The Runner (2 page)

Somewhere between the eighth and ninth mile, he began to feel the work his muscles were doing. From then on, he ran on strength alone, keeping up the steady pace, just not paying any attention to what his body was trying to say to him. After a little while he didn't feel anything. He'd run past it, run through it, and his body got back to the work he intended it to do. A year ago, Bullet would have hit that point at around five miles—hit it and gutted his way through it.

For the last quarter mile he ran along the flat beach. That was the way most cross-country courses were, too, a flat run at the end. Bullet sprinted, driving his feet into the wet sand, pumping his arms faster, to force the faster rhythm on his legs.

Back at the dock again he stood straight.

He wanted to fall down onto the boards—he could have thrown up his whole supper without any trouble at all, lots of guys did just that at the end of every race. But Bullet stood straight and locked his throat tight. His chest heaved, he couldn't even focus his eyes on anything, as if a film of blood spread over his retinas. He stood straight, arms loose at his sides, his shaking legs holding him firm. Every muscle in his body had been used and felt it.

Sweat poured down his back and legs, stung in his eyes, soaked his armpits. He liked that smell of sweat.

When his vision cleared, he took a look at the sun. His time was okay. He looked at the water and wanted to fall into it, but because he wanted to, he waited. He knew he could do that to himself, for himself; he'd learned that, too.

The sun hung red, just above the watery horizon—as if it were being sucked down into the water. The water reflected the cloudless gray-blue of the sky. When he no longer needed to, Bullet allowed himself to go swimming. The tide was up. Wind slapped the waves against the sides of Johnny's boat. A single star burned low above the horizon, obscured by the brightness of the sun. Bullet did a shallow dive off the end of the dock, then splashed around for a while. This late in the year you didn't have to worry much about jellyfish. Water soaked his clothes and shoes and all of his skin. He hauled himself back up onto the dock and sat there, looking out. His sneakers were heavy. His hair was plastered onto his forehead and clammy down the back of his neck.

It wasn't even as if his hair was that long, only halfway down his neck, and it looked good, thick and dark brown like his mother's. Some of the people at school—they had hair so long they kept it tied back in ponytails. The old man wanted him to have a crew cut, as if there was something wrong about a good head of hair on a man, as if that had anything to do with anything. It wasn't haircuts the old man cared about, it was being able to give orders. With Johnny gone and Liza gone, there was only Bullet to give orders to. You'd think the old man would learn.

Bullet swung his feet back and forth, the weight of wet sneakers pulling at his thigh muscles. The farm lay behind him, all the flat acres of it, broad fields, patches of woods where raccoons and rabbits and squirrels lived, fields left fallow, fields where cornstalks dried in the September sun, lines of loblollies—he didn't look back, he didn't have to, to see it. He looked across the water at the horizon, to the invisible western shore.

The farm was his now, both a draft deferment and a job. If he wanted it. After a couple of years, when Johnny just didn't ever come back, the old man said that to him. “It'll be yours.” Ignoring Liza. Bullet just shook his head. The old man thought Bullet was scared of the hard work, but he wasn't, and the old man only thought that because it was an idea he got hold of. The old man got hold of ideas and kept them, clenched tight in his fist, as if that made them true. It was boxes Bullet was afraid of, the kind of boxes the old man built around people he lived with. The draft was a kind of box, too, except that Bullet wasn't so sure he'd mind the army, and he knew for certain he'd make a good soldier; the same way he knew for certain what it would cost him to stay on the farm, waiting for the old man to die.

It wasn't as if his father even wanted Bullet to have the farm. He didn't, he didn't want to let go of the farm ever. Funny, because it was really his wife's farm, her land anyway, the old Hackett place. When they'd gotten married, the old man took over from his father-in-law, who wanted to retire in Florida. The only other person with a claim on it was his wife's sister, who had married and disappeared up north to live with her rich husband. So the farm was his wife's, half of it by law and all of it by rights. But the old man never admitted that, he slapped his name on her, slapped his name on the land, and owned everything. Only, the way he acted and talked, the farm owned him and he hated it. What a life.

For her too, Bullet guessed, living with the old man this way. Except, to watch her work over her vegetable garden, or climb down into Johnny's boat and get the tiller in her hand, he knew she liked it. Whatever the old man did, there was something about her, something proud and bold and brave and strong—the old man couldn't break her, couldn't drive her off. Not if he lived to be a hundred.

The sky grew dark, gray colored with purple, and a few dim stars appeared. The wind blew around him. It was just like the old man to tell him to get his hair cut without giving him a buck for the barber. Do it my way and pay for it with your money. Money Bullet had earned for himself, working for Patrice. Work he'd gotten for himself by going down to the docks early, hanging around, asking if anyone needed an extra hand for the day, doing day work until he met up with Patrice and had a steady job. Hauling crabs all summer. Hauling oysters on winter weekends. Sure, he had the money, he had six hundred and fourteen dollars saved up, and by the end of this fall he'd have enough money to buy himself the sixteen-gauge Smith and Wesson he'd had his eye on for two years. He'd held that gun just once, the only time he'd seen it, at the store in Salisbury. The stock fit into his shoulder like one of his own bones, the triggers moved like a hot knife through cold butter, the balance of the thing made his own twenty-two feel like a Tinker-toy, like the junk it was. He knew what he was saving his money for and it wasn't for haircuts.

With a gun like that, and some practice, he'd—he could see the deer, pronged antlers held up, see it poise for just those crucial seconds listening, see its legs crumple in mid-stride, see it fall while the echoes of that one clean shot still echoed through the trees.

Bullet shook his head to clear the image out of it. He'd learned not to make dreams up for himself, that was part of growing up. Growing up meant you knew what you wanted and you worked for it, and you didn't let yourself get in your own way. Not dreams, not memories—he knew he could allow no weakness in himself if he was going to win free. He could feel the danger of his father's will closing in around him, and he could feel his own strength too. It would cost him, but what didn't cost something? Nothing, that was what. It would cost him this farm that ran acres wide under his feet, that ran acres deep and fertile underneath
him. It had already cost him whatever it cost to be different. Nobody knew him anymore—which was funny because all he had done was let his real self out. But everybody saw only the difference. Nobody knew what Bullet was like. Except Patrice. And maybe nobody ever had except Patrice, who didn't mind him as he was, who didn't try to make him into somebody else. Or his mother—she could read him still, he knew, and he could read her too for that matter. But they never talked about that, not in any way. Because it didn't make any difference.

T
he waves slapped up against the dock and Johnny's boat. More stars appeared. The wind was strong enough to blow the mosquitoes away, so he could stay outside as long as he felt like it. His parents went to bed early. He'd be damned if he'd get his hair cut. He lay back, down on his back on the hard wooden dock, looking up at the star-studded sky, and eased up on himself. It was okay, he was alone.

Maybe he'd grow his hair really long, long as Liza's, and wear it in a braid, or two braids. Bullet grinned—that would give the old man something to chew over.

He didn't blame Liza for just going off with Frank—four years ago now. He almost had to respect her for doing it. About the only smart thing she'd done in her life. Or Johnny either, packing and going off to college and just never coming back; he didn't much blame him anymore. Trust Johnny to do the smart thing, get a scholarship. Johnny got the brains and Liza got the looks.

It was funny though, and not as if he missed her, but he could always feel how Liza wasn't there. Once Johnny was surely gone, it stopped bothering him, like a board nailed into place. But Liza . . . sometimes, like now, when he was alone with nothing to get done and the sky filled up with stars, he could almost hear her, the way she sang. Bullet couldn't sing a note on tune, but he could hear songs inside his head, just the way they sounded.
Now he heard Liza's voice: “Will there be any stars, any stars in my crown,” that voice sang, “when at evening the sun goeth down? When I stand with the blest in God's mansions of rest, will there be any stars in my crown?” Well, he didn't know about that, Liza, running off with Frank Verricker like that. He almost hoped they were having a merry old time of it, wherever they were. He liked Frank okay, Frank never let anything get through to him, especially not the old man's hostility. Frank just kept on coming back whenever his ship got into Baltimore. You never knew when he'd turn up, in some rattletrap he'd bought. You never knew when you'd see him slouching against the doorframe, about to bust out laughing. “Tell Liza I've come courting. You're welcome this time too, kid, it's a movie. A couple of hamburgers. Get you out from under, if you want to.” Bullet never wanted to, not badly enough to give in to the wanting; and that puzzled Frank, he could tell. The light eyes would study him, curious about what made Bullet tick. After a while, Bullet said no just to keep Frank puzzled. Liza never kept Frank puzzled, she had her heart out there in her eyes for him. She'd hang around waiting for him to show up, out of the blue, whenever. She was surprised every time when she finally figured out that he'd gone off again, back to whatever ship he was on, without a word to her. You'd think she'd have learned, but Liza never did learn much. Or she learned so slow she was long gone before Bullet would have known about it.

Maybe he'd get his hair trimmed a bare quarter of an inch. Then, when his father said, the way he inevitably would, “I instructed you to have your hair cut,” Bullet would give him a receipt, or the clippings in an envelope. Billy-O, the barber, would give him a receipt. He'd shove the receipt at the old man, and then what could he say?

Although, when it came to a showdown, the old man wouldn't
say anything; he'd make Bullet's mother do the saying. To pay her back for standing behind Johnny, maybe. She wanted Johnny to go to college; she stood up for that the way she hadn't stood up for anything before or since, against the old man. And Johnny just walked away, never a letter, never a phone call, all that long year. That long year—who knew what she was thinking?—she never said. The old man never said. One long, quiet year that was, not even an explosion when Bullet flunked fifth grade and had to repeat it. All year long, nobody said a thing. That was one good thing about Johnny's leaving. Another good thing was having him gone, with his orders and his right answers, “Cool it, kid,” “Hands off.” Johnny was always building something, like that boat—working off his temper on wood. Or the tree house for Liza. Talking at Bullet when he caught him messing with his precious tools, because Bullet was supposed to wait until he was old enough to learn how to use them. “Face facts, kid,” Johnny told him. Well, Johnny knew how to face facts, and he taught Bullet how, and Bullet had to be grateful for that. “Face facts, you're a breaker. You better learn the truth about yourself.” “So what,” Bullet answered him, “sew buttons.” But Johnny would stand up to the old man, when he wanted, like about Liza keeping OD, and sometimes Johnny could argue him down. After Johnny left, Bullet figured out that he'd also done some standing between his father and Bullet—but Johnny taught Bullet how to stand up for himself before he walked out.

Bullet guessed he didn't fault Johnny, and he didn't fault Liza either. His eyes roamed around, watching the stars. He guessed his mother didn't either, although he knew that she, at least, missed them. Not that she said so, not that she tried to stop Liza from going—but he could read her. And, if he remembered, he remembered how different things used to be, how different she was . . . He could remember seeing her run, her skirt tangling at
her legs and himself running to try to catch her and her laughter when she pretended he had—but that was all gone, long gone, faded away, closed off. As far as he could tell, his mother didn't miss it.

Maybe he'd grow braids and wind them up around his head and see how many synonyms his father could think of for effeminate.

Bullet rolled over, sat up, stood up, stretched. Tired. He went back down the dock to the grass. OD was waiting for him on shore. She never would go out onto the dock. Johnny said it was because she had been traumatized by nearly drowning, then explained to Bullet what trauma was. Once, when Liza wasn't around, one long summer day—the first summer Johnny was gone—Bullet had hoisted OD up under his arm and taken her out onto the dock. The water wasn't even deep where he dropped her in, just halfway out the dock. He'd leaned over and dropped her straight down, while her legs scrabbled for a grip on his arms and chest. She didn't howl or anything, just froze stiff and looked at him. Bullet figured, trauma or no, all animals could swim, it was an instinct. But not OD. She sank like a stone, right to the bottom, and he could just barely see her open eyes looking up at him through six inches of murky water. She didn't even move her legs, just like a stone statue. He gave her a while, but she never surfaced. So he jumped in and grabbed her. The scratches he'd had—she was out of her mind with fear he guessed. When he dumped her on the beach she just lay there, shivering. He watched for a while. Johnny was always right about things, Johnny always knew the answers. It was just that the way he told you made you want to prove he was wrong.