The Memory of Running

  Bill never got much mail, so one day while I was reading a letter from my sister, one of the few she sent, he sat down next to me.

  “Good news?”

  “Just my sister.”

  “She fine?”

  “I guess.”

  “Pretty?”

  “Oh, yeah.”

  “What she say?”

  It was raining outside our tent, and I remember how much it felt like Boy Scout camp. That was the war to me. I didn’t get it. I just didn’t know. Small, muddy ponds formed in Alpha Base, and streams flowed under our plywood floorboards.

  “My sister writes sort of strange.”

  “What?”

  Bill lit a cigarette and gave me one. Marlboros. Marlboro Country. I took a drag and looked back at the letter.

  “Well, Bethany, that’s my sister, she says she knows a lot of secrets, and one of them is that when her voice tells her to scratch and claw at her face or pull out her hair, it’s a stage she must go through to get to a better Bethany. Also she knows where God lives, and sometimes at church she knows she could float around if she wanted to, but she doesn’t want to scare anybody.”

  Bill nodded and inhaled.

  “She says my folks are good but my pop is always watching her, and one day she might take a steak knife and cut her own head off. She says he’ll stop watching then. Also, she thinks I’m going to die over here.”

  Bill inhaled again. “I got two sisters. I got Tanya and I got Dorothy. Tanya is black, and Dorothy is brown. Same daddy, too. Tanya got a mouth. Girl can throw it. Yap, yap, yap. Dorothy like a mouse.”

  “They pretty?”

  “Tanya fine. Dorothy shit. She nice, though.”

  “That’s good, too,” I said. We finished our cigarettes silently, thirty seconds of smoky breath. The rain continued. Bill took out two more Marlboros and gave me one.

  “She crazy, then?”

  Out of our tent flap, across the mesh rubber walkway that connected us all, in a white prom gown, stood Bethany in her pose. It was one of the first times I had seen her clear. She stood in the rain but stood dry. Her smile, her hair, her eyes bounced sun where there was no sun.

  “Yes,” I said.

  Bill nodded and didn’t say anything else. After a while he got up and lay down on his bed. I just kept watching the rain until Bethany was gone.

  31

  He came around the edge of the front fender and stood, both hands on the hood, looking at me. At my bike. He was crying.

  “Oh,” he said. “Oh, no.”

  I was sitting with my legs out and I’m sure the dumbest look on my face the man had ever seen. I swayed from side to side.

  “Raleigh,” I said.

  “I can’t get to it,” he said. “If I got to it, I couldn’t pick it up.”

  Some birds swirled over us, and I could see, maybe, mist on another field, in the shape of a cloud. We were silent. I could feel blood under my hands that held me sitting.

  “Bike,” I said finally.

  He looked past me to the pieces of my maroon childhood.

  “No more bike. Are you going to die?”

  Bill Butler had asked me the same thing when they shot me. I was pretty sure I was, but I didn’t.

  “No.”

  “Can you get in my car?”

  “Can I get in your car?”

  We both waited, and he came clear, slowly. Bone-thin arms leaned flat against the car. Baggy jeans and a gray sweatshirt that covered him like a tent. Long, fine brown hair hung sweaty to his ears, and where no beard covered his milk-colored face, I saw large, square red blotches that looked ready to give way to spurts of blood. This is what I thought while we looked at each other: I thought how odd the lake in Maine ran in currents cool and warm. Mom counting by twos when I held my breath and clung underwater to rocks. I thought about a huge rock only inches from the surface and my pop and Bethany and me swimming out with yellow buoys and tying them fast to the underside of the rock so the motorboats wouldn’t crash into it. The red canoe. The mother ducks showing off their babies, begging for food in the breeze of the late-summer afternoon.

  His crying took me back from Maine.

  “I am so sorry,” he said still leaning on the hood of the pickup. It was blue. No, it was green. It was a green pickup.

  “You have to get to my truck. I don’t think I can let go of it. I’m sick. I’m very sick.”

  “You look sick,” I said. “My Raleigh . . .”

  “The bike is gone.”

  My bike, my bananas. That good, clear spring water in the good, clear plastic bottles.

  “You have to get in my truck.”

  “Your green truck?”

  “Yes.”

  The sun hung utterly red, a red ball with yellow fringe, inches above the tall sunflowers.

  “Come to my truck on your hands and knees.”

  I held my hands up to him and the corner of the pickup. “Blood,” I said.

  “Oh, God!” he sobbed. “Hands and knees, hands and knees.”

  I rolled onto my hands and knees and faced the truck like a bloodhound.

  “C’mon now. C’mon now. You can do it.”

  I could do it. I didn’t feel any pain. I remembered flying, but not landing. Hands and knees. Hands and knees. My paws left their bloody prints. Some cars slowed but did not stop. He pushed himself, a shuffle at a time, hands on the metal, to the passenger side and opened the door.

  “Jesus,” he gasped in exhaustion.

  I crawled into the cab of the pickup, lay on my side, then pushed up to a sitting position. He closed the door. In the time he took to work his way around the hood to the driver’s side, the sun had gone down completely. He pulled himself in, and we moved away from my Raleigh.

  “Clarion Mercy Hospital,” he said.

  Five minutes later he said, “The Mennonites administer Clarion Mercy Hospital. I go there sometimes.”

  I put my hands on the dashboard. I held myself that way. As long as you sit up, you can’t die.

  “Breasts,” I said sort of casually. “Titties, she said, but afterward pointing pussy. And how sorry, of course, and embarrassed. Pickerel.”

  The sick and skinny man stepped on the gas.

  We pulled onto the half circle drive of the emergency-room entrance. He got out of the pickup and made his way, in slow motion, to the passenger side.

  “I’m coming,” he gasped, “don’t worry.”

  He had just put his hand on the door handle when two uniformed emergency medical workers, a black man and a huge woman in orange and green, firmly eased him into a wheelchair.

  He tried to speak, but the woman pivoted the wheelchair and began to push him up a ramp toward double doors.

  “We’ll get him comfortable.” The black man nodded at me reassuringly.

  I nodded back.

  I watched them disappear through the light blue doors. I glanced about me. My eyes were cold, and I could feel the blood hardening on my arm and my back. I took a good, deep breath and fell asleep.

  I thought of Faye Dunaway, and I dreamed Norma watched us in the barrels.

  “I’m sorry, Norma,” I said, opening my eyes.

  “Listen, you have to move this. You can’t block this entrance.”

  My eyes darted about until I found the black attendant leaning in the driver’s window.

  “You have to move this.”

  I slid over, turned the ignition, and pulled around into Parking Lot B. I didn’t see Parking Lot A.

  I had no idea how long I’d been asleep. Not long, I guess, but the moon was out and three-quarters bright, the way it is in the country. I got out of the truck and walked to the emergency room. There was no one at the admitting desk, so I went into the men’s room. I had a headache, and my balls hurt. I pulled my shirt over my head. The blood down my arm came from a slice just below the back of my neck. I wet a paper towel, two towels, and washed it down. I washed my arms. The caked blood ran blackish. My ass was pretty cut
, small cuts, but my underwear was soaked with blood. I threw them in the trash and washed myself with more towels. I put my shorts back on without undies. I washed the black-red parts of my legs. I turned my blue T-shirt inside out, but it was ruined, so I threw it away. I left the men’s room in shorts and sneaks. I like underwear. I do not feel great without that support, and the dark brown shorts, even with the strings tightened, felt as if they could slip off in a second.

  There were a few people in the waiting room. A little girl crying, an old man with his arm in a sling made of what looked like a really used handkerchief, a young black guy holding his head. There still wasn’t anybody at the admitting desk. I went into one of the examining rooms, but no one was there either. Every cabinet in the room had been marked in huge red letters. HEART. TRAUMA. WOUNDS. I opened WOUNDS. I took some white cream marked ANTIBACTERIAL and rubbed it onto my back slice, my arm cuts, and my ass, then covered them with huge Band-Aids. I found some aspirin, too. I took four, then put on a long green paper shirt and walked back to admitting.

  The huge woman emergency worker in the green-and-orange uniform was walking by. She recognized me from the pickup. She linked her muscular arm with mine, and I walked with her down the blue corridor.

  “Carl’s in number six. What we’ve done is got some fluid going, sugar and water. B1 shot, for what it’s worth. Carl has to be better aware of secondary infections. He hasn’t taken his AZT. You know it’s not fair of Carl to have it and not take it. There’s people all over the world waiting for it.”

  We walked into number six. This was where everybody had gone. There was a female doctor with a blond ponytail and horn-rimmed glasses, and a tall male doctor with a gray ponytail. Four nurses crowded in beside the gurney where Carl lay. One of them gave me a mask.

  “Carl! Now, Jesus Christ!” the male doctor shouted.

  “Look,” the lady doctor said to me, “we’ve got about a half hour more here; then he can go home, but I’m going to want to talk to both of you. Wait in the waiting room.”

  The huge woman gently pulled me out of Carl’s room and pushed me into the waiting area. I sat in the corner on a red molded plastic chair and fell asleep. I started to dream a good Norma dream, but it didn’t go anywhere, because some little boy with a gash over his nose stuck his thumb in my ear.

  “Jarrod, get your damned little thumb out of there!” an old woman yelled.

  “Ear,” he said.

  “Jarrod!”

  I didn’t know what to say. I didn’t want Jarrod to get in trouble, and I didn’t want the old lady to get all mad.

  “Balls,” I said reasonably. “As long as he doesn’t whack my balls. They hurt.”

  I smiled. I felt stupid, but again, like Bill Butler had told me, keep talking and don’t die.

  It was a lot longer than half an hour before they pushed the wheelchair, with Carl in it, down the blue corridor to the waiting room. The lady doctor walked alongside and spoke as she went. Bethany drifted on the other side, her arm punched up, her wonderful eyes half closed. Behind her lips the tiniest teeth. She left me when the doctor called out.

  “One problem child ready to go home.”

  My balls really ached. I remembered I had been hit and I had flown. I stood up and walked over to Carl and the doctor.

  “You’ve got your hands full,” she chuckled. “Seriously, though, if Carl didn’t assure us you could take good care of him, we wouldn’t release him. He speaks very highly of you.”

  I looked at Carl. He looked away from me.

  “Lots, I mean lots, of liquids. Soup. Juice, soda, I don’t care. And protein. Lots and lots.” She looked at me quietly. “Are you all right?”

  “Am I all right?”

  “Mr. . . .”

  “Smith . . . y.”

  “Smith.”

  “Ide.”

  “Ide?”

  “Smith Ide.”

  “Smith Ide?”

  “Smithy Ide. There’s a y. Sorry.”

  “Are you all right? You look . . .”

  Carl looked at me. I knew I had to talk. Talk or die.

  “My balls hurt. That’s all. They’re just . . . well . . . you know . . . aching balls. I’ve had bad balls . . . before . . . before your . . . see . . . your balls get like an egg, ostrich egg, and even if air gets on them . . . it’s . . . I mean . . . you know.”

  She looked at me, paused for a moment, and spoke to Carl. “Where’s Renny?”

  “Renny had to get back to New York.”

  “Just like that?”

  “The Big Apple. Top of the heap.”

  “God.”

  “This is the way the world ends.”

  She looked at me again, then back to Carl. “Let me admit you, Carl. It’s time now, honey.”

  It probably took three-quarters of all his strength, but Carl wheeled away. “No. Not here. Not in a hospital. I’m afraid enough.”

  The doctor went and put her arms around him. “Okay, honey, okay. I’m here, you know.”

  “I know.”

  She stood up tall and looked back at me.

  “You better take care, Mr. . . .”

  “Ide,” Carl said.

  “Okay,” I said.

  I brought the truck around, but it wasn’t easy. I tripped getting into the driver’s side, fell out completely onto the pavement, and couldn’t get back on my feet. Finally I crawled into position. The huge woman and the black man gently eased Carl into the passenger side, and I pulled out into the Indiana moon.

  “Go left here . . . right here. We stay on this about ten miles. I’m in Providence.”

  I took the left and right. “I’m from East Providence, Rhode Island.”

  Roger Williams thought of all his good luck when he named the Providence River and the little town on it. I thought if I concentrated and talked, I’d be all right.

  “Roger Williams named Providence . . . Rhode Island.”

  “Almost there. There’s a big mailbox . . . there. . . . Now turn onto the dirt road.”

  The headlights passed through trees into a large field of flowers. Across the road from the flowers was a greenhouse in a Quonset hut design. A new log cabin, one of those nice kits, stood in three levels by the greenhouse. It looked like the cover of a brochure. A red metal roof looked pretty over yellowing logs.

  “Here.”

  I parked the pickup next to the porch stairs.

  Carl looked at the property. He didn’t move. “Could you step into the greenhouse? If you get a warmish, clammy feeling, that’s good. If it seems cold or too hot, I’ll tell you what to do.”

  I eased down to the ground. I could feel my feet. I was getting better. The greenhouse gave me the warm, clammy skin he said, so I walked to the passenger side holding thumbs up and opened the door.

  “Warmish,” I said. “Clammy.”

  I concentrated on not letting go of the feeling of feet underneath me. Carl concentrated, too. He put both hands onto my shoulders and stepped slowly behind. We both edged up the stairs, the railing becoming a life support. Carl fumbled at the lock, got the key in but couldn’t turn it. I turned it and stepped inside. He reached past the doorframe and switched the lights on.

  There was no hall in Carl’s house, only a gigantic, three-story open room and, in the back of the room, an iron circular staircase leading to a landing and, on that, another staircase to another landing. The room was oak and pine varnished clear, and it smelled better than any room I had ever been in, like fresh wood shavings or new cedar. A large glass light fixture of many different colors was suspended over a square arrangement of stuffed chairs. A new-looking rough wood coffee table of, maybe, oak or, again, pine was squarely in the center. A stone fireplace, also three stories, was the entire left side of the house.

  I looked at Carl, and he was admiring it also. I realized then that Carl wasn’t an old man, although he moved old. His skin was tight on his face, but it wasn’t a wrinkled one. His lips were dry. His eyes were green, so green
that his light brown hair seemed kind of greenish, too.

  “I built this myself.”

  I looked at him stupidly and said stupidly, “You built this yourself.”

  “Myself and Renny Kurtz. Designed. Built. Staired. Furnished. Lived. Sixteen years.”

  “It smells wonderful,” I said, “and it’s beautiful.”

  “I moved downstairs two weeks ago. Two weeks ago I knew I wouldn’t be able to climb the stairs. There.”

  He shuffled toward a bed in the corner where two huge bookcases, filled with books, connected.

  “Bathroom is behind the bookcase.”

  He pulled the case lightly, and it opened. He walked in and closed the case. I walked to the arrangement of chairs and sat. I sat for about an hour; then I walked back to the bookcase and asked the books, “Are you all right?”

  “I’m all right. Runs.”

  I sat back down, and about fifteen or twenty minutes later, Carl came into the room.

  He had on red plaid pajamas that were, of course, much too big. I got up and stood by the bed like a servant. Only, I mean, you know, not like it was a bad thing. I pulled the covers back, which were loosely made up, and he sat down and then lay out in his bed.

  “Just the sheet,” he said quietly.

  I pulled the two blankets all the way down and covered him with the sheet.

  “Would you get me some water? Kitchen is there.”

  The kitchen was open, set off by peach-colored tile. I thought how Mom would have loved the kitchen. A big butcher-block table with knives on the side and oak stools around it, and a gas range and grill right in the center of the room. I found a glass and filled it with tap water.

  Carl leaned up and took the water. He had a tiny drink, then set the glass on his night table. He took some Vaseline and smeared it all over his lips.

  “All the things, all things, and still I hate most the dry lips, the dry and the cracked lips.”