The Memory of Running

by Ron McLarty

  I pushed pretty hard for another couple of hours—hard for me anyway. I mean, I still walked up the hills and coasted when I had the opportunity. I picked Route 10 from my little road guide, and at Florham Park, New Jersey, picked up 510. After a while you get into a bike trance and don’t have to think too much about pedaling. At least, because I was going so slow, I didn’t, and I could look around at where I was. This was new for me. The whole idea of a place, I mean. And away from the big interstate road system—which you couldn’t use if you didn’t have an engine—New Jersey was, I suppose, gorgeous. In Rhode Island the words “New Jersey” were interchangeable with “dog shit,” but it’s amazing to see how many perfect farms and groves and forests there are. And the rivers and streams are great. Around Ralston I walked my bike off the road and sat by the Raritan River. Beautiful. I had a couple of bananas and splashed some of that good water over my face and hair. I had a beard coming up, and the cool water stayed around my stubble, taking away the itch. Every stop has a purpose. I was learning, I suppose, about refreshment.

  I stopped at a small sporting goods store with a sign in the window that said UNDER NEW MANAGEMENT and treated myself to a ground cloth, a waterproof sleeping bag, a small tent, and a knapsack to keep the stuff in. The new owners, a young guy and his wife, came out to look at my bike and measured me for my bag and made a real effort to get me good, lightweight supplies.

  “You’re getting a lot of sun,” the wife said as I paid her.

  “Yes.”

  She reached behind her to a counter hat rack and took down a modified baseball cap with a sunglass visor.

  “These are new. Maximum protection.”

  “I’ll take it.”

  “One size fits all.”

  “I’ll take it.”

  When the sun got a little low, I pulled off the road and into a field. There were some mosquitoes, but it wasn’t too bad, because the day was cooling toward night, but I made another little promise to myself to get repellent. Then I drank a bottled water, had another banana and a juice orange, and read a little more Iggy.

  The book was a western, but it really wasn’t a western in that the cowboy part was not as important as him starting to feel good about his place in the world. The world of the Old West.

  I read about fifteen pages, slowly, still getting into reading shape. Iggy never knew his father, who abandoned his mother when he was freed after the Civil War. Iggy’s mother was a kind but powerful woman named Esther Booklook. She had gotten her last name from her father, who got it from his father, who got it from the nine-year-old daughter of a plantation owner because he liked to look at books. Iggy didn’t like the name Booklook. Nothing against his mother, but he changed his last name to Hannibal after the hero from Carthage, because his mother used to tell stories about Hannibal to her children and told them they were related to him. Iggy changed his name in 1878, the year he headed west. He was fourteen, and I felt my reading headache coming on. I spread out my gear, everything except the tent, and after an apple I slept the sleep of the just.

  By Wednesday afternoon I had zigzagged onto Route 645 to 614, cut through the deep valley of the Musconetcong Mountains, and crossed the Delaware River into Pennsylvania. Here is what I discovered over a tuna sandwich: Even walking uphill and not killing myself on the straightaways, I could make between fifty and seventy miles a day. It had to do with consistency.

  I picked up Penn. 212 down to Quakertown, and ten miles later, outside Pennsburg, I had the Quaker Meat Loaf Special at the Quaker Restaurant. The baked potato was still in its foil, and the iced coffee was really perked and not freeze-dried. I wasn’t a great diner man. I had become a volume guy, I guess, what with Burger King and those big hoagies they make in a second. Uncle Count had the dual aptitude for mass food of quality. He could sit—and I am not kidding, and I don’t use this often—I swear to God, he could sit in a restaurant and sniff and tell not only what was choicest among the foodstuffs but also what had been prepared in great quantities. I was understanding my uncle. A little anyway. For me, though, the slice of meat loaf and the baked potato were plenty. What is it? Medical? The more you do, the less you need? I don’t get it. I had Jell-O with grapes, too.

  Pennsylvania is also beautiful. Big hills, though. Just when I figured I was going to average that 50 or so miles, I got beaten up by the hills. I had estimated that from Durham, where I entered Pennsylvania, to Wayne Heights, where I would get into the tip of Maryland, was less than two hundred miles and I could do it in three or four days, but even though the weather was nice and dry I didn’t get to Gettysburg, which was forty or so miles from Maryland, until Sunday.

  I checked into a Howard Johnson’s and parked the Raleigh in my room. It was pretty early—three in the afternoon, I think—and as much as I wanted a shower and a bed, I wanted to do everything on my mental list first. I crossed the street to a shopping center and bought some shaving supplies and fruit and bottled water. Back inside the room, I laid out my new purchases on the TV set. I spread the sleeping bag over the clothes rack and generally laid out the rest of my stuff to dry. I wanted a beer and a cigarette. I don’t know why. Probably because hotel rooms always required an activity. Television, cigarettes, beer. I sat there and looked at my stuff all around the little blue room, and it was very comforting to be there with my bike and my stuff. I thought I would eat an orange, maybe, and then stretch out on the bed for a while before I found a good place to eat. I was very tired, and the bed and pillows looked perfect. I fell asleep in the chair thinking about them.

  24

  In 1966 three things happened that I would call events, in the sense that you couldn’t under any circumstances forget them. I got drafted; Charlie Love, trying to score from third base, got struck by lightning; and my sister, Bethany, disappeared again.

  Most of the kids I graduated with went to college or business school. They went, really, because their parents were afraid of the Russians. That’s the short reason. When the Soviet Union flew Sputnik, it looked as though they were doing better than we were in the brain department, and somehow we had to catch up or they’d kill us. That’s how I understood it anyway.

  East Providence roared into action. First they separated the kids by how smart they were. They formed divisions, and all the divisions together were called ROXY SUMAC-GL. If you were an accelerated person, you were placed in R and O, and it was hoped you’d go to Ivy League schools and lose your accent. X, Y, and S were, I guess, college preparatory; U, M, A, and C were business stuff about being secretaries and typists; and G and L were shop, auto mechanics. The R and O divisions were kept pretty separate from the other kids and were given special lunchtimes and up-to-date science labs and stuff. The divisions all dressed different, too, with chinos and plaid shirts favored by the accelerates and college preps, blue and gray by the business kids, and blue jeans and leather jackets by the mondos in auto shop.

  We all knew, but weren’t supposed to say, that our school now had four groups arranged by letters. We had very smart, pretty smart, could learn to hold a job, dumb. I was in pretty smart, but I should have been in dumb. I got C’s, and no college wanted me, even Springfield College in Massachusetts, where they train gym teachers and people who work at the Y and they had classes in the fundamentals of badminton. College did not want me. Mom thought I should go to junior college, and I was thinking about it when I got my notice to go into the army. But I’m not complaining. If I wanted to go to college and study bowling or table tennis, I should have applied myself better in high school. I didn’t. You get what you deserve.

  Sometimes, I mean. Sometimes you get what you deserve. Charlie Love—my pop’s shortstop and leadoff hitter who unloaded oil with Pop and had the locker next to his—did not get what he deserved. He deserved more.

  A month before I got my draft notice, Pop’s team made the Metropolitan Rhode Island Playoffs. This was huge. Everybody suspected that this might be Pop’s last year, and the Socony Red Sox’s slow start in Apr
il, where they stood sixth in their division, put him into a real slump. He gave up nine homers, he made three errors in the field, and for the first time in twenty-one years with the Sox, his average dipped below .300.

  One morning at breakfast, when he was getting ready to go to the oil plant, he said, “You know what it could be? It could be that a ballplayer should just play ball. This working, I don’t know. What does this working all the time have to do with being a ballplayer?”

  Bethany had had an excellent summer, and the Ides were basking in the false confidence we clung to. She was lifeguarding at the Crestwood Country Club and had an Indian tan. She buttered her toast and listened to Pop.

  “Getting the old stick around . . . well, I think all the lifting and pulling of the oil hoses, my swing just seems a step off. I don’t know.”

  Pop drank some coffee, and we were all pretty quiet. We were a family that had placed a pretty high premium on Pop’s natural swing, and now he was baffled.

  “I just don’t know.”

  Bethany didn’t look up from her toast.

  “You got a hitch, Pop, that’s for sure. Course, this new stance makes it hard for me to tell.”

  “What new stance?” Pop said, putting his coffee down.

  “It’s Pop’s same old stance,” I laughed.

  “Nope.”

  “Bethany,” Mom said, “your father’s stance is the same one he had in American Legion ball. Eat your toast.”

  Bethany got up and took one of Pop’s bats out of the umbrella basket. “Here’s Pop’s stance. Right? Right?”

  “Yeah,” I said, getting bored.

  “Now you take your stance, Pop.”

  “C’mon . . .” I whined.

  Pop shrugged and took the bat from Bethany and got into his stance. Bethany stayed in hers.

  “That’s my stance,” he said.

  “That’s it,” Mom said admiringly.

  “No,” said Bethany, “that’s not your stance. I’m doing your stance. See, my front heel is off the ground, and your front heel is flat.”

  Mom’s hand covered her mouth. I stared in astonishment. Pop about fainted.

  “Right,” he said. “Yes, yes, yes.”

  That night, against the Pawtucket Penguins, Pop started in left field. He hit a homer, a triple, a double, and a single for the cycle, and even though going into the ninth they were down 4–3, we all felt that a win was in the cards—especially since Charlie Love singled, then stole second with one out. Charlie Love was a complicated man for East Providence. He was short and a little fat—in the hips and butt, I mean—but he had pretty good speed for a man in his forties. He was balding like one of those monks, so he never took off his baseball cap, and he always had his uniform laundered before each game. He also was the only bachelor on the club, and although Charlie would tell a continuous line of dirty stories about his many girlfriends, it was pretty clear that Charlie was very womanly. I guess, effeminate. One game I remember in particular, because it was the only game that a downright free-for-all broke out, was against that Irish mob, the Riverside Rollers. They were a lousy team, but, God, could they get on a player. This one night they were on Charlie hard. He hit a home run and played excellent shortstop for the Sox, and after a second base hit, one of the Rollers yelled “Fag,” and then they all started yelling about “the little fag,” “homo,” “fruitcake,” and making sucking sounds. After ten minutes of this stuff, my pop called time and asked the coach of the Rollers to have his guys knock it off because there were kids around, but the coach, who had been drinking ’Gansetts all night and was probably not much of a strategist anyway, gave Pop the finger, which Pop took and bent back to the coach’s wrist. This cleared the benches, and these old guys stood there bombing each other with punches.

  So anyway, Charlie’s on second and looking for a sacrifice or a hit to score, and Pop steps up. Something was going to happen, you could feel it. He took a strike. Then three balls. The pitcher had given Pop all the respect he possibly could, but everybody knew what was coming—three and one. Pop cracked that fastball and sent it to deepest center. Back, back, looked like it was going, but the center fielder caught it backpedaling and hit his cutoff man. Charlie had tagged up the instant the ball entered the glove and sprinted toward third. The cutoff man whirled and fired for home, which by now Charlie Love was charging for like a steam engine.

  Now, it’s important not to forget that this was the Metropolitan Playoffs and Pop had got his heel up thanks to my sister. It was inevitable that this afternoon would get burned into memory even without that one lonely dark cloud in an otherwise sunny sky. I can see them all, another of my clear memories, standing tense and screaming for Charlie to slide. I can see him go into his crouch and start to spring out, as if it were in slow motion and I was watching it again and again.

  I think he became illuminated for a fraction of a second, but it’s the one thing that’s not clear, so perhaps he didn’t. Before he could complete the slide and while he was still on his feet, the lightning found him. It popped into his head on entry and found the earth out of his left leg. The bolt flipped his hat off and set it on fire and, for some reason, set his belt on fire, too. He landed facedown in his slide position, two arms extended, but stopped about one inch from home plate.

  For a moment everyone was still, stunned by the electricity that leaped from that one small cloud and struck Charlie out. The relay would have been late anyway. The cutoff man threw wild, and the ball sailed over the catcher’s head and rested against the backstop. The players and fans approached the prone, unmoving Charlie Love, almost as if he still had the electricity in him. Then Hy Cramer, the chiropractor, broke through the circle of people and took charge.

  “Jesus,” said Hy, kneeling by Charlie’s head. He reached over and picked up his hat by its bill. Everyone looked at the flames. “This goddamn hat is actually burning,” marveled Hy.

  My pop knelt down, too, and so did the catcher, who brushed the ball against Charlie’s outstretched hand to seal the play.

  “Fried dead,” said Hy.

  That turned out to be Pop’s last game. I was drafted the next month, September, and told to report in November. I got a little job frying clam cakes at Horton’s Fish Market and fished the Shad Factory whenever I could. Then, in October, Bethany walked off.

  I still say that, don’t I? Notice that? She “disappeared” or she “walked off.” We all talked like that, even to each other, because it tends to soften the actuality of it. And the actuality of it is that her voice took her. I never spoke to Mom or Pop about my fears—they had enough of their own, and probably we all had the same ones—but in August, about the time when Charlie Love burned up, I was afraid that Bethany’s voice was becoming bigger and stronger than we were.

  I came home from work around five and immediately sensed a feeling in the house of action. The tension, the wait, was gone. Mom was on the phone to the police, to her friends, to people at church. Pop had his road atlas spread over the kitchen table and was making some marks with a red crayon.

  “Maybe she’s just with some friends. Maybe she’s at the beach,” I said.

  Pop took a note out of his pocket and handed it to me. The penmanship was crazy, and most of the words were printed as a child might print them.

  Gone, I am gone

  Babalask and gone

  The sun, shit, shit

  I read the words and felt cold. I gave the note back to Pop.

  “This time we’ll have to commit. This time,” he uttered. My pop was mumbling to himself and crying, but only a little.

  I rode the Raleigh around Kent Heights and into Riverside, but I had a feeling she wasn’t close by. Her note upset me a lot. I would call her name and feel the anger in my voice. Maybe anger wasn’t the word. Maybe fear. Pop drove his usual route, and we linked up at home around nine-fifteen. Mom told us a police cruiser stopped by, and there were no leads. At times like this, the Ide kitchen was more a command central than a family
room.

  Pop leaned on the table and nodded at Mom’s news. It was a small room, our kitchen, like all the rooms in our house, but that night we were small, too. We fit nicely. I even remember a steady breeze through the window over the sink and Mom’s fine brown hair waving in it. I knew that Norma watched, too, behind those fluttering venetian blinds, watched the movement in the kitchen and the long shadows we threw. I thought about Norma that night and how we all had stopped going over, little by little, until for everybody it was too late.

  “Okay. I’m going to call Al Prisco at the plant and tell him I can’t work for a few days. We’ll get a good night’s sleep, then start in Barrington. Did you try the water tower?”

  “Yes, sir,” I said. It was the only time I called my pop “sir.”

  “Okay. All right. Let’s get some rest.”

  Mom and Pop didn’t sleep well. In the morning they looked old. That was the look they had in Bethany searches. Old. After a while I managed to fall asleep. I dreamed I was me but wasn’t me, and when horrible things started happening to me, I could watch it happen from some safe place. I was set on fire, and nobody helped me. Even me watching from that safe place couldn’t help. Or wouldn’t help. And because it was my darling sister who put a torch to me, what I watched were her eyes. It wasn’t bad, because I could see that they weren’t her eyes but almost purple, like the bottom of a lake, or a bruise.

  In the morning, and for three weeks of mornings, we got out of bed strong. By afternoon we fell back hard under the weight of our own failure, until finally, when we found her, we had no energy for each other.

  25

  Monday Night

  (Couple of rings.)

  Norma: Hello?

  Me: Norma?

  (I hear a catch of breath and a pause, as if she is determined not to say what she needs to. It comes anyway.)

  Norma: I’m not gonna jump up and down, Smithy, you have to know that. I’m not Norma, little next-door Norma that you can pat, just pat, pat on the head. I’ve got, I’ve got . . . I’ve got responsibility. I do. I take care, is all—Bea, the architects I draw for, layouts, prints, and I even write articles and things about being kids and being in wheelchairs, and these things I do make me . . . make me necessary. I’m a necessary person. Woman. And if you think I wait by the phone, if I have to wait by the phone because you call and then you don’t call and don’t call and there are . . . there are . . . and . . . bicycles and . . . and . . .