“You too, amigo.”

At that moment, Lou realized his breathing was coming more easily. The nagging stitch in his side vanished. It was a second wind—as much mental as physical. He had experienced what he assumed was the involuntary flood of endorphins on runs before. His mind began to calm and his senses heightened. With the lightening sky, the wet woods hummed with energy and the sounds of the forest. Birdcalls. Insects. Raindrops tapping against leaves. The counterpoint of their footfalls. And from somewhere far down the steep hillside to his left, the white noise rush of the Chattahoochee.

They were out in the boondocks, now, far from civilization, the connection to the forest growing with every stride.

Meanwhile the pitch continued to rise higher and higher. Lou was aware and alert, but also relaxed. His mind and body were wonderfully in tune. He was still on a high when they hit the one-hour mark and made the one-eighty.

“From the contour map, this looks like the highest we’re gonna get,” Lou said. “You want to take the lead?”

“No, no. I’m fine searching for things to stare at that ain’t your butt.”

“You’re whacked. The pace getting to you?”

“We should have brought our gloves so we could stop and go a couple of rounds right here.”

There was no sign of the nearly ten years’ difference in their ages.

“That would be a gas,” he said. “Rather than having my block knocked off by you in the gym, I can have it knocked off at altitude.”

“It should fly farther.… And Lou?”

“Yeah?”

“I’m glad you talked me into making this run.”

Lou grinned and started up again. The second-wind euphoria was gone, but he sensed he had enough in the tank to make it back.

Keep pushing … keep it going.

Cap followed Lou’s lines, staying in single file until the path widened. Pulling alongside, he was breathing harder than before as he ran shoulder-to-shoulder on Lou’s right, just a couple of feet from the edge of the drop-off. From time to time, far down in the valley below the trees and rock-strewn hillside, they caught glimpses of the river—a thin gray snake slithering through the endless shades of spring green.

“Pretty stuff, eh, bro?” Cap said.

“Like Dorothy said: I don’t think we’re in Kansas anymore.”

Lou tried to gauge the slope to Cap’s right, but here the drop-off was too sharp to see anything straight down. During one stretch, he did catch a good look. He had always had a touch of vertigo staring down from anything higher than a third-floor porch. Now his stomach tightened at the height and the steepness of the grade. He hadn’t really appreciated it on the run out, but the trail sat atop a fifty- or sixty-degree cliff face with a slope that paused in a rock-strewn wooded ravine before dropping off again. Pass the Dramamine, please.