The Long Run (49 page)

Epilogue

FOR AS LONG AS I LIVE
, I'll never forget our last contact with Blackie. It was the closest we'd ever been to him, even though he wasn't physically present. And the closest we'd been to each other in all our time together at the Mount. It was so real. As real as Oberstein shouting, “Give them wings, Lord, that they may fly.” As real as the homemade bread and bog juice we'd have every day at every meal. As real as the Bat Cave. Our canteen cards. Bug's wheelchair. The Raffle. More real and more powerful than most of my dreams. Blackie wasn't really there, but he really was there.

Rags always said the world of the imagination is a more real world than the one we wake up to every day. Like Oberstein's world of dreams. I didn't know what he was trying to tell us back then. But I do now. It's hard to explain. Like the feeling I get sometimes when I'm out running, and I know with certainty that Blackie and the other night runners are there beside me. Even though they're not. They're not there . . . but they really are. They're just as real as they were when we'd loaf around the Bat Cave, smoking and joshing and humming along to Oberstein's renditions of songs we did in choir.

The gull are squawking madly as the big ferry moves towards the dock in Argentia. The foghorn drowns them out, and the memory of Bug's squeaky voice fades. Standing at the stern, I watch the wide wake the boat cuts in the clear blue water. It's a beautiful day. Surprisingly, I am alone. Well, as Rags used to say, we are never alone. Not as long as we can remember the past. Was it Faulkner who said, “the past is never past”?

I've been crying. A long, tearless cry. The kind that can only come with age. It's my first visit to Newfoundland in many years. I live in Cape Breton now, in an old farmhouse in a small town near a community college, where I teach English literature. I have returned to St. John's to teach a summer-school course at the university.

I drive the long distance that Blackie ran and hiked so many years ago, and I'm amazed at the distance. It's so much farther than he and Oberstein figured. Much farther than a Comrades. Arriving in the oldest city in North America, I stop for a bite to eat at the Golden Eagle Gas Station. The chips and gravy are as good as they always were. I ask the tiny waitress for a spruce beer. She screws up her face and shrugs. “A root beer will be fine,” I say.

The new highway to Stavanger Drive takes me to Major's Path. I park the car on the side of the road and walk the few hundred yards to the Bat Cave. It's still there, but the heavy equipment parked nearby means that it's not long for this world. Some developer, I suspect, will destroy it soon to make way for another supermarket.

I walk over the dry earth to the ashes scattered near the opening. The rusty bars are gone, and the heavy steel door is down. I step inside and squint until my eyes adapt to the dimness. The air is musty, and the cave smells of urine. I close my eyes and remember Blackie sitting in his log chair, passing sentence. I hear the roll call and picture the Bank of Newfoundland. I open my eyes and wander about. There is a hole where the bank used to be, and someone has recently built a fire there.

I search the back wall for Father Cross's bat. Only a few faded letters from the Magna Carta remain. The black bat is gone, and in its place someone has scrawled an odd-shaped heart. Inside it is written “Kathy loves Kevin” and “Debbie loves Rob.” Beneath the heart is a mattress. I wander toward the entrance, happy that someone besides Father Cross has found love in the cave.

I stand at the opening, close my eyes, lower my head and think of the Dare Klub. Such beautiful memories. I open my eyes and stare at my trouser cuffs and my shoes, my favorite shoes, heavy oxblood brogues. The kind Gene Kelly wore, with wingtips. Wingies, the store clerk called them. And I think of Richardson's run to town the day he was wearing penny loafers.

I walk toward the evergreens. Something catches my eye. A tiny metal disk peeks through the soil. I pick it up and rub it between my fingers, thinking about all the slugs we put in pop machines. After the Golden Eagle, we moved the operation, as Oberstein called it, to Bugden's, a small corner store near Memorial Stadium. How often did Blackie send sprinters from the soccer field to Bugden's Store, to return each time with a bottle of pop and fifteen cents? Blackie knew how to make money more than any of us. He just didn't have the law on his side.

Remembering those runs, I walk toward my car, breathing in the clear Newfoundland air. The fresh air invigorates me. Without realizing it, I am jogging past my car, moving along Major's Path toward Torbay Road and Mount Kildare. A car horn blows, and the bald driver smiles and waves. I must look crazy, running along the highway in my shoes, suit pants, and Arrow shirt. I wave and pick up speed. Feeling light, I think of Nicky. As I pass the Mount, I hear the night runners yelling that they've come to join me.
Believe, believe
. . . I love that about running, the way thoughts jump at you out of nowhere. I don't want to stop. I want to run forever. I fly past the soccer field to Logy Bay Road and Fort Pepperrell and the turnoff to Sugar Loaf Pond before stopping to rest.

I stand in the sunlight and look at the trees and the calm water, listening to memory again. So many great times. Holy, Oberstein might say. But the most sacred of all, the one I'll remember long after the bloodred flickering of the sanctuary lamp, the rosaries and Benedictions, the stations of the cross, the Panis Angelicus, and the Veni Creator Spiritus, the most sacred of all: returning from a long run, the great stone buildings looming in the distance, all of us drenched in sweat, our feet blistered, our throats parched, our thighs chafed, our bodies aching, like tired soldiers finally coming home.

Acknowledgments

MANY PEOPLE HELPED
me in the writing of
The Long Run
. I was encouraged and supported by R.J. MacSween, longtime editor of the
Antigonish Review,
and by his successor in that post, George Sanderson, and by Sheldon Currie, one-time fiction editor.
The Antigonish Review
published a number of stories that later became parts of the book. Gert and George Sanderson and Dawn and Sheldon Currie discussed every aspect of the novel with me over a two-year period. Jeanette Lynes, now coeditor of
TAR,
gave the manuscript a detailed and sympathetic reading at a crucial phase in its publication history. Anne Simpson, then fiction editor of
TAR,
read an early version of the book and offered good advice.

Thanks to friends and colleagues who read and/or discussed the manuscript: New Brunswick poet Michael Oliver, novelist Jean Dohaney, Bev and Gavin Matthews, Sarah and Gary Chang, Donna and Robin MacNeil. The memory of Jodean and Brian Tobin's enthusiastic remarks still lingers. Newfoundland poet David Hickey contributed many insightful criticisms, as did novelist Derek Yetman. Special thanks to Dean MacDonald for his encouragement. Also, many thanks to Joyce and Geoff Stirling for their constant support. To Judith and Al Title, Janet McDonald, and Susan and John Venn, many thanks.

Special thanks to Key Porter, the publisher of the Canadian edition. Thanks also to my good friend, Rick Butler, for his constant encouragement and for the opportunity to work as the writer-in-residence at the Hotel California in Los Angeles and the Savoy Hotel in San Francisco. I am also in debt to my agent, Anne McDermid, who, once she started reading the manuscript, became one of its keenest supporters.

Deepest thanks to my family: my mother, many of whose proverbs and Newfoundland expressions found a home in my book, and my brothers and sisters, always supportive and kind. Jean Chisholm and her Cape Breton family encouraged me in my early literary aspirations. My wonderful children, Rachel, Beth, John-Paul, and Sarah, are constantly supportive and full of praise.

Most of all, thanks to Fluff Cole, whose perfect ear and keen eye guided me through the writing of this book.

 

 

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