by Eric Walters
“I think the running part started the night before they took off my leg. I read an article in a magazine that my old high school basketball coach, Terri Fleming, brought me. He had read the article and thought I should read it too. It was about an amputee runner, a guy who ran in the New York City Marathon.”
“That’s how you got the idea about being able to run, but when did you get the idea about running across the country?” my father persisted.
“That night,” he said. “I know it sounds strange, but I dreamed about it that night while I was lying there in the hospital bed, waiting for them to amputate my leg.”
A shiver went up my spine. What would that have been like? Lying in bed, trying to sleep, knowing that when I woke up they’d be wheeling me into an operating room and taking off my—
“I had the idea, but I didn’t tell anybody about it right then,” Terry continued. “I had to convince myself it was possible before I talked to anybody else about it.”
“And the fundraising part?” my father asked.
“That came almost right away too. I saw a lot when I was being treated. I read a lot, and I found out how little money was being spent on research to try to cure cancer.”
“Being a cancer victim, you’d certainly be more aware of those things.”
“I don’t think of myself as a victim,” Terry said. “I’m a survivor. A cancer survivor. I got up and walked away from it. Now I’m doing something for those who didn’t get a chance to walk away. You have to understand that I’m one of the lucky ones…the people who survived cancer. I remember those who weren’t so lucky. I’ve been there in the cancer ward with other people…this is my way of trying to make the hurt stop so that other people don’t have to suffer or die.”
“And when did you start to do something about it?” my father asked.
“That wasn’t until a lot later. Like I said, first I had to convince myself that it was possible.”
“How did you do that?”
“I started back into playing sports.”
“No surprise there,” Doug said softly.
Terry smiled. “Wheelchair basketball. Another friend, his name is Rick Hansen, he got me interested in playing. We were the national wheelchair basketball champions three times running. I did miles and miles and miles in that chair during those practices and games, getting myself strong. Sometimes I’d push myself harder than maybe I should have.”
“As in he’d do it until his hands started to bleed,” Doug said.
“Did you use the wheelchair to get around before you started running?”
“No,” Terry said. “I never used a wheelchair except for basketball. I got around at first on crutches, and then with a cane to help, and finally I just started walking and then running with the artificial leg. I started to train. That first day I ran one lap of the track by my house—I did a quarter of a mile.”
“And that went well?” my father asked.
“No,” Terry said, shaking his head. “It went awful. I couldn’t believe how much it took out of me to run that one lap. But I went back the next day and did the same thing. At the end of the first week I added another lap, and then another the next week and the week after that and the week after that. I trained for about fourteen months. Every day except Christmas.”
“His mother asked him to take the day off,” Doug explained.
“I ran over three thousand miles,” Terry continued. “It was than that I knew I could do this.”
“And when you did finally tell people about your plans, they must have thought you were nuts,” my father said.
“My mother said I was crazy,” Terry said, and everybody laughed. “But I told her I was going to run anyway, and she said she’d help any way she could.”
“And what was your father’s reaction?”
“He just wanted to know when I was going to go.”
“They didn’t try to talk you out of it?”
“Well, maybe a little bit at first, but they knew I was serious so they just decided they’d get behind me on this.”
“That’s awfully supportive. And Doug, what was your first reaction when Terry told you about his plans?”
“I just thought, ‘If Terry says he’s going to do it, then he’s going to do it.’ ”
“And when he asked you to come along?”
“I said, ‘Sure, when do we go?’ ”
“So you didn’t need any persuasion,” my father said.
“None, although I really had to wonder whether he’d picked the right guy for the job!”
“There isn’t anybody better,” Terry said, and though Doug ducked his head I could see he was hiding a grin.
“And were you like his parents, or did you have questions?”
“Oh, I had questions,” Doug said. “Lots of questions. But no doubts. Terry told me what he was going to do, and I knew he was going to do it, end of story,” he said with a shrug of his shoulders.
“You didn’t have any doubts?”
A slight smile came to his face. “You don’t know Terry.”
My father laughed. “It sounds like your family and friends really believed in you from the start. It’s nice to have people back you up that way,” he said. “I was wondering, is it painful to run on that leg?”
“It’s not really a problem.”
“Really?” my father persisted.
“It can be a little sore sometimes, but nothing I can’t handle.”
“I see. And what is your artificial leg made of?”
Terry pulled his leg up and put it on the bench right beside me. “Fibreglass, metal, a little bit of leather. It’s pretty sophisticated.”
“And it has lots of parts that can go wrong,” Doug added. “It really takes a pounding out there and it needs to be adjusted and tinkered with all the time to make the spring work right.”
“But it’s working pretty good today,” Terry said.
Doug looked at his watch again. “We have to get going in a couple of minutes.”
“It sounds like you’re running on a real schedule,” my father said.
“We try,” Terry told him, “although all the credit for that belongs to Doug. I just do the easy part, the running. He takes care of everything else.”
“Sounds like a good arrangement. You two been friends for long?”
“Practically forever,” Terry said.
“Must be good friends to spend every day together. How many days has it been?” my father asked.
“This is day forty,” Doug said.
“I dipped my foot into the Atlantic on April 12,” Terry said.
“In Newfoundland?”
“St. John’s.”
“The weather in Newfoundland in April can be pretty bad,” my father pointed out.
“Bad doesn’t even come close to describing it,” Doug said. “And I was just driving the van.”
“We had some rough days,” Terry added. “Snow. Sleet. Rain. Cold. You name it and I ran through it.”
“That must have been tough.”
“It wasn’t easy,” Terry said. “But what we found was that even when the weather was cold, the people were always warm and friendly.”
“Nice people,” Doug said. “It’s like everybody in the whole province of Newfoundland is friendly.”
“I’ll never forget the way we were treated in Corner Brook,” Terry added.
“They gave you a good reception?” my father prompted.
“They were great…and generous. They made it all worthwhile.”
“I have two more questions,” my father said. “First, why are you doing this?”
Terry looked confused. “To raise money for cancer research.”
“I understand that you want to raise money, but aren’t there easier ways than running across the
country?”
“Maybe easier, but this is the way I want to do it,” Terry said. “By running like this I let people know that cancer can be beaten…that life can go on…that you define people by their ability and not their disability.” He shrugged. “And your last question?”
“You’ve probably already answered it, but I’ll ask anyway. Do you think you can do it? Do you think you can actually run across the whole country?”
Terry smiled. “You’re right…I have already answered that one.”
Both men stood up once again, and I staggered to my feet as well.
“Thank you for taking the time to interview us,” Terry said as he reached out and shook hands with my father first and then with me.
“Thank you for giving me the time,” my father replied.
Terry stepped over the bench and then swung his artificial leg over as well.
“Wait a second, I do have one more question,” my father said.
Terry turned back around.
“When you’re out there running, what do you think about?”
“Mostly I just try to think about the next part of the run. I take it one day at a time, one mile at a time, one corner at a time. I’m reaching out for each signpost and each corner. All you can do is take another step and keep on going.”
“But what do you think about?”
Terry didn’t answer right away. “I guess I think about a lot of things. Sometimes I think about what it’s going to be like running into Port Renfrew.”
“Is that your hometown in B.C.?” my father asked.
“No, we’re from Poco…Port Coquitlam,” Doug explained. “But Port Renfrew, on Vancouver Island, is the farthest point west, so that’s where the run ends.”
“That’s where I’ll put my foot into the Pacific Ocean,” Terry added.
“Speaking of which,” Doug said, “the ocean isn’t coming to us, so we’d better get going.”
“Right. I’ll see you in a mile,” Terry said to Doug.
He walked over to the side of the van, touched it with one hand and then started to run up the road.
It was the strangest run. I don’t know what I’d expected, but this wasn’t it. He certainly wasn’t walking—it was sort of skipping or hopping or bouncing along the road. It was…it was—
“It’s not the most graceful movement,” Doug said, reading my thoughts. “But there’s something almost hypnotic about it.”
“What happens now?” my father asked.
“I clean up, get in the van and drive one mile. Terry catches up to me and I give him a cup of water. I drive another mile, and when he catches me the second time he has some more water, some oranges or a snack and rests a minute. Then he runs the next two miles. We keep doing that until we reach our goal for the day.”
“And that goal is how many miles?” my father asked.
“We try to do about twelve miles in the morning and add another fourteen in the afternoon. Some days it’s only fifteen altogether, sometimes more than double that, depending on the road we have to cover, or arrangements we’ve made for spending the night. On average Terry covers twenty-six miles a day, which is forty-two kilometres. Then we mark our spot on the road, go and spend the night in the back of the van, or sometimes someone will donate a motel room, which is great. We start up again the next day where we left off,” he said. “Thanks a lot for the interview. I think we’ve gotten to understand that stories like this really help to raise awareness of what Terry’s doing, and that raises money for cancer research, and that’s what this is all about. Now I’d better get going or Terry will beat me to the mile spot.”
“Thank you. I’ll write a good article.”
Doug gathered up the plates and garbage from the table and headed for the van.
“We’ll just stay here and eat our lunch before we’re off,” my father said to me.
I’d forgotten all about eating! My father opened the lid of the box and pulled out two paper bags. I opened up the one he handed to me. It held a big, delicious-looking club sandwich—on white, toasted. It looked like it had extra mayo!
I looked up at him and smiled.
“I had a hunch that might be what you’d like for lunch,” he said.
“Thanks,” I said as I pulled it from the container and took a big bite. It tasted good, very good. Much better than the one I’d had the night before.
“So is that it?” I asked.
“I don’t understand,” my father said. “You want more than one sandwich?”
“No, no…I mean, is that the whole interview? They send you all this way for a twenty-minute conversation?”
“There’s a little more we have to do still.”
“What?”
“We have one more place to stop,” he said.
“Where?”
“First we eat…then we drive.”
7
We stayed about another half hour at the picnic table finishing our lunch. My father mainly picked at his and had a couple more cigarettes. I couldn’t believe how many cigarettes he smoked every day.
My thoughts turned to the two men we’d just met. They seemed so normal and nice. Don’t ask me exactly what I’d been expecting, but somehow I guess I’d thought that somebody who was running across the country would be different. Maybe full of himself and cocky, or just downright strange. Like, what normal person really thinks he can run across the country? Especially run across the country on one leg? To even think that you could do that you had to be…maybe a little bit crazy…although he didn’t seem crazy.
“Ready?” my father asked.
“All set.”
I’d been finished for a while. I actually could have gone for a second club sandwich because the first one was so good. That was nice of him to get that sandwich for me. It was the sort of thing he used to do all the time when I was growing up. He was always doing things to make me happy—even when my mother didn’t want him to. She didn’t want him to “spoil” me. I liked being spoiled!
Besides, I knew that it wasn’t just him doing nice things for me. I tried to do things to make him happy, too. But that was in the past. Way in the past.
My father was different from other fathers I knew. He always seemed to be full of surprises. You never knew what to expect out of him, but it was almost always something different, or fun, or unusual, or at least not boring. My father was never boring. Even when he came in hours after he was expected—maybe especially then—he was never boring. Maybe boring would have been better. I think my mother would have liked a little more boring and a little less in the way of surprises.
We bundled up the last few pieces of garbage, tossed them into a garbage can sitting just over from the table and climbed back into the car. He turned the ignition and both the engine and the radio started up, playing another Sinatra song! My father turned it up and started to sing along as he pulled back onto the highway. I was beginning to think that this guy wasn’t the Chairman of the Board, he was the Chairman of the Bored.
“You still haven’t told me where we’re going,” I said, using my question as an excuse to turn the radio way down.
“A little town just down the way from here.”
“To do what?”
“To watch.”
“Watch Terry run?”
“That’s only part of it. We’ll watch him run. And we’ll watch Doug driving that van. We’ll watch people watching them. And then I’ll probably do some more interviews.”
“You’re going to interview Terry and Doug again?”
“Nope. Other people.”
“What other people?” I asked.
“People in the town. I want to know what their reaction is to what Terry’s doing. If I’m not mistaken, I think we can capture something. Something that I don’t completely understand, but something that people are going
to want to read about, and—”
“There they are!” I yelled.
Up ahead, almost at the top of a long hill, I could see the almond-coloured van crawling along the side of the road. In front of that was the lone figure of Terry running…jogging along…whatever it was exactly he was doing.
My father slowed down as we got closer. He really didn’t have much choice. A number of cars up ahead of us had done the same. It was then that I noticed that vehicles coming in the opposite direction were also slowing down as they passed. Some people rolled down their windows and waved. Others honked—not an angry, get-out-of-my-way sort of honking, just a gentle tap, tap, tap of the horn. A car up ahead pulled off to the side of the road in front of the van. The driver jumped out and ran back to the driver’s side.
“What is he doing?” I asked.
“Watch…reporters learn to watch and watch to learn.”
The man reached out and handed something to Doug.
“What did he give him?” I asked.
“If I’m not mistaken, I think he handed him some money.”
“Really?”
“Really. You see?” my father said. “Something is happening.”
We came up alongside the van. My father beeped his horn and I caught sight of Doug—he gave a wave as we passed. We slowed down even more as we reached Terry. He looked over and smiled and his arm shot up to give us a little wave as well. I turned around as we drove past and continued to watch. It hardly looked like he could make it to the top of the hill, let alone across the country.
“When you said we were seeing something happening,” I said to my father, “does that mean you think he can make it?”
“Make it?”
“Yeah, run across the country.”
“Before we sat down with him I thought there was no way in the world he had a chance of doing it.”
“And now you do?” I asked.
“There’s something in that kid’s eyes. You probably couldn’t see it because you were sitting beside him, but I saw it.”
“So you think he can do it?”
“No, not really, but I think there’s a chance…not a big one…heck, let’s be honest, not even a small one, but I think there is a tiny chance…maybe.”