The Memory of Running

  Bethany solemnly dripped water onto the top of her head. Her mouth was open enough so I could see that several teeth were missing in front, and her lips were cut and scabby. Her nose seemed puffy, as if she’d been punched, her eyes unclear and set somehow deeper than before.

  “I baptize thee Bethany Adele Ide, in the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost.”

  She looked at me, and for a moment I thought her eyes were shining. “Amen,” I said, wanting to do anything for my beaten Bethany, scrunched and squatting on the marble baptismal.

  “Amen,” she said. “That’s all I know about how they baptize. Do you think that’s enough, Hook?”

  I stepped to her. “I think that’s beautiful, Bethany. C’mon.”

  I picked her off the baptismal and set her down on the ground. She wasn’t wearing shoes, and she smelled of urine and shit and dampness. I hugged her, and she squeezed me so tight and for so long I thought she might have gone into a pose, but she released her grip and looked at me.

  “I want to die now, Hook. I think that’s best.”

  I started crying. I never cried in-country, but her words tumbled, like those small rolling slugs that hit me sideways and ran around inside me. Only hers were hot. Hers were hotter. The only thing I wanted right then was for her never to talk again. I took her hand, and we walked out of the cold stone church onto Westminster Street. It had begun to drizzle, but it felt good. I put Bethany into the car, then walked around to the driver’s side. I turned and for a second or two stared at the phone hanging in the red booth across the street. I walked over, hung it up; then I drove my Bethany directly to Bradley Hospital.

  37

  Me: Norma? Are you busy? If you’re busy, I can—

  Norma: What happened?

  Me: I know it’s been five days, but . . .

  Norma: We were talking, and then we were not talking.

  Me: Everything’s been so crazy, but I wanted to call earlier. . . . It’s so weird. I wrote you a letter, but I didn’t send it.

  Norma: You wrote me a letter?

  Me: Honest to God. I’ve got it right here.

  Norma: Read it.

  Me: I don’t know.

  Norma: Please read it to me.

  (I was in the middle of Indiana now. A pay phone in a drugstore. I opened my letter to Norma.)

  Me: Okay. “Dear Norma. Carl is dead. He was a very nice man, and even though I did not get to know him very well, I think of him as a friend, kind of.” . . . That sounds stupid.

  Norma: No, it doesn’t . . . dead?

  Me: I’m so stupid sometimes.

  Norma: Read. Read.

  Me: “Why I didn’t call you before is because Carl dying caused some problems. First I had to take care of Carl, and then Dr. Donna Trivitch, Carl’s friend from the hospital, came to the house with a policeman and he beat me up.”

  Norma: Smithy!

  Me: I’m all right now, Norma. Honest to God. Should I keep reading?

  Norma: Please read, Smithy. It’s my letter.

  Me: “After I got beat up, Carl told the doctor that I was not a bum, and she put me to bed on the second floor of Carl’s really beautiful, beautiful house.” Oh—I didn’t write this, but Norma, Carl grew flowers for a living, and his house is surrounded, absolutely surrounded with roses and flowers. Every color in the world. You would love it.

  Norma: I would. I would love it. Read, Smithy.

  Me: And his house was truly beautiful. All wood and smelling like wood.

  Norma: Ooooh. Read.

  Me: Okay . . . “After a while I felt better, so I went downstairs, and Carl died. It was actually all right, that part, his dying, I mean. Dr. Donna Trivitch, his friend, sort of held him until he stopped breathing. It was peaceful, but then the doctor started crying and couldn’t stop. There was a letter Carl had given her with stuff he needed done, when he couldn’t do it anymore, but she was crying and she gave the letter to me and said I had to do it because she couldn’t. I felt funny reading Carl’s letter. He had about ten names, and next to each name was a phone number and what he wanted to say. Most of it was okay, but some of it was awful, and I didn’t want to do it, but I did do it. I saved the three awful calls for last. Awful is not fair. Hard is fair. They were hard things, and I knew that if Carl asked Dr. Donna Trivitch to make these calls, then she should. When I told her they were hard, she started crying again. I had to call his brother, father, and a man named Renny Kurtz in New York. All his brother kept doing was shouting at me over the phone. He kept saying, ‘Who the hell are you? Who the hell are you?’ and then he said, ‘Are you . . . ?’ ” Norma?

  Norma: Read. I’m here.

  Me: I know, but it was easier to write some of this than speak it.

  Norma: It’s all right. What did he say?

  Me: “ ‘Are you some old faggot, is that what you are?’ ”

  Norma: No!

  Me: Well, yes he did. He said that. Carl was homosexual.

  Norma: Oh.

  Me: So he figured I must be homosexual. Carl was his brother. Jeez.

  Norma: Read.

  Me: Let’s see . . . “Every time I tried to read to Carl’s brother, he kept calling me names. Carl was saying things about how much he loved him and how he set up something to give money to his brother’s kids, and his brother kept saying to me, ‘You faggot. You old queen’ . . . like that.”

  Norma: That bastard . . . that bastard.

  Me: “So I told him what Carl wanted me to tell him, and I called his father. I probably shouldn’t have, but who else would? And Dr. Donna Trivitch was still crying hard, only now she had gone out onto the porch. I told his father that Carl had died. He said thank you and hung up.”

  Norma: Bastard.

  Me: “I wanted to call him back, but I would let the doctor do that later. There was something that seemed to be urgent about the calls. Is death urgent? I don’t know. Maybe it just gives a feeling that things have to be done quickly. Calls have to be made. My last call was to this Renny Kurtz.”

  Norma: Who was Renny Kurtz?

  Me: He used to be in Carl’s business.

  Norma: Where was he now?

  Me: He was in New York now.

  Norma: What did he say?

  Me: Let me see . . . okay . . . “My last call was to this Renny Kurtz. I had to try three or four times, but finally I got him. I told him. For some reason—I don’t know why—it was a lot harder telling Renny Kurtz than anybody else. I didn’t hear anything on the other end of the phone, so I read what Carl had written. Except for things Carl was giving to his family, he was giving everything else to Renny Kurtz. Renny Kurtz made a sound I had never heard before and never wanted to hear again. Then he started screaming. He was screaming Carl’s name. I thought he would stop, but after a few minutes, I sort of gently put the receiver down. Dr. Donna Trivitch had Carl taken to an undertaker and took me to get some clothes. I had no clothes because of when Carl hit me with his truck, but I wasn’t passing blood so I was all right. I bought—or she bought for me, because she felt bad she had me beaten up—some new shorts and socks and sneakers and knapsack and hat and sunglasses and chino pants and a belt and two sweaters and underwear and water and some fruit and stress tablets and a brand-new English ten-speed touring bike, and the guy adjusted the seat and handlebars perfectly. Also new nylon saddlebags. She bought me a little cassette player with earphones, and she gave me some tapes, and I bought a book. I bought a book called Ringo by the same guy who wrote Iggy.” . . . Then . . . then I say . . . I say, “Good-bye, Smithy.”

  Norma: That’s a nice letter. That’s a sad letter. . . . You say good-bye?

  (I look out through the glass door of the phone booth where I sit holding Norma to my ear. A red-haired girl is pushing a stroller up the aisle toward me. When did I become so turned in on myself that I swallow feelings like fast food and everything tastes the same salty way? She’s waiting. I feel her patience and power. Jesus, I want to be more. I want to be
more than I am. The baby is reaching at the passing shelves. The girl smiles, and they wheel away. I’m the one without legs.)

  Me: I say . . . I say . . . you know, “Love, Smithy.”

  Norma: I love you, Smithy.

  Me: So . . . so I left Providence, Indiana, on my new bike, and I went through . . . oh, Seymour and North Vernon and Bedford. . . . I’m still on Route 50. And I’m in Huron, Indiana, now. I’ve got a beard.

  Norma: A beard? Wow. I’d love to see you in a beard.

  Me: I don’t know.

  Norma: I bet you look great.

  Me: I don’t look great. . . . Well, I should go so I can put up my little tent. . . . She bought me a tent.

  Norma: I love you.

  Me: Hey, Norma?

  Norma: Yes, Smithy?

  Me: Did I get fired from Goddard?

  Norma: Yes.

  Me: Bye, Norma.

  Norma: Bye, Smithy.

  38

  We never found out where Bethany had been those months before I came back. I suppose she might not have known herself. I did know it wasn’t a gentle place, because some teeth were knocked out, and Bradley Hospital, on top of her madness, found a cracked thighbone and a broken rib. Bethany stayed in Bradley for two weeks while they adjusted and then readjusted her medicine. Pop had gotten her a new psychiatrist, too. A woman named Georgina Glass. Dr. Glass was one of the most beautiful women I had ever seen. She probably had the thickest black hair in the world, and she was tall, and she had gigantic breasts. They gave Dr. Glass an aura, I guess. I really respected her, and whenever Bethany had an appointment at her office on Blackstone Boulevard in Providence, I would go with her.

  Dr. Glass was divorced. I knew this because she told Bethany everything. She told her everything, and she expected Bethany to tell her everything, too. She had a couple of boyfriends—a doctor, of course, and a football coach at Brown University. She was lovely, and to see her with my sister was a sort of miracle. She would let all of Bethany’s great things out. They would hug after every session.

  I had started my job at Goddard. I was on the SEAL Sam line. I hadn’t gotten up to supervisor yet, and so most of my day was spent in assembly. Assembly is easy, but after a while it becomes hard. I never got angry, when I was a supervisor, if one of the line people put a leg on where an arm should be. I understood from working the line for seven and a half years that by eleven-thirty in the morning, the arms and the legs looked the same.

  On days that Bethany would see Dr. Glass, I would race home—I was still at home then—and take off my red Goddard jumpsuit with the SEAL Sam face on the back and dress up in my charcoal suit from Anderson Little and Co. I was gaining weight by then, and my forty-long jacket wouldn’t button, but if I left it unbuttoned, it didn’t look too bad. Also, I always put on my Purple Heart pin.

  “You like driving me to the doctor’s, don’t you?” Bethany said, as I drove Pop’s car across the old George Washington.

  “I guess.”

  “Why?”

  “No reason.”

  Bethany was quiet for about a minute. She stared out over the black Providence River. “I’m going to go back to work in the thrift shop,” she said, sort of matter-of-fact.

  “Good.”

  “Old people come in. Sometimes people that are bums. It’s hard to tell if they are, but I can pretty much tell. They want shoes and warm coats. Sometimes they want them and they don’t have any money at all.”

  I turned onto Waterman Avenue and cut over toward Blackstone Boulevard. “What do you do if they want some shoes and they don’t have any money?”

  “I give them to them.”

  “Nobody minds?”

  “Schnibe,” she muttered. “Schnibe, callop, disper.”

  “What?”

  “What?”

  “You just said something.”

  “No I didn’t.”

  “ ‘Schnibe’ or something.”

  “No I didn’t.”

  Dr. Glass’s office was in her brick home near the Brown University campus. The football field was above it, and I parked alongside the concrete bleachers.

  “Callop,” she said louder.

  “What?”

  “It’s the football field. One of Dr. Glass’s boyfriends is a football coach.”

  “I know,” I said. I pretended I wasn’t interested, but I was. I liked Dr. Georgina Glass. I liked her name. She was the only Georgina I had ever met. Every time I saw her in the office with Bethany, it was like the first time, because she never remembered me, and so she would always stick out her hand and say, “Hi, I’m Georgina Glass.” She was, of course, a lot older than me, but I found her very attractive.

  “She gives him blow jobs,” Bethany said.

  “C’mon,” I said. “Quit it.”

  “Really. She told me before they have sex he likes her to give him blow jobs. Her doctor boyfriend just wants to have the sex.”

  We walked up the steps to the office portion of her house. I put all that stuff out of my head. I didn’t understand why Bethany felt she had to throw all these lies at me, why she had to try to make me feel bad at the expense of Georgina Glass.

  Dr. Glass met us at the red mahogany door. She looked amazing, framed by red. I stood to the back right of Bethany, my Purple Heart pin just over my sister’s shoulder.

  “Hi,” Dr. Glass said, and hugged Bethany. She extended her hand to me. “Georgina Glass,” she said.

  “Smithson Ide,” I said in my loudest voice. I followed them, as usual, into the hall, picked up an Outdoor Life from a magazine rack, and sat in the small waiting alcove. They walked into the office.

  In the doorway Bethany stopped and turned to Dr. Glass. “Oh, I almost forgot.”

  “What, honey?”

  “Tell him,” she said, pointing to me. “Tell him you give blow jobs to the coach.”

  Georgina Glass laughed and threw up her hands. “Bethany, you knock me out.” Then, still laughing, she looked over at me. “I give blow jobs to the coach.”

  “Schnibe,” my sister said, looking at me. “Schnibe, callop, disper.”

  39

  Two days after I read my letter to Norma, I rode the new Moto touring bike across the Wabash and into Illinois. I still had a few residual pains from the cop Tommy and from Carl’s pickup, but my breathing was easier and the new clothes gave me a sort of clean feeling. It was good to be fresh and on the road. Route 50 still did not disappoint me. It moved through pure farm country until just outside of East St. Louis. I loved the smell of the road. The hay and manure, and pollen from the corn, and even the hard smells of pigs. They were like living smells. I know it sounds stupid, but they were smells with muscles. Each morning the smells were crispy and separated from each other, but as I pedaled into the afternoon, the wet heat of the Midwest mixed all the odors together. Both times of day were wonderful.

  The new tent Dr. Trivitch had bought for me was actually quite a bit better than the old one. It was easier to pitch and kept the rain out. The truth was, all the stuff was better than what I’d had. Dr. Donna Trivitch took me to the best outfitter, so that the people who worked there could fit me up for my needs. Two things, though, that shocked me. First, in my new clothes, my belly didn’t hang very much, only a little; and second, the Moto bike. See, I didn’t notice my belly getting smaller until I put on biking shorts. It was like it just happened. Don’t get me wrong, I was still a porker in biking shorts, but I was getting curious to see what I weighed from the 279 that first rolled those flat Raleigh tires down Brightridge Avenue.

  The Moto bike was another thing altogether. When did this happen? When did bikes become things like this? This was a jet plane of bikes! This was a happy dream of bikes! It was dark blue, and it looked so solid you would think it weighed a hundred pounds, but you could literally pick it off the ground with one finger. The seat was padded with lamb’s wool, and the handlebars curved wide and down and had a soft foam cover. It was a bike that could make me forget my Ral
eigh (but I would never forget my Raleigh).

  I slept exclusively in cornfields while I rode Illinois. Because it was hot during the day, I stayed pretty much to cold tuna sandwiches for lunch and dinner, and lots of apples and bottled water, although in Ryan, Illinois, I treated myself to a steak dinner at Angie’s on Main Street. What I did was clean up at a gas station, trimmed my beard, and changed into the chino pants. It was nice to be around folks. There was a couple who sort of reminded me of my mom and my pop, but they had a table full of grandkids with them, and, of course, me and Bethany never had any kids. At night I read Ringo. I didn’t have to get in reading shape or anything since Iggy. I enjoyed Ringo very much. Like Iggy it was the story of a guy who has a good and interesting life despite all the odds that are stacked against him. Ringo was a cowboy in 1900 Wyoming who had lost his left leg and right arm in an accident. Even though some of the other cowboys made fun of him, he relearned to ride as well as anybody and fell in love with an Indian girl named Doris Redleaf who had gone to Carlyle Indian College in Pennsylvania and had come back to Wyoming to teach little Indians English. It was, I guess, a heartwarming story. I wondered, if I were Ringo, could I have taken all he did? I thought about this through most of Illinois.

  I also was thinking hard about Bill Butler. Not about how he propped me up and gave me those three morphine shots and saved me, but I was thinking about Bill and East St. Louis. I knew he was from there, because I used to think he said St. Louis and he was always correcting me.

  “Not St. Louis, muthafucka. East St. Louis.” And East St. Louis was straight on Route 50. I used a pay phone in Mascoutah, Illinois, to call information. There were no Bill Butlers in East St. Louis, but there was one William Butler III on Landham Street. I let the phone ring eight times, then got on my bike and headed into the city.

  Now, this is important. I do not feel sorry for myself, and if there was any way to tell about the East St. Louis part of the Bethany trip without having me in it, I would. But there isn’t any way that can happen. I even thought maybe I wouldn’t tell this part, but I’m going to because it happened, and Bill Butler happened, too.