They had all the right gear: Orvis fly rods, Medalist reels, waders perfect for drowning. I wanted it to go well. Recognizing that I needed to make an effort if I wanted to feel less crazy, I even pretended I thought it was okay that they fished with live bait: eight-inch worms, live grasshoppers attached to hooks with model airplane glue. They even told me a story about plugging for bass with live mice. Still, I could not help but admire their results.
I watched in horror as their bloodworms pulled more trout from that creek than I had seen, much less caught, all year, with my father’s sportsmanship and wet flies. With each Ortley outing I grew sulkier and more resentful of the ungentlemanly tactics they used to spell success. Frustrated and embarrassed that my inability to fit in at St. Luke’s had reduced me to this level of low, I did not tell my father that I, too, had resorted to fishing with live bait.
On the second to last weekend of the school year, as the Ortleys and I stood midstream in adolescence, Chas suddenly asked, “Wanna see something wicked cool?”
Lacking my brother’s strength of character, I said, “Yeah, I guess.” Before I knew what I had agreed to, Chas’s twin, Peter, pulled a Zippo lighter and a bright red cherry bomb out of his pocket.
Firecrackers in general, and cherry bombs in particular, in my father’s cautionary dinner table tales were “invitations to losing a few fingers or an eye.” The excitement of the forbidden distracted me. The cherry bomb was being tied to a rock. I didn’t know what was happening until it was too late. Rock, with cherry bomb attached, was heaved into the pool I had been fishing. A moment later, a soggy “boom” erupted from the spring-fed depths, followed by a whoosh of muddy water and smoke-filled bubbles, followed by dead trout. The only symptom the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual: Mental Disorders said I lacked, I had now acquired: “tortures animals.”
“Stop!” I shouted, but these friends I no longer wanted to have didn’t hear me. “I fucking mean it.”
“Don’t be a wuss.” Two cherry bombs were now being strung to a second rock.
“Put it down.” The lighter was aflame. What lit my fuse was that when I started to cry, they laughed. Feeling sorry for myself and the fish, mad at myself, angry about the fish, I swung wild. My new Shakespeare fly rod snapped clean just above the cork handle and broke across the bridge of Chas’s pug nose.
I didn’t see the blood. The bomb was lit. Peter Ortley was running toward my father’s favorite trout pool. The twin fuses sparkled in midair. It was a mistake to kick him in the balls. Rock and cherry-bombs bola’ed toward my head. I held up my hand to keep it from hitting me in the face. Reflex action kept it from blowing out my eye. I felt the heat of the explosion spread up my arm as the blast deafened me to the white noise of the river and Peter Ortley’s cries for help.
My hand was bloody and numb. His waders were filled with water. Both things happened just the way my father had said they would. Peter nearly drowned, and I lost the tip of my left index finger.
All three of us had to go to the hospital. I told my father everything that had happened. I was surprised he wasn’t more angry with me. I knew he hadn’t really listened to what I said when I overheard him tell my mother, “If nothing else, it shows he has a strong sense of self.” My father stuck up for his children just often enough to make it seem like it was your fault when he didn’t.
The Ortleys were expelled. The headmaster, being a fly-fisherman and a member of the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, let me off with a warning. Now, in addition to all the other things I still wasn’t at St. Luke’s, I was now the new boy suck-up crazy enough to lose the end of a finger trying to save the lives of a bunch of fish he spent every weekend trying to kill.
I wasn’t the only one who was out of his mind. The night after I had my stitches taken out, we stayed up late watching TV. We cheered as Bobby Kennedy won the California primary. He’d just finished his acceptance speech, promised to see everybody in Chicago, and then he was dead.
By the start of my freshman year in high school, I was so desperate to be well, I resolved to be more like my brother, to say no to craziness. As we drove off down the drive for the first day of my second year at St. Luke’s in September 1968, I asked Willy, “What do you think my biggest flaw is?” I knew I was taking a risk.
“You’re not me.” Willy smirked, but at least he didn’t turn on the radio.
“I know, I’m me. But what I mean is, what could someone who’s in the position of being me do to make you, for instance, like me . . . more . . . a little.”
“Did Dad tell you to ask me this?”
“No.” He looked at me suspiciously, like he thought I had a tape recorder hidden in my briefcase.
“Because, Zach, I don’t dislike you, I feel sorry for you.”
“Why?” It was like getting someone else to pick my scab.
“Because you think Mom and Dad know everything.”
“No, I don’t.”
“Then why do you say yes to everything they ask you?”
“It’s easier.” I felt stupid saying I wanted them to be happy.
“You’ve got to think for yourself. You’re almost fourteen years old. Grow up. Your problem is basically . . .”—Willy thought for a moment—“. . . a fundamental lack of character.”
“How do I get that?”
“You don’t get it, you earn it.”
“What would you do if I said I was ready to earn it, to work for it.”
“I’d say, as usual, you’re just telling somebody what they want to hear.”
“Hypothetically . . .”—I did my best imitation of my father— “theoretically, for the sake of argument, what could I do that would make you want me to sit down and hang out with you and your friends at lunch. And not just so one of them could pull the chair out from under me.”
Willy laughed and squeezed the hard, dirty rubber ball he kept in the front seat to strengthen his finger muscles while he was driving. “Get me a date with Constance Murdoch.”
“Who’s she?”
“A girl.”
“I figured that much.” I never heard my brother mention her before. Willy kept his interests in that department to himself. “What’s so special about her?”
“All the guys on the track team say she’s the best-looking girl in town. Shot every one of them down. If she’s the best, then why settle for less?” He was talking to himself. Still, it was the longest conversation we’d had in a number of years.
“Why don’t you ask her out yourself?”
“She goes to boarding school in Rhode Island.” My brother was still squeezing the rubber ball.
“Look, how am I going to introduce you to someone who doesn’t even go to school here? Give me something I have a chance at.”
“Do five miles under thirty.”
“What?”
“Run five miles in under half an hour.”
My brother was surprised when he saw me that afternoon at the tail end of a line of twenty-odd freshmen and sophomore boys signing up for the junior varsity cross-country team. He was even more surprised when I put on my sneakers and followed in his footsteps and began to run. We started out with a three-mile jog. I walked the second mile and limped the third.
That night, every muscle in my body screamed in protest. I felt like I had been disassembled and put back together incorrectly. After my mother helped me rub Ben-Gay on my legs, I got into bed stinking of menthol and reexamined what the DSM had to say about sadomasochism.
Much to my amazement, after two weeks of cross-country, my lungs ceased to burn, my legs stopped feeling like they were being flayed, and I was finally able to complete the three-mile course Coach Wyler called a “stroll” without becoming separated from my lunch. My father was so hopeful of a long-distance rapprochement between his sons, he bought me a pair of the same expensive kangaroo-hide running shoes Willy wore in his victories. They made me feel like I was running faster, even though I still came in last.
; Mind, body, or heart. I’m still not sure which part of me was most ill suited to long-distance running. If the sun was shining and the sky blue and there was the slightest breeze at my back, I could not resist the urge to start off faster than was wise. And when it was cold and drizzly, I lagged behind right from the start, as if I were waiting for a change in the weather to inspire me.
On those rare occasions when I found myself in the lead and actually had a chance to beat someone, I would suddenly feel so unfamiliarly good about myself, my mind would wander off course. The sight of a pond, its surface glimmery with thin ice, would make me wonder how many snapping turtles were sleeping in the mud of its bottom. The vapor trail of a jet passing overhead at thirty thousand feet would prompt fantasies of myself not as I was but as the first-class passenger I would become once I had character.
Once I let one kid pass me in a track meet, I’d be so busy convincing myself that coming in second wouldn’t be so bad, my pace would slow even further, and then another boy would overtake me. And then as I struggled to lower my sights to third, another one would pass me. The worst thing was seeing my father clap when I came in last.
The final meet of the fall, I made my best showing, thirteenth out of twenty-six, the middle of the pack. Coach Wyler said, “Nice try.”
My mother said, “You’re getting better.”
My father waited until I caught my breath to ask me, “What are you thinking about out there?”
“Running.” I wasn’t about to tell my father the truth, and he knew it.
“You’re soft. Soft mentally and physically.”
“What?”
All the other dads were patting their sons on the back, giving them cups of cocoa. “I could take you right now. In street shoes. And I’m fifty years old.” He was fifty-one.
“No, you couldn’t.” Willy’s voice was cold and matter-of-fact. He didn’t like either one of us, but if he had to choose . . .
When I went out to put my book bag in the back of my parents’ Volvo, I heard my parents talking in the parking lot. My mother was mad at my father. “You shouldn’t have said that to Zach.”
“I said it so Willy could stick up for him. I wanted to give the boys something to bond over.”
My seemingly lackadaisical disinterest in winning had a strange way of devaluing the prize, the ribbon, or cup Willy invariably won. My brother was the state champion now. Photographs appeared in newspapers of his breaking the tape at the finish line, arms raised, body pitched forward, eyes already looking ahead to the next race.
By the spring of 1969, I was less than four minutes away from running five miles in thirty minutes. My parents knew about Willy’s challenge by now, and it had become something of a family joke about what would transpire between us when and if I ever met his challenge.
It was around this time, I think, that my father suggested we go on a double date. Having been sent to an all-boys’ school while still in puberty, my experience with girls my own age was nonexistent. Having never gone on a date with a girl, the idea of stepping out in virgin territory with my brother watching was a nightmare.
Willy wasn’t much of a dater, either. Girls were always paying attention to him, but he was so busy running, he only asked girls out when his star status at St. Luke’s demanded his attendance at a school dance and he needed someone on his arm to impress his teammates. On those rare occasions, he would double-date with his best friend, Emory Nicholas, a two hundred and forty pounder with a strangely high-pitched voice who threw the hammer, javelin, and shot put. I found it interesting that they both went for the same type—blonde, overeager, and big boobed. As Emory put it in his near castrato tenor, “Sure things.”
It was Emory who had told Willy about Constance Murdock. From our limited conversations about the mythic beauty, I inferred Constance wasn’t easy. This, coupled with the fact that she was the New England girls’ champion in the mile, prompted me to imagine her as a female mirror image of Willy. I could imagine Willy making love to himself.
They had met the year before at a winter track meet outside of Boston that Willy had attended with my parents. I wasn’t there. My mother said she was pretty. My father called her “unusual.” Which pissed Willy off. I tried on more than one occasion to get Willy to talk about Constance, but at the mere mention of her name, he’d smile and say, “No.”
Willy wasn’t amused by the prospect of a double date, but I could see he was looking forward to having me as a friend, now that it was clear to one and all that he had set the terms of our bond.
One morning in the last week of March, as I was checking my list against the contents of my briefcase, my father took me aside and told me, “It’s time for you to quit dawdling.” Willy was outside waiting behind the wheel of the Skylark. I thought my father was talking about being late to school.
“I’m not dawdling.”
“You and I both know that you could run five miles in thirty minutes if you really wanted to.” Willy honked the horn for me to hurry up.
“He’ll do it when he’s ready.” My mother still watched to make sure my head was screwed on straight.
“You’re putting it off because you’re ambivalent.”
“About what?” My mother and I said the words simultaneously.
“About having a friendship with his brother.” Of course, he was right.
I didn’t like it when my father talked about me in the third person, like I was one of his patients. For so many months, running had seemed the cure. Now, suddenly, a few words from my father and a brain that needed a smooth combing had turned the cure into a symptom.
Overdosed with family, a delicate balance within myself was shifting. The need to say yes versus the need to say no versus the need not to feel crazy anymore. My feelings were further complicated when I passed my brother in the hall that day after lunch, and he not only talked to me, he stopped to inquire, “What’s wrong?”
“I’m nervous.”
“About what?”
“I’m going for it. Five miles, thirty minutes, today’s the day.” I tried to sound more Clint Eastwood than John Wayne.
“I understand.” He didn’t. But he filled Coach Wyler in on the time trial. At three o’clock, my brother unstrapped his chronograph and buckled it onto my wrist. The whole track team, JV and varsity, were assembled behind the field house. They all knew of the challenge now.
Coach Wyler drew out the course I would run in the dirt with a stick from the popsicle he had just finished. “Gentlemen, since no hills were specified in your challenge, I suggest up through the sanctuary, twice around town, then back down through the goalposts.”
I shook my head no. “Too many distractions. I want to run on the road.” My brother nodded in agreement. “Five miles is five miles.” A new course was imposed by Coach Wyler. “Fair enough. Zach’ll go out the back, turn right on 512, left onto Mill Road, then take Long Lane, then back through town and in the front gate.” I pulled off my sweats. Coach Wyler mounted his bicycle. My brother shook his head no.
“You don’t need to go with him, Coach.”
“I don’t mean to impugn your little brother’s character, but how are we gonna know he’s run the full five miles?” Everyone laughed except me and Willy.
“I trust him.” Suddenly, in that moment, we really were friends.
I ran as I had never run before. I forgot about my father and my mother and the warmth of my brother’s handshake and listened only to the beat of my heart. Matching its rhythm to my stride, I kept my eyes down to avoid getting caught in the vapor trails of jets or the dreams of sleeping turtles. I knew I was going to be okay, even before Willy’s chronometer told me I’d covered the first mile in five minutes and twenty-two seconds. Breathing easy, muscles relaxed, not a thought in my mind except covering ground with as little emotional involvement as humanly possible, I did the second mile in five seventeen.
As I turned onto the rutted macadam of Mill Road and passed the red silo that marked the halfwa
y point to victory, I had character. I wasn’t just a fourteen-and-a half-year-old, I was my own man. I had out-distanced all my doubts and ambivalence, and outrun even my family.
Heading down Long Lane now, the wind at my back, anything was possible. The road narrowed, potholes topped up by the morning rain reflected the grace of my velocity. Fields turned over but not yet planted, and hedgerows flecked with forsythia sweetened the air I breathed. I was so much better than fine that when a pickup piled high with baled hay barreled by me, blasting its horn as it showered me with a spray of pothole water, I did not lose stride or concentration.
I was fine until I took my eyes off the blur of ground beneath my feet to wipe the muddy water off my face . . . that’s when I saw her.
She stood atop a five-foot-high stone wall postered with signs that read “No Trespassing.” From a quarter-mile away, her body was so quiet, she looked almost like a statue. Curious, I quickened my pace to get a better look. Her hair was long and the color of butterscotch. Though the day was hot for the last of March, she was dressed for the summer to come, not for the spring that was. She had taken off her flannel shirt. At first I thought she was standing up there in just her bra. But now I was close enough to see the bra was the top to a bathing suit—which must have been a bikini, because it was skimpier than any of the bras my sisters or mother wore. Her jeans rode so low on her hips, I wasn’t imagining she wasn’t wearing any underwear. They were bell-bottomed and frayed, and secured with a macramé sash. My knowledge of hippies in the spring of ’69 was limited to what I’d seen on the pages of Rolling Stone magazine and read in an issue of Time with a cover with the words TUNE IN, TURN ON, DROP OUT. But that’s what I knew her instinctively to be. She was barefoot, her feet and her hands were dirty, her eyes were closed, and her arms outstretched. She stood as still and primeval as a lizard warming itself in the sun.
It is difficult to run with an erection, but it and I pressed on. I was almost upon her now. She must have heard me panting, but she showed no sign of it. She looked old to me . . . seventeen?
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