The Long Run
Authors: Leo Furey
“Inspirational without being mawkish. Furey's debut is a shoo-in for book clubs.”
â
Publishers Weekly
“A winning first novel. . . . Furey encapsulates the life-affirming resilience of youth.”
â
Booklist
starred review
“
The Long Run
is a ghastly-wonderful journey through a pious hell run by lunatics, an antic dance of grim humor, genuine pathos, and final redeeming joy.”
â
The Globe & Mail
“Like Frank McCourt's
Angela's Ashes
,
The Long Run
finds humor and even joy in a childhood that reads at times like something out of Charles Dickens.”
â
The Toronto Star
“Funny, sad, forgiving, and redemptive,
The Long Run
wonderfully and tenderly evokes a time and place and shows us boys fighting for survival and happiness in the face of relentless and often heartless opposition. The reader fights and wins with them.”
âWayne Johnston, author of
The Navigator of New York
and
The Colony of Unrequited Dreams
“What got me is how laugh-out-loud funny this book is. Yet the whole is suffused with an aura of incredible sadness. It is universal in its message that adversity and systematic repression can reveal the infinite resourcefulness and indomitability of people, especially young people. Leo Furey has turned bitter experience into a work of art.”
âRobert MacNeil, author of
Wordstruck
and
Burden of Desire
“This is a novel about the pastâa past that is presented in such detail that it becomes the present, and, in its finality, knows no boundaries. It is a story of everlasting friendships forged in youth and pain.”
âAlistair MacLeod, author of
No Great Mischief
“Furey's tragicomic tale of orphanage life in St. John's during the sixties will win your heart and break it by turns.
The Long Run
is a vivid account of brutality, laughter, the unwavering bravery of childhood, and a hard resilienceâit cannot fail to move its readers.”
âLisa Moore, author of
Open
and
Alligator
ABOUT THE BOOK
From a hill above town, the Mount Kildare Orphanage for Boys looks down on the small city of St. John's, Newfoundland. The year is 1960. The orphanage is always cold, there is never enough to eat, and the Catholic Brothers who run the home are heavy-handed in their religious discourses and harsh in their discipline. Here, a group of boys manages to look out for each other and live by their own set of rules.
By day the boys are obedient students, but when the sun goes down the Dare Klub rules the night: raiding the bakery; stealing sacramental wine; and talking endlessly about girls, sex, and the merits of Floyd Patterson versus Willie Mays. Above all, they help each other through the waves of loneliness and sadness that they all experience. Their secret society is their law and their family. But when the Brothers discover the wine is missing, they go on a manhunt, offering payoffs and bribes to any boy who will rat out the culprits.
To buck up the frightened boys' courage, the Dare Klub's leader, Blackie, creates a program of secret training for the annual St. John's marathon. The boys sneak out at night for running sessions in the hours before morning prayers, devising elaborate rituals to protect their secrecy. Leo Furey has created a classic coming-of-age story of dazzling scope and powerful insight, leavened with razor-sharp wit.
LEO FUREY's poetry, stories, and reviews have appeared in several literary journals. An English teacher for twenty-five years, he is currently executive director of the Newfoundland and Labrador Film Development Corporation.
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THE
LONG
RUN
A NOVEL
Leo Furey
Trumpeter â¢
Boston
⢠2015
Trumpeter Books
An imprint of
Shambhala Publications, Inc.
Horticultural Hall
300 Massachusetts Avenue
Boston, Massachusetts 02115
© 2004 by Leo Furey
Cover design and photo retouching by Jim Zaccaria
Cover photo: © H. Armstrong Roberts/Corbis
Spine photo: Siede Preis/Photodisc Green/Getty Images
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.
The Library of Congress catalogues the previous edition of this book as follows:
Furey, Leo.
The long run: a novel/Leo Furey.â1st. Trumpeter ed.
p. cm.
eISBN 978-0-8348-2636-6
ISBN 978-1-59030-411-2 (hardcover)
ISBN 978-1-59030-528-7 (paperback)
1. BoysâFiction. 2. OrphanagesâFiction. 3. Male friendshipâFiction. 4. St. John's (N.L.)âFiction. I. Title.
PR9199.4.F865L66 2006
813â².6âdc22
2006014924
To
R
EVEREND
RJ M
AC
S
WEEN
(1915â1990)
priest of the invisible
Two things cannot alter
Since time was, nor today
The flowing of water
And Love's strange, sweet way.
Japanese lyric
Contents
1
THE FIRST PERIOD
in the afternoon is religion. Brother McCann takes attendance, gets up from behind his desk, shakes chalk dust from his soutane and struts to the middle of the classroom. As he walks, his right shoulder sags. His huge head tilts permanently to the right as if he's listening to his shoulder, and his left ear juts straight out so it looks like it came off and he glued it back on wrong. As usual, specks of greenish white saliva cling to the corners of his mouth. A few wisps of reddish hair dance on his bald head and look like they'd waltz away on a windy day. He's an odd duck with the worst temper of all the brothers at the Mount. When he speaks, he sprays spit. The boys in the front row shield their faces with their hands. Oberstein calls McCann's classroom “the shower.”
When Brother McCann moves to the middle of the room, we know what's up. He's about to launch into one of his sessions. Monologues and Dialogues he calls them. Ten to fifteen minutes of ranting and raving. We painfully participate “for the sole purpose of the salvation of souls.” His raving makes no sense. “Monologues and Dialogues is like a game of fish,” he says. “You all have playing cards. I see all the Mount Kildare boys playing fish in the halls. You play fish in the halls, don't you, Spencers?”
His hazel eyes stare hungrily from beneath bushy brows. He has the odd habit of always adding an
s
to a boy's name: Murphys, Ryans, Kavanaghs, Obersteins. And if a boy's name ends in
s
, he drops it: Hyne, Roger, Jone, Brooke.
“Murphys, you play fish?”
“Yes, Brother.”
“Littlejohns?”
“Yes, Brother.”
“And you, Ryans?”
“Yes, Brother.”
“And are you good at it, Murphys?”
“Yes, pretty good, Brother.”
“Well, Monologues and Dialogues is like the card game fish. During the monologue, you, the class, are dealt the cards, information, and during a dialogue you are to match the cards,
information
, with the information,
cards
, given out during the monologue. Is that clear, Kavanaghs?”
“Yes, Brother.”
“Carmichaels?”
“Yes, Brother McCann.” I watch him remove the large ivory crucifix from above the blackboard.
“Quite clear, Mr. Burn?”
“Oh yes, Brother, quite clear.”
“Clear, Nevilles?”
“Yes, Brother McCann.”
None of us has a clue what the hell he's talking about. But you don't dare disagree with Brother McCann unless you want a knuckle sandwich. His game is very simple. There is no dialogue, just monologues where Brother McCann tries to stump you with a question and you answer as best you can, hoping to avoid the strap. Each monologue has a theme, and he announces the theme by reading from a book or a magazine. There are always props, as he calls them, to help get the point across. Today's props are the huge ivory crucifix, a copy of the
Nazareth Foreign Missions Magazine
and a
National Geographic
photograph of a monkey. He raises each prop slowly and places each item on his desk.
The classes are always crazy, and most days somebody gets a bad strapping. Usually drowsy Rowsell or bucktoothed O'Grady. They're the slowpokes in the class. Blackie thinks Brother McCann is crazy. He says that Monologues and Dialogues is all the proof you need to put Brother McCann in a rubber room at the Mental and throw away the key.
“Today's theme is Christ, the Evangelist. Are you paying attention, boys?” A thread of spittle hangs between his lips.
“Yes, Brother,” we chant. The air in the classroom is very hot, and I can feel the sweat soaking the back of my shirt.
“And do you know what an evangelist is, Kellys?”
“No, Brother.”
“Well then, pay very close attention and you shall find out, Mr. Kellys.”
“Yes, Brother.”
“Bradburys, are you paying attention?”
“Yes, Brrr.”
“Pardon me, Bradburys?” McCann's eyes narrow as he speaks.
“Yes, Brother McCann.”
“That's better, Bradburys. Now, I know many of you boys abbreviate the word âBrother.' In fact, you use this abbreviated form in other classes. But not in my class, boys. There will be no lapses in my class. You will not say Brrr or Burr or Bruh or Bro in my class. Is that clear, boys?”
“Yes, Brother McCann.”
“Bradburys?”
“Yes, Brother McCann.”
“Some of the other brothers may permit you to say Burr and Bruh and Bro. But not this brother. This brother does not permit such speech. With this brother, it will always be Brother and nothing else. Never forget that, class. Brother and nothing else. Repeat that now.”
“Brother and nothing else, Brother.”
He looks at us dully before reading from the
Nazareth Foreign Missions Magazine
, the corners of his mouth wet with saliva. After reading for a few minutes, he stops short, rolls the magazine into his fist and begins his raving.
“We are being accused of buying souls. Buying souls, boys. Trading in salvation. Us, boys. You. And me. And not just Mount Kildare Orphanage. All Romans around the world.”
Romans is his word for Roman Catholics.
“We are the majority, boys. The largest single denomination on God's earth is being accused of buying the souls of the poor. How? How, boys? Why, with money and jobs. That's how. That's the accusation. That's the allegation. Money and jobs, boys. As if Romans need to stoop so low.”
