The Memory of Running (7 page)

By 1961 Bethany had started to go places where we didnt know shed gone. These were
technically not disappearances. Mostly theyd last anywhere from two hours to a day and a
night, and even though the Ide family would be frantic, we never panicked and never, ever
used the word disappearance. My pop would do his drive, and Id do my bike, and Mom would
call around to neighbors and friends and eventually the police. Because of the Red Bridge
thing, which was the first time her voice had tried to kill her, the Ide family be- came
less concerned about what people might think of Bethany. When she was gone, we just wanted
her back. So we rode and biked and called.

Now, this is about her junior prom, so I have to throw in two things that may or may not
make it a little clearer. First is Bobby My- ers, who was her date. Bobby had gone with
Joanie Caveletti, who was to East Providence High School what Brigitte Bardot was to
France. She was a hot item, and she was cool. I was still in junior high, but she was a
legend. An enormous chest. There it was. That just said it all.

Bobby was not one of the nicest kids in school. He combed his long blond side hairs
straight back, and his flattop stood about an inch high and at attention because of thick
butch stick. So first im- pression, even to us little kids, was that he was a punk. He
wore a leather jacket, too, but the problem was, he also had one of his EP letters sewed
on the back, set against the shiny black leather. We all saw that the girls could not
resist, because while Bobby Myers and his pals from the Riverside plat dressed and acted
like mondo punks, they were the mainstay of the mighty townie football team, and baseball
stars as well. The combination was lethal, and Bobby took full advantage. That was how the
lovely and large Joanie Caveletti became his girlfriend. They went together from September
of

Bobbys junior year until right before April, when Joanie apparently discovered that Bobby
Myers was a dick with ears and dumped him. Bobby was devastated that a girl would abuse
him in that way, and he rebounded by asking Bethany to the junior prom. Bethany had been
in the back of Bobbys mind since the time she stripped off her clothes in the parking lot.
Hed never been with a nut before, and he remembered her nice little breasts and other
things.

Bethany had never had a boyfriend before and didnt know how a girlfriend and boyfriend
were supposed to behave.

Meet me at my locker, Bobby would say. Okay. Like that. It was simple. And Bobby would
give her a ride home

and call her. This was turning into a good Bethany year. She had a couple of girls at
school that she liked, and now Bobby Myerswho by the way was an Old Spice manwas her
boyfriend.

When Bethany would come home from a Saturday date, usually a movie and a hamburger, Mom
would ask casually how the date was.

Neat. What did you do? Movie, you know. Is Bobby a nice boy? Hes a mondo, I would say. He
is not. Hes very nice. And he was being nice. Hed always open the car door for her and

always seemed to be paying tremendous attention to the things shed say, but I had a
suspicion in the cloudy part of my achy brain that old Bobby Myers was planning something.
Biding his time. Waiting. I hated him. I hated him, but I worried about him, too, because
it was obvious to the Ides that cool Bobby Myers had not met the voice yet.

East Providence had an excellent baseball team that year, and Bobby Myers was certainly
heading to his second all-state selection at third base. He had good range, a strong arm,
a quick release to turn

a double play, and, as much as I hated to admit it, a sweet, natural swing that cannot be
taught. He would simply challenge the pitcher to put his best stuff in that strike zone.
Bethany went to almost every home game and sometimes even wore a baseball jersey with
Bobbys number on it. It was a powerful moment in the life of a high-school baseball
player. And while he basked in glory, my junior-high team lost sixteen straight and I was
hitless in the last thirteen. But Im not dwelling on it. No.

Being a gentleman was a strain on the mondo punk from River- side plat. Sometimes hed lose
his temper and punch one of his friends, which is what they were always doing to one
another. Still, anybody could tell he was determined to be a nice boy with my sis- ter,
until he made his move. Thats what guys like that do. They wait. Theyre patient. In a lot
of ways, theyre like good actors. I think thats probably why, as the years went by and I
grew out of my life, I never felt completely bad for Bobby Myers. He had made a slick plan
but never considered that other things are out there waiting, too.

Bethanys prom was May 11. Its a date I remember. Like April 1 or December 25 or November
22. Its a life date, and there has never been a moreand I know that a brother should not
say this beautiful, amazing prom girl in this whole country. Her dress was black and
sleek. And she had blue heels on that clinked on the kitchen floor in a special way. She
had silk stockings that caught the light a little and threw it off in sparkles, and her
long hair was curled bouncy around her head. Bethanys eyes were made up, too. I had never
seen her eyes fixed, and they looked huge and hopeful. She wore Moms serious pearls and
cameo earrings. It was like you couldnt breathe around her; she took the oxygen out of the
air.

My pop gave her a big, happy hug and told her she was beautiful. He was careful to hold
his lit Camel away from her hair. Mom cried.

What do you think, Hook? I think you look great. You think Bobby will like it?

Bobby Myers was a dog. Bobby Myers was a greasy little shit. Yeah, hell like it. The
doorbell rang, and there was Bobby. Black tuxedo slacks,

white dinner jacket, red bow tie and cummerbund, fresh wads of butch stick. He adjusted
his crotch and came in. The folks took pic- tures, and then they left. We watched them get
into Bobbys fathers Chevy Impala, and they were gone.

We stood on the front lawn in silence, and the clouds came in. My pop lit another Camel.

She sure looked lovely, Pop said. Lovely, lovely, lovely, Mom said. Uh-huh, I agreed. The
sun was doing a peekaboo in the high afternoon clouds, and

it got cold suddenly. Pop reached over and took Moms hand and squeezed. I knew that Norma
Mulvey would be watching, and I looked over to Beas house. I wanted to wave, but it was
already too late, so I looked off in the direction of Bobby and all his secret plans.

After a couple of hours, my ass got numb and the terrible pain went away. My legs were
still stiff, but the more I pedaled the Raleigh and sweated, I felt actually soothed. I
wasnt ready to stop by the time the turnpike led me into East Providence, so I cut over by
the high school, through Six Corners, and crossed the old George Washing- ton Bridge into
Providence. I got off 95 on the other side of the bridge and followed the east-side route
to Elmwood Avenue. Then, feeling light-headed, I mostly coasted down into Cranston.
Cranston is an interesting place. Its loaded with Italians. It makes you wish you were
Italian. In Cranston a kid could probably be ashamed not to be Italian. Its good, and I
stopped by a ball field and ate another banana and watched some girls play softball. Big
girls, throwing fast under- hand curves that blurred by. I had another banana.

I got through Warwick about early afternoon. I didnt have a watch, and I didnt miss it,
but theres something about time and re- sponsibility. I dont know. Something. The highway
always stayed to my right, and for the most part the roads I chose were poorly main-
tained and poorly traveled.

A waste of a good road, I said out loud. But on a road where nobody travels, theres a
great feeling of not being judged. Does that make any sense at all? When youre 279 pounds
and youre wearing a tight blue suit and somebody coming up behind you on your bike could
not see the seat, then you think about that. It becomes a dis- traction. You sweat even
more. Your personal chest pain gets even worse. Its another defeat.

I remember quite a bit about this part. The ride part. People I talked to and who were
mostly nice and the country. It surprises me how memory goes. I have whole years I cant
remember, but this part . . . well, Im surprised.

I walked my bike up the big Exeter hill and snuck onto Route 95 for a coast down toward
Hope Valley. Wood River is in Hope Valley, and Yawgoog, too. Thats the Boy Scout camp I
went to. The big coast scared me. I was daydreaming, and by the time I realized the air
was slapping me so hard I couldnt breathe, I was going about as fast as the cars. Like a
jerk I hadnt been checking the tires, and they were almost on the rim again, and they made
a high whine against the shoulder of the road. I tried to gently pump the hand brakes, but
the tires smoked. I held my breath. My chest hurt, and my fat heart jumped around like a
jumping bean.

There did not appear to be a bottom to the big hill, although I do remember one. I coasted
on, steadily gaining speed, even though I squeezed the brakes with all my strength. Smoke
changed from white to black. I smelled fire.

It is at moments like this, pivotal moments, that I had always failed. Sometimes there are
moments when a person has to make a decision, as opposed to letting things just happen. A
person then has to happen himself. I had never done this. Life bounced off me, and bounced
me, and now it was going to bounce me to death. My fat ass, my blue suit. And so I turned
my sizzling Raleigh off the 95 hill onto the Hope Valley exit ramp at approximately
sixty-five miles per hour.

My sorry strands of hair stood straight back, and my bike careened into traffic. I headed
for the yellow divider, which came over me like color wash. There had been some gas
stations and a Howard John- sons on this route to the Boy Scout camp, but at my speed I
simply could not make out signs or landmarks. I zoomed on, and I noticed as I flew through
the main intersections of Hope Valley that not only was I not slowing down, I was
approaching another hill. This is the way luck goes and goes. My berserk luck. My blindly
out-of-control luck. But at least this time I would decide, like I decided to exit into
Hope Valley at miraculous speed. What could possibly happen to a

load on a sparking Raleigh? For the first time in a long time, life was not just coming at
me, I was coming at life. I thought this when I turned the bike toward a small dirt road,
and as the tight lines of oaks and maples and fir trees whizzed by, I thought how odd to
think this stuff about life. To ruminate at the speed of light.

The dirt road ended in a grassy field. A Little League baseball game was going on, with
kids in red shirts up and blue shirts in the field. I exploded onto the field between
first base and right. In a split second, I cut between the left and center fielders and
charged toward a blurry patch of woods.

Trees, I said out loud.

Even the slap of birch branches and tiny maples didnt slow me much, so when I began the
deep slide down the ravine to where Wood River slowly rolled through Hope Valley, the drop
seemed al- most nothing. And the water, warmed up by the summer, strangely refreshed me
for the instant before I passed out.

Above me, although I didnt know it at the time, the teams and parents of Holy Ghost the
Redeemer and Third Reform Baptists ran across the field and down the tricky slope to help.
My luck was changing.

The current had apparently rolled me onto my back, and although I did swallow some water,
I also swallowed some good, clean Hope Valley air. A Catholic priest, Father Benny Gallo,
still wearing his umpire hat, led two burly Baptists waist deep in the river. They reached
for me, but because I had picked up speed in a rapid section of the river, they missed me,
just before I rolled over the nine-foot Anthony Falls.

My pop and me, on the opening days of the trout season and after sometimes, usually fished
a few miles above Hope Valley, where the pools spread out and were a little deeper, but
sometimes wed fish this stretch. It was about twenty-five miles or more from East
Providence, and even though it ran right through this little town, you wouldnt

know it. Id like to throw a dry fly into the small rifts, but Pop loved taking a weighted
woolly worm and popping it up into the white bubbles of Anthony Falls. He could fish there
all day and always did well. Now his fat boy was there, and the tiny bubbles ran over him
and kissed him, and the trout had all flipped downstream.

Somehow the thump of the falls shook me awake, or I think I was awake. I remember being in
a narrow flume of water and hearing voices around the slam of the waterfall. I was moving
again, and I tried to kick my legs, but they were like legs in a dream that arent really
yours. Along the bank I think I glimpsed a man in black who would be the umpire priest,
but I cant be sure, because just as I thought of raising my arms for help, I went over
Jenner Falls and ap- parently blacked out again.

Its scary, waking up with a plastic oxygen mask on. In a lot of ways, claustrophobic.
Confining. When I got so hurt in the army, I didnt feel it was so scary. One of the other
soldiers, Bill Butler, a black guy from St. Louis, leaned me against a tree, took out his
little morphine bag we all had with us, stuck the needle into my stomach, and squeezed the
whole thing in. I couldnt move, but you know what? I couldnt feel any of those twenty-one
holes either. It hurt more being this fat-ass than it hurt then.

Hello? Hello? this umpire yelled, kneeling over me while I lay there in the skunk cabbage,
by the side of Wood River.

Other faces loomed over me. Two Little League teams, moms and dads, sisters, some
grandparents, people from the Hope Valley Res- cue Squad. They had cut off my shirt and
pants, and I wanted to pre- tend I was dead rather than spread this blubber out in front
of them.

Thank you, I said quietly to the priest, my words muffled by the oxygen mask. A huge roar
went out from the crowd. One of the rescue-squad men made a victory sign, and everyone
began to applaud.

They carried me up the slope behind an elementary school,

where I had ended my float, and loaded me into the rescue wagon. Two medics, the umpire,
and the two Little League baseball captains climbed in and rode with me to the community
hospital.

My clothes were wet and cut, so the hospital gave me a papery pair of pajamas to wear. My
nose was broken, and I had a little bruise over my right eye. Also two hip pointers and a
bruised kidney. The priest stayed with me. I was embarrassed to be so much trouble, but I
was grateful he was there. I gave one of the nurses my name and told her I had insurance,
but I wasnt sure what it was. Id never needed it before. She kept looking up at Father
Benny like she didnt be- lieve me.

After about two hours, a young lady doctor with a kind of perma- nent sneer gave me two
prescriptions and an instruction sheet on kidneys. It said to drink lots of water and not
to lie on the kidney for a while. Then they released me from the emergency room. I walked
with Father Benny, still in my paper pajamas, to the hospital en- trance, and we took a
cab to Holy Ghost Catholic Church. It was set back from the main street in Hope Valley,
and we turned down a narrow paved road to the small white clapboard church.

It was getting dark by now. It might have been six or seven when we walked around the back
of the church to an even smaller white cottage. I followed the priest into the house and
then into the kitchen. He pulled out a blue kitchen chair for me, and I sat at the table.

Can I get you a sandwich or anything? Father Benny Gallo asked.

A sandwich would be good. Tuna, he said. Youll love this. I sat in his tiny kitchen while
he quickly and expertly put the

sandwich together. I had cold bottled water, too. Good?

Very good. Thank you.

I chewed slowly. Father Bennys tuna salad topped my pops by about a mile. In fact, since
my pops awful fishing sandwiches, cut too solid with too much mayo, I dont remember the
last time Id had a tuna.

The priest tinkered around the kitchen, so as not to stare at me while I ate. I
appreciated that. I could not bear to be watched while I ate. I felt I should apologize
for feeding my mountain of flesh.

Youre on the road, he said over his shoulder. Youre on the road like the fifties. Hard
times. Bad times, really. But we do go on, dont we? The human spirit. We go on.

I didnt understand, but I nodded at him, even though he was at the sink and his back was
turned.

The emergency-room doctor told me those were bullet wounds No, sorry, forget that, I
promised myself I wouldnt ask.

Vietnam, I said, with my mouth full of his wonderful sandwich. Awful. Horrible. No, no,
really. This is the best tuna-fish sandwich I have ever

had. Really?

The best.

I squeeze a little lemon. Not much mayonnaise. Celery. Very healthy.

Good, too. The doctor said there were fourteen wounds . . . holes. Twenty-one. Im fine.
Horrible. No, really. Horrible, horrible. I finished the sandwich and the water. Another
one? Strangely, I was full. Father Benny dried his hands and sat across

from me at the small kitchen table.

Bitterness over such an old war is not good, my friend. Its time to put it behind you.

Im not bitter at all. I dont think about it. The priest looked at me with understanding
and smiled sadly. Well, if twenty-one bullets didnt pull you into bitterness, then

whatever did must have been horrible. Im not bitter. Look . . . Smithy, I said, shaking
his hand, Smithy Ide. Father Benny Gallo.

I know.

Look, Smithy. Im a little younger than you. Youre about what? Fifty? Fifty-five?

I was forty-three. I ran my fingers over my mouth.

I know I may seem out of line, but Id feel remiss if I didnt point out to you that
homelessness is not a thing that simply happens. Its a result of a great many factors, and
there are many people and agen- cies that understand this and want to help. I probably
could name you twenty different people active in the greater Providence area alone.

A lot of people are nice, I said.

They are. They are nice. So before we throw our hands up and go on the road, we should
reach out to them.

Father Benny Gallo took my hands in his. They were the hands youd expect from an outdoor
kind of priest who umpired Little League games.

Dont give up, Smithy Ide. Fight it. Fight it. I have to fight my- self, too. Every day. I
want to stand up and say, Ive had it. But I dont. I go on. I push on through, you see. I
push. An archaic church, an unappreciative little town, an empty rectory. I dont know. I
had envisioned a kind of pastor-and-flock situation, a Bing Crosby thing. An amazed
congregation, but . . . well, I just dont know. Are you Catholic?

Sure, I said. Actually not, but they use the word Catholic all the time in the Episcopal
Church.

Three, he said, holding up three fingers with an edge in his voice, count them, three guys
made monsignor this year, and every one of them graduated seminary with me and took vows
with Bishop Fuget with me, and now theyre monsignor. Ive had Holy Ghost in Hope Valley for
eleven years, and still Im only an assistant pastor and theres no damn pastor here at all.
See? What Im . . . what Im trying to say here is, you cant give up.

Okay. Poverty, homelessness, a simple bicycle My bike, I said. Is it . . . ? One of the
boys said he and his dad would take it home and see

if they could fix it. The pitcher, I think. Baptist. And its not, by the way, that I feel
any resentment whatsoever toward the good bishop, but one would have to ask about the
blatant effeminacy shared by all three brand-spanking-new monsignors and Queenie Fuget.
You see what it is, is the absolute inability of the diocese to forgive and forget.

Father Benny paused and rubbed his forehead with the back of his hand. Suddenly I was as
tired as Id ever been. I could feel my heart slowing.

Nineteen eighty-six. Nineteen eighty-six. Things were going fine. Great. I was working
mass and confession at the Scout camp up the road, maintaining Holy Ghost here. Church
school. Commis- sioner of girls softball, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. Then, well . .
. I dont know. Well, to be honest, Jeneen Dovrance. Jeneen Dovrance. God!

Father Benny stood up and slapped his chest. This was a womannot, no, not a married woman,
no, just a mother of one of the Scouts, and she cornered me after mass at the camp to ask
me about her boys God and Country Award. Jeneen was a divorced mother with two boys and
this little beauty spot, here, on her cheek,