herself up with makeup anyway. She had the kind of skin that tans golden but she still had a spattering of faint freckles over her nose and cheeks that were youthful and cute. God he loved kissing Ellia. He hadn't been joking when he'd told her that he was addicted to it, but to be honest he was more addicted to just spending time with her. He loved how she made him feel, so happy and lighthearted, as if nothing in the world could hurt him while she was there. He needed that feeling more and more as the tour wore on. His relationships within the other riders were strained at best. Andrea, the team leader seemed to be unable to close the 16 second gap that Micah had opened on him during the prologue and everyone seemed to blame him. It's not as if Micah was trying to beat him. He did exactly what Fabian told him to do every day. He didn't get involved in break-aways and he obligingly played mule for the rest of the riders. Every day that they were on the flats he sat in the peloton, waited for orders, and carried them out as quickly and efficiently as he could. The stress within the team wasn't the only thing bothering him though. It seemed his participation had sparked interest in the Tour from black immigrant population in France and other European countries. This in itself wouldn't be a bad thing except that they tended to come in large groups and overrun traditional celebrations. They brought their loud obnoxious rap music and their angry confrontational manner and they cheered openly and loudly and only for Micah. He didn't know what to do about it, or if there was even anything he could do about it, so he just tried to ignore the situation. When they got to the mountain stages it only got worse. The necessity for the different subcultures in the crowd to be close to one another seemed to turn the resentment up a notch. The more traditional white fans started to fight back. There was a roadside brawl that happened right as a cameraman was passing who stopped to film the violent encounter. Fists flew and there was yelling and screaming and then someone produced a knife and there was blood and the police and an ambulance came. The young African immigrants seemed to think he was some sort of leader for them. They printed photographs of him on T-shirts and banners and they chanted for him as he rode past. He wanted no part of it, but what could he do? To make a bad situation worse Andrea wasn't gaining on him in the mountains, he was loosing ground and his teammates became colder and more distant. Even Danilo, who had always been nice to him, didn't want to talk to him anymore. The white fans started to turn against him. Even though he'd never even been to Africa he had somehow become the poster-boy for everything that didn't work about African immigration into Europe. People spat at him as he rode past. People liked to yell at him, "Go back to the basketball court nigger." He wasn't even good at basketball. He sucked at ball sports. Micah felt lonely and anxious any time that he wasn't with Ellia. Even talking on the phone to his family stressed him out now. They could see what was happening on the Tour from the TV footage. His mom was worried. His brothers and Lucas wanted him to drop out. "Just come home and train with us for the last couple of weeks before the Olympics," they urged. The only person at home he actually enjoyed talking to was his niece Adie. His sister Grace heavily censored the TV that she let her kids watch so all his six-year-old niece knew was that he was in Europe riding his bike in a big race. He took to calling Grace after dinner to talk to Adie, who was on summer vacation from first grade. He asked her what she was doing that day and what her mommy was making her for lunch. He asked her what games she was playing with her best friend Madeline and her little sister Jasmine and if her baby brother Alexander could do anything cool yet. Adie was so sweet and innocent. The worst thing she was dealing with in her life was having to share her toys. It calmed him that her world was still safe and predictable. It reassured him to hear her simple words in her little girl voice. Ellia let him lie on her bed while he talked to Adie and after he had hung up she would come and sit with him and wrap her arms around him and hold him close to her. "Do you think I should pull out?" He asked. "No. Micah you're doing so well. Most people don't even make it through their first Tour de France, you're ranked in the top ten." "But I feel like I'm inciting a civil war. Someone got stabbed. Someone got stabbed because of me." "No. Think about it. All you're doing is riding a bike in a race that you have earned the right to participate in." Ellia kissed his forehead and hugged him to her chest and made him feel safe. So he didn't pull out. He kept on riding and he kept on getting spat on and Andrea kept on falling further behind and nobody wanted to ride near him. It was like he was radioactive or something. He didn't watch or read the news because he knew he was one of the lead stories. Even though he did nothing interesting and kept his mouth shut all day long, he'd be right up there beside the burning cars and smashed windows in the slums on the outskirts of Paris. Racial tension was reaching fever pitch. People were rioting and getting injured and he was to blame. On the rest days he would find a body of water and swim. He didn't care what it was; a pool, a canal, an alpine lake, they were all the same to him. He'd swim slowly for hours, letting the water caress his tired body and lulling his mind into that blank place where nothing matters, where he didn't even exist. On one of the rest days in the Alps he found a lake that was only about two miles from the hotel the team was staying in. He asked one of the mechanics for a bike and rode the narrow dusty country road as close as he could get, then dismounted and walked the final hundred yards or so through the woods to the edge of the lake. He stashed the bike and his shoes, helmet and jersey behind a bush, pulled on his goggles and waded into the cold water. He swam until he could feel his muscles shivering from the cold and then he swam just a little longer. When he got back to the shore he stood and walked carefully out of the water, minding the sharp rocks. He caught sight of movement in his peripheral vision and froze. He scanned the trees. "Is there someone there?" He asked. There was silence, but he didn't want to move. It felt wrong. He stood rooted in the knee-deep water, shivering. Finally somebody stepped out of the trees. It was a big fat white guy with a rusty red goatee. "I'd like to talk," he said in a thick accent. "Who are you?" "I am just a fan of the Tour. For a long time, a fan." "What do you want?" He spread his hands out in a gesture that spoke of friendliness. "I just want the Tour back. We all want the Tour back. And we want our country back." Micah's heart was beating at a million miles an hour. The man was walking towards him with his hands open in front of him, but he felt dangerous. His skin tingled with fear. What would Nicholas do in this situation? His brother was a martial artist and when Micah was younger Nicholas had given him some classes in self-defense. Nicholas' strategy for dealing one-on-one with an unarmed individual who clearly wanted to hurt you was easy to remember – break the bones of your opponent's foot by stomping, and then run away as fast as you can. But Micah didn't have any shoes on, so even if he could somehow break this guys foot he probably couldn't outrun him through the forest. Any ideas of getting out of the water were quickly forgotten in the next seconds. More men emerged from the trees and they weren't pretending to be friendly. Before he knew what was happening there were rocks flying at him. There were so many of them and they were coming so fast that he couldn't dodge. He turned as quickly as he could and dove for the safety of the water. He swam under the surface for as long as his lungs could handle and when he came up for air he quickly ducked under again. He did that until he figured that he was somewhere near the middle of the lake. He was still shivering, but he didn't know if it was from cold or from fear. He checked over his body as he tread water in the middle of the lake. His head hurt and the back of one arm hurt. He felt down over his legs. He felt a bruise on the back of one thigh and the back of his opposite calf ached and stung at the same time. He was bruised and cut up but he didn't think anything was broken. He couldn't see the shore of the lake clearly so he didn't know if the men were still at the place where he'd left the bike or if they had spread out along the shore. He decided to try and exit the lake on the western shore. It would be a long hike through the woods back to the road, but the shadows of the trees obscured the water on the western shore, which would give him some cover. He swam under the water, being careful to disturb the surface as little as possible when he came up to breathe to give him the best chance of making it to the shore without being spotted. He couched low to the ground until he was in the thick of the trees and then he walked barefoot through the spiky pine needles and over the jagged rocks, using the angle of the sun to guide him back to the road. When he finally got to the road he walked on the forest side of the ditch so he could duck into the trees if he needed to. He wondered how it had come to this. He was a law abiding US citizen. He'd never done anything bad in his life. Sure he'd done some stupid things when he was a teenager, but he'd never done anything bad. Apart from a little under-aged drinking he'd never done anything illegal, and he'd certainly never intentionally hurt anyone. And now he was an outcast. Relegated to the fringes where he feared for his life, all because his skin was the wrong color. When he finally made it back to the hotel his body was sore and exhausted and his feet were cut up and in excruciating pain. He was covered in blood and his head throbbed where he must have been hit above his left eyebrow. He'd left his team ID with the bike and his clothes on the shore of the lake and the guard wouldn't let him in. He begged for him to call Ellia or Guiseppe but the guard was completely unmoved, so he stood and waited and waited for someone he knew to walk past. Finally Danilo and Alessandro walked through the lobby and he called out to them. They both turned and saw him but Alessandro looked away. Danilo stopped, shock all over his face. "Get Ellia for me," Micah called out. A few minutes later Ellia came through the lobby, she looked around, confused and then her eyes locked on him and he could swear that he saw something break inside her. Her hand came to her mouth and despair filled her eyes. "Micah..." Her hand reached out to him as she hurried towards him. She argued with the guard in French, who reluctantly let him pass over the threshold into the hotel. She took his hand and led him through the lobby to the elevator. When he turned around in the elevator he saw a trail of bloody footprints across the tile floor of the lobby. She sat him down in the bathtub in her suite and took the showerhead from its perch and washed him gently with warm water and a washcloth. He watched red water swirl down the drain. She rinsed the washcloth out and wiped his face, dabbing softly over the throbbing pain above his eye. She didn't speak. She cried quietly as she worked on him. Tears leaked out of her eyes and dribbled over her cheeks. She sniffed occasionally and bit down on her lower lip when it started to quiver. When she was finished she dried him carefully with a hotel towel and had him lie down on her massage table holding a damp washcloth to the wound on his face. She picked up the hotel phone and spoke quietly into it in Italian. He couldn't be bothered trying to understand what she was saying, he was tired and numb and he just didn't care anymore. She wiped her eyes and moved the upright lamp and desk chair to the foot end of the massage table and set about examining his feet. After a few minutes there was a knock on the door and she let Alfredo, the team doctor, in. They spoke quickly in Italian as Alfredo checked over his body, lifting the washcloth to look at the wound, walking his fingers along Micah's bones to check for breaks and shining a light into his eyes. Moments later there was another knock and Ellia let Guiseppe in. He gasped in shock. "Micah, what happened?" "I was stoned," he replied flatly. Guiseppe's eyes went wide and Ellia, who had been chewing on her thumbnail, turned her face away. "Stoned?" "Yes. People threw rocks at me." Guiseppe called Fabian and the police and the rest of the evening was a blur of interviews punctuated by the searing pain of getting sutures in his head and the back of his calf, antibiotic injections and Ellia extracting splinters and slivers of rock and glass from his feet. Ellia passed food to him regularly and he stuffed it in his mouth and chewed and swallowed without thinking. When the police and doctor had left, Guiseppe sat on the bed and shook his head. "I am sorry Micah," he said quietly. "I fear the world was not ready for you." Micah didn't know what he was supposed to say to that. He didn't even know what was meant by it. Did that mean Guiseppe wanted to pull him off the team? Not that Micah was really on the team. Sure he wore the uniform and did what he was told but he wasn't really part of the team, he was more like a refugee out on the course. Guiseppe left and Ellia retrieved Micah's suitcase for him from the room he was sharing with Danilo. He brushed and flossed his teeth and changed into boxer shorts and was careful not to look in the mirror. He crawled into the bed beside her and lay in her arms with his head resting on her breast. Ellia didn't say anything. She just held him tightly and wept softly. She was silent until the next day when he was getting ready. He put on his cycling shorts and the white jersey he was supposed to wear for being the fastest rookie, and then checked the bandages on the bottoms of his feet before carefully pulling his socks and his jogging shoes on. He would put on his cycling shoes at the last possible minute. Today was going to hurt like hell. "You don't have to do it Micah," she said. "What?" "You don't have to continue. You could go home and recover for a few days then put some training in at the velodrome and the pool." He nodded. "Yeah, I could do that, but not today." "Why not?" "Because I don't like quitting." She caught his hand and her eyes searched his desperately. "Micah, I'm afraid." Honestly, he was scared too. He was scared shitless, but he kissed her hand and said, "Ellia it'll be fine. The whole thing is televised. Nobody in their right mind would try anything." "It's not the people in their right mind I'm worried about." Micah tried not to think about it. Danilo actually rode beside him for part of the morning and although he didn't talk to him it brought some comfort. There wasn't much room in his brain for conscious thought anyway, it was mostly consumed by the pain in his feet and aches in the rest of his body. So he just thought about the pain and it made it easier to get through the day. He left Danilo behind on the first steep climb and steadily passed other cyclists up the side of the mountain. Nobody chased him. There were some advantages to being the Tour leper. Chapter Eleven Ellia watched the TV coverage with mounting anxiety. She was already at the hotel that they'd be staying at that night and she should be out shopping for fresh food or setting up the massage table in her room, or something, but instead she sat glued to the television. Every time the camera cut to footage of Micah she nervously scanned the crowd around him, trying to pick out potential attackers. Micah's stoning had been on the news all day and the commentators spoke about it briefly. She was worried that it might give people ideas, that there might be copycat attacks on the course. But nobody attacked him. It was a relatively uneventful day. There was only a minor shuffle in the standings and the lead jerseys didn't change hands. She held her breath when he went up to the podium to accept the white jersey but nothing bad happened. Nobody rushed him or threw rocks at him. "See, nothing to worry about," Micah said when he was finally safe inside the hotel walls that night. He said it lightly but there was no light in his eyes. His entire demeanor was flat and lifeless. The next day at first appeared to be the same thing all over again. It was another mountain stage, but not quite as difficult as the one before it. By half way through the day the peloton was stretched out across a kilometer or more. Micah was riding with a group of twelve riders, which surprised her and made her feel a bit better. Over the past couple of stages the other cyclists didn't seem to want to ride with him, but perhaps now they'd turned a corner of acceptance. At least they would offer him a little protection from the crowd. 7. The Patriots Ch. 10-12 Her comfort was short lived, however, because Micah crashed over a barricade on a sweeping corner that was bordered to one side by a steep rocky cliff. The incident wasn't caught on film, it had happened at a time when the riders in his group didn't have a camera on them. The only thing the camera had caught was him dumping his mangled bike back over the barricade and climbing back over to wait for a new bike from the general support vehicle. When the general support vehicle gave him his bike there was a moment of confusion. Micah kept on patting his head and she realized that he'd lost his helmet. He must have been asking for one, but he probably didn't know the word for it in French. Finally the man in the general support car figured out what he wanted and handed him a helmet and Micah got on the new bike and set off up the mountain again. Not one of the cyclists in the group he'd been riding with stopped to wait for him or check to see if he was alright, not even his team mate Alessandro. The fall gave him a nasty graze between his elbow and wrist and reopened the cut on his head, which oozed blood. His face was quickly covered and the collar of his white jersey turned red. The team support car caught up to him and she saw Alfredo lean out the window to try to clean him up and close the wound on the fly. In the end they stopped. The mechanic jumped out of the car and replaced the bike he'd gotten from general support with a team one that actually fit him. He'd lost a lot of time but he kept on going. The commentators speculated on how he could have come off on that corner. It was on just a slight decline and it was an easy line. They showed footage of other riders going through the same turn and it seemed inconceivable that Micah could have stuffed up so badly that he would have gone over the barricade. The commentators never actually said it but Ellia was sure there were others drawing the same conclusion that she was: Another rider had pushed him over. There were eleven other riders in that pack. It could have been any one of them. She felt sick to her stomach. He had to quit. His life was in danger. Once he had crossed the finish line they showed footage of him climbing into an ambulance with Guiseppe. The commentators talked about what a shame it was that he'd lost twelve minutes and had dropped from ninth to eighty-third position. When he finally knocked on her hotel door that night he looked exhausted. "What happened?" She asked as she ushered him into the suite. He shook his head. "I just want to take a shower." He unzipped his suitcase and took clothes from it and went into the bathroom and shut the door behind him. He was in there for a long time. He'd left all of his gear out in the room with her and his phone kept on buzzing. Every couple of minutes it would buzz. When he finally came out she told him his phone had been ringing. He picked it up and swore. "Shit." He looked up. "Come with me?" "What is it?" "My sister's here. She's less likely to murder me if you're with me." He was already heading towards the door and she quickly slipped her feet into her flip flops to follow him. "Why would she be mad at you?" She asked in the elevator. "Because I haven't answered my phone in three days." Ellia looked around for a tall, strapping, half-black woman as they walked through the lobby but none appeared. Micah walked straight towards the entrance, where a guard was stationed to keep unauthorized people out of the hotel, and enveloped a short, slightly built white woman in his arms. "Gracie, I'm sorry," he said. He showed the guard his team ID and guided his sister into the hotel lobby. He introduced them and led them back to her room. Ellia couldn't help but sneak glances at Grace. She was not at all what she was expecting. She was small and fragile-looking with wild curly dark brown hair and round amber-brown eyes. She may have looked fragile but her demeanor was nothing if not confident. She didn't walk, she strode. She looked Micah straight in the eye and said, "Mom wants me to detain you until after the race has left tomorrow. Force you to drop out." Micah sucked in a breath and his big muscular body shrank away from the tiny woman before him. "You wouldn't do that though, would you?" "I would if I agreed with her, and if I thought you would ever forgive me." His shoulders relaxed and he plunked himself down on the couch in the sitting room part of the suite. "She's beside herself with worry Micah, we all are." "What do you want me to do about it?" "Answer your phone, for a start." He sighed. "Yeah, okay. Sorry. I just don't really feel like talking right now." Grace's face softened and she sat across from him on the couch. "What happened?" He shook his head. "I don't know Gracie. Somehow I've become a symbol of hatred." His brow furrowed and he looked down at his hands. "Nobody wants me here." "You were stoned?" She asked gently. He nodded without looking up. "And then someone... another cyclist... pushed you off your bike?" He hesitated and then nodded again. Ellia had known it in her heart, but she had been holding out for a different explanation. That another rider could have done it on purpose was sickening. Micah started to tremble. It started with his shoulders, but when he raised his hand to wipe his eyes it was unsteady. Grace moved beside him on the couch and put her arms around him and he seemed to collapse into her. "I never wanted any of this." His voice broke with emotion. "I don't want to be famous. I don't want people to think of me as their leader. I just want to ride my bike, is that really so much to ask?" Grace didn't reply, she just sat with him and rubbed his back for a long time. Ellia sat in the armchair and curled her legs up under her and tried to fade into the background. After a while Grace spoke again and Micah lifted his head to look at her. "There are some people who make it their mission in life to make the world a better place. You know, like Martin Luther King Jr., Cesar Chavez, Anna Politkovskaya... social activists and political dissidents who believe so strongly in their cause that they devote their entire lives to it. But then there are others. "There are normal everyday people who find themselves in appalling situations. People who have been wronged greatly, and they have to ask themselves, 'What is the right thing to do?' Sometimes the right thing is easy, but more often it is difficult. "When the police found that guy who raped me I was dead set against testifying against him. It had been two years and I was trying to move on. I didn't want to see or hear or think about him ever again. I thought that I'd already been through enough suffering and I didn't want to put myself through any more. "But my Sensei said something to me that changed my mind. She said, 'Allowing a bad thing to happen is the same thing as doing a bad thing.' Obviously there was nothing I could have done about being raped in the first place, but if I let him get away with it I would have been allowing him to do the same thing to other women. "Don't get me wrong, I don't see myself as a hero or anything, but I'm proud that I stood up for myself and for other women, even though it was traumatic for me." Micah sniffed and nodded. "I'm proud of you too Gracie... But I cooperated with the police, I told them everything..." "I know. I'm glad you did, but you can do more. You can stand up for a whole minority population. This is bigger than people throwing rocks at you or pushing you off your bike. It's not just about bad things that happened to you, it's about bad things that continue to happen to the people around us. This is about intolerance. It's about oppression." He shook his head. "But I don't know about any of that stuff. I've never been oppressed in my life. I'm the child of an upper middle class white guy. I'm not an immigrant, I'm not like the black people on the side of the road cheering for me." "It doesn't matter, they're still looking to you to lead them." "I don't want to lead them, or represent them, or have anything to do with them." "Micah, they're hurt and scared and powerless. If you don't want to stand up for them who do you want to stand up for?" "I don't know... what about the people who've been coming out and enjoying this race every year of their lives who've suddenly had the carpet swept out from underneath them? Who suddenly have to deal with angry mobs that don't give a shit about the traditions that have been carefully preserved over hundreds of years?" Grace stared at him for a moment. "Are you being argumentative, or do you really believe that blacks shouldn't be allowed to participate in and observe a bike race?" "Participate? Yes. Spectate? Yes. Hijack the whole damn thing and turn it into a political statement? No." "They don't have a voice. How else can they be heard?" "I don't know, but I don't see why it has to be my problem. Just because I have black skin doesn't make me one of them." Grace shook her head. "It is your problem Micah. It is the problem of everyone who believes in equality and fairness. It's my problem and Ellia's problem and Adie's problem too. The difference is you have the power to do something about it." He tried to look away and Grace caught him by the chin and made him look back at her. "Micah, you of all of us have the chance to do something truly great. This is a terrible situation but it is also an amazing opportunity for someone who has the strength to do the right thing." He stared at her for a moment and then nodded. "Talk to them Mikey. Tell them something worth hearing..." He nodded again, her hand still holding his face towards her. "It's not a perfect world... but... I heard... it's already done." She stared into his eyes for a moment before she let go of his chin and one corner of her mouth rose into a sly smile. Her head tilted to the side just perceptibly. Micah narrowed his eyes. "Lucas..." Grace laughed. "Who else did he tell?" "I think even your third grade teacher has probably heard about it by now. I think everyone knows... except perhaps the person who would like to now the most?" He sighed. "Yeah, I'm working on it." "Good." She turned to Ellia. "Do you like fast cars?" "Ah... sure, I guess so." Grace smiled and turned back to Micah. "You should see the car Gerard rented for me, it's amazing." "Gerard?" "Nicholas' personal assistant." His eyebrows rose. "Nicholas has a secretary now?" "Gerard prefers 'personal assistant.' He is so funny, his name is actually Jared but he insists that we pronounce it Geh-rard." Grace made them come outside to see the Ferrari sports car that her husband's personal assistant had rented for her and then she hugged Micah goodnight. "You should do it tomorrow morning before the race. Call a press conference and take care of it right away. No more festering." "Okay," he conceded. "Oh, I almost forgot. Nicholas is concerned about your tax burden, he wanted me to give this to you." She took a blue sealed envelope out of her purse and handed it to him. "And the girls wanted me to give you these." She took out a second envelope that had the words 'Uncle Micah,' written across the front in big unsteady red crayon letters. He opened the one from his nieces first, while he was eating his dinner, and smiled at each sheet before handing them over the table to her. There were three drawings. The first one was cut out from a coloring book and was of a Disney princess that was colored in bright scribbles. Across the top the name Jasmine was written in neat pencil letters that were copied over in unsteady blue crayon. The second was a crayon drawing of a brown figure on a big red bicycle riding over green grass with mountains and a tree in the background, with the words, 'I love you Uncle Micah, from Adie.' The third one was drawn in colored pencils and was by far the most skillful. There were figures all over the page, some bigger, some smaller, some darker, some fairer, each with a letter above their head. In the middle was a brown dog with the name 'Zeus' written above it. "Is this your family?" She asked. "Yeah." "Which one are you?" He motioned for her to come to his side of the table and pulled her down into his lap so that she was sitting across him sideways. "I guess it's time for your lesson. It's kind of complicated." "Okay." "Let's start with the basics, that's my mom and dad." He pointed to the pink man and brown woman at the top right of the page. "Before I was born they fostered Zach, who stayed with us for eleven years, so he's basically my brother. He married Beth and they have a son, Calvin." He pointed to the brown figures at the bottom of the page. He continued, "My parents adopted Grace when she was a baby, and she married Nicholas and they have three kids, Adie, Jasmine and Alexander." He pointed to the family in the bottom left corner. "Now, here's where it gets confusing. Nicholas' parents are Tyler and Maya." He pointed to the pink figures in the top left corner. "They have two other kids, Lucas and Madeline." He pointed to the pink boy and girl figures on the left of the page. "Grace's husband is Lucas' brother? So your best friend is your brother's brother?" "Yeah." "That is kind of confusing." "Mm. Well let me add one more layer of complexity, Lucas' sister Madeline drew this picture. She's seven years old. She's in the same class as Adie at school." He smiled at her as she tried to piece it all together. "So... Madeline would be Adie's Aunty?" "Exactly." "So you must be one of these guys?" She pointed to the boy figures on the right hand side of the page. "Uh-huh, I'm guessing I'm this one." He pointed to the darkest brown one that had an M above its head. "These are my brothers, Matthew and Oliver." "Who's A?" She pointed to the pink boy at the bottom of the page beside Zach. "That's Adrian. He was Nicholas' best friend in college, but now he's just one of the family." "Entry is that easy?" He shrugged. "According to Madeline, and her opinion is just as valid as anyone else's." "And this is the all-important family dog?" He slipped his arms around her waist and rested his chin on her shoulder. "Yeah, that's Zeus, the only one important enough for her to write out his full name." "You're smiling." "Huh?" "In the picture. She drew you smiling." "Yeah, well there's no reason not to smile in their world. Here, you keep this." He folded the picture up and put it back in her hand. "You might need it for reference. You'll be meeting them all at the Olympics." "All of them at once?" "Yep. You'd better study up." He smiled as he leaned in to kiss her and she forgot her alarm when their lips met. She forgot everything when Micah kissed her. But, as usual, he said he couldn't stay. The only time he'd stayed was after he'd been stoned and he lay motionless in her arms all night. "I need to think about what I'm going to say in the morning and prepare a statement," he said. So she let him leave and she cleaned up and made breakfast for the next day and went to bed alone. She dreamed of him lifeless and covered in blood on the side of the road and woke up sweating in the early hours of the morning. She wanted to go to his room and crawl into his bed with him but it wasn't possible. Even if she could get into his room Danilo would be there. She couldn't get back to sleep so she found Madeline's picture and took it back to bed with her and lay there looking at it and trying to remember everyone's names and how they were all related to each other. She finally slept again. Chapter Twelve The next morning she met up with Grace and Micah at nine thirty, after she had seen to the athletes who wanted treatment before the stage began. He was even quieter than usual. In the half hour before the press conference he went to the toilet twice and he looked worse each time he came out. "Are you okay?" She asked, hoping that she hadn't accidentally poisoned him again. "Yeah, I'm just nervous." It was ironic. Micah had nerves of steel, he could sit motionless in the starting gate with his eyes closed for more than a minute, but as soon as he had a microphone in front of him he practically passed out from fear. He sat between Ellia and Grace and read and reread over his statement. "The media are speculating that you were pushed yesterday," Grace said. "Do you know how you want to respond when they ask you about it?" He took a deep breath and nodded. A few minutes before he was scheduled to start Guiseppe appeared and clasped Micah's shoulder. He said he would introduce him. They stood to the side of the makeshift platform at the start line that was crowded with microphones. She couldn't tell how many people had turned out to see him give his statement, but it had to be in the thousands. The town square was completely packed and there was a live feed to the adjoining park where an image of the stage was projected on to story-high screens in real time. The feed from the microphones was amplified to the masses waiting there. There was an uneasy tension in the air as Guiseppe gave a brief introduction, praising Micah for his talent and perseverance and condemning the people who had attacked him by the lake. Then Micah folded the piece of paper his statement was written on and tucked it into the back of his team racing jersey as he took the stage. He stood before the microphones, under the bright TV lights, and took a deep breath. "I am Micah Watson," he began. "I grew up in Denver, Colorado, and I am not very different from you. I like riding my bike. When it's hot I like to go to the beach. I like French cheese... almost as much as I like Italian cheese." He paused for a moment while the crowd acknowledged his friendly jibe with a low chuckle. "I love my family and my friends, and I love my country, and to be honest I never would have left it if it weren't for this race. I left everything I knew and loved for the chance to participate in this - The greatest race in the world. "The Tour de France is the longest, most grueling race there is for a cyclist. It punishes more, and more... and then some more, but it also rewards more. It is more than a route through the plains and hills and mountains. It is a tradition, a culture, a spirit of competition and sportsmanship that is paralleled in few other sports. I love the Tour, I respect it, and I would never do anything to degrade it. There was strength in his words but the real power came in the moments between them. When there were no words there was just Micah. There was just a tall, commanding black man with a burning intellect and a quiet dignity. There was a man who was impossible to ignore. "Unfortunately, this year the Tour is under siege by intolerance and disrespect. "I'm sure that everyone is aware of the racial tension that surrounds us. There are factions who assumed me as a leader simply because of the color of my skin, people with no respect for traditions that have been in place for over a century." He paused and looked around. The crowd was completely silent, hanging on his every word. "Here, today, I publicly decry these people. "I am not your leader. "I do not ride for you. "When you disrespect the Tour you disrespect the riders and you disrespect me. If you cannot participate in a civilized way I deplore you to stay away." There was a murmur of agreement from the crowd. A few people clapped. "I am not just talking about black people. There are white people who are disrespecting the Tour too. When you spit on me you are spitting on all of the riders who are striving to be the best on a level playing field. You are spitting on fairness and tolerance and sportsmanship; all of the things that make the Tour what it is. I also ask these people to stay home." 7. The Patriots Ch. 10-12 He paused while the crowd clapped. "The Tour de France has a long and prestigious history. It has been the venue of great battles, great triumphs and great failures. It has always inspired passion. Before now, the riders have always been white... but times change. The world changes, sometimes faster than we feel we can cope with. "Sometimes it feels as if the things we hold dear are slipping through our fingers." He paused and looked around the crowd. It was so quiet you could have heard a pin drop. Every eye was glued to Micah. Every ear strained in anticipation. "But we cannot go back. This is a fact of life - our world will change. We cannot stop it. We cannot control it. All we can control is the way we act. "Every day we get to choose how we treat our neighbors. We can choose to treat them with respect and humanity. We can try to understand their customs. We can extend the hand of friendship to a man or woman who looks or speaks differently... and we can forgive. "In this rapidly changing world mistakes will be made. There will be misunderstandings and offenses that cut us to the core. But without forgiveness we cannot learn from each other. "Without forgiveness there is no way forward. "That is why I have forgiven those who spat on me, and those who threw rocks at me, and I have forgiven the person who pushed me off my bike. Everyone makes mistakes, and everyone deserves a second chance. "I will never reveal the identity of the man who pushed me, so please do not ask. In the pack of eleven cyclists I was riding with were ten perfectly innocent men, so please do not speculate. Instead, let's put this behind us. "Let's use today to make the first step towards a better tomorrow. To that end I challenge you all. "I challenge the true fans to step forward. If you love the Tour for its history and its vibrancy and its life, line the streets and cheer, no matter your age, gender, nationality or color. Shake the hand of someone you would usually avoid or ignore. Start a conversation. Ask where they are from, or which soccer team they root for, or whatever it is you Europeans talk about..." He trailed off while he waved his hand as if it was all a mystery to him, and the crowd laughed. "I challenge business owners and personnel managers to level the playing field. If a person of African or Arab descent is the most highly qualified for a position, interview them and hire them. Take a chance. Do what I believe you will later see is the right thing for your business and for your community." "I challenge my teammates and my fellow cyclists to ride with me. Take today to show the world that you believe in fairness and equality, and ride with me." He paused while the crowd clapped and cheered and whistled. "Our world will never be the same, but that doesn't have to be a bad thing. "We can make it a good thing. "Today, make it a good thing." The crowd erupted in deafening cheers and he looked over the jubilant masses for a moment, then nodded once and was walking off the stage towards her. She wanted to hug him but the crowd was going crazy. Reporters crowded him as police officers guided him through the throng, pushing cameras and people and microphones out of the way. Ellia grabbed Grace's hand and pushed after him, flashing her ID to the guards manning the gate that lead back to the area cordoned off for the teams. Back there it wasn't much better. Athletes and trainers and team staff flooded from their trailers to meet him. Everybody wanted to shake his hand and pat him on the back. In the end she had to settle for a brief embrace in the team trailer in front of everybody and then he was putting on his helmet and gloves and he was gone. Grace wanted to hang out with her for the day and tag along for all of her chores. "It's really not very exciting," she warned her. "Nor is standing beside the road for four hours waiting for the three seconds in which a pack of cyclists blaze past you, and then wondering if your brother was in there or not." So she and Grace spent the day together, going through the daily chores and stopping by every TV they saw to check on the progress of the bike race. Today she didn't worry about Micah being attacked. All of the riders wanted to be seen beside him. They smiled and shook his hand and talked to him. It seemed that there wasn't a single moment that Micah wasn't engaged in some sort of conversation. All of the riders were bunched together in a single group that rode at a leisurely pace through the rolling countryside. In the absence of a real bicycle race to discuss upon the commentators spent a lot of time talking about Micah. They showed clips of the speech he'd given that morning and his track time trial race that qualified him for the US Olympic cycling team. About half way through the day someone discovered that his dad was an Olympian and that his brothers were swimmers and very soon after that they broadcast the footage from him at the US swimming trials. At the end of the day, the other riders pushed Micah to the front of the peloton and over the finish line first. On the winners podium he asked for a microphone, an unconventional request. He spoke in English. "I'd like to dedicate today's stage to my sister Grace, the most courage person I know." He motioned for Grace to join him and Ellia pushed her towards the stage. Grace looked tiny when she stood beside Micah, smiling and waving to the over-excited crowd. Micah fished around in the back pocket of his jersey with one hand and pulled out the blue envelope Grace had given him the previous night. You could hear the rustling of paper through the microphone as he removed a sheet of paper from the envelope. He leaned down and said something to Grace, who shook her head, and then he called the city mayor, who was standing to the side with other dignitaries over to him. "As a gesture of good will, the prize money for this stage will be donated to..." "Louis DePaolo fondation de bienfaisance," the mayor read from the sheet of paper. The crowd clapped and hooted and somewhere someone was playing a horned instrument. "What was that all about?" She asked when they were walking back to the bus that would take them to the hotel. Micah shrugged. "Nicholas found a charity that works to teach African immigrants French manners and helps them to integrate." "The French have manners?" He glanced at her for a moment before he laughed. When they got to the hotel she picked up the mail for the entire team and distributed it before she began the evening's massages. Micah had twelve refrigerated packages. He looked as surprised as she was when she delivered them to his door. "What do you think they are?" She asked. He shrugged as he started to rip the packaging tape off the first one, and then he started to laugh. He held a block of cheese up for her to see. Instead of eating alone like they usually did they decided to take the blocks of cheese and share them with the rest of the team. It was both better and worse. It was nice to see Micah smiling and joking around with the rest of the cyclists but being in a big group prevented her from touching him. She wanted to touch him and kiss him and press her body against him. She needed physical contact with him like she needed to breathe. When they were finally done with eating and had said goodnight to Grace he walked her back to her room and she pulled him inside. She backed him up against the wall and tried to kiss him but he turned away from her. "What's wrong?" She asked, hurt. He rubbed up and down her arms. "You ate bread at dinner. I can't kiss you because you're all glutenized." "Oh..." She let her forehead fall forward onto his chest. She hadn't even thought about it before eating the bread from the basket in the middle of the table. Micah didn't seem to want to stick around. "I'm tired Elle," he said. "I hardly slept last night." He kissed her on her hair before gently pushing her away. She let him go. She was frustrated with yearning for him but she let him go. It was the Tour de France after all.