Townie_ A Memoir - Andre Dubus [1]
I waved at him behind the wheel of his old Lancer. He waved back and I stuffed my feet into Suzanne’s sneakers and ran to the car and climbed in.
“Hey, man.”
“Happy Birthday.”
“Gracias.” He pulled away from the curb. He wore running shoes, shorts, a tank top, and he’d tied a blue bandanna around his forehead. He didn’t have much muscle, but he was trim. His chest and arms were covered with dark hair. He kept glancing at me as I leaned over and tied the worn laces of Suzanne’s blue sneakers.
“You sure you want to do this?”
“Yep.”
“It’s gonna be long and hot.”
I shrugged.
“Okay, man.”
I sat back in my seat. I was hungry and wished I’d eaten something first, or at least drunk a glass of water. But what bothered me more were my feet. Suzanne’s sneakers felt two sizes too small, my toes squeezed together, too much pressure on my heels. A few minutes later, when he pulled into the gravel parking lot and I got out and shut the door, I could feel each stone through the soles of my sister’s shoes.
Pop and I were walking toward the woods and the five-and-a-half mile trail. Already there was an ache in both feet. I should tell him. I should tell him these aren’t my sneakers. They’re Suzanne’s and they’re too small. But when I looked over at him, the sun on his face, his trimmed beard looking brown and red in that light, he smiled at me and I smiled back and we started running.
My father had been a runner longer than he’d been my father. When he was still living with us, he’d finish his morning writing, change into sneakers and shorts and a T-shirt, and go running. He’d be gone for an hour, sometimes longer, and when he walked back in, his shirt dark and wet, his cheeks flushed, it was the most relaxed and content he’d ever look. This was the sixties and early seventies. Nobody jogged then. It was a habit he’d formed in the Marine Corps, and when he ran down the road, people would shout from their lawns and ask if he needed any help. Where was he going?
I had run with him once before when I was eight years old. It was at our old house in the woods in New Hampshire, one with land to play on, a clear brook in the trees. It was a summer day, when Mom and Pop were still married, and Pop had asked me and Jeb if we wanted to go with him. We said yes, though Jeb lost interest pretty quickly and walked back down the country road Pop and I kept running on. I lagged a few feet behind him, the sun on my face, sweat burning my eyes. At the one-mile mark, he turned around and I followed him home where he left me and set back out on a longer run. But I’d run two miles and when I stepped inside our cool, dark house, I yelled up the stairs to Mom, “I ran two miles with Daddy, Mom! I’m strong! I’m strong!” And I punched the wall and could feel the plaster and lath behind the wallpaper, though I had no words for them.
Now I was twice that age and hadn’t run since, and even though my feet hurt with each stride, it felt good to be running outside with Pop on his birthday, spending time with him that wasn’t in a restaurant he couldn’t afford on a Sunday, that wasn’t in his small apartment every fourth Wednesday. It was easier not having to look directly at him across a table, to have him sometimes look directly at me. And this was a part of town I didn’t even know about. For a while it was hard to believe it was the same town as the one I spent all my time in; we were running on a wide dirt trail under a canopy of leafy branches. To our left, the trees grew on a slope and leaned over the water. To our right was a steep wooded hill, the ground a bed of pine needles and moss-covered rock, deep green ferns growing up around fallen logs and bare branches. I was in weight-training shape, not running