Take a Magic Bean

Take a magic bean.

Beans have always worked for me.  Take a bean, feel better.  Wasn’t that our motto as teenagers?

This is an exercise in futility, I am afraid – no bean will get me ready for the New York Marathon in November.

Instead I am spending my time reading the book ‘On Writing’ by Stephen King.  

Clearly, avoidance behavior at its finest.

Stephen King, the prolific author of the macabre genre, says he writes 2,000 words a day.  This reflects the discipline he has developed over the years and is what he recommends for aspiring writers. 

Discipline.  This is the key word. 

If one wants to be a professional writer, one has to be, you know, that. 

He says it takes him typically from four to six hours a day to write 2,000 words, and he does this six to seven days a week.

I am told, this is, for those of us who need to visualize these things, ten pages a day, day in, day out. 

Yikes!

I think – since I work full-time and am training for the you-know-what in New York come November – I would be wise to cut back on such a level of commitment.  My goal should be smaller.  I can build my stamina later. 

Five minutes. 

Every morning I should write for five good minutes. 

Five minutes sounds like something I can handle.  Five minutes is do-able.

One page. 

Something, in fact, I can do right now this morning.

Maybe, even, a page-and-a-half.

This way I won’t get overly tired from the mental exertion or be fired for being late for work, and I can save my physical strength for my oh-never-mind.   

Still, we mustn’t forget those beans. 

Magic beans could come in awfully handy with writing too!

Okay then, Stephen King says he goes into a room, the room where he chooses to write, closes the door, and sequesters himself inside (with the blinds drawn) until he produces his ten pages for the day.  Hmmmm….

For me, it would be better if I used my kitchen counter.  Much easier. 

Besides, I like having access to the coffee machine, the refrigerator, the pantry, the bread drawer, the bananas near the knives – much better than being off somewhere in the house with the door closed.  That sounds so secretive...  

In the kitchen, I bet, I can write, say, fifty words easy.  No problem.  Then, I can get up and make myself a piece of toast.   

Fifteen more words and I can refill my coffee cup.

Thirty words and I can look at my face in the downstairs bathroom mirror and practice my visualization exercises: how to smile on the back jacket of my Pulitzer Prize-winning book.

Wait.  What is that thing on my nose?  Where did that come from…

I decide, back at the kitchen counter, doing the math: rather than fifty words, if I write 500 words a day, six days a week, I can generate 3,000 words in one week and, say, 12,000 words in a month. 

This would be… hmmmm, let’s see…

This would be sixty pages in one month!  Wow!

This would be so cool.

Let’s see…

If I actually made an effort to combine these sixty pages of words into real sentences (with meaning!) and, maybe even, sorted the sentences into paragraphs to help categorize my thoughts, it could be even cooler!

In fact, it could be extraordinary! 

How difficult can it be to write 500 words and have them bunched together in short, separate sentences with, say, subjects, verbs and, direct objects?  Like, ah, someone doing something to someone.  Simple!  How tough can this be?

Hmmmm....  I must mull this over – especially while I check the refrigerator.  

I wonder what we are having for dinner tonight?  I need something healthy – I am running a marathon after all.

I need coffee…

Okay, I’m back and focused on writing.  What was it, fifty words?

Wait!  I really should wash the pots and pans from last night.

We had spaghetti for dinner. 

Why is it that I am the one who cleans up afterward?  For that matter, why is it that I never clean up after dinner, but always, always, always wait until the next morning? 

What a mess.

I decide at the sink, I like the concept of discipline in writing.

In truth, I realize in running the hot water, I actually thought about getting myself disciplined long before Stephen King’s book. 

In fact, I know, I’ve lacked discipline all of my life. 

When they handed out the discipline gene, I must have been in the line for magic beans…   

I recall a morning, just like this morning, earlier this year (or was it last year?); it was the morning when I first realized the truth:

I am a lazy writer.

At that time, though, I decided, I needed to think about this some more as I really lacked supporting evidence to justify such an accusation. 

Stop.  Now I've just realized –  

I am a lazy runner too – which is why my training is turning into such a disaster!  

My verdict across the board is ‘guilty’ as charged. 

I am a lazy writer, a lazy runner, and a lazy person! 

Becoming more disciplined is just the kind of punishment I need.  

Like breaking rocks…

Thirty minutes a day of actual writing should be my sentence.

Only now I’ll have to come up with a storyline.

Say, wait, Stephen King says he doesn’t like having a plot.  He simply puts characters into situations and let’s them go wherever it takes them.

Whew!  This works for me.

Most of my essays are plot-less and all of my characters, namely me, are in “situations” all the time.

Just like with this piece. 

And I'm not sure where it is taking me, either. 

In fact, working my way out of this predicament (and the one about to unfold in a month, like an impending disaster) is precisely why magic beans could come in so handy.   

Suddenly, I feel as one with Stephen King.  I am all warm and fuzzy inside.  Maybe I too can get published. 

Opps.  Wait a minute...  .

Okay, back again. 

I think the other thing is not to stop. 

I mean in terms of writing.  

“In running,” my old coach says, “the key is not to stop!”  

Only, Coach, when I write an actual paragraph, I feel like celebrating. 

I have to get serious.  

Tomorrow I get serious.  

My 500-word enterprise will begin tomorrow, and I’ll focus on a more compelling narrative too. 

Today is simply practice.  Getting the feel of what it means to be disciplined.

  

Maybe I need to move my writing to a less “addictive” place. The garage?

But NO, here I sit at my kitchen counter, disciplining myself to write, write, write…

And, that means: focus, focus, focus….

Say, wait a minute, I haven’t actually read the ‘focus’ chapter and Stephen King may have some insight on that too. 

Jeez, this writing business is harder than it seems.  

Maybe I should go running, or, rather, take a magic bean.

****

Kiss

She averts her face,
Looking away,

Like she is suffering

And the touch

Of their lips

Would pass years of
Lies and neglect and

Unsavory thoughts

Between them.

When they kiss,

It is as light as

Eye lashes in the wind.

That’s the issue:

To her, a kiss is a glance

Caught in sin;

To him, it is venom

Passing through skin.

My Family Story #12: Branded

Charles Edgar Giles, Jr.

If I was willing to play baseball or football, Charley could be a wonderful older brother.  The two of us would ride our bikes for miles to other farms in the area for pick-up games, and, though he was always third or fourth in the lineup or he was picked to play quarterback or the primary running back, I swung ninth and stayed deep, deep, deep in the outfield or I was the scrawny lineman at the far, far end of the line.  In pick-up games, though, Charley never let me be the last one chosen, and he always called me to be on his team before it became too embarrassing.  I loved him for that and hated to let him down, frequently playing against older kids who often knocked the crap out of me or tramped me into a pulp, and, god forbid, a ball would be hit to the outfield in my direction.  Still, better to be with Charley and wear the accolades of victory or the scars of defeat than be alone with him on a Saturday morning in our bedroom and suffer the punishment for turning him down and being such a wimp.

Charley was good in all sports; he had a natural affinity for baseball, loved contact sports like football, and would play basketball by himself for what seemed like hours.  I would wonder, watching him, how anyone could throw a ball at a basket over and over?  And not just that, but with no backstop, he would throw the ball, then chase it down, throw the ball, then chase it down, again and again and again.  I would stand at the window in the house and watch him out on the gravel driveway where Daddy had put up a basketball hoop for him.  How could anyone find satisfaction in that?  Or baseball, Charley had a tree he would hit over and over practicing his swing.  Over and over he would hit the tree, over and over.  My sister Allison and I, playing in the garden, shuddered as the repeated thud against the tree reverberating through the fields and woods, the house itself seemed to shake with each hit until Mother would come out and tell him to leave the poor tree alone.  Sometimes he would have me to pitch to him, or tell me to run after his fly balls.  I hated pitching to Charley who invariably would chase me down and beat me up for throwing stupid balls he couldn’t hit and wasting time searching for balls I should have caught. 

In my defense, I was left-handed and was given Charley’s old hand-me-down, right-hander’s glove.  To throw and catch, I would catch the ball with the glove in my left hand, toss the glove, and throw it back with my left hand to Charley.  With him watching, rarely did things go smoothly.  Sometimes I dropped the ball and threw the glove.  Daddy finally bought me a left-handed glove so I wouldn’t get beat up catching balls with Charley, but that only helped a little as I rarely returned the ball to the person to whom I was aiming.  Often Charley would be off and running in any one of a number of different directions to catch my missiles to him, which, in turn, also infuriated him.  Soon he was running at me and I was running for my life.  Daddy didn’t know how to teach me to bat left-handed, so I learned right-handed.  That was okay, as I missed the ball most of the time anyway.  

Charley and Daddy had a lot more in common, than Daddy did with me, though we shared a love of reading and theater: plays from community theater to plays on tv, like Peter Pan with Mary Martin, to musicals on the living room hi-fi, like Oklahoma. I loved Daddy’s enjoyment in watching a musical, explaining the nuances of a song, telling us a good story, sharing with us a magical moment on television.  He loved to laugh, and it was something we all shared with him.

Charley, though, shared his enthusiasm for the Pittsburgh Pirates, for golf and the incredible performance of Arnold Palmer, and later, Jack Nicholas who suffered in popularity at our house because he was not from Western Pennsylvania.  Charley and Daddy went to the U.S. Open in Boston one year and left me at home.  Another year they went to the Indianapolis 500 and, once again, I stayed behind.  Sports – the exploits of the players, their stats in the newspaper, the games broadcast on the radio – was something they shared alone and was unique to them.  I never entered that world with them, and often found myself watching them from the side, from the window.

It’s just that, unfortunately, Daddy wasn’t around much, and it felt like Charley took out his frustration on me.  I knew, though, it had to be more than that.  If we were watching tv, I would be punched in the stomach for no reason, or I would be hit in the face with a throw pillow, or suddenly jumped upon and pummeled.  If I was walking near him, I would be shoved, or tripped, or smacked, or kicked in the butt.  If I was in the pool at the Country Club, I would be dunked and held down until I was sure I was going to drown.  If we were at the library, he would hit me over the head with a book, or kick my shin under the table, or cuffed across the head as he walked by. 

There was nowhere I could go get away from him.  I learned always to be aware of where he was in my presence and would try to put as much distance between us as possible, to never find myself next to him, to stay further back when we were walking, to never sit beside him in a restaurant, to never be in front of him in going to church, to never challenge him by looking at him, or saying something back he might take as a personal affront.  Surely, if he couldn’t punish me when the infraction occurred, there was always Saturday mornings when we were relegated back to our bedroom to clean up our room and take the sheets off of our beds.  Punishment waited for me whether I had done something wrong or not.  Charley was the judge and the dispenser of justice and knew no mercy; and me, being three years younger, of a slighter build, less competitive in my disposition, I was guilty as charged.     

Holly didn’t take his guff though.  Many a time, when my mother wasn’t around, Charley would start a fight, challenging her, and they would wrestle on the floor.  When they were younger, Holly invariably ended up on top of him, pinning him down, unless, of course, he could get me to join him.  Holly holding Charley down infuriated him and led to another match and another and another until, as he grew older, she no longer could dominate him.  Charley never could stand being the second oldest child in our family, especially to a girl, but his being three years younger than Holly, really made a difference.  Holly who also was involved in sports, worked on the farm, rode horses and skied actively could and would take him on and had the disposition to carry it through.  She was the oldest and the most senior of the “four G’s,” and would never give up her leadership to him.

One time, when Holly was babysitting us, she decided to play a new game with us.  As she often did when she was babysitting, she held court in her bedroom playing music from her record player while we sat around on her bed.  She was the teenager, and usually a lot of fun – but you never knew, she could be cruel and dangerous too.  At one point, Holly came up with the idea of pressing a wire coat hanger against the light bulb in the blue plastic lamp next to her bed.  She had opened the hanger and made a strange circle-like configuration with the wire.  When it was red-hot she had Charley and me hold Allison down while she pretended to brand her, bringing the hot wire down to her nightie, listening to Allison screaming to get away.  We knew she would let Allison go, but we weren’t sure when.  That was the scary part, and when she pulled the hanger back and we let Allison go free, we all laughed as Allison cried.  Next Charley and Holly were onto me, and soon I was held down by Charley and Allison as, once again, Holly lowered the vivid, red-hot wire to my chest.  This time she had opened my pajama top and really was going to do it.  I knew her.  She could be so mean.  I struggled violently against Charley and Allison’s hold, but with Charley, in particular, there was no getting away from his grip.

“Do it.” He said to Holly, and, with his encouragement, she brought the wire down almost to my chest before pausing. 

“Holly, Holly, please,” I screamed and screamed, “I’ll do anything.  Anything.  Don’t.  Don’t.  I’ll tell.  I’ll tell.”

“Do it, do it, do it!”  Charley kept saying over and over, excited about what the pain would do to me.  “I’ll do it.  Let me do it!”

“If I let you up, you are my slave,” she said ignoring Charley, staring at me.  “You will do anything I ask.  Anything.”

“Yes, yes, anything, Holly, anything,” I wailed, hating the predicament I was in, knowing Charley wasn’t going to save me, hoping Holly would not give Charley the hot wire.  I could see Allison wanting to let up on her grip, but she wasn’t going to go against Holly and Charley.  

“Okay, let him go,” she said.  I absolutely hated this game, and I knew Allison did too, but we couldn’t leave Holly’s room.

Suddenly Holly was grabbing Charley and yelling for Allison and me to help her hold him down.  Charley was surprised by how quickly Holly had turned on him, and as he struggled to break her grip, we jumped on his arms, holding onto him for dear life. 

“You have been mean to me for the last time,” she said to Charley when the hanger was red-hot ready.

Charley was furious and frustrated that he couldn’t break our grip.  With Holly’s body on him and Allison and I holding down his arms, there was nothing he could do. But he refused to scream and beg to be let go, like Allison and I had done.  He refused to play the game.

“Will you be my slave?” Holly asked him as she brought the hot and contorted wire to his face, holding one end with a towel to keep from burning her fingers.  “Will you be my slave?”

“No, never.” Charley shouted at her, panting with the exertion of twisting and turning his chest, trying to get up, trying to get free.  “I hate you, and I’ll kill you if you touch me.  Let me go.  Let me go.”

“Charley, tell me.” Holly hissed; she too was getting angry that he wasn’t playing the game.  “Tell me you will do what I say from now on.”

“Never, never,” Charley panted, twisting his head back and forth, looking at Allison and me, “ I’ll kill you both if you don’t let me up.  I swear, I’ll kill you all.”

Charley threatening Allison and me was a significant change in the game.  I knew Allison and I did not wanted to face Charley’s wrath, even if Holly was with us and often she was not.  We started to let up, but Holly screamed,

“Don’t you let him go!”

She turned to Charley, “This is your last chance.”

“You wouldn’t dare,” he said, growling in frustration, turning his attention directly to her.  Now it was between the two of them; Holly and Charley one more time; Allison and I spectators to their endless fights. 

“Oh wouldn’t I,” Holly responded. “Watch me!” she said and pressed the red-hot wire hanger down directly onto his chest.

Charley screamed and Allison and I jumped away, shocked that Holly had gone through with it.  Charley, screaming in pain, leaped from the bed and ran out of the room.  I ran after him as he raced up the hallway, crying, holding his pajama top against his chest.  He ran into the bathroom and slammed the bathroom door, locking it behind him.

“Charley, Charley,” I cried against the door. 

“Charley, are you all right.  Are you all right?”  Allison was beside me.  She was worried too. 

We could hear his loud cries in the bathroom, but he wouldn’t talk to us.  I turned and looked at Allison: what would happen to us now?  What would Charley do to us?  How would he punish us?  Maybe we should tell…” 

“Don’t you dare say a word to Mother,” Holly shouted at us from her doorway, almost like she was reading our thoughts.  “I swear I will brand the both of you if you say a word.” 

 It was too much.  Charley was going to kill us, and now Holly was threatening to kill us too.  Mother surely would kill us if she ever found out.

Charley refused to come out of the bathroom.  I could hear him sobbing, as Allison and I walked away not know what else to do.  We went back down the hallway, but didn’t go into Holly’s room.  Not this time.  The game was over.  I went to my bed and tried to go to sleep.  Later, I heard Charley come in the room and go over to his bed.

“I am sorry,” I whispered.  Charley didn’t say a word, but I could hear him moaning in pain.  “Charley, I am so sorry.”

It was a horrible night, as he whimpered for hours in his bed on the other side of our desks, but he never told on Holly or us, and Mother never knew about the incident.  The following Saturday, when Mother sent us back to our bedroom to change our sheets and straighten our room, Charley pounded on me, once more, and in screaming in pain, in hollering for Mother to get him to stop, there was a side of me that was glad.   

****

Mother didn’t take Charley’s guff either, though she had no desire to brand him into submission.  Still, with a metal fly swatter or a plastic waffle ball bat, she would go after him and get him to listen to her.  At times it was crazy, and at times we would be horrified by their struggles, but she was bound and determined that he would listen to her, that he would stop beating up on me, and that he would do the chores she had given him.  With our father in Pittsburgh or on the Pennsylvania Turnpike, Charley felt that her authority could be challenged and made it clear he was willing to question hers, as well as anyone else’s, all through his elementary, junior high, and high school years – until he encountered the ultimate authority, when a judge gave him a choice the summer after high school: go to jail or join the marines.  Of course, that began Charley’s marine story, which, given we were in the height of the Vietnam War, was a tale to be told unto itself!  But that’s many years later and way ahead in this story.

****

Recovery

He wasn’t sure why he felt his best days were behind him.  He had driven to Gettysburg for the day to visit the town and see his two sisters and decided at the spur of the moment, as the late afternoon waned into evening, to go for a run on the battlefield.  Now his idea seemed crazy: maybe he was too out of shape, or his leg had not recovered from his fall earlier in the spring, or he just wasn’t into it like he had been a year ago.  The easy route he envisioned was becoming more of an effort than it deserved, a test of stamina when he had no stamina to provide and no desire to be tested here and now on a hot Saturday afternoon in the middle of August.  Rather than finding inner peace in the act itself – the pace, the movement of his legs, the regular, rhythmic rise and fall of his chest – or even enjoying the serenity of the battlefield where he almost never had the opportunity to run – the nicely paved roads with monuments and cannons lining the route, the large elms and oaks providing cool shade in juxtaposition to the hot and hazy sun lowering against the distant, purple-cast Catoctin Mountains, or the roll of the steaming deep-green farm land in southern Pennsylvania, undulating and welcoming – his run, he realized much to his chagrin, was turning into self-inflicted travesty.

From the beginning when he left his sisters’ house on Chambersburg Street near the town square, running down Racehorse Alley toward Buford Avenue and Route 30, he could feel the reluctance of his legs, the creak and moan of joints and muscles not wanting to go through this again, the overall weariness in pushing through the heavy humidity of the late afternoon.  He forced his mind to focus on his left thigh still recovering from his fall back on Mother’s Day – back on a trail in the Duke Forest, back when he tore his upper hamstring tendon tripping over a root, or a rock, or his own feet – and reassured himself, testing his leg, stretching the muscle, it would be all right – even if he didn’t actually believe it and even if it still was sore that day.  Much better though, he decided, to concentrate on this than dwell on the agony of driving home later that night, six hours back to Durham. 

He had come up to Gettysburg that morning from a business trip to D.C. and was sore from two days of driving in his old car with no shocks and little cushioning.  The meeting in Arlington at the U.S. National Science Foundation on Friday afternoon had been a disaster: the two staff members – a middle-aged, African-American woman and an older white guy with gray hair and wrinkled shirt – had agreed to meet him at the very end of the day, but sitting in a messy seventh floor conference room that smelled of old sweat and burned coffee, it was clear to him they weren’t buying into his idea and, frankly, wanted to go home.  Twenty-three after five and they were arguing between themselves whether or not he should bother submitting his proposal at all.  He sat there, looking beyond the two of them and stared at the large windows closed with cheap tan curtains, but glowing from the hot afternoon sun.  The room was stifling, on fire, and he was too old to cool things down.  He just wanted to close his eyes to the radiating dust streaming off the windows down to the worn carpeting; he longed to tune out the discussion and lay with his forehead on his hands flat on the hard conference table.

The proposal deadline was Wednesday, and he had no energy or desire to change the write-up now.  Besides, was it the idea itself or the way he presented it that had caused the two NSF staffers to have such a negative reaction?  He had spent weeks with his program staff drafting the write up, even practicing what he should say, he driven up from North Carolina, fighting traffic on I-85 and 95 the entire way just for this opportunity, but after his presentation, their response was so disappointing, he didn’t know where to begin.  He and his team had not practiced for that, what to say when the pronouncement was dead on arrival.  Sitting there he knew how things would go: they would end the meeting making him feel better by agreeing he should submit and let the panel review it; if the committee liked it, maybe it could get funded.  But he knew, if they didn’t like it, regardless of what the reviewers said, it was a lost cause. He could envision the Chair of his department on Monday evaluating him, as she always did when she heard such bad news: searching his eyes, his body language, seeking an understanding behind Friday’s crushing blow.  Would she have made a difference?  Was he a mistake?  Could she get him to salvage the proposal?  How much effort would it take?  Was he even up for pulling this off?

He decided to change his plans Saturday after waking up late in the Hampton near Reagan National Airport.  The trip to Gettysburg was far enough to unwind in the car and gain time to think – and the visit would be a nice respite free of the persistent inquiries of his staff and his wife’s endless questions about what he was going to say on Monday.  He grew up in Gettysburg after his family had moved from their Pennsylvania farm back when he was kid.  Though he left more than thirty years, his sisters still lived in the town.  His sisters were together now, long after failed marriages and children who had grown up and gone off to raise families of their own.  They were three and six years older than him, owned a business near the town square, and shared an old, civil war house next door on Chambersburg Street.  Unfortunately, as the younger brother, he realized, he was their work-in-progress: they watched him from afar and didn’t hesitate to comment when, as today, they thought he was fumbling along, flailing away, or even falling apart.  The run, in fact, was undertaken precisely to end all further discussion on that topic and show them that, by the very act itself, he was still of sound mind, even if he did seem a little depressed and scattered and non-communicative, and his health was fine too, even if he appeared to be overweight, overly tired, and just a little jittery.         

Avoidance was a stupid reason to go for a run, he decided, working his way across North Washington Street, a stupid reason to come to Gettysburg at all.  He should have headed home this morning, explained to his wife the bad news, and taken Sunday to prepare for the battle ahead; besides it was way too hot to be running outside; he should have waited another hour or two; maybe gone for a walk instead, maybe down to his family’s old house on Carlisle Street, the house his mother had sold long ago.  Then, again, if he had, his sisters would have wanted to accompany him, and, then, the conversation would have returned, once again, to him, his family, his work situation; then, the question of when he would free himself from all of the stress he was facing (for no reason, they would say, given his age) would inevitably come up for discussion.  By running, he could be alone and focus his thoughts, or rather, not think at all and simply concentrate on landing his feet free from the broken concrete, bits of glass, and chunks of macadam littering the alleyway.

He knew Racehorse Alley well; even with it being many years since he had ridden his bike or walked down the length of it.  His mother had moved them to a house next to Gettysburg College, and when she sold their home back when he was in high school and remarried, he spent an equal number of years sub-renting apartments near the alley from college kids every summer.  Later, after college, with three friends from work, he rented a decrepit Civil War-era house further down Chambersburg Street with a weedy, rarely mowed lawn that also backed up to the alley.  Now, running past the house, he remembered the girls from Gettysburg College and the local bars that he brought there.  It was here too, in his mid-twenties, while smoking pot with friends early one night he learned his mother and stepfather had been killed in a small plane crash.  His stepfather owned his own plane; they had been trying to land in dismal weather, but never made it across the last range of mountains near Hagerstown.  They flew headlong into the side of a forested ridge and died instantly.  That night his oldest sister’s husband walked down Racehorse Alley from his mother’s restaurant on the square, took his turn on the joint being passed around, and broke the news.  His brother-in-law’s relationship with his sister never withstood the crash.  Even his mother’s restaurant, the one he had worked in as a kid, burned to the ground several years later.    

He picked his way around a car backing out of a garage and hurried forward when he realized a truck was waiting for him to cross a narrow bridge over Tiber Creek.  The bridge, a solid cement structure built over a whisper of a winding creek, was similar to the one on Carlisle Street under which he sat as a kid those first few years hating everything about this town, hated his mother for bringing them here when she separated his father, using the endless time at his disposal with no one asking where he was to drink bottles of beer stolen from their refrigerator and learn to smoke cigarettes.  Tareytons.  His father died of cancer somewhere back then, back in Pittsburgh.  

Now, at the end of the alley, crossing Buford Avenue and Route 30 proved to be more difficult than he envisioned with all the trucks and locals on one of the main thoroughfares into and out of the town, but with a small opening in the traffic, he sprinted across the street to an abrasive honk of an oncoming car.  Clearly, sprinting in his sixties was not the same as when he was a kid, or a college dropout, or in his twenties working in his mother’s restaurant, but he still could dash when he had to, even if, with his age and the injury he sustained earlier in the year, it seemed a bit doddering. 

Heading up Stevens Street, he left the noise of Buford Avenue and Route 30 behind, but slowed as he reached his high school girl friend’s house on the corner.  He and his friends spent many nights sitting outside on her porch.  In fact, he thought, running on, didn’t he and Betsy engage in their first sexual experiences back in that house?  Later, after her mother committed suicide and Betsy found her in her parents’ bedroom, after her father subsequently remarried and sold the house, of all people, his dentist moved onto the property and set up his practice there.  Now it looked like Dr. Wynsiak also was gone, and the house was, once again, someone’s home with a flickering TV in the windows and a Honda SUV parked on the driveway.  He wondered what happened to his dentist.  Had it been that long, he thought, as he reached the end of the street and started up the long, sloping lawn of the Lutheran Seminary.  Betsy, back then, after their traumatic relationship that extended into their college years, moved to LA to be an illustrator.  Like him, she rarely returned.  This, according to his sisters, when he asked about her, after his sisters told him earlier this afternoon of a close friend of theirs, another friend from high school, who had died from a lingering and complicated illness back in the spring.  Betsy and Kathy had been best friends.  Back then, Kathy had wanted to be a musician; when he was at Penn State, he watched Kathy perform in a Marriott Hotel cocktail lounge in State College.  She was singing by herself with just her guitar and a drum machine that provided a computerized beat behind her.  He had gone to talk about his problems with Betsy, but Kathy looked so lonely in the silvery spotlight drinking manhattans and singing with just a couple of customers in the dark bar, he decided not to bother: by then Kathy was a world away from their lives together back in high school and miles removed from Gettysburg.  Running through the seminary, he was sorry to hear she had died, sorry he had lost touch with both of them after college, and, as he passed the large Lutheran church with the beautiful white copula, he was sorry too that neither he nor Betsy had come back for Kathy’s funeral.  He would have liked to talk to Betsy about those days back when they were together, so young and screwed-up.   

Crossing the intersection with Fairfield Road, he left the town behind and entered the battlefield, slowly working his way down Confederate Avenue.  Within a mile he passed a large group of boy scouts walking to an encampment where they would spend the night.  It reminded him of when he and his friends walked this same route.  One of his friends had an assortment of firecrackers and they were looking for a safe place to light the rockets.  Fireworks were illegal and it wasn’t the Fourth of July, but still, they wanted to see how high the rockets would shoot.  He remembered watching the cars driving past, touring the battlefield, eyes in the car focusing on the left side of the road where the Army of Northern Virginia had taken up encampment in the woods.  He and his friends went into the fields sloping down toward the farms on the right side and found a spot where they could set off the rockets after the park closed.  It was a spectacular show of force and display, with the booming sound and colorful, tingling lights sparkling high across the night sky.  Back then, they had a total disregard for the town police, the county sheriff, or the rangers patrolling the park.  Perhaps, it was the excitement of stolen freedom that he and his friends enjoyed.  He wondered, as he ran past the troop, if scouting provided that.  He had never been a scout.  More like riff-raff.  The kind Boy Scouts avoid.    

In fact, he had walked Confederate Avenue a thousand times, he reminded himself as he ran past Robert E. Lee’s Monument, working his way through the traffic of cars and people.  It was here, with his left leg starting to throb, he felt the first urge to stop, to go back to Gettysburg and his sisters’ house, to nurse his injury over their pestering questions.  Surely, he could run further than this before turning around, especially with the Boy Scout troop behind him, or the people in the cars wondering why he didn’t keep going.  He had walked further than this with Betsy back in high school, looking for a spot to lie in the grass.  He couldn’t turn back now.  All one summer in his late twenties, he and Karen, the woman he later married, walked past Lee’s Monument on numerous occasions and talked about what their lives could be like together; they agreed he would have to finish college and both would need to go to graduate school before they could get the jobs they wanted and live a life free of the stress of money and crappy apartments.  He had met Karen after his mother’s death working in his mother’s restaurant; she was a Gettysburg girl, a Gettysburg College graduate, and living with her family further down on Buford Avenue.  Karen left the area after that summer to begin graduate school at Duke; he subsequently moved to DC and ultimately followed her to North Carolina and the life they said they wanted.  It was a good life; he had tried to be a good husband, father and colleague but he wasn’t so sure he was up for it any more.  When can one opt out?  Start over?  Kiss it all good-bye? 

So much of what he remembered was gone, he realized as he ran toward Emmitsburg Road.  The houses and structures that had dotted the battlefield along Confederate Avenue, even the refreshment stand near the small tower, had been purchased by the Park Service and torn down.  The fields across Emmitsburg Road were cleared of trees that had grown up over the years and, in fact, he was told, had changed the look of what the fields had been like for thousands of soldiers fighting here a hundred and fifty or so years ago; the trees that had made the park such a beautiful testimonial to the dead, these too had been removed. 

Yes, much more austere than he remembered, he thought: symbolic, perhaps, of the need to cut the crap that had begun to overwhelm him in his life; on the other hand, maybe he was just too old.  As he ran by tourists getting in and out of their cars, he couldn’t help but notice how out of shape most of them were, fat men and women struggling to walk across the road to take a picture of the field, a monument, or each other.  So many men with long grizzly beards and white hair sprouting under funky hats – is this really who comes to the battlefield anymore?  The Rip Van Winkles of the world?  The only people left in America who thought the battle interesting?  Wasn’t he, in fact, one of them, having turned sixty-one less than a month earlier, carrying twenty pounds of dead weight around his gut that he loathed, but could not force himself to do something about; why didn’t he have the discipline, or the desire any more?  He needed a drink.  Last night he had drank way too much in the hotel and felt horrible this morning.  He adjusted his running cap over his eyes to deflect the light, like the pillow over his eyes earlier in the hotel when he thought the sun streaming through the curtains would blind him.  Soon he crossed Emmitsburg Road, breathing hard, harder than he should have been breathing at this point in the run, knowing that he needed to get a handle on this if he was going to make it up both Big Round Top and Little Round Top on the other side.  With his leg throbbing he was leaving the Confederacy behind and heading for Union lines.

He knew what the problem was, and it had nothing to do with the Civil War, or the historic three-day battle, or his leg.  He had known it for a while: it was so stupid, but he had forgotten to bring water on his run.  He was a proven runner with several years of experience, and yet he left his sisters’ house in such a hurry, he had forgotten his water bottle and running glasses.  He didn’t need the sunglasses in the shade of Confederate Avenue, but that would change, especially in the bright sun of the open fields after he climbed the two Round Tops and headed down to the majestic Pennsylvania Monument built like a temple near the High Water Mark of Pickett’s Charge, back in the early 1900s when Gettysburg was a top-tourist destination.  Right now, though, with his aching leg, climbing up Big Round Top would require all of his focus and dehydration was definitely an issue. 

He could hear his wife:  “You forgot your water?” she would shriek, as if saying it with a calm voice would not be dramatic enough.  “You’re kidding me!”  She would be furious, like somehow his forgetting to carry water had impacted her in some strange way, like she would turn instantaneously into a stone statue on the spot, a horrid monument to the exasperated next to marble depictions of the dying and triumphant – that is, if she didn’t release pent up years of frustration accumulated from his misdeeds.  “So typical,” she would say, as if he only got it right when she was there to check up on him.  “Do you have your sunglasses, your keys, your water, your hat?”  “Yes, dear,” he would respond every time, but thinking each time: “Quit it!  It’s my run.  Let me alone.” 

Why couldn’t he have said ‘let me be’ to his sisters earlier in the afternoon when he became so angry, rather than be stuck out here on the battlefield, or, better yet, say “go fuck yourself” on Monday in his early morning meeting with his Departmental Chair, a woman ten years younger and on the rise for greater glory.  But did he really want to drop out of her inner circle, no longer be counted on as the moneyman on her team, did he really want to stop riding her coattails?  When in his life did he become such a suck-ass?  Did he really believe she would keep him on when she reached the pinnacle of her success?  He was carnage, didn’t everyone see that, and why did he care, anyway?  He remembered his half-empty glass of ice tea sitting on his sisters’ kitchen counter next to his sunglasses and keys; his water bottle empty in the car.  Mistakes happen, goddamn it.  Leave me alone.  Still, how could he have forgotten water?  It was so stupid, and as much as he denied it along Confederate Avenue when he told himself he often ran four or five miles without water, now, as he slowed in his climb up Big Round Top, he was struggling.

A man stood by a red Honda Civic in the parking area at the turn-in for Big Round Top.  His passenger door was wide open and he was leaning against the top of his car, not looking up the forested path to the top of the heavily contested hill, but rather watching him slowly run by; he realized suddenly, the man was drinking from a gallon thermos in his right hand.  Could this be for real?  Maybe he was a mirage, a figment of his dehydrated imagination.  Wouldn’t it be wonderful, he thought as he struggled past the car, feeling the man’s eyes on him as he swallowed and lowered his head and followed the road onward to Little Round Top – wouldn’t it be wonderful if the man stepped forward and offered him a sip.  “Here, brother, quench your parched throat. Wipe your furrowed brow on my sleeve.”  No one could help him now, he thought.  His eyes flashed ahead to a pool of light on the road.  What was that?  Sunlight streamed through a spot in the thick, green canopy overhead, creating an incandescent orb of glittering filament dancing on the road.  What was that?  A sound to his left – he looked over to one of the wooden porta-johns near the rear of the small parking area.  A door was opening and a boy was stepping out still adjusting his shorts.  As the boy came forward, now staring at him, his mother, watching for her son, whispered, “Hurry, dear,” pointing to their car.  Let the wild man go by.      

Maybe, rather, he should lie down on the road and just give himself time to recover.

****