The Wall

I completed 11.2 laps; the best of our group did 13.5. Two of the four women in our group didn't make 10.

Each event had to be completed in the stated time to receive a qualifying 70 points. There were four events, with a minimum score of 280 needed to pass. Hypothetically, one event could be failed completely if the others were completed in such astonishing time as to gain the needed extra points, but it seemed clear to all of us that failing one thing was equivalent to washing out.

The wall jump was next. Our group trundled back to the academy, wheezing. There were 17 seconds to run 50 yards (including a hairpin turn around a pylon, which killed one's time considerably), jump the wall without touching the metal posts on either side, then run an additional 10 yards.

Most of the men vaulted the wall, hands on top, legs straight out to the side. One women hit the blue guardrail with her foot and was disqualified. We clapped along politely, giving the occasional cheer for a job well done. I struggled a bit, surprising myself, and pulled over. The crowd roared for me. I had finished the course in 16 seconds. The men and one particularly wiry young woman did it between 10 and 11.

We headed down to the obstacle courses that were carved into the side of the hill for the bar hang. I would have pegged this as the worst event, though now I was sure that nothing would ever be as bad as the running. The instructor told us to run 50 yards around a pylon, go to our bar, jump up, and once we stopped swinging, the timing of one minute would begin. It was harder than it sounds. There were three bars. We would be sent out in a staggered order. The athletic woman told me to crush a leaf on my hands to make them sticky, that it would help to keep me on. I wondered which leaf was sticky enough to glue my full body weight to a bar for a minute. An airman stationed in Savannah told me it was all a mind game. "You just have to clear your head. Count slowly, one, one thousand one, one, one thousand two . . . by the time you get to thirty in your head, it's time to drop." And people were dropping. Men struggled, grabbed, and slipped off. One fellow fell at 59.4 seconds. The day grew hotter still, and I left my hands face up and open in my lap, hoping to keep them dry. The crowd cheered people according to their spot. "Hang on, lucky 2!" they shouted.

"You can do it!"

I had 17 seconds to get to bar number 3, the farthest one to run to. Still, I took my time getting on to minimize the swing. I tensed everything I had, and then I counted, one, Mississippi, one. I closed my eyes, and the crowd called to me in a dream. "You look great, number 3." "You look great, Sweetheart." "Think about a nice cold beer. I'll buy you a beer, Iowa." My hands hurt. When I got to one, Mississippi, nineteen, the officer brought up to time the event called drop. "Number 3, drop."

"Why?" I said, holding on. Was there blood running down my arms? Had I been disqualified? "Drop 3, and hold your place." I dropped and held. It did not occur to me that my minute was up. My run to the bar had taken 16.4 of my potential 17 seconds.

The last event was a 160-pound weight drag. Run 25 yards, tug a lead weight the size of two encyclopedias tied to a thick rope through deep, soft dust, backward for 25 yards. When it was my turn, the crowd went wild. I was the mascot now, the favorite girl. No sense in cheering for the two who'd never pass or the one who might beat your score. Cheer for the one who barely makes her time but somehow, miraculously, manages. I yanked the weight backward as the giant men began to chant my name, dragging one syllable into two until it became "Ay-un, Ay-un, Ay-un." It would never happen again; 26 broad-shouldered young men would never call my name at once, and I let the sound trace against my pounding heart.

WE ENDED NEAR THE PICNIC TABLES where we had begun, back under the pine trees where the police academy looked most like the friendly summer camp I remembered from my childhood. I passed at 288. Most of the ones who passed did so well over 300, one at 360. As soon as I heard my score, I ran to the pay phone. "Get me the hell out of here," I said to my father, and hung up. I went back to see my group again, to say goodbye, but they'd all left as fast as I had.

It was barely noon, and already I had realized that I could not get through the police academy for love or money, the two reasons I was planning on going in the first place. Standing at the front gates, I felt that I had used up every ounce of courage and fortitude I possessed just to get through the test. I did not begin to have what it would take to do this day after day, month after month. I knew the truth, and I told it to my father when he picked me up. The best idea I'd ever had for a book was one I was never going to write.

"Wait and see," he said.

But after I had taken the longest shower on record and eaten the breakfast he'd made me, he'd changed his mind. "If you really aren't going to do the job, if you won't be a cop, then I think you shouldn't go through the academy. I'm only saying this because you said you don't want to go. You shouldn't take up the spot of somebody who wants it."

"But I told you all along I was never going to be a cop."

My father looked at me and shrugged. "I didn't believe you," he said.

Later that afternoon, there were two gifts from my father: a medal of the Virgin Mary given to him in school by his favorite nun, and the wedding ring from his marriage to my mother. "There's a lot of good metal in there," he said. "You could melt it down and make something nice out of it."

Even at 288, I felt like I'd failed, though my oral score came two weeks later and I got a 100, which my father said he had never heard of happening before. I did not have what it took to make it through the police academy, to come anywhere close to what my father had done. But I caught a brief glimpse of how difficult it would be to be a police officer in Los Angeles, how easy it would be to fail at the job, as so many have failed. My father had succeeded. He served his city well. Even if I never wrote the book, I wanted the chance to say that.

Ann Patchett's new novel, Run, will be published by HarperCollins in September. She will be fielding questions and comments about this article Monday at noon.