Cross Justice (Alex Cross 23)

2021—World Championships Podium

2022—World Champion

2024—Olympic Games Gold Medalist

Was any of this possible? McDonald said it was. He said Jannie might win any of the titles he’d listed as a pure runner, but he’d seen such athleticism in my daughter that he thought she’d be better suited to the grueling multi-skill heptathlon event.

“The heptathlon decides the best female athlete in the world,” McDonald said. “You interested in being that athlete, Jannie? The one who can do anything? Superwoman?”

You could see it in my daughter’s face, how in the very instant he’d thrown out that spark, Jannie had caught fire.

“What would it take?” she asked.

“Your heart, your soul, and years of hard work,” he said. “You up to that?”

She’d glanced at me and then back at him, and nodded. I got chills.

McDonald said that if Jannie consented, he’d visit her regularly in Washington, DC, during the year to teach her the various events within the heptathlon. She’d compete as a runner until he was satisfied with her skills. If we were all happy after the first year, he’d arrange a scholarship at a private school in Austin, where she could work with him on a more consistent basis.

“The school’s excellent. They’ll challenge her academically so she’s ready for wherever she decides to go to college,” he said.

Bree said, “How much is this going to cost us?”

“Zero,” the coach said.

“What?” I said. “How’s that possible??

??

McDonald said he was funded by several athletic-shoe and -apparel companies and charged with finding and nurturing track talent. If Jannie became the kind of athlete he thought she was, she’d be in line for endorsements that would make her life easier in the long run.

Free education. A career as a professional athlete. Olympic—

“They’re heading home, Alex,” Bree said, breaking into my thoughts.

Nana Mama, Ali, and Jannie were in Pinkie’s pickup in front of us. Pinkie reached his massive four-finger hand out the window crossing the railroad tracks and waved to us.

I waved back as Bree put on the blinker and pulled into the old Piggly Wiggly parking lot. I folded the napkin, put it in my shirt pocket.

“Think she can do it?” Bree asked as we headed toward that line of trees on that short bluff above the tracks.

“I’m beginning to think she’s like you,” I said. “Capable of anything and everything.”

She smiled, poked me in the ribs, said, “When’d you get so sweet?”

“Day I met you.”

“Good answer.”

“I have my moments.”

When we reached the trees, Bree led me to a big beech tree that overlooked the tracks. There were steel steps screwed into the tree. She said bow hunters used them, and she’d bought them at the local army-navy.

She climbed up around ten feet to another recent purchase. The Bushnell night-vision trail camera was designed to take pictures of whatever came by. Hunters used them to pattern deer. There seemed to be a commercial for them every eight minutes on the Outdoor Channel.

“Even Jim Shockey uses them,” Bree said. “So I thought, Why not? We’ll take pictures of every train that comes through Starksville.”

Bree had put up this camera and another one three hundred yards west. She’d checked the memory cards once after twenty-four hours and found pictures of riders heading north on the train late Thursday afternoon, just about the time we’d seen riders the previous Thursday as we drove into town.