By Seth Abramson Dogs run wild signaling with drumbeats in the snow, bringing the ends of the forest close with a silent wriggle of the nose. They learn the alphabet from jagged lightning-- the "S" of late spring, all infant brooks anticipating green shores, smooth pebbles to caress; the "Y" of winter's dark peaks, the lean weeks of yellow glares shrouded in white mist, the tracks of the pack circling meat. They speak backwards, beginning with the forest and ending with the trees. In the wilderness, the moments preceding breath speak volumes. Motocross They've gathered under a cavernous dome for the evening's main event: Hondas, Suzukis, Kawasakis, registered and logged in official notebooks. The dirt dunes are unforgiving, natural concrete ready to snap necks and tear ligaments; they're over-hung with a web of banners, orange and blue and red in tacky repetition. Up the starting hill, the men are clad in tight fluorescents, with white numbered bibs, gun-fighter eyes steel behind tinted goggles. They check shoulder guards, shout "Let's do it, Pete!" to the sponsor's other rider, thinking, "Asshole!--what does Pepsi want with him, anyway?" Tubes of electric orange mark the path, garish and dumb beside blocks of straw draped with corporate logos, so you can verify Dunlop makes the best tennis balls before you throw out your back and have your skin shredded by the whirling treads of #67, that hack from Louisville. Still there's grace, arena majesty, in the fine-tuned machines shooting up over the landscape like Mexican jumping beans, thoughts bouncing about in stereo under visored helmets, men thinking "Give it more leg, dammit! Cut the line!" Television lackeys in pinstripes lay it on thick, playing to the sofa crowd at home--"Look at that pass! Oh, that's confidence, Jim!"--and patting gelled hair while the home audience is sent away; Fox's southern affiliates hawk "Crash Impact 3" to the North Carolinians--they love a little pain in their sport. Back at Crollup Auditorium in Tennessee, the locals shuffle about on temporary stands, clinking their rubber boots on metal as Darnell goes for a dog, hails to Jerry, nursing beer in a plastic cup down by the trainer's table. On the snaking trails, thunder spits and whines, the Red Cross flag comes out as #23 lies in a heap underneath the third hill. His Honda teammates are unnerved, some bounding over hills, some rolling awkwardly, thinking "This is Tuscaloosa all over again--" and giving up dreams of a podium finish. It's the white flag lap; the riders are spread out now, everyone's race is personal--#41 has forgotten his sponsor--everything is muscular legs burning over hot coals, sweat pooling in goggle corners, five men gunning for metal and the rest thinking of their girlfriends; hopefully none of them are watching. The winner needs maximum points, half-seconds are rare coins he hoards and stuffs into his zippered jacket, as he blazes past the checkers, pumping his fist and hot-dogging it for the yawning crowd. Afterwards he'll thank Jesus Christ for the victory. Rudy At seventeen he mimicked the hobo's ice-cube throat, rolling his tongue around vowels and striking jagged consonants against alley walls. He saw in a disheveled gray coat a shepherd bundled against February, and said so; he imagined dangling wind chime teeth lazing about the skin of a rotten apple, over ghostly groans, and laughed like a bigot clad in grease-stained shirt, knowing that baseness was snoring outside. At twenty-one he became some mud-stained native, wearing his miner's hard hat like a medicine man. An exhausted glance at the morning paper told of painted wraiths thumping staves to call attention to their privates, confronted with a European-made radio; he grinned into frozen waffles. Washing machine repair slips got lost in a catacomb of bills, and the impossibly-colored stains remained. At twenty-five he choked on a pink slip shoved into his face by some pasty man with rolling marble eyes constantly sweeping away, like purple-green sludge beneath a cracked pier. He planted sooty kisses on his child's head, and inched down the highway in a powder-blue rescue project from the local auto graveyard. One finger on the wheel, he sang country badly, staggering between keys like his miner friends making one last stab at glory in the Royal Badger pub. He avoided the whistling of West Virginia wind like death itself. At twenty-nine his sullied white flag had been repossessed, he looked at week-old cheese like the Gordian Knot post-Alexander. Anything that could melt in saliva made him weep; his pursuit of a rotten apple was Biblical. He slid in ragged gangs from one gas station to the next, trying to keep his teeth from tinkling when, gas pump in hand, he bowed to patrons in what he suspected was medieval fashion. Tourists mistook him for a vampire; he avoided mirrors. Silently, he choked on ice-cubes; he had the stomach but not the heart to hang himself with irony.