by Tom Murphy
“You covered for them?”
“Yes. Five years at Walpole was easy for me compared to the guilt they carried for something that wasn’t their fault.”
Bridget walked to the window and looked out. She stood with her back to Tim as she absorbed all that. I watched Tim Finn’s face, half expecting to see him crumble, but a new light shone in his lidded eyes, as if a heavy weight had been lifted off his shoulders.
“You can see why I couldn’t talk to you when you came to Hyde Park High last fall.”
“Where is she now, Tim? Where is Margaret?”
“I don’t know, honestly I don’t.”
“She wrote me this note in the last twenty-four hours. She’s someplace close by.”
“Like everybody, I thought she had been killed by the thugs who raided her convent during that civil war. This whole time, I thought she was dead, like everyone else, we all believed that.”
“You wouldn’t lie to me, Tim, please not now?”
“I’m telling you the truth, Bridget, I swear. We all thought she was dead.”
“I’m going to need to come back to you for more.”
“That’s fine, and I will help you. But let me ask you one favor. Do this thing, find your mother, but do it in a way that you don’t take Pop down, OK?”
“I agree. There’s no sense involving Pop.”
“Why don’t you talk to Young John. He was closest to Jock Semple. He might have information from his end at the B.A.A. He may know something about Margaret that can help you.”
“You’re a strong man, Tim.”
“I’m not, Bridget, but thank you.”
“Where to now?” I asked Bridget after we returned to the car.
“We’re going to take a cab ride in Connecticut.”
New London is a small town on the Connecticut shore. Old, brick buildings, warehouses during the whaling days, had been converted into malls with shops like J. Crew, while restaurants with nautical names on shellacked wooden signs occupied renovated storefronts. Early the next morning we drove to New London and found Johnny Kelley—“Young John”—hanging out in a taxi queue at the Amtrak station in a 50s Buick turned Yellow Cab.
“Bridget,” he said. “I got your message you called. What’s up?”
“I need your help, John.”
“I was about to run this sailor out to Foxwoods so he could make a donation. Hop in.”
“Hell, I don’t do donations,” said the sailor, all of twenty and shorn of all his hair. “I’m the ace of Black Jack in Tennessee.”
“See what I mean?” said Young John.“A donor. If you don’t mind taking a ride to the casino, we can talk.”
We made an incongruous picture: the shorn sailor sitting in the back of the cab with me, counting his bills, while John J. Kelley, America’s best runner from a quarter century earlier, drove his sister’s cab. The cab company, with the single cab, was his sister’s company, but Johnny Kelley enjoyed driving part-time—“to rub elbows with characters,” he said—after he retired as the town’s most beloved schoolteacher. Next to Johnny in the cab rode Bridget, America’s first elite female runner, who peppered him with questions about a nun from El Salvador.
“Nobody on Jock’s team talked about nuns. But they did talk about things that would have gotten them into trouble with the nuns,” Johnny said, exercising his sardonic wit.
“I can imagine. Anything else you remember about the 1951 Boston Marathon?”
“As I told you when I saw you in Boston, the ’51 race was important to Jock and your dad, especially with the Japanese sending over a strong team. Everybody in America, all the guys who fought in the War, were rooting for an American team to carry the day. Both Pop and Jock wanted to be heroes by winning the team prize. But when it came to Pop and Jock they’d combine events in countless ways to create a storyline favorable to them, you know that. So 1 never knew who to believe.”
“You ever hear the name ‘Delaney’ mentioned?”
“I don’t recall ever meeting anyone by that name, but I do know there’s a Delaney on a plaque at the Hyde Park VFW Hall.”
“What plaque?”
“The Hyde Park race in March, ’51, a month before Boston, was the only time the D.A.A. beat our B.A.A. for the team prize in a run-up to the marathon. To rub it in, those D.A.A. guys had a plaque made, a big one, with the names of all the runners on their team, and they hung it in the VFW Hall. Every March we had to go to that Hall for the final tune-up before Boston and that plaque would stare us in the face. The four Finn brothers’ names were on it, but so was the name ‘Delaney.’ Staring at that plaque year after year, that’s not something you forget.”
“When we gonna be there?” said the sailor, as he finished counting his money again, this time sideways.
“Soon enough, lad, for you to make your contribution,” said Johnny, then he paused before he turned back to Bridget. “There is another thing I remember about 1951. I remember Jock got hot under the collar at Pop about a particular bill. They were both co-directors and equally responsible for the operation of the race. I remember Jock calling out your dad for allowing a double billing for the gold medal that year.”
“Double-billing?”
“Yes, the B.A.A. had been billed for two gold medals and Jock wanted to contest the bill, claiming it was an error. The diamond on that medal can get expensive, as you know, and Jock was frugal. But Pop told him not to worry, he’d take care of it. Their discussion carried quite a lot of heat.”
We turned a corner and came upon the Foxwoods Casino, a garish faux palace in the middle of the woods, the sight of which lit the sailor’s eyes as bright as the lights on a slot machine.
“Stop!” he shouted.
Young John pulled to the curb to let him out and the kid paid John, but the sailor shoved the change into his pocket without offering a tip.
“See,” Johnny said, with a wink, as the sailor sped through the chrome doors to do his business. “Your old man and Jock were two of the simpler characters I’ve had to contend with in my time.”
The VFW Hall sat in the middle of a busy thoroughfare in Hyde Park. The building, a sagging brick structure with a small yard in severe need of weeding, was located down the block from a tired town center. Tim Finn was waiting outside as Bridget and I pulled up and parked in front of the hall.
“Good of you to come, Tim,” she said.
“I’m as eager as you are to ensure Margaret is OK.”
Inside the hall, an old man with puffy eyes sat behind a desk in a flannel shirt, blowing smoke rings. His name was Smokey McKee, the custodian of the building.
“Hey, Finn,” he said. “Great news about your brother winning again.”
“Thanks, Smokey. You don’t mind if I take a moment to show these folks around?”
“No, not at all. Your brother hiring yet?”
“Sorry, Smokey, he’s got his team in order already.”
“Tell him I need a job, Tim. Something that pays more than this, with benefits.”
“Keep doin’ what you’re doing, Smokey, guarding the Dunkin’ Donuts, you’ll be OK.”
The main room looked like an extension of the ‘marathon museum’ in Pop’s house with road race pictures all around. Tim gestured for us to follow him to a wall across from Smokey’s desk. On the wall was a plaque dated, “March 1951,” with a list of names, including, “M. Delaney.”
“My mother?” Bridget said.
Tim nodded, as the cell phone in Bridget’s purse rang. “What, Stan?” She nodded, then folded the phone and put it away. “Junior,” she said to me.
“What’s up?”
“Stan thinks Junior senses something,” she said, and she turned to Tim again. “Keep going, what about the plaque?”
“Sit down,” he said, and he pointed to a couch. “Let me tell you a s
tory.”
We sat on the couch as he pulled up a folding chair.
“A girl, blonde, prettiest blue eyes I’d ever seen, she lived around the corner from me in the Uphams Corner neighborhood when I was eighteen. She was just sixteen, and she asked me if she could run with me as I jogged to Fields Corner one afternoon. Of course, I said yes, though that was unheard of, a girl running in the roads. But she was fast, fast as me almost, and we hit it off, especially when I learned she was my girlfriend, Delia’s, kid sister. Then one day she asked if she could run a race with me, and I thought she was kidding, but I thought, hey, this could be a kick. Hyde Park was the final tune-up before Boston that spring in 1951, and Bailey, our fifth man, had a pulled hamstring, so I let her run.”
“You let her run on Pop’s D.A.A. team?”
“You need a shot, Tim?” Smokey said, as he held up a bottle of Jameson.
Tim waved him off as Smokey poured himself a drink, and Tim continued to tell us everything.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
I waited outside security at Logan Airport for Ellen who was flying back from Colorado that evening.
My heart skipped a beat when I saw her and it jumped again when she waved to me with both hands high above her head. We were holding each other tight in baggage claim waiting for her luggage when my eye caught a banner for the 10 O’clock News, “Exclusive to Channel 6,” on the TV above the carousel.
“Whoa!” I said, “What’s this?” The picture cut to a shot of Steele standing outside the VFW Hall in Hyde Park. He had Smokey standing beside him.
“We are live in Hyde Park with a story based on a tip offered by this gentleman, Francis ‘Smokey’ McKee, who says Pop Gallagher, the epitome of integrity at the Boston Marathon for nearly thirty years, lied about circumstances surrounding the first woman to run a marathon on American soil. Tell us, Smokey.”
“I was dustin’ the trophy case, like I do every day, when I seen the plaque, the one you got in your hand there, and it all just came back to me. I said to myself, ‘I don’t remember Pop’s D.A.A. team ever having a regular runner named, ‘Delaney.’”
“Who’s that?” said Ellen.
“A saint we met this afternoon. Jesus Christ!”
Smokey continued: “So I checked into it and I realized ‘M’ Delaney was the sister of a girl, Delia Delaney, who used to help Pop with race administration.”
As he spoke the TV showed photos of the D.A.A. team from the 50s, including the picture from Roman’s office of Delia sitting at a race administration table wearing a red hood.
“Delia was Tim Finn’s girlfriend and she had a kid sister named Margaret who wanted to run.”
“Pop’s rules precluded women from competing,” said Steele. “Why did Pop let a woman compete on his team?”
“It was Finn’s idea. The D.A.A. had a man, Bailey, who was injured, and Finn let Margaret Delaney replace Bailey. He put her in a red hood, a sweatshirt he borrowed from Delia, so neither Pop or Jock would see the subterfuge. Oh, she ran like the wind and beat half the men. Pop’s D.A.A. beat Jock’s B.A.A. in that big Hyde Park tune-up for the Boston Marathon because of her.”
“Continue,” said Steele.
“That’s how Margaret got her name on the plaque. Finn put it there, ‘M. Delaney,’ just her initial. Imagine, the same thing Kathrine Switzer did 16 years later, signing her initials, ‘K.V. Switzer’ on her application for the 1967 Boston Marathon. It worked for a girl in 1951, too.”
“Amazing,” Steele said, “Tell us, how did Pop Gallagher lie?”
“You fellas pay for this information, don’t ya? There’s some kind of compensation?”
Steele nodded vaguely, enough to prompt Smokey to continue and as he spoke, the picture showed war scenes from the Pacific theatre in World War II.
“At the 1951 Boston Marathon, the Japs were still smartin’ from losing the war and (bleep). Oops, can’t say that on TV, I guess. But the Japs planned to win the team prize to make up for getting bombed and (bleep). Sorry, force a habit. Both Pop and Jock wanted their boys to hold off the Japs, but Tim Finn convinced Pop they needed ‘M.’ Delaney on the team. Pop went crazy when he heard ‘M.’ was a girl, but Pop wanted to win the prize very bad, so he let Tim Finn put Delia’s red hood on Margaret, and Pop let her run in the ’51 Boston Marathon. That’s how Pop Gallagher knowingly permitted the first girl to run in the Boston Marathon, and he’s been lying about it ever since.”
The screen showed Freddie Norman’s picture of the runner in a red hood on Heartbreak Hill in 1951, then the shot cut to Steele for the close.
“So there you have it. Tonight we know that Pop Gallagher, staunchest defender of the rules against women—a man who once blocked his own daughter from crossing the finish line—permitted the first woman to run in the Boston Marathon, a woman named Margaret Delaney in 1951. This makes Margaret Delaney the first woman to run a marathon in America and calls for a total re-writing of the history of women’s running. This has been a Channel 6 exclusive.”
“Where did he get all that?” Ellen said, as she stood frozen in baggage claim, her hands covering her mouth.
When we got to Pop’s house, a huge crowd including several news crews had formed on the sidewalk, along with the kid on the bike.
“Like in the movies, old dude’s been holed up in there for hours,” said the kid.
We edged our way through the crowd making our way to the front door, where we were joined by Bridget. Ellen glared at her mother.
“You did this!”
“No,” Bridget said. “This is not what I wanted.”
“You created this situation,” Ellen said and she pushed her way to the front door, where Pop opened the door just a notch so Ellen could squeeze through as two or three news reporters thrust microphones under Bridget’s chin on the front porch.
“Ms. Maloney, what can you tell us about Pop’s lie?”
“I’ll kick his ass,” she said, turning on her heel, and I knew what she was talking about.
“I tried to hold them off,” Stan said, when Bridget and I got to the station.
Junior stood beaming in a corner of the newsroom.
“Wait till your father hears about what you did,” Bridget said, but he smiled even wider.
“My father ordered this.”
“He what!”
“You never could cross the finish line. Those were my father’s exact words.”
She shook her head in total disbelief.
“How does it feel not to be in bed with my father any longer.”
I never saw it coming, it came so fast, her hand as she whipped it around and slapped Junior full in the face, leaving red marks on his cheek from the outline of her fingers.
“You little twisted turd piece of crap!”
I rushed out the door to catch her as she hurried to her car.
“Where are you going?”
“To New York, to confront him, and I’m not even stopping to catch a plane.”
She spun pebbles as she pulled her car out of the parking lot and took the turn onto the main highway on two wheels.
Back at Pop’s house, I stood on the sidewalk out of the way of the crowd, which had grown larger even at that late hour and I tried to get Ellen on her phone inside. But she did not answer.
“When do they start shooting?” said the kid on the bike.
“Don’t you ever go to bed?”
“And miss all the action? This is better than anything on TV,” he said, and I watched as he pedaled up and down the block looking for fresh angles in the crowd to observe the action.
That’s when my phone rang and I thought it was Ellen getting back to me. But it was my brother’s wife Rosemary.
“Colin!” she said, nearly hysterical.
“Rosemary? What’s up?”
“It’s Kenny, Colin!”
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“What about Kenny?”
“He’s been shot!”
“What?”
“In the back, in Brooklyn,” she said, crying hysterically, and all I could decipher through her tears was, “Come quick, Colin, he’s in a coma!”
I rushed up the steps to Brooklyn Hospital in Fort Greene where a group of cops met me in the lobby. They told me how it had been a botched sting. Kenny had taken a position in the front leading a team of six undercover policemen into a crack house when an informer working with them turned suddenly and fired off three rounds at Kenny, hitting him in the back, pow, pow, pow!
I ran to Intensive Care, but a nurse blocked me, “Sorry,” she said. “Only family beyond this point.”
I tried to explain but I didn’t have to because Rosemary, seven months pregnant, appeared and told them who I was.
The nurse backed off and Rosemary collapsed into my arms.
“Oh, Colin,” she said, “Oh, oh, oh...” on and on she cried.
Several doctors joined me along with several cops to lead Rosemary back to the waiting room where her three small boys sat in shock, until they saw me. They ran to me and hugged my arms and legs and whatever else they could grab onto.
Finally, after a day and a half of phone tag I was able to get through to Ellen. She told me Pop remained curled in bed and despite her efforts to feed him, he would not eat. She told me how she had waited till after midnight to go for her run, after the throng of media outside the house had quieted down.
“But this is nothing compared to what you’re dealing with,” she said. “How’s your brother?”
I told her how painful it was, knowing that I could have prevented this.
“Had I just said yes to Kenny when he asked me to start a security company with him none of this would have happened.”
“It’s not your fault,” she said, but I brushed that off. I told her to go for her run at night if that worked to relax her. She said it did, and she said she was still focused on winning the Boston Marathon, more than ever, to do it for Pop.