The Memory of Running (26 page)

Twenty-four miles out of Williams, riding my bike in the truck night of Route 40, I pulled
into Ash Fork. The dry cold had stiff- ened me up, and I could think of nothing except my
warm sleeping bag spread out on the cot and Chris across the space of a whisper. My
thinking made the cold worse. My feet numbed, and my ears ached even with the wool cap
pulled tightly down over them. I was also feeling more stupid than usual, that phone
conversation with Norma playing over in my head.

Lips! I shouted out loud. Eyes!

I shouted for no reason other than trying to shout out a bad feeling I had. A certain kind
of lonely feeling. A feeling that embarrassed me. I glided then into Ash Fork on the run.
Chris, Norma, Little Bill, Carl, and Bethany glided, too, this time in the stars,
twinkling on and off between me and God. I felt light-headed. I felt as if I could fall

asleep balanced on my bike. Passing several old gas stations and a small grouping of
stores, all

closed, I circled the rotary road until I spotted the blinking lights of Randys 24-Hour
Restaurant. I leaned my bike against the curbing and tried the door. Locked. All the
lights were on, and I looked in. One old woman in a blue uniform and a white apron was
laying out the silverware. Slowly. Table to table. I knocked on the glass. When she looked
up to me, I smiled and waved through my chilly miser- ableness, and she came to the door.

Were closed. Open in half an hour. She looked like Mrs. Santa Claus, and when she said she
was closed, it was with a warmth and understanding youd expect from Mrs. Claus, but I was
cold and had lost understanding maybe seven or eight miles ago. I needed coffee. I needed
a warm seat.

But the sign saysI pointedRandys 24-Hour Restaurant. Thats true, honey, but the signs
wrong. Its Randys 23-Hour

Restaurant. I close between three and four in the morning so I can put a grand shine on
everything.

She raised her watch hand up in a sweeping motion and an- nounced the time. Its three
forty-five . . . forty-six now.

Okay, I said.

Mrs. Claus closed the door and returned to her grandly shining silverware. I stood looking
after her for a moment and then walked back to my bike. My legs were stiffening up, and my
shoulders throbbed. It was unsettling to have begun aching again similar to that first
bike week. I squatted and touched my toes, but the ache re- mained in an almost dizzying
spray of needles and pins. I put my hands onto the main frame of the bike and pathetically
laid my head on the leather seat. I closed my burning eyes. Bethany was singing a solo, in
our churchs choir. Her chin was softer than I imagined, and I couldnt recognize the song.
It was a strangeI could call it light dream, because it happened before I slept, but it
was actually much clearer than a daydream. My daydreams have a soft edge, and the
characters are in a kind of prearranged situation. People first and then the situation. Im
more or less in the daydream drivers seat. In a full dream, Im not in command of events,
but the events and people are specific, and they absolutely wouldnt sing a song I wasnt
sure of, any more than theyd speak in a foreign language. Light dreams are problem dreams.
There are no rules. With my head on the seat, my sister delicately sang, her head raised.
She might have been calling birdsIm not surebut off to her side, in the empty soprano sec-
tion, something moved, and it had the hands of a rake. It had the long fingers of the
bamboo pieces of rake, and arms that could stretch around altars for what it wanted. And
what it wanted, in the row, was my beautiful sister, her hand raised, her eyes somewhere
off, looking into a mirror that wasnt there. I saw her clear, and the rake hands and
fingers. I screamed, but the only words that came were louder and Chevrolet. And then a
great light turned on, and it made my head ache, and my eyes, already burning, burned in
flames.

And it became dark again. And then the great light again, and . . . I opened my eyes. The
light that was on and off continued. The light was no longer a part of my dream but a part
of the restaurants park- ing lot. I turned to it. Pulled into a far corner was an enormous
freight truck, its lights on, then off, its engine growling. The great lights blinked on
and off again. This time they remained off. I stood and faced the truck. Slowly, I pointed
to myself.

Me? I asked softly, stupidly.

The lights blinked again, and I walked toward them. I circled to the drivers side of the
cab and stopped as a deep, easy voice said, Theres some minutes left. Come around the
passenger side. Heats on.

I walked around the front of the truck and climbed high into the cab. Coffee and
cigarettes drifted through the air. Warm. I smiled at the driver.

Thanks, I said. Cold out there. He handed me his coffee cup and poured the remaining coffee

from his battered thermos into it. Warm you up nicely, he said. It was a smooth, like I
said, deep, honey sort of voice, and it fit

him. A dark brown man, maybe sixty, with tufts of white hair under- neath a round cap of
brown-and-gold plaid. A neatly trimmed mus- tache played in his smile above heavy lips.
Tired black eyes were set in a part of his face that seemed very young, almost as if the
eyes and skin and bones around the eyes were new, some recent addition maybe.

Good coffee, I said. Thanks. Philip Wolsey, he said, offering his hand. Smithson Ide, I
said. It was a bitter coffee, and I smiled over the

taste of it. Mom would fill my pops thermos every morning with a harsh and acidy blend.
That was real coffee, Pop said. Philip Wolsey had a thermos of the real thing, too.
Wonderful aromas went

with it. Toast. Bacon. This coffee was a feast of a memory. I smiled again, and my stomach
growled.

Good? Oh, yes, sir. I need this. Real coffee. Call me Philip. My pops coffee was exactly
like this. What I do, you see, is instruct the counter worker to reboil my

coffee before they fill the thermos. Trick is, you have to stop at the real places. No
fast food.

I passed the cup back to Philip, who took a sip and handed it back. Finish it. Randy makes
fine coffee. Five minutes. Three more trucks pulled into the lot. A town police car. A
small

electricians van. No one got out. Now, if Im out of line, you must say so, but old Mr.
Curiosity

has got me. Thats your bicycle? Yes, sir, I said. Philip, he said. Philip, yes. Mine.

And you are coming from somewhere. I know it.

Im coming from Rhode Island, Philip. Im coming from East Providence, Rhode Island. I
finished the last mouthful of coffee and passed the tin cup back to him. He shook it out
the window and screwed it back onto the thermos. Whatever cloud cover there had been had
miraculously blown off, seemingly in minutes, and the greatest starry sky of all time lit
the space around Randys diner.

Philip checked his watch, and a big grin spread across his wide face. Ten, nine, eight,
seven, six, five, four, three, two, and one.

Immediately the entrance lights popped on, and the old woman in the blue dress opened the
door. The three truckers got out, and two policemen, and two men from the electrical van.

Come on, young man. Breakfast is on Mr. Philip Wolsey of the Ames, Iowa, Wolseys.

I followed him into the warm restaurant and sat in a booth by the window.

Well order at the counter. Randy wont wait on tables between midnight and five. I havent
been through this particular route in maybe seven years, but I cant imagine its any
different.

We got up and ordered bacon and eggs and pancakes instead of toast. Orange juice and
coffee, which we carried to our booth.

We sipped our coffee and our juice.

Rhode Island. Nineteen sixty-three. I carted a freightload of semolina wheat, some exotic
strain of wheat, from a Mr. Tamernack to Bostons Italian section. Brought back gourmet
handmade fettuc- cini. Passed Providence on Route 95. Then passed it coming out. Thats
quite a distance.

Pretty far. My eyes were still burning, and I still felt cold. I shiv- ered a little.
Philip reached across the table and put the back of his hand on my forehead. He left it
there for about thirty seconds.

Temperature. Youre sick. Ill be fine. Excuse me. Philip walked out to his truck. Our
breakfast was ready, and I

picked it up at the counter and brought it to the table. Philip re- turned and put two
aspirin in front of me.

Oh, Ive got some in my saddlebags, I said.

These are extra-strength. If you take them with food, they shouldnt upset your stomach.

I took them, and we ate. I could only finish about half of the food, although I was very
hungry. I sat back and sipped my juice.

So what youre saying is that you have ridden that bicycle from Rhode Island to Ash Fork,
Arizona.

I hadnt been saying anything, but Philip was buying my breakfast.

I changed bikes in Providence, Indiana. I had a Raleigh, and out there now is a Moto.

Why?

I thought for a second and stared at the juice in my hand.

I think Im on a quest. My friend Norma says Im on a quest. I know its strange. I used to
be fat.

I dont have any idea why I said that last thing, except that, being sick, I was thinking
differently.

Dont look fat now, Philip said. A quest. Don Quixote in America. But theres more.

Philip took both of our cups up to the counter, and Randy re- filled them. He carried them
back.

There are people Ive met, he said confidentially, who swear that Randy never leaves.
People who say theyve never seen other help in here.

I looked over at the blue-and-white woman. Is that possible? I said. All things, all
things are possible. What do you think your bike

ride says? People would say, Is that possible? Of course you know it is, now.

I guess. Whats the quest? Thats the thing. Norma says its that, but I dont know. Well, he
said seriously, holding his coffee in both hands, a quest

could be someone seeking something, or pursuing something, or even an investigation of
sorts. A personal investigation.

The black and twinkling sky had gotten red over a huge, distant bluff that I could see out
the window. I told Philip what I knew. Bethany, Bill, Norma. I skipped a lot, I remembered
a lot. When I fin- ished, he said, Its all of it, then, young man. Im very fond of the way
your Norma thinks. Im going to Needles, in California, on Route 40, where Ill unload half
of my freight. Dog food. Dry. Hundred-pound bags. Then Ill cut up to Vegas and deliver the
rest. Im going to highly recommend that we put that bike of yours in the truck and you
hitch with me into Needlesif thats not cheating.

Thats not cheating, I said.

He came out hard, a white frosting over his black and brown and white beagle colors. I
couldnt pry the thermos ice bag out of his mouth. Almost instantly his coat went damp,
then soggy. I laid him on the Counts workbench. I never noticed how long Wiggy had been.
He was always in some frenzy to eat, to be petted, to be played with. I rubbed him lightly
from his ears to his tail.

Wiggy, I said.

I walked back to Paulas kitchen and washed my hands in scalding water. Then I took one of
her dish towels and emptied a tray of ice from her kitchen refrigerator into it.

I couldnt find the ice bag, Aunt Paula. I did this. This will do, she said. My pop was
standing vigil, and Paula began applying the ice pack. I kind of left the frozen stuff all
over the place. Im just gonna

put it back. I dont lie very well. I dont lie very much. This was a good lie, I

think, and I walked back to the garage. I bundled Wiggy up in a car blanket, grabbed a
gardening shovel off the garage wall, and ran out through the backyard and around front. I
crossed the street under a lamp, praying no one would see me. Shovel. Wiggy. Me. There was
a vacant lot across the street, and behind that a small stream had created what could be
called a little gulch. I used to play there when Paula and Count had baby-sat for me. The
floor of the gulch was covered by generations of leaves, and the ground was spongy. I laid
Wiggy down and began to dig. I worked frantically, and the labor made it seem less
terrible. I pulled at rocks, I chopped roots. When the hole was deep enough that I had to
be on my knees to work, I pulled Wiggy over by the blanket and set him down in the hole,
wrapped in red plaid forever.

I havent thought about God for a long time. I would say twenty-

five years. People who think about God probably have a circle of friends and wonder and
share things about God. Things like, is there one? I have thought about God recently. In
the fields, in my tent, I think of God and me and the rest of it, but back then the last
thing on my mind was God. Still, after I had filled in his hole and patted it down and
even redistributed a layer of the oak and maple and birch leaves over that silly dog, I
got onto my knees and said, Dear God, please do something to make Wiggy happy. He was a
nice dog, and now Counts sick. I kept my eyes tight for a moment, then ran like a madman
back to my uncles garage.

For fifteen minutes I followed the beat of my heart on its route to my feet. I imagined I
was also moving the pieces of Philip Wolseys extra-strength aspirin around. Doing for
myself. Helping myself. I opened my eyes, and the burning had stopped, at least slowed
down, and I didnt feel exhausted. I had progressed to tired.

The stars fell back, but the darkness had a clarity, and things around the highway seemed
in shade rather than night. Philip sensed I was not sleeping.

Sleep. Good for you.

Im fine. I feel a lot better. I do this thing with the beat of my heart. I move it. I
mean, if I concentrate on it, I can move the beat around my body. When I get to my feet, I
can send the beat right out the bottom.

So you meditate, then. I guess I do. I ponder things, Philip said. I ponder things and
hope to one

day understand. I thought about this for a moment. Understand what? Im not clear on the
specifics, but I want to gain an understand-

ing of the why. The why. I would like to go backward to the begin- ning. Thats why I
ponder.

We rode heavy and smooth. My bike wedged against dog food be- hind me. Philip Wolsey made
sense to me.

I would like to go backward, too, I said. I think maybe thats part of the quest thing.

Possibly. He nodded thoughtfully. Theres more, though. I guess, I said. We climbed a small
hill. I couldnt see morning, but I could feel it.

Philip lit a cigarette. His cap furrowed down close to his eyes. He said, What do you hope
to accomplish at Bethanys rest home?

For a second or two I had forgotten Id told him some of Bethany at the diner. I simply
shrugged.

We rode quietly. Philip took only a couple puffs of the smoke. Pondering.

I am sixty years old, he said, his eyes tight on the highway.

Im forty-three, I said. I used to weigh two hundred and seventy-nine pounds. I dont know,
Philip. I just dont know.

Now there was the beginning of orange sun at the end of the desert, at the tip of the
plateaus.

Father was an Episcopal minister.

Im Episcopal. Kind of. I mean, I dont go or anything anymore. And . . . and, of course, I
dont . . . believe.

You dont believe? No, I dont. Why? Its like I said. I just dont know. Philip nodded and
cracked the window of the cab. Sage and pine

smells. I thought that the desert smells an awful lot like Aunt Paulas turkey stuffing. I
was named for Sir Philip Sidney, the English ad- venturer and poet. My brother was named
for Sir Walter Raleigh for similar reasons.

I was named for the guy who turned the first official double play.

Philip smiled and pretended to catch a baseball. Yes. We played baseball. All sports,
really, that we could access in Ames. Our little Iowa town. The Wolsey boys. Walter was my
senior by five years and some months. We attended St. Thomas Priory adjacent to Fathers
parish. A very liberal, a very leveling education. Classics and sciences. And most
excellent people, too. Teachers, classmates. Walter and Philip Wolsey were the only
colored childrenthe only children of African descentyet we found a commonality with the
others that served us powerfully for years.

In 1943 Walter joined the army, of course. Turned eighteen and popped into the service
like a weasel pops out of a box. We were all

frightened, but Father explained about duty and honor and, in short, a kind of special
American obligation to serve, to offer yourself to the common good. Want some coffee?

Im fine, I said. I offered myself, too. Drafted.

As fate and luck had it, the war ended before he left the States, and before we knew it,
he was out of the service and off to the Uni- versity of Chicago. Fathers alma mater.
Legacy. Walter had distin- guished himself in so very many areas of academia, he could
have attended any school that accepted coloredAfrican students.

He was smart, huh?

Gifted. Intellectually superior, and Im not a man who throws superlatives around. Gifted.

Thats great.

Whos Who on Campus, 1946, 1947, 1948. Graduated in three years. I shall never forget . . .

He lit another smoke against the wheel.

I shall never forget driving up with Father for the graduation. Tall, flatheaded. Truly
the features of an aristocracy that no longer has a place in our universe. Thats my theory.

Philip took one puff and punched the cigarette out in the ashtray. We rode again in a
shared quiet, and the sun came on, and the long, dry earth spread out.

Thats my theory, he said again, almost to himself.

His degree was English literature with a special concentration on Thomas Hardy. Father
assumed that Walter would teach, but our Walter surprised us all by applying for, and
getting, a position on the Chicago Times-Herald.

Thats great, I said.

Journalism. We might have known. And there were books to be written. Wonderful novels
somewhere. We knew that. We had al- ways known that, really. In the meanwhile yours truly,
Philip Wolsey, while not as brilliant a student, still, as now, I read voraciously and
graduated from St. Thomas Priory in 1949.

You speak great, I said, in a short and stupid and true compli- ment. Philip smiled.

Sometimes, when one drives a truck, one speaks as a trucker. Sometimes one speaks as
oneself.

Thats true, I said, but Philip had lost me on that one.

I was to attend Chicago also. I would have loved to have read the law like Fathers
brother, Andrew, in Des Moineswho defended Bob Staghardt, the Tornado Rapist, and defended
him successfully, toobut the Korean conflict began, and after another reminder of national
obligation, I, too, went to war. Only mine happened.

This I understood completely. I went to war, too. Mine happened all over the place. The
night before Father put me on the Des Moines train to Fort

Bragg in North Carolina, Walter came home, and we had a wonderful dinner of steak and
corn. Fresh sliced tomatoes. Melon. Mrs. Gautier was our cook and housekeeper. Mother, of
course, had died of tuber- culosis when I was just a baby. But Mrs. Gautier was a splendid
and inventive cook. Catholic, though, but knew she was appreciated.

Thats sad about your mom. Well, yes, but I never knew her. Its in the knowing, isnt it? It
is. After dinner Walter regaled us with his electric accounts of work-

ing for the great paper, as he called it. He was an assistant copy editor of the
metropolitan room and occasionally covered sports and police.

Cubbies? Saw DiMaggio play the White Sox. Williams? Saw him. Wow. My pop loved DiMaggio.
You couldnt say a sour word

about Joe DiMaggio, but he loved Teddy Williams more. I didnt know why I thought it just
then, but I will always be surprised my pop never walked over to our Normas house and
picked her up and brought her to listen on the porch. Teddy Ballgame.

And so I went to Korea and the hot gates and took the common duty, Philip said, another
cigarette firing.

Thats the Mojave, he said, gesturing to the left of us. Back in there. Thats the Mother of
Deserts.

You wouldnt think so many things would grow on the desert, I said. Flowers and things.

Rain, rains the ticket. October is a rainy time. I left Rhode Island August twenty-ninth.
Philip thought about this and then said, Well, its October six-

teenth, so that would make this your forty-ninth day out. I nodded and looked out at the
Mojave. In October it just wasnt

the desert I imagined it was. Flowers. October of 1951 I was returned stateside and
reassigned to Pe-

tersburg, Virginia. Fort Lee. Quartermaster School, but really a place where those who had
already fought waited for separation from the military. It was in Virginia that I first
received word of the Chicago event.

Philip lit another cigarette. He took his two small puffs, held the smoke, then stubbed it
out.

What was the Chicago event? I asked.

Coming into Kingman, Arizona, he said, pointing straight ahead. Now well roll, still on
40, down through a goodly slice of our Mojave to Yucca, and in no time at all well cross
the Colorado into California.

California, here I come, I said, and we both chuckled a com- fortable chuckle, like two
people who have known each other a long time. I felt that.

Walter was not a copy editor for long. His compact prose made quite an impression on his
employers at the Times-Herald, and of course one could not easily overlook this young
colored mans access to sections of town and community not readily available to the pa-
pers rank and file. In short order my brother secured his own beat and, within a year, a
byline. Father had sent several of his articles to

me in Korea. Walter had a sense of person and place in relationship to the times he was
writing in that was so utterly unique you felt you were virtually being taken into
anothers confidence and that the words were for only your ears.

And such varied subjects. I remember one, listen: The Blues Are Looking Rosy. That was the
title of a piece on Ra Tanner, who played the twelve-string guitar and wrote songs only
about a girl named Rose. There was Collards and Coloreds, which got an inside look at the
kitchen of Marie Bliss, who had the most successful Ne- gro restaurant of all time. Later
Mrs. Bliss used the title of Walters article for her own cookbook.

A big smile played over Philips face. But after a moment or two, his face flattened and
his eyes seemed heavier.

You okay, Philip?

Im fine, young man. Thank you very much. He also began a se- ries of stories about heroin
and the jazz community, if community is the word. Horn blowers. Brush drummers.

My pop thought Errol Garner was a genius.

Errol Garner had a vibrancy, he said, almost begrudgingly. Philip seemed angry, and his
eyes narrowed onto the road.

Personally, the deliberate distortion of pitch and timbre of sound into some polyphonic
improvisation has left me cold, but I will ad- mit to a certain coldness to many things I
do not understand. And so my father sent on three articles in Walters jazz-heroin series.
Then the letters stopped. Abruptly. That was in Petersburg, 1951.

After a moment I said stupidly and forty years after the fact, I hope nothing was wrong.

We drove on in silence. I saw a tall cactus and, behind it, peeking out, was my beautiful
sister. I almost felt like waving to her, thats how real she seemed.

Walter had been too . . . protected. In many ways Fathers world was a difficult one to
carry on into a cosmopolitan reality. Not, mind you, that Father was wrong in his
insistence on duty and honor and

belief. Its that for most people those things are much too difficult to incorporate into
everyday life. And Walter could not. He fell hard, first into the propulsive, syncopated
rhythms of jazz and then into its narcotic.

Heroin, I thought. Walter.

I learned this later, and I think I have pieced the sequence of events correctly. But who
knows? By the time I was informed of our predicament and returned home, it was finished.

Finished, I thought. Oh, God.

I returned to Ames, and in the midst of my chaos, I determined this: Walter, as I said,
fell hard. It doesnt take long with the horse. It offers euphoria but gives a horror. A
horror. A few months and the wonderful byline gone. The job itself gone. Friends having to
turn away. I tell you, they had no choice but to turn away from Walter, who in the snap of
a finger became alone. He ran home. He left home. The days went on like years for Father.
His superior boy, gifted boy, ruptured in the spirit. When Walter came home, he stole from
Father. He became something adrift. Mrs. Gautier told me later that once he actually
threatened her with violence if she would not give him money. Threatened our dear Mrs.
Gautier while Father, overwhelmed, prayed in his study.

One eveningMrs. Gautier had by now left Fathers employ be- cause of fear of Walterhe fled
Chicago again. He came home in that same hope of leaving his addiction in the city and
being healed. But, of course, by the time he arrived home, he was nothing more than the
beast who rummages for cash. This time Father had no illu- sion. Prayer had fortified him.
It would require an almost superhu- man strength of purpose, an absolute resolve, to save
my brother from himself.

Philip smiled bitterly, a smile that goes inside and is really a crease across your face.
He shook his head and seemed older than sixty. I had seen the downturn of his mouth on my
fathers face. I didnt

want him to talk anymore. I thought I saw a woman, as thin as wire, old, in rags. I
thought I saw her behind a small canyon we rolled through. I closed my eyes tight.

Finally its all a guess. A compilation of events. A personal belief, really, of events.
Yet it was necessary, as I said, for myself, as a man and a son and a brother, to be
clear. As clear as I possibly could be. As close to the actual truth as I could be. And so
I re-created the eve- ning as I feel it was, so that I might understand.

I opened my eyes, and the hag was not there, and we rolled out of the canyon back onto a
desert flat. Philips face was blank. Light- ning flashed in the west, and five or six
seconds later, thunder cracked over us.

I cant be sure, of course, Philip said softly. Maybe thats my cross to bear, but I will
say that Im personally satisfied with the con- clusion Ive drawn. Father confronted Walter
in the rectory. Its my belief Walter was going to try to sell the communion vessels, which
were quite authentic and had some value as antique and silver. Walter was no longer our
Walter, and Im certain Father understood this. Somehow, in the struggle for the vessels,
Walter struck Father. Not a terrible blow. Im absolutely certain it was not a blow
designed to in- jure, to kill, a man as robust as Father. So no matter what the police
findings, a more reasonable explanation was that the blow to Father simply loosed a
preexisting conditiona clot, a weakness of the tis- sue around the cranium, something, as
I said, preexisting.