Away Running
O R C A B O O K P U B L I S H E R S
Text copyright © 2016 David Wright and Luc Bouchard
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system now known or to be invented, without permission in writing from the publisher.
Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication
Bouchard, Luc, 1963 June 6–, author
Away running / Luc Bouchard and David Wright.
Issued in print and electronic formats.
ISBN
978-1-4598-1046-4 (paperback).—
ISBN
978-1-4598-1047-1 (pdf).—
ISBN
978-1-4598-1048-8 (epub)
I. Wright, David, 1964–, author II. Title.
PS
8603.
O
92435
A
93 2015 j
C
813'.6
C
2015-904518-5
C
2015-904519-3
First published in the United States, 2016
Library of Congress Control Number
: 2015946245
Summary
: In this novel for teens, Matt and Free meet in Paris, where they both play American football on a team in a poverty-stricken suburb where racial tension affects the team.
Orca Book Publishers gratefully acknowledges the support for its publishing programs provided by the following agencies: the Government of Canada through the Canada Book Fund and the Canada Council for the Arts, and the Province of British Columbia through the BC Arts Council and the Book Publishing Tax Credit.
Cover design by Teresa Bubela
Cover images by Getty Images and
Dreamstime.com
Author photos by Jonathan Wei, Julie Durocher
ORCA BOOK PUBLISHERS
19
18
17
16
•
4
3
2
1
For Zyed Benna, Bouna Traoré and Muhittin Altun
But Paris was a very old city and we were young and nothing was simple there.
—Ernest Hemingway,
A Moveable Feast
CONTENTS
VILLENEUVE-LA-GRANDE: APRIL 15
THREE MONTHS EARLIER: JANUARY 10
DIABLES ROUGES V. JETS: JANUARY 31
DIABLES ROUGES (1–1) V. OURS (0–2): FEBRUARY 28
ANGES BLEUS (2–1) V. DIABLES ROUGES (2–1): MARCH 14
CAÏMANS (3–1) V. DIABLES ROUGES (3–1): MARCH 29
DIABLES ROUGES (4–1) V. ARGONAUTES (3–2): APRIL 11
FOUR DAYS BEFORE THE UNDER-20s: CHAMPIONSHIP GAME: APRIL 15
THE UNDER-20s CHAMPIONSHIP: DIABLES ROUGES V. JETS: APRIL 19
The Wednesday before game day—our last game of the season, for the league championship—me and Matt take the suburban train, the
RER
, from Paris up to Villeneuve-La-Grande early, way before practice. Me and him play American football for the team there, the Diables Rouges. We meet a bunch of our teammates outside the station and walk to a field between some abandoned cinder-block warehouses and their high school to play a pickup game of soccer.
A few guys from their projects join us, including Karim and one of his crew. Me and Karim got history, dating back to when I first got here, in February. Him and his set were slinging dime bags outside their high-rise like the bangers do back in my ’hood in San Antonio, and he
just strode up on me, spitting French slang I didn’t understand at the time, but I squared off with him all the same. That’s what you do when someone’s fronting on you.
Now he acts like he doesn’t remember or doesn’t care. But Matt whispers in English, “Keep cool, Freeman. We’ll be going home soon. No more Karim.”
I’m like, “Tsst. I ain’t studying that fool.”
Never having to see Karim again is the last thing I think on when I think of home. I think about Mama, my brother Tookie and baby sister Tina, who I haven’t seen in so long—you know I do. But I also think about not seeing Matt anymore, him going back to Montreal and off to college to major in business and become a big businessman like almost everyone else in his family. I’m going to miss every single one of the Diables Rouges. Even Moose. We’ve gotten pretty close since our rough start. That’s what I think on when I think about leaving.
Moose takes charge now. “The two ’
Ricains
,” he says, pointing to me and Matt, “with me, Jean-Marc and Couly. Sidi, you and Mobylette take Adar, Franck, Karim and…?”
He’s looking at Karim’s boy.
“Omar,” Karim’s boy says, doing that dope-smoker giggle thing as he pulls his hoodie off over his head.
Like so many here, the field is more dirt than grass and the goals don’t have nets, but there’s a brick wall surrounding the lot, so we shouldn’t have to go chasing
after too many missed kicks. Adar pulls a ball out of his book bag and kicks the game off.
Matt insists on covering Karim—or trying to. Karim is cat quick. He plays with a cigarette dangling from his lips (that pisses Matt off even more) and dribbles circles around Matt.
I’m no better. I play cornerback and am fit, but all you do in soccer is run, and every few seconds I’m bent over at the waist and wheezing. (I think Moose put me and Matt on the same side to humiliate us ’
Ricains
, as the guys call us North Americans, even more.)
And I notice something:
everybody
is loose today—all our teammates. Sidi pulls Moose’s T-shirt over his head to steal his dribble. Jean-Marc and Mobylette and Adar play grab-ass as much as soccer. They don’t act nothing like before, like after we beat the Anges Bleus and then the Caïmans and everybody pretended like it was no big deal but they were all sniping at each other and practices were a disaster. This week, the week of the last game of our season, everybody is Zen.
Karim passes the ball to Sidi, and I cover him. Sidi plays it serious, dribbling forward, shifting his weight to keep his body between me and the ball. Nearing the box, he does this dope scissors move where he switches it from one foot to the other, and then he fires it into the goal.
Dang!
I jog back upfield. “I’ll never again in my life look down on the sport of soccer,” I say, saying
soccer
in English, the rest
en français
.
“Football,” Moose corrects me, pronouncing it in French—FOO-tuh-bowl. “
This
is the real football, not what we do with the Diables Rouges.” He jogs ahead, teasing, “All the world calls it by its proper name but you bullheaded ’
Ricains
.”
The sun is setting. Matt points to the incoming black clouds. “It’s going to rain a river.”
“Should be a great practice tonight then,” I say. “Slogging around and drenched and no footing.”
“I hope the weather clears by Sunday,” Matt adds, looking worried.
Matt is our starting
QB
, but it’s not about stats with him. Rain will make a mess of our passing game, and everybody knows, our opponents included, that we need the pass if we’re going to win on Sunday. A heavy, slick ball will make Matt’s job all the harder.
We play a little while longer, till it gets too dark to continue, then call it quits. We have to grab our gear from the clubhouse and then get to practice on time, and we’re cutting it a little close. Still, everybody is laughing, boasting about his best play (except me and Matt—there’s not much to boast about).
Moose grabs Karim from behind in a bear hug and lifts him off his feet. “How many times do I have to say it,
mec
? You’ve got crazy quicks. We could use you on the Diables Rouges.”
Mec
means “guy,” but up here they use it kind of like we do back home, like
dawg
or
G
or whatnot.
Karim flips the hood of his sweatshirt up over his head, strikes a match and puts it to his cigarette, the glow lighting up his face. “Naw. Sports is your thing. I’ve got other interests.”
“The Diables treat us right, Karim, no joke,” Moose says. “City hall finds guys work, stuff like that.”
“City jobs.” He pulls hard on his smoke, the tip burning bright. “My pay scale is higher.”
Karim’s friend Omar laughs, and he and Karim head off in the other direction from us.
“
Oueche!
” Karim calls over his shoulder. Yo! “Kill those bourgeois pricks Sunday.”
The rest of us, ten or twelve or so, walk down the street, past an abandoned warehouse, its windows all busted out, a machine shop and a funeral home, then along the corrugated tin fence of a darkened construction site.
Sidi says, “I know a shortcut.”
“Through the site?” Moose sounds reluctant.
“It’ll save us fifteen minutes.”
Sidi climbs up onto the padlocked chain-link gate and jumps down on the other side. Matt follows suit, and I follow him.
Moose stays outside. “My father” is all he says.
And I’m thinking, He’s right, duh! Moose’s dad keeps a pretty tight rein on him. I’m about to climb back over when Sidi says, “C’mon, you wimp,” and Mobylette and the others climb over too.
Moose doesn’t move.
It’s pitch-black inside the site, all of us just shadows against more shadows. The Cité des Cinq Mille, the high-rise projects where most of the guys live, looms ahead of us, pushing up past the far-side fence, two football fields away. Most of its windows are lit up.
Finally, Moose says, “But nobody screws around in there.” He points his finger through the chain-link directly at Sidi’s dark shape. “Nobody! Understood?”
“Okay, okay already,” Sidi says.
Then Moose hops the fence.
Once my eyes adjust, I see that there are stacks of two-by-fours and two-by-sixes and rebar all over. A yellow-and-black hydraulic excavator stands there like a sleeping Decepticon, its giant metal arm and bucket still. I kind of want to warn the others to tiptoe by, so we don’t wake it. Then Sidi jumps up onto the tracks of the digging
machine, opens his arms wide and in thick-accented English yells, “I’m the King of the Woooorrrld!”
We all laugh. Even Moose.
“Come on,” he tells Sidi. “Get down.”
We work our way through the rows of stacked gear and metal pipes. At the gate on the other side, we climb up and jump over. Just as the last one of us drops to the ground, the night is suddenly blue-lit, and there’s a siren. Then another. Two white cars, engines roaring,
POLICE
in block letters across each hood, bear down on us. A third rounds the corner. I think I can hear a fourth.
We all freeze.
“I don’t have my
ID
papers,” Sidi says.
“Me neither,” says Mobylette.
“
Merde
,” says Moose.
The first two cars scream forward, sirens blaring.
“We didn’t do anything,” Matt says. “We’ll be okay.”
But they ignore him.
“That means they’ll take us in,” Sidi says. “Call our parents.”
“
Merde!
” says Moose again.
He looks freaked. Panicked.
The cars screech to a stop not ten feet from us, one blocking us to the right, the other to the left. Six cops in civilian clothes spring out, carrying those huge
Flash-Ball guns. They grab Adar and Ibrahim, tossing them to the ground.