Runner fights to save his hero
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Alex Wilson Pine, the second-fastest cross country runner at Pine Ridge High, refuses to give up on Patrick Grass, his best friend and uncle. He tries to get him to run again on reservation roads. He tries to make it like it was before, when Patrick would leave him in the dust.
Part 3 of 4 -- see parts 1, 2 and 4
BY COLLEEN KENNEY | Lincoln Journal Star
Fifteen-year-old Alex Wilson Pine walked into the hospital room, scared of what he'd see.
The doctors were saying his best friend and uncle, 17-year-old Patrick Grass, had had a seizure.
They didn't know why.
They didn't know if Patrick, one of the best high school distance runners in the nation, would come out of it.
Hey, Patrick, he remembers saying. How you feeling?
Patrick stared at him, his face blank. He tried to speak. A word came in a whisper.
Ruh... ruh... ruh...
He couldn't say it. Run.
Like most young runners on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, Alex worships Patrick Grass, the all-American who's won three South Dakota cross-country titles. The junior who was just named Pine Ridge High's Male Athlete of the Year.
People say Patrick has run every road of the reservation at least once. They say he's trying to make running his ticket out so he won't become like his dad, Clifford Grass, who sits many days down the road in Whiteclay, drinking.
They say he'll get a scholarship. Go to college. Become the next Billy Mills, the Pine Ridge runner whose road led to Olympic glory decades ago.
Ale... Ale... Ale...
Patrick couldn't say it. Alex.
Alex could barely breathe. He tried to smile that June day as he looked at Patrick, who seemed content to sit forever and stare out the window.
Alex remembers telling Patrick they'd be running together soon, leaving everyone in their dust.
v v v
It was a bad batch of meth.
It was rat poisoning.
It was angel dust...
Rumors spread all summer. By early August, powwow time at Pine Ridge, it seemed everyone had heard variations of this one:
Did you hear Patrick Grass was drugged at a party? Now he's blanked out like a zombie.
Alex's biological mom, Patrick's oldest sister Lori Cottier, says a guy drinking with her one night claimed he saw it: Patrick left his beer on the table at a party near Wounded Knee. A guy dumped something in it, shook it. When Patrick drank it, he got dizzy and passed out.
Alex believes the rumors.
Strange stuff happens on the rez, he says, especially at Wounded Knee.
Alex tells about their cousin, Frances Spotted Elk. He's 25 now. Used to be a good student. A good distance runner, too. He was going to join the Army. Now he has a plate in his head and talks like he's in sixth grade. One night at a party, someone took a baseball bat to his head.
People at Wounded Knee say there's a woman who walks around town when she's back from the mental hospital. She lifts her skirt with no underwear on. She used to be beautiful, smart, a basketball player with a scholarship.
One night, they say, she went to the wrong party.
Athletes are worshipped here. But there's this other thing Alex has seen, too. People seem to keep pulling one another down. Like crabs in a basket.
They teach kids at Pine Ridge High the crabs-in-a-basket story:If one crab crawls too high, the others pull it back down.
Patrick's older brother doesn't know what to think. But the night of the seizure, Wes Cottier says, Patrick called from Wounded Knee, saying he was sick and needed a ride.
Wes and Lori stood outside the bedroom door the day Patrick told the track coach he was too sick to run at regionals.
Mom drank when she was pregnant with him, didn't she? Lori recalls Wes saying.
Yeah, she did.
Well, maybe that's what's making him act so strange now.
Wes, 27, was 10 when Patrick was born. Lori, 36, was 19.
Lori drank when she was pregnant. She knows what can happen.
Alex has something called fetal alcohol effects, a lesser form of fetal alcohol syndrome. He and Patrick have learning disabilities.
Patrick's mom doesn't believe the rumors. Rose Cottier thinks it's just a seizure, says he had them when he was a little kid.
Yes, she says, she drank when she was pregnant with Patrick. She drank a lot, she says, but only the last two months. Not as much as she did with some of her other kids.
Maybe that's why he has trouble keeping up with the other kids in school, she says.
v v v
Three weeks into his hospital stay, Patrick snaps out of it. He loses the blank look. He starts talking in sentences, smiling. The doctors are surprised.
But Alex sees he's not the same yet. Back home in Pine Ridge, he sits around all day watching TV.
One hot day in August, he's standing in front of a fan in the living room, lifting his black Nike shirt.
"Are you still taking your pills?" his mom asks.
"Kind of," he says.
One pill is for seizures. One is for depression. One for anxiety.
At powwow time, Alex tries to get Patrick to run, bike and swim with him in a triathlon that starts at the Billy Mills Center in the middle of town.
Patrick says he'll go, but that morning Patrick says he's not feeling well. Alex goes alone. He wins, even though the bike they give him is broken.
He wishes it'd be like before, when he couldn't keep up with Patrick.
Alex's adopted parents, Dale and Lyn Pine, coach cross country at Pine Ridge High. They are second parents to Patrick. On one visit to the hospital in Rapid City, Dale Pine walked out to the hallway and cried. Another kid lost.
But Alex says Patrick will run again. He picks Patrick up to lift weights at the school. He takes him out running in the country.
Patrick is out of shape. Alex pushes him, a little more each day.
Cross country season starts in a few weeks.
The rumor is Patrick Grass won't even go out for cross country. He won't win another state title. He won't even make it through the door the first day of school.
But by late August, Alex sees Patrick start crawling back up - 70 percent, 75 percent, 80 percent.
His legs and lungs start filling out. His words start to make sense. His humor starts to come back.
I'm going to catch up with you soon, Patrick tells Alex.
Running on a road on the state line south of town one day, Patrick runs past Alex and pushes him.
Cheater! Alex pretends he's mad.
But inside, he feels good as he tries to catch Patrick, who's looking back at him with a smile on his face.
Reach Colleen Kenney at 473-2655 or ckenney@journalstar.com.
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