Runner (3 page)

Once he was gone, I sat on the bench and looked at nothing. We were in trouble. Again.

My dad owned the sailboat outright. He bought it with the money he'd gotten from selling the house after the divorce. But there was still the monthly moorage fee and the sewage fee and the electricity bill and the heat bill and food and soap and toilet paper and toothpaste and a hundred other things. He'd want his cigarettes and his booze. Where was the money going to come from? He'd used up all his welfare eligibility. I made some money washing pots on weekends at Ray's restaurant, but I already gave my dad most of what I earned to pay for food. The money I kept I used to buy my clothes and my shoes and stuff I needed for school like notebooks and paper. But even if I gave him every single penny I earned, it wouldn't be enough to pay all the bills. It wouldn't even be close.

I looked out at the water. Four ducks were swimming in the oily gunk between Pier B and Pier C. All they had to do was spread their wings and fly away, but they stayed. How stupid can you get?

The joke is that according to the divorce papers, I'm supposed to be living with my mom. For a while, I did. After the divorce, she landed a job at Dakota Art Store in the Roosevelt district. We lived in an apartment right above the store. Sometimes at night we'd go back down into the store after dinner. I'd sit and watch as she'd stand before a big easel and paint using stuff customers had returned. "This is crap," she told me, even though all her paintings looked great to me. "When I get enough money, I'm going to art school. Then you'll see what I can do. The whole world will see what I can do."

I stayed with her during the week, and then went to stay with my dad on the sailboat Saturday, Saturday night, and Sunday. He was drinking, and after the first time the boat was no fun. I couldn't wait for Sunday night when my mom would pick me up.

Only one Sunday she didn't show. Dad called her from the phone booth outside the marina office, but her phone just
rang and rang. We took the bus to the apartment and knocked on the door. No answer. Dad tried the doorknob. It opened, and we stepped inside.

The apartment was bare except for three boxes by the front door. Dad opened them one at a time. Inside were my clothes, a football, an old school binder, some baseball cards, and a couple of books. From behind us came a voice. "Are you looking for Marlene?"

We turned around. Standing outside the door was Bill, the man who lived in the apartment across the hall from Mom and me.

"Yeah," Dad said. "We are."

"She moved out yesterday." Bill looked at me. "I thought that you..." He stopped.

"Did she say where she was going?" Dad asked.

"Some town along the Oregon coast. Not Cannon Beach, but somewhere near there." He stopped. "I'm sorry. I didn't pay attention to the name."

My dad didn't say anything to me on the bus ride back to the marina, but when we got to the sailboat he ruffled my hair. "It'll be OK, Chance. She'll call. You'll see her real soon."

Mom's letter arrived a couple weeks later. Dad read it, and then handed it to me. I didn't understand most of it, but there was one sentence that I read over and over:
It will only be for a little while.

Those days Dad was full of plans. At night, after we ate, he drank his vodka and read me passages from
Sailing Alone around the World,
his favorite book. "We'll be like Joshua
Slocum. We'll sail someplace special. No school for you; no crummy jobs for me. How's that sound?"

"Sounds great," I said, but all the time I kept waiting for Mom to come back and get me. The weeks turned into months, and all I did was slop around in the marina, watch my dad drink, and listen to his stories about the sailing trips we were going to take.

One night, when Mom had been gone for five months, he pulled out his nautical charts for what had to be the fiftieth time. "I was talking to Frank Fisher today," he said, his words slurred. "The way Frank figures it, the way to sail around the world is to do it in stages. First we'd go to Hawaii. I'd get a job there for a while, and then—"

"We're never going anywhere," I said, interrupting him.

"Sure, we are," he said.

"No, we're not," I said, my voice rising with every word, all the anger spilling out. "And Mom's never coming back either. You're a drunk and that's all you are. So just shut up! OK? Just shut up and leave me alone!"

He looked at me for a long time. Then he folded up his charts and put them away.

That was years ago. He has never mentioned sailing around the world to me since that day. But every once in a while he'll put out his charts and pore over them as if he really is going somewhere someday. And sometimes, when I get the mail from the woman at the marina office, there will be a letter with handwriting that reminds me of my mom's. My whole body will go tense, and then I'll see that it's from Green-lake Golf or Funtasia, and I'll feel like a fool.

I sat on the deck of the
Tiny Dancer
watching the stupid ducks for about fifteen minutes, and then I did what I always do when I feel like my head is about to explode: I ran.

Running is the only thing I've ever really liked to do. Sometimes at Lincoln I look at the kids on the track team or the cross-country team on the day of a meet. They've got their hundred-dollar running shoes, their fifty-dollar running shorts, their bottles of Gatorade, and their energy bars. But I'd beaten all of them in elementary school, and I still figured I could beat them. They had a softness to them, in their eyes, a softness that made me believe I could gut it out at the end against them, and take them, if I ever got the chance. "Finish strong," my dad always told me. "Finish strong."

That day I ran my normal route. I started by heading east on Seaview Avenue toward the Ballard Locks. For the first mile or so, my mind was buzzing like a chainsaw. I had
conversations with Melissa Watts and Brent Miller and Mr. Arnold and my dad. But by the time I'd reached the locks, my mind shut off just like it always does. Instead of thinking while I ran, I was just running. Through the locks, up the hill, and over the footbridge to Magnolia—one foot after the other.

At the end of the footbridge, I stopped for a minute and looked out. A Coast Guard cutter was going through the locks, headed from Lake Union toward Puget Sound. Some herons were flying from their nests above the railroad tracks out toward the water.

I watched for a couple of minutes and then I ran back the same way I'd come: through the locks, then along Seaview Avenue to Pier B. I kept going, past the marina offices and out to Golden Gardens Park. At Meadow Point, I cut over to the beach and ran in the sand toward North Beach.

At the spot where the beach turns north is a weather-beaten maple tree that seems to grow sideways right out of the rocks. My mom always said it had to be the toughest tree in the world. I don't know how it gets the nutrients to stay alive, or why it doesn't blow over in the windstorms that come every winter, but somehow it survives. I kept going until I reached that maple, touched it for luck, and then headed back.

When I reached Pier B, I looked at my watch. I'd run seven miles in a little over forty minutes. I went onto the boat, grabbed some clean clothes and a towel from the cabin, and headed back up the ramp.

In the parking lot across from Pier B is an L-shaped utility room with lockers, a washer and a dryer, toilets, and some shower stalls. It's open only to people who have a boat in the
marina. I stuck my key into the lock, turned the handle, and stepped inside.

As usual, it was empty. I walked past the lockers and the washing machines, turned right, and entered the shower area. There are three stalls; I took the one farthest back. For the next twenty minutes, I let the water wash away the sweat and dirt of the day. After twenty minutes, the water slowly changed from hot to warm. Before it turned cold, I stepped out, toweled myself dry, and put on clean clothes. Then I went back to the boat.

I had six hours to kill before I could flick off the lights and call it a day. I waited until it was almost seven before I heated up a can of tomato soup and made a grilled cheese sandwich. After I'd cleaned the dishes and put them away, I watched
Fear Factor
and
Cops
on TV. When that got too stupid, I switched off the television and turned on the radio. There are kids at school who live for music; I wish I were that way. I wish I could find some station that would make an hour or two or three go by, but I can't.

Around nine o'clock I left the boat and walked the length of the marina. I like to walk after it gets dark because it's quiet then. The sidewalks are empty and the nightclubs haven't gotten going.

It was after eleven when I finally climbed into my berth, and my dad was still out drinking. The wind was up, making the boat rock back and forth, and my mind would rock back and forth with it. One minute I'd want him to disappear from my life forever; the next I'd panic at the thought of being alone in the world.

I don't know when I finally fell asleep. When the alarm went off at six-thirty, my dad was snoring away in his berth. I didn't know whether I was glad to see him there, or whether I wished he hadn't come back.

I closed my eyes and lay back. I thought about skipping school, but if I did I'd end up hanging around the boat waiting for him to start drinking. So at seven-fifteen I was dragging myself up Sixty-first toward Lincoln High.

Sixty-first crosses under the railroad tracks before it climbs the bluff into Ballard. Homeless guys sleep behind the blackberry bushes that grow along the tracks. Most of the time I just hear them rustling around back there, but sometimes they come out and ask for money or cigarettes.

The guy who came out that morning had a skinny, wrinkled face, blue eyes, and long, black hair. "You got a spare quarter, kid?" he said, his voice raspy.

"I got nothing," I said.

I tried to edge around him, but he stepped in front of me.

"Have a heart, kid," he said. "A quarter? A dime? You got to have something."

"I told you," I snapped. "I got nothing."

As I moved by him, he grabbed at my sleeve. I wheeled around and pushed him away. His chest felt small and bony, like a child's. He toppled in a heap onto the sidewalk.

"All I wanted was a quarter," he called after me. "You didn't have to hit me, you son of a bitch."

It wasn't until I'd reached the top of the hill that I looked back. The guy was sitting on the sidewalk, looking up at me. "You son of a bitch," he called out again, but his voice was so weak I could hardly hear him. I kept going.

It's straight uphill from the marina to Thirty-second Avenue, but there the land levels. Walter's Café is on Thirty-second, right at the top of the hill. Kim Lawton—a friend of my mom's from before the divorce—works there. She's always after me to stop in to see her, but I don't, partly because I don't have much money and partly because she reminds me of my mother. But the whole thing with the homeless bum made my hands shaky and my knees feel like they were made of water. A cup of something hot didn't seem like the worst idea.

Kim was behind the counter. The instant she saw me, her face broke into a big grin. "Good to see you, stranger," she said as I stepped inside. "And it's about time, too."

I ordered a small hot chocolate and put six quarters down on the counter. She pushed the coins back to me. "Go sit down," she said. "I'll bring it to you."

I found an empty table in the corner. I hadn't waited for more than a minute before Kim put a mug of hot chocolate on the table and settled into the chair across from me. "How are things going, Chance?" she said.

"OK."

"What's OK mean?"

"OK means OK. Not good, not bad."

She pursed her lips, and I could tell we were both thinking
about my mom. Just then an old guy came in. Kim jumped up and returned to her spot behind the counter. "The regular?" she asked.

The old guy nodded, and soon the café filled with the sound of the espresso machine. My chocolate was too hot to drink quickly, so I put my hands around the mug and let the warmth in, taking a sip every now and then.

I thought that sitting would steady my nerves; instead, it made things worse. I kept seeing the homeless guy sprawled out on the sidewalk. I kept feeling his bony chest against my palms. He was the size of a child and I'd pushed him hard. What if I'd hurt him badly? What if he was still down on the sidewalk?

More customers came in. Kim looked over at me, shrugged, and I gave her a wave to show I understood. Eventually I finished my hot chocolate and then headed for the door. "You leaving?" Kim called to me. She had a line of customers now.

"I've got school," I said.

"Come in Saturday when it's not so busy," she said. "I want to have a long talk with you."

"I will," I said.

I pushed the door open, but instead of going to school, I retraced my steps to the top of the hill and looked down the street to where the homeless guy had fallen. He wasn't there. I wanted to believe that meant everything was OK, but I couldn't. He might have crawled into the bushes. If he did, and he was hurt and alone, he could die in there and nobody would find him for weeks.

I walked slowly down to the bottom of the hill. When I
reached the spot where he'd fallen, I stepped off the sidewalk and pushed my way through the tangle of blackberry bushes. "Anybody in here?" I called out.

There was no answer.

"Is somebody in here?"

Still no answer.

I followed a hint of a trail about twenty more feet, ducked under some vines, and found myself in a small clearing. Under a makeshift tent made of plastic bags were some cans of food, a pair of boots, an old coat, a sleeping bag, empty beer bottles, and a bunch of old magazines. Sitting on the ground next to that pile of junk were two guys—the guy I'd pushed and another guy who was older, skinnier, and had a long, gray beard. They were both smoking cigarettes.

"You OK?" I said, looking at the guy I'd pushed. He just stared at me. "You OK?" I repeated. He kept staring.