The Memory of Running (9 page)

I lay in bed semi-awake and tried to yawn. My eyes were dry, and I knew a good yawn would
activate my tear ducts. Is it like that for everybody? The door to the rectory opened, and
Benny Gallo walked in carrying some huge Kmart bags.

We had a guy in seminary used to sleep late. We called him the big sleeper.

What time is it? I said. Almost twelve. Youre getting up at the crack of noon. Benny was
wearing sneakers, running shorts, and a blue T-shirt

that said
??????? ???? ?? ??
. I wanted to get this stuff before one. Theres the regional girls

softball championship and picnic over at Chariho High. Im umpir- ing the first game and
then judging brownies. Serious stuff.

I sat up and swung my legs to the floor. Saturdays are always hectic, he said. Its
Saturday? If Saturdays dont run like clockwork, Im lost. I fall behind and

never catch up. Mass at six. Jog. Breakfast. AA meeting. Rounds at the nursing home.
Coaching or umpiring, theres always something going on. Hospital calls. Knights of
Columbus, whatnot. Its a bitch.

But Father Benny was buoyant in his activity-loaded schedule, and the room thumped with
his energy.

I got you some stuff, he said. And he described each of the items as he pulled them from
the bags.

Toothbrush and toothpaste. Got to have this. I got you the soft bristles. Fruit of the
Loom. I guessed XXL. Jockeys. Running shorts. Three pairs. Again XXL. See, these are extra
stretch in the waist and wide in the leg, so they shouldnt bind on you when youre on the
bike. T-shirts and sweatshirtsand look at this baby. Father Benny

reverently took out an enormous red-flowered Hawaiian shirt that two of me could have fit
in.

Beautiful, huh? And look at these. Two pairs of Nike trail boots. Theyre light as
sneakers, but theyre all-terrain. I got your size out of the shoe you had left. I love
mine. Oh, and I got some sweat socks and food. Energy bars and bananas and fruit. And
bottled water and stress tablets. These are good. Theyre special vitamins. I take them,
too.

This stuff is all for me? I asked.

Father Benny reached into his pocket and pulled out an old telephone-bill envelope. He sat
on the edge of the couch and handed it to me. I wish it could be more.

I opened it up, and inside were three ten-dollar bills. Ill send it back, I said.

Sure. Sometime when youre not on the road. Sometime when you have a home.

I do.

Sure. Look, Smithy, Mother Mary teaches us that home is what we carry in our hearts. Be
strong. Go on.

I will.

Dont give up. Im going over to the nursing home. Your bikes all fixed. Its in the kitchen.
If I dont see you, God bless.

God bless you, too.

Benny Gallo smiled and left the rectory at a jog. I went into the bathroom and brushed my
teeth, and he was right. I needed a nice mouth feeling. I took a shower, too; then I put
on the clothes he bought me and went to the kitchen. The sneaker boots felt wonder- ful.
My legs and kidney still ached, and my face was purple from the fall, but in the kitchen I
took a deep breath, and I didnt remember so much good air getting into me for a long time.

My Raleigh leaned on its kickstand next to the stove. It was oiled and polished, and there
were two new tires on it. Also large saddle- bags set over the back. Some player and his
pop had taken the fat

mans bike home and fixed it up and put on red nylon saddlebags. I drank some of the water
Benny had given me and had an orange. I ate standing, because even though I was old and
fat, I was excited to try a Raleigh that now seemed like a new Raleigh. I took the things
Benny bought me and put them in the expanding saddlebags. Then I walked the bike through
the door and up to Main Street.

They had raised the seat a little and the handlebars, too, so when I pedaled, my legs
extended all the way in a full, natural circle. The bike whirred, and the smoothness of
the braking was exhilarating. My bike was the best bike ever.

Thank you, I said out loud to the player and his pop. Good peo- ple were there. There were
things for them to do together, and I was somehow a part of that. I felt easy, thats the
word. It wasnt hard to smile. Also I had bananas and apples and boots in my saddlebags.

I rode under the I-95 overpass and, after an hour or so, picked up Route 1 around Potter
Hill. I could smell the salt air and the unmis- takable heavy, sweet mountain laurel that
grew so strong close to the ocean. I broke into a tremendous sweat, and the parts of my
bulky body that had throbbed with pain seemed to become new like my bike. It was as if the
pain sweated away with each slow pedal, and I mean slow. I glided down hills. I walked up
them. I sucked the air out of entire counties.

When the big houses of Westerly came into view, with their peaks and awnings and widows
walks, I pulled off the road and stopped under a huge elm tree. It was cool this close to
the ocean. I took off my blue XXL T-shirt and put on the enormous red Hawaiian shirt.
Father Benny knew how to pick clothes. The extra-stretch waist on the shorts had only a
moderate amount of gut spillage, and the sneaker boots felt great.

Thank you, Father Benny, I said.

I got back onto the Raleigh and went through the town. My pop had known some guys here. He
knew a ballplayer named Archie Bis- sette, who played first base for Socony and also had a
bait shop in

Westerly where he sold lures and hooks and frozen squid for the tau- tog, and live eels
for the stripers the fishermen would try for off the beaches of Green Hill and Misquamicut
and Quonochontaug. I rode around the center of town where their war memorial stood, but I
couldnt remember where Archie Bissettes store was, and, really, nothing looked familiar,
so I picked up scenic Route 1 again and crossed into Connecticut.

A breeze, moist and constant, blew off the Block Island Sound and got me. There were hawks
sitting on the high dead branches of ash trees, and they stared, like I did, at the crazy
seagulls and the tight, loud circles they made above us.

I stopped at a picnic grove in Pawcatuck and ate some bananas and an apple and, just
because he had taken the time to buy them for me, one of Father Bennys stress tablets.

Now, this is one of those clear things. Where I was. A pretty grove of fir trees. Picnic
benches. Bathroom. A pretty place. When youre a kid, place is everything. And when you
leave, youre so absolutely aware of departure. I havent been aware for a while now. Long
enough, actually, to not be aware when one place started running into another place, until
they were all the same. But on this Saturday, in this cool grove, with kickstand down and
my feet feeling wonder- ful, I had a sense, a real sense, of having left Rhode Island and
crossed out of my life. Connecticut felt good, and down the road was Ston- ington, and
past that Mystic, where my pop had taken us to see tall ships and eat clam cakes.

I felt tired and closed my eyes for a while. I must have slept, be- cause I felt good when
I opened them. It was getting high afternoon already, and then I remembered my late sleep.
I left the grove and rode hard toward Mystic. I had a feeling I would like to see the
aquarium there. Then later, in fields near the ocean, I would spend the Connecticut night.

The homes in the planned communities that encircle Brickyard Pond and State Park in
Barrington, Rhode Island, are really lovely. Big houses, with three and four bedrooms and
two-car garages and won- derfully manicured property. The houses on the lake itself, the
prime houses, have lawns that slope to the blue-brown water. On the far side of the lake,
where the garbage landfill site ruled for almost twenty years, from 1955 on, magnificent
white stucco hacienda-type homes spread evenly among new poplars.

I loved to fish the Brickyard. Me and Tony Travanti from across the street would ride down
with some night crawlers and clean up. Some trout, bass, pickerel, perch, andIm not
kiddingbluegill so big we used to think they were a different fish altogether. It was
Tonys theory, and I think its a good one, that a lot of garbage and cans and stuff spilled
into the lake from the dump and all this leftover food and medicine and aluminum foil just
made a different bluegill. The other parts of the pond were pretty much trees and dirt
paths, and when you walked away from the official park, following the bank to fish in the
weedy, stumpy sections where the big pickerel were, the underbrush was prehistoric.

Sal the Dago told the police how after the Chevy had tried to murder Miss Gomes and
himself, it had driven down the beach and disappeared into the reeds.

Then it just fucking flew out of the reeds and jumped up the bank back onto the road and
took off. Im eaten alive. Im eaten by fucking bugs.

Shut up, greaseball, the crew-cut Barrington police officer said. Watch your language
around this young lady.

Thank you, Debbie Gomes said, ladylike. What did I say? Sal asked, genuinely confused.

The officer doesnt want you to offend me, Debbie said.

I cant offend her, Officer, Sal said sincerely. She gives me hand jobs.

The punch took the wind out of Sal, and he buckled, then fell on his knees. The policeman
easily brought Sals hands behind his back and handcuffed him, then jerked him to his feet.

Thank you. Debbie smiled.

The policeman smiled back, then pulled the gasping Sal to the cruiser and leaned him
against it. Then he walked back to Debbie.

He forced himself on you? Kind of, I guess. It was a cool evening, and the slightest
breeze off Narragansett

Bay put some real chill in the air. For the next three days and two nights, the Barrington
police,

joined by the finest of East Providence and, finally, state troopers from the Bristol
barracks, launched an all-out three-state search for Bobby Myers and the young prom date
he abducted. They crossed, with permission, into Connecticut and as far as Waltham,
Massachu- setts, looking for the blond mondo and his fathers Chevy Impala. They looked
everywhere but the Brickyard, where Bethanys voice had taken them. Not more than three
miles from Barrington Beach. Theyd driven crazily to the state park entrance, went onto a
small playing field and into the thick overgrowth, as far as the car could possibly go.
Then my sister had shut off the engine and gone into a three-day, two-night pose. If it
wasnt for a fisherman looking for a shortcut to the bass and pickerel, they might be there
still. He called to her, but she was frozen and swollen from the heavy mosquito hatches.
Then he heard the faintest of whimpers and opened the trunk.

In the weeks after the prom, Bethany was returned once again to Bradley Hospital. My pop
found a new psychiatrist through Grace Church, and for a while both he and Mom felt they
were moving in

the right direction. She became Bethany again, and her bug-ravaged skin returned clear and
beautiful. We visited her often, and all of our meetings with Dr. Glenn Golden were upbeat
and hopeful.

Bobby Myers didnt make all-state that year. Sal the Dago Ruggeri plea-bargained the
sexual-assault charge to simple battery. He was given a one-year suspended sentence. He
was also expelled from school.

I love penguins. Theyre not only the silliest bird, Ill bet theyre the silliest animal.
They walk funny and sound funny and swing their wings like little arms, and then they look
right at you with this what are you looking at? expression. The penguins were the high
point of the Mystic Aquarium, but the porpoise show was pretty amazing, too. And cheap.
Oh, and the bathrooms were exceptionally clean and cheerful.

I slept about a mile out of Mystic. It got very black, so I walked into a cornfield and
lay down between the rows. I used the sweatshirt for a pillow, and I slept pretty good. In
the morning I had more than the usual aches. Complicating the pain of being a fat-ass who
hadnt exercised since the army was a terrific sunburn on my arms and legs and head. I
stopped at a gas station and bought some aspirin and used the bathroom; then I pedaled for
maybe half an hour until I found a little variety store that sold sun lotion. I hadnt worn
shorts for twenty or thirty years. I lathered myself up good and ate breakfast. Bananas
again. And an apple and the biggest bran muffin I have ever seen for a dollar. But
bananas, I want to say, bananas you forget. How else can I explain them? I love them.
Everything about the texture and the chewability of bananas is me, but Id just stopped
eating them. Im happy I found bananas again.

The aspirin worked, and the lotion snuffed the burn, but I still moved slow. I stopped in
the middle of the GrotonNew London Bridge and saw the coast guards four-masted training
schooner and behind that a nuclear-powered sub as long as a football field. Id had a tour
of the sub base once with the Scouts, but I dont remember when. I thought it was
interesting.

I slept on the beach near Old Saybrook that night, and in the morning I called Norma.

Yes? she answered on the first ring.

Norma? I didnt wake you up or anything, did I? Norma Mulveys end of the phone sank into
silence. Norma? Did I wake you? Smithy? Smithy? She was crying.

Dont cry, Norma.

The garage door was open, the house was open, bills on the tableBea called the police.

She called the police? Where are you? Come home. Were . . . Beas worried sick. Im in Old
Saybrook. Im on my Raleigh. A priest gave me

clothes and stress tablets. Norma, I got this letter, one of my pops letters, really. . . .

Pop? From Los Angeles. They found Bethany. They found her? They found her? Bethany died,
Norma. Normas breathing became faster, and her voice dropped. She

sniffled. They had to . . . they had to identify her through dental records

my pop had sent everywhere. Dont cry, Norma. I loved her, too. The defiance again, only
this time through

chokes and sobs. I started to go, too, but I grabbed myself. Norma? Would you call Goddard
and tell them Im sick and Im

not coming in for a while? Youre sick? No. Im in Old Saybrook. Im on my bike. Im . . . I
dont

know . . . I think Im going to Los Angeles. We hung together with what I just said, in
silence, on the line. Ill call Goddard. Ill tell them youre sick. Thanks, Norma. Do you
need money? I dont think so . . . well . . . thanks, Norma. She was quiet, then quieter
still. It was hard to believe there wasnt

a wild ten-year-old on the other end holding her breath the way she used to when she
wanted me to play catch or dolls. Then I remem- bered her telling me outside the funeral
home that she did for her- self. That she had these systems for things and important jobs
to do.

Did you hang up, Norma?

Ive never been held, Norma said like a blow of air over the miles. I didnt say anything. I
couldnt think. Held as a child, I mean, but thats different.

I heard her voice bounce off satellites and flow through the hot wires.

I . . . I hold myself. I do for myself. I got to go. I waited for her to hang up the
phone, but she didnt. We stayed,

without speaking, like kids with tin cans and string. I would hold you, Norma, I said
after a while, and heard the

faintest click. In the east. Near the bay.