The Runner Page 18

  “It’s just a different form of slavery. If I were black it wouldn’t feel much different to me. Economic slavery and sociological slavery. I’d be pissed, if I were black.”

  Yeah but you’re not. Because you cannot be what you are not. It was hard enough to be what you were. Easier, Bullet saw now, to pretend you were something you weren’t and say if you were how you’d feel and behave, easier than working on yourself.

  “. . . organized around a leader. It would have to be a black, because they don’t much trust us. That Shipp character they beat up, he’d be good. You hear them talk about him, they think he walks on water. But the guy’s got a wife and kid, he’s got jobs because they don’t have much family around here to help out; he’s not as useful as he could be.”

  Tommy’s theys were switching around, and he didn’t even hear it. He didn’t want to hear it.

  “I thought,” Bullet said carefully, “Vietnam was your personal crusade.”

  “Man, I had that all wrong. This is the real war. Look around you—this room looks like a layer cake, half vanilla, half chocolate. And there’s no real difference between us, except the vanilla knows how to keep the chocolate on the bottom of the pan. This is the real war, right here. This is the big one, the long one. This is the war with some future and purpose to it. And all over the color of a man’s skin. To prove that white are better. To hide the fact that we’re all the same.”

  Tommy had his hands on half the truth, because whatever the cost to Bullet personally, the Vietnam thing would end. One way or the other, win or lose. But Tommy needed the other half of the truth. “We aren’t all the same,” Bullet said. Nothing is more different than each person, one from the other, every one from every other.

  People were beginning to empty out of the lunch room.

  You’ve got to honor the differences, or what’s similar will be useless to you.

  “You’re kidding,” Tommy said. “C’mon, Bullet—you really think you’re any different from the rest of us? Oh, I grant you, with that trick you have of not saying much, you look different, and you’re not scared of anything, but how does that make you so damned superior? Everybody sits down to take a crap, Bullet.”

  So what.

  “You had me fooled. I thought you were really something; I even admired you. You looked so strong, nobody could pull the wool over your eyes. I thought—last week—you were going to tell them, really let them have it. But you never were my friend, were you. You don’t have friends; you don’t have any connections to anybody at all. That’s the only thing that bothers me, seeing through you like that. I don’t give a damn about their stupid newspaper, or being editor, I don’t even miss it. I don’t even mind seeing how far downhill Cheryl can pull the thing in a week. But you—”

  Bullet stood up. He looked down at Tommy, down across the years. “You don’t have to settle for half the truth,” he said.

  For a second, he thought Tommy understood. Then the pale bony face closed him out. “You can’t fool me,” Tommy said, bitterly. “Not anymore. I didn’t think you’d try. I thought better of you, Bullet.”

  “No, you didn’t,” Bullet said, meaning exactly and precisely what he said.

  CHAPTER 20

  That night, Bullet came into the kitchen while his parents were having their dinner. His father served onto the two plates from a platter of pork chops, a bowl of stewed tomatoes and a bowl of noodles. The old man was just starting to serve when Bullet came in. There were five chops, three for the old man, two for his mother. She used to cook pork chops up in nines, three for him, two for her, three for Bullet, and the extra one against a large appetite. The extra one always got eaten.

  She used to cook platters of food, to feed all of them, her hands quick and strong, making bread, washing up, her voice sharp and quick. No matter how stony his father sat, she put all the quickness she had into that room. Until they started leaving, no more Johnny to fight back, no more Liza to go stand beside her mother with tears rolling out of her eyes. Now his mother sat as stony as his father, all her quickness gone.

  Bullet walked over to the shelves. He wanted to slam his fist through the glass panes of the cupboard door. But why so angry? Because there was always nothing he could do, because Liza shouldn’t have left her here like this with the two of them. Because he was going to leave too, he was going to have to leave the farm behind him and never come back. Never work his own crops out of it and make it as good as it once had been—and he could have done that, he could feel that in his back and his hands. But he’d known for years now he was going to lose it. So why so angry?

  Because he wasn’t doing a damned thing for her. Couldn’t. Just adding to it for her. Too bad. Tough luck.

  No compromising, he warned himself. Because he wanted—he wanted to do something, even knowing he couldn’t change anything, not the way things were, not the way things were going to be. Because he couldn’t stand to be one of the things that worked to break her. He wasn’t, he wouldn’t be, he didn’t want to do that: that could scare him, scare him cold down through his jittery bones.

  I never thought, Bullet thought, knowing how he looked right then as if he could stand outside the window and see himself: straight back and shoulders stiff, chin high, face a mask, and the skin of his head bronzed. He hoped not, he hoped he wasn’t, but he couldn’t be sure. He just didn’t know how much like his old man he was.

  Thoughtfully, Bullet took a can of spaghetti out of the cupboard, opened it, scraped the coagulated mass into a pan and put it over a low flame on the stove. He left the wooden spoon in the pan. He took down a bowl and got out an eating spoon, thinking. He stirred the loosening stuff in the pan, wondering how they managed to get that bright red-orange color to their sauce. He poured himself a glass of milk, drank it down, then poured himself another. Okay, he said to himself.

  Behind him, utensils clanked against china as they ate. Nobody said anything to him, but he could feel the anger pouring out of the old man. It blew all around him: go away, go away. In time, he answered; ignoring it in the meantime.

  Steam came up from the pan, and he scraped some spaghetti into his bowl. He took a deep breath, then carried the bowl, glass and spoon to the table. He pulled out a chair and sat down. Without looking around, he started to eat.

  The air in the room got very still, like an iceberg forming all at once. Bullet looked up briefly: his father stared at his plate, his mouth working; his mother stared at the middle of the table, just waiting. Bullet went back to his slow eating.

  Finally, his father spoke to him: “At the risk of being repetitive, I said I didn’t want to lay eyes on you until you looked like a human being again. I believe you were excused from the table until then.” The cold eyes looked right at Bullet.

  Bullet looked right back. The old wind in the old anger, he thought. He kept his voice quiet when he answered:

  “No.”

  That was everything he had to say about the question, the general question and the particular one.

  The old man couldn’t do anything, except get up and leave the table himself. “I don’t eat with animals,” he said to Bullet.

  “That’s right, you don’t,” Bullet said.

  The only question was how the old man was going to approach this.

  “So you’re not going to respect my desire not to have to look at you,” his father said. He didn’t move his eyes from Bullet’s face. Bullet didn’t need to say anything to that. “Nor my request not to have you at my table.”

  “It’s her table too.”

  “Abigail?”

  She looked at Bullet then, and he couldn’t tell what she was thinking. She looked along at her husband, still without expression. She didn’t say anything. Bullet heard what that was supposed to say: I’ll stand by him as long as we live.

  Well, he knew that; he wasn’t going to quarrel with either of them about that.

  His father chewed on his meat, ignoring both of them. After a long time he said, “I�
�ll take some applesauce.”

  Bullet dug into the spaghetti again. The old man was just going to pretend it hadn’t happened.

  “We’re out of applesauce.”

  “You should have told me. I was in town today; you could have done a shopping.”

  The table they ate at was made of wood, scrubbed down to smoothness. The joints between the separate boards had been made so close that you could see just a thin pencil line where one piece ended and the next began. The table had been put together the same way that fourteen-footer had, somebody’s best work. It was as old as the farmhouse.

  “I didn’t know you were going,” she said.

  “You should have told me it was time to do a shopping.”

  She didn’t answer.

  “There’s no call for us to run out of food.”

  Nobody said anything. Bullet ate. The stuff mushed in his mouth; he couldn’t even chew it.

  “I didn’t know you’d be going into town,” she finally answered.

  “The fan belt on the tractor is giving out,” he told her. “I had to get it replaced.”

  What was she supposed to say to that?

  “And you know I don’t enjoy pork without applesauce,” the old man said.

  I’m sorry, that’s what she was supposed to say. The hell with that. Bullet pushed his chair back from the table and went to refill his bowl. Creating a diversion. When he sat down again, he looked at his mother. “This stuff is terrible,” he told her. “Want some?”

  She shook her head, but her eyes had come alive. “Can you eat this pork chop?” She had one left on her plate.

  Before Bullet could answer, the old man announced, “If you don’t want it I’ll take it. I’ve got room.” When nobody responded right away, he said, “Pass me your plate, there’s no need to let it get any colder than it is.”

  It’s almost funny, Bullet thought, ducking his head to hide his expression. He looked sideways at his mother.

  “You reap what you sow,” his father announced. “Samuel, do you hear me? You reap what you sow.”

  “I hear you,” Bullet answered, without anger. But I don’t have to reap what you’ve sown, old man. “Are you thinking about soybeans for the front fields next season then?” he asked.

  At his right hand, his mother humphed, the sound of smothered laughter. “You, Bullet,” she warned him.

  “Okay,” he promised her.

  * * *

  The coach read them the letter inviting the team to take part in the state field and track championships, the weekend before Thanksgiving. Twenty-five teams from all over the state were invited. The meets would take place over near Frederick, in the western part of the state, from Friday through Sunday.

  “Well, whaddaya think, are you ready?” the coach asked them.

  “Sure.”

  “I’m always ready to miss a couple of days of school.”

  “I hope,” the coach told them, “you’re not taking this as lightly as you seem to be. Because that would mean you’re seriously underestimating the competition. Only one of the schools we’ve played this fall is going to be there—Acorn. Remember that meet?”

  “The first? They had one coach for every player, didn’t they?”

  “We’re a lot better now.”

  “Yeah, well, so’re they, you can count on that.”

  That point sobered them.

  “And they’re the only one of the twenty-five we’ve gone up against?”

  “Look at the list yourselves. We’ve got no reason to be confident. On the other hand, we do have the element of surprise. They’re not expecting us to be as good as we are, not the whole team. Bullet here they know about, but the rest of us. It’ll be hard, I’m not trying to kid you. But—I can see it, right out in front of me—” His hand reached out, as if to pluck an invisible cluster of grapes from just overhead. “I can almost touch it. I can almost taste it.”

  “Hey, Coach, you’re not expecting us to win this thing, are you? It’s only three weeks, we can’t get that good in three weeks.”

  The coach looked deliberately around at the circle of young men. “That would be too much, winning the whole thing. But I’d like to come in among the top ten, and I think this year we just might be able to do that. If you’re on your form and you bust your guts . . . I think we’re good enough for that. What do you think, are you good enough?”

  “How would we know? You’re the coach.”

  “I was planning on being happy just not to be on the bottom again. Like, twenty-second place, or maybe even twenty-third.”

  * * *

  “The South,” Walker said, “thought it was being invaded by hostile forces. The North thought it was trampling down the vineyards where the grapes of wrath were stored.” He gave that a minute to sink in. Long enough for Cheryl to say, “‘Battle Hymn of the Republic,’ Howe.” Walker just looked her in the eye and looked her in the eye.

  Bullet smiled to himself. He didn’t mind Walker, he decided.

  “What do you think?” Walker asked. He waited to hear whatever anybody had to say.

  “People were different back then,” somebody said, “so we can’t think like they did at all.”

  “What do you mean, different?” Walker asked.

  “Well, they really believed in what they were fighting about. The Southerners really believed in their right to own slaves. The Northerners really believed slavery was wrong. To the Southerner, freeing a slave was like . . . giving your dog equal rights, you know? Dressing him up and letting him eat at the table with you.”

  “You telling me that to prove things are different now?” a black kid asked.

  Walker let the wave of laughter ripple over the room before asking another question. “Are people different?”

  “People now?” Cheryl asked. “Sure. We know so much more.”

  “Are you saying that knowledge is the key to progress?” somebody demanded.

  “Well, look at the way they used to think war was romantic, dying for your country and all that. They didn’t know.”

  “Just marching along like sheep to the slaughter.”

  “I guess we are really different, Mr. Walker.”

  “I guess they wish we were the same, don’t you think? No draft protesters, no freedom riders? Just followers.”

  “Wait a minute,” Walker said. “Did you know there were riots when Lincoln announced the draft?” Silence greeted this. “And what about John Brown, isn’t he the original freedom rider?”

  “What are you trying to say?” somebody asked. “That we never learn and just make the same mistakes over and over?”

  “History repeats itself,” Cheryl said.

  “I’ll tell you what I think,” one of the black girls said. “The South was being invaded. No, listen, if—if the Russians put up a fort on Deale Island, wouldn’t you think just that?”

  “Sabrina’s right, we would feel invaded.”

  “Of course we would, because we’d be invaded. Jerk.”

  “So we’d go trampling down the vineyards, right?”

  “Spare me another metaphor.”

  “Well it’s a good one, because it’s interesting, because it’s so ironic—the grapes of wrath. If you trample the grapes of wrath it should mean you put a stop to war.”

  “The Civil War was another war to end all wars? But I thought World War I—”

  “Which didn’t do the job, either. When are people going to learn that making war is not the way to end wars?”

  “Yeah! Then what is? Because if you’re so smart and know the answer, I wish you’d tell us about it before they send me off to get killed.”

  “Mr. Walker? What are you getting at?”

  Walker had been watching the class. “Ask Mr. Tillerman.”

  No you don’t.

  “Ask Bullet? Why? Is he awake?”

  Well, that is pretty funny.

  “Okay, I’ll bite. Bullet? Mr. Tillerman, I mean—what is he getting at?”

  B
ullet fixed Walker with a glance. The man was looking at him, not het up, not pressuring, not entirely sure of himself; just interested.

  “He’s talking about the old wind in the old anger again,” Bullet said. Not, he could see, what Walker expected him to say. He watched the guy think it through.

  “That’s pretty subtle,” Walker said. “He’s right, and he knows it—but I’m here to teach, not mystify. Let’s get back to a fact, the draft riots.”

  They chewed that one around for a while, asking Walker questions about the draft laws at the time, and how much you had to pay someone to go into the army in your place, and what happened to the rioters, and what happened to the draft law. Bullet relaxed back and followed his own thoughts. His father was pushing him out and the draft was out there pressuring him in; how was he supposed to know what he wanted? In one way, getting drafted would be a way of getting away, running free and clear. In another, sticking it out at home would be a way of running beyond the reach of the draft. If he stayed on the farm, that would show his father, show him he couldn’t push Bullet out. If he went into the army, enlisted, it would be a way of not being pushed into it. The feeling in the classroom was pretty clear—they wanted to run clear of the draft; not even the draft, really, they wanted to run clear of the danger. But that was one choice they didn’t have, because you didn’t choose the time you were born in.

  Bullet thought on. Although, if it was the old wind in the old anger, the one thing you could be sure of was that it would blow on by. The war would end, his father would die; the wind was going to blow itself by whether you stood firm or ran along, with it or against it. He wondered, his legs stretched out, relaxed, crossed at the ankles, what he was going to decide to do. He had the same feeling he had waiting at the start of a race.

  CHAPTER 21

  Bullet looked around him. Mountains ringed this long, wide valley. To the east and south, distant mountains were massed shapes across the valley horizon. To the north and west, their shapes were clear because they lay closer. They looked as if some giant lying within the earth had punched out with his fists to form them—rough, strong, irregular, they rose up out of sloping hillsides into stone outcroppings or steep woods. Bullet ignored the crowd of competitors, coaches, officials and judges swarming around him. His eyes were on the mountains and the sky over them. The sky was clear and blue. The early sunlight was starting to take the icy chill out of the air and illuminate the details of mountain faces—here a woods of mixed evergreens and bare branches, there the long vertical gulley formed by spring floods.