The Long Run Read online

  “I went to the bathroom, Brother.”

  “And then what?” McMurtry removes his glasses, bites the tip of an arm and stares at Ryan. Specks of dust float behind him near the sunlit window.

  “I can’t remember, Brother.” For a moment the classroom is silent. Bug wipes sweat from the back of his neck. McMurtry stares blankly at the floor. A faint smile ripples across McCann’s face.

  “You can’t remember?” The force of his words seems to push us back in our desks. “You weren’t trying to run away again, were you?”

  “No, Brother. I was sleepy, Brother. I fell asleep.” Ryan scratches the veins on his skinny neck.

  “You fell asleep?”

  “Yes, Brother.” A loud mocking hiss from the radiator.

  “On the toilet?”

  “Yes, Brother. On the toilet, Brother. I was drying. Like Brother Walsh told us to do.”

  A pause. McMurtry’s face muscles stiffen. He asks Ryan if he fell asleep before he used the toilet or after.

  “I can’t remember, Brother. Before, I think. No, before and after. I used the toilet again after I woke up.

  “And then what?” A grin, like a shadow, creeps across his face.

  “Then I wiped myself, Brother, and went back to bed.”

  “Very well, Mr. Ryan. We shall continue this conversation later.” He strokes his hair, which is white as the driven snow, as his wolf eyes scan the class. “Brother McCann and I shall be holding a series of, shall we say, interviews. With a number of, shall we say, suspects. You will be the first on the list, Mr. Ryan. It appears someone, not necessarily Mr. Ryan, not necessarily one of our suspects, but someone, some boy or two or, God knows, more . . . someone is responsible for stealing wine from the sacristy. It is our intent to find the culprit, or culprits. These thieves. These wine smugglers. These smugglers of holy wine. And punish them. Even if we have to strap the entire orphanage.”

  I can feel the back of my shirt dampen against my chair as McMurtry leaves the room. McCann stares at us, stone-faced, until the buzzer sounds.

  After class Blackie calls an emergency meeting with the Klub executive and Ryan, out by the incinerator.

  “Interviews, my ass,” Oberstein says. “Interrogation is what the Nazis called it.”

  “What are Nasties?” Bug says.

  “Stick to your guns, Ryan,” I say. “They’ll try to trip you up. Don’t say anything new, for God’s sake. Stick to your guns. Remember what happened to the guy on Perry Mason.”

  Blackie and Oberstein grill Ryan over and over until they’re certain he won’t screw up.

  “Did you say anything else to Spook?” I ask.

  “Don’t think so. Not that I remember,” Ryan says.

  “They ask you who you knock around with, just say everyone. Say, just about everyone,” Blackie says. “And remember. Interrogation’s like a card game. Silence is your trump card. Understand? Silence.”

  “I understand,” Ryan says.

  “No information, ’less they ask,” Blackie repeats.

  When we finish the cross-examination, as Oberstein calls it, Ryan gets up and walks off, scratching his greasy black hair. He is dazed and worried. We follow him, silently. We are all dazed and worried. This is the sort of thing that makes a bout of spells get worse. Bug and Anstey are the only ones who never get the spells. You avoid Bug like the plague if you have them because he really gives you a hard time. “Sissy baby, got the spells. Nah-nah, nah-nah-nah.” He just loves teasing and mocking anyone who has the spells. He pays criers with comics and marbles to shout it through the halls: “Oberstein’s got the spells again. Sissy baby’s got the spells. Oberstein’s got the spells again. Sissy baby. Sissy baby.” Once Bug teased me about not having a mother and father. “And you’ll never ever have one in this world,” he said, “for the rest of your life.” The way he said it really hit me. I couldn’t shake the spells for the longest time.

  Last Sunday, after my sister, Clare, visited, they started up again. The minute she left, I could feel them coming on. The Great Panic, as Oberstein calls it. And I haven’t been able to shake them. We’re all so worried about the wine stealing, it makes it a hundred times worse.

  I may have to talk to someone. Oberstein and some of the other boys say that talking to someone about the spells can give you a lift. I’ve never done that before, and I don’t want to, but I don’t think I have a choice. I’m considering talking to Blackie. He’s the most sensible in many ways. He may say something that helps. Or maybe I’ll talk to Ryan or Kavanagh. Or Oberstein. Oberstein is certainly the most intelligent. Any one of them would probably be a big help at this stage. No, I think I’ll talk to Blackie. The others don’t need to be reminded of the spells. Especially Oberstein. And Blackie only gets them once in a while, like the time he was watching the news on TV. A bunch of black students at a college in the States refused to leave a Woolworth’s lunch counter after the waiter wouldn’t serve them. They talked to them right there, live on the TV. The oldest said, “We ain’t movin’ for nobody. We stayin’ till we treated same as white folk.” The news announcer said it would probably spark sit-ins and race riots. It certainly sparked the spells in Blackie. “I don’t get it,” he said. “Not servin’ someone a hot dog ’cause of the color of their skin.” He turned off the TV and started to cry. I tried to perk him up, but he wouldn’t speak for the rest of the week. That’s how Blackie deals with the spells. He just doesn’t talk. Oberstein gets sick. Kelly stops eating. We all have our different ways.

  I might even talk to Rags. His face turned so sad last week when Brother McMurtry told him the U.S. Supreme Court was cutting out praying in schools. I was sure he was getting the spells. But I don’t think the brothers get them.

  Sometimes, the spells last a long, long time. I had them two years ago off and on all winter. It was a really cold winter, freezing all the time, and we were buried in snow, which made it worse. So cold nobody even wanted to go outdoors after school. And at night the dormitory was freezing. You had to slide under your blanket and breathe hot air to get warm. Spells are always worse at night. When I get into bed, I feel so empty, like I’m living outside my body, on the empty bunk above mine, looking down at myself.

  To fight the empty feelings, and so I can get some sleep, I often close my eyes and pretend Clare and I are with Mom and Dad in Dad’s big old blue bus, driving down to Torbay or out to Manuels for a picnic. Mom singing her favorite songs—“Let Me Fish Off Cape St. Mary’s” and “Time Would Tell”—the ones Clare told me she loved singing and sang to her all the time. And Clare and Dad and me joining in. Mom had such a beautiful voice and sang to us all the time, Clare says. Even now when I hear a woman singing a beautiful song I think of Mom. I must have got her gift because the brothers always get me to sing the Gloria and the Sanctus at Mass. I’m not as good as Oberstein but I can carry a note in a basket, as Brother Walsh says.

  We’d be bouncing along in the big old bus, and I’d be up in the driver’s seat in Dad’s lap at the steering wheel, pretending I was the driver the way he’d let me sometimes. In my mind, we’d race along, and Dad would be the tour guide commenting on just about everything, the way Rags does when he takes us on an outing. “Oh, there’s Murphy’s goats on the left. Best goat’s milk around the bay. You can spot O’Reilly’s horses further on in the meadow. Ladies and gentlemen, if you look to your right, you’ll see the property of Mr. Willam Nash, who died last year trying to rescue four fishermen lost on the high seas. The story of Newfoundland, ladies and gentlemen, the characters change, but the ocean and the story always remain the same.” As Rags says, it’s the story “of doors held ajar in storms.” And all at once Dad’s face would turn sad, and his mouth would take on an odd shape, and tears would appear in his sad gray eyes.

  I can picture everything so vividly it is just like watching a movie. Every once in a while I’d clear my mind of everything except the image of the four of us at a picnic in Manuels, out in the canyon, where the brother
s take us to swim during the summer. And I feel the warm summer sun on my face and the hardness of the rocks, the big boulders where we’d sit with our picnic basket, eating sandwiches and watching the river. And I pray to them to help me get over the spells. I don’t know if they could or not, but I pray hard to them and to Mother Mary that they hear me and help me. Sometimes it feel like they answer. For a little while. Once, it got so bad I was gonna run away to St. Martha’s, to be with Clare, but Blackie and Oberstein stopped me.

  Every now and then, I escape the spells by daydreaming about running away, being the only boy from Mount Kildare to ever perform Brother McMurtry’s impossible trick. In my mind, I would take up his challenge. I would hide out somewhere. In the shed at the Mount Carmel graveyard for a few days. It would be cold at night, but I would have blankets and an extra sweater and provisions stashed away and a friend, someone smart like Oberstein, to bring me reports every so often about where they were looking for me and when it was safe to change my hideout. When the time was right, I’d steal some money and head for the ferry terminal at Argentia or Port aux Basques and sneak on the big boat that sails to Nova Scotia. Over there I’d get a job in a garage, maybe, or a restaurant, washing dishes or waiting on tables. I’d do that for a year or so till I could save enough money to get to the United States. New York, maybe, or Washington, where Oberstein says there’s a HELP WANTED sign in every window. I ask him if that’s because it’s where the president lives in the big white house, and he says no, it’s because they have a special economy with special budgets that the other states don’t have. It’s really amazing the stuff Oberstein knows.

  Pretty soon I’m thinking about how awful Oberstein’s spells are, and I don’t feel so bad. And by and by Spencer starts talking in his sleep about his brother Jimmy’s hockey cards, or O’Connor starts rocking, or someone gives out a mournful sigh, and I’m reminded of how cold it is and pull the blanket over my head again and start blowing hot air everywhere. And when I am good and warm, my mind becomes clear, and I’m exactly where I was hours before, with nothing but my loneliness. Then I bury my head in the pillow and hope that sleep hauls me under.

  It all started last week. Outta the blue. I was listening to Brookes talk about when his mother told him and his two brothers they would have to go into the orphanage for a while. Brookes said he almost went insane. He threatened to run away, and would have if his mother hadn’t cried so much and gotten sick. It was really tough listening to him talk about it.

  It made me remember the worst day of my life. My trip to hell. The day I had to choose between my mother and father. I was five at the time, but I remember it as clear as day. Mom was upstairs in her room packing. When I walked in, she told me to go to my room and start packing my things, we were leaving. I started to cry and said I didn’t want to leave. She was only a mouse of a woman, but she grabbed my hand and squeezed it so hard it hurt. She turned me around and aimed me toward my bedroom and marched me there. Then she took both my hands in hers and dragged me to my suitcase, an old brown cardboard one with long straps that went all around and looped into big brass buckles. I wonder what happened to that old suitcase. I had it when I came here. I must ask Rags about it. He’ll help me find it. That suitcase must be stored somewhere. I’d really like to see it again. Anyway, we were almost finished packing when Dad came and stood in the doorway. He was so tall he had to stoop. He was wearing his blue bus uniform. I’ll never forget his expression. He was smiling, and his face was the color of raw meat. He lit a cigarette and laughed and said, “I hope I’m invited on this wee trip.” He used the word wee a lot when he was drinking. There was a long silence. I felt a real sinking feeling come over me. It was terrible. I remember it as if it happened yesterday. I’m sure it’s the feeling you get if you go to hell. Only the feeling lasts forever in hell.

  “I don’t want to go away,” I said, and ran to my father, crying.

  He patted my head and said, “You don’t have to. You can stay right here with me if you want to. Isn’t that right, Maisie?”

  There was that sinking feeling again and another long silence, during which my mother stared right through me.

  “Yes, that’s right. Your father’s right. You may stay. It’s your choice.” She turned to my father. “But if he stays, I want you to know that he will never see me again.”

  I ran to her and cried harder than I had with Dad. She buckled my suitcase and took me by the hand. As we passed through the doorway, my father patted me on the head. “Be a good boy,” he said, “a good wee boy.”

  I could smell the whiskey on his breath. I didn’t know what the smell was then. I thought it was a smell like the one Mom wore every Sunday when she dressed for church, only a bit stronger. I looked up at his red, smiling face and said goodbye. My mother tugged my arm and raced downstairs and outside to an ugly brown taxi that was waiting with Clare in the backseat.

  I only saw my father once after that. We moved into a small apartment on Prescott Street in St. John’s. My mother got a job downtown at the Arcade Stores, and I started kindergarten at Mercy Convent School, and Clare was placed in grade six. One day Dad appeared in the kitchen. Mom was making supper, and boom, there he was, in his bus uniform, tall and thin and leaning on the refrigerator. They got into an argument really fast. And Mom threw herself into a chair and started to cry. All at once, my father’s face turned sad, and his mouth took on an odd shape, and tears appeared in his eyes. Then he knelt down beside her and kissed her and stroked her long brown hair and put his head in her lap and started crying too. Then I started crying, and they both stopped. He said he wanted her to go for a ride in the bus so they could talk privately. Mom said okay and asked the neighbors to keep an eye on me and Clare. I remember looking out the window down into the street at the two of them. They were holding hands and laughing as they got into Dad’s old condemned-looking big blue bus.

  That’s the last picture I have . . . I never saw them again. A while later a gigantic policeman with a lightbulb nose and a bald head came to the neighbors and told us that the big blue bus went over a cliff in Outer Cove and that my mother and father were dead and I would have to come with him to a place called Mount Kildare and that Clare would have to go to a place called St. Martha’s. “Them’s places what looks after children what got no parents,” he said. I remember the exact words. And I remember crying and crying and crying. And listening to Clare crying and crying and crying.

  I only get the spells once in a while. And I never get them as bad as most of the boys. I feel real sad sometimes and a bit blue, but I never feel as terrible as Ryan and Blackie and Murphy do. And never, ever like Oberstein, who gets them worse than anyone.

  Anstey never gets the spells because his father comes to see him a lot. Mr. Anstey is huge, like the Friendly Giant on TV, only he has a much bigger head and a moonbeam smile. Anstey is gonna be just as big. And he’s so kind. He’s the kinda father, if you only saw him once a year, it’d be enough. He gives all of us great big bear hugs when he comes here. And he always bursts out laughing when he asks us if we’re true Newfoundlanders. If we say we are, he says we have to prove it by standing stiff as a poker with our arms straight as arrows while he lifts us off the ground. Oberstein’s the only one who buckles when he’s lifted, but we think that’s deliberate. Oberstein’s so proud he’s an American. So you can imagine what Anstey feels like when his father’s around. He’s lotsa fun. I’d never get the spells if I had a father like Mr. Anstey.

  Lately I’ve been praying to the Blessed Virgin to help me shake them. I even made a deal. I promised her I would help O’Grady with his homework during study hall every night till Christmas if she helps me get over the spells. It seems to be working a bit. Whenever I’m helping O’Grady, I don’t think about my moment in hell. Of course, O’Grady’s so stunned you have to give all your time and energy just to teach him that seven divided by seven is one. He’s slow as cold molasses. He can’t remember much, and he’s a terrible stutterer. When I
’m working with O’Grady, there’s no time for the spells.

  So I shouldn’t really complain. Study hall is the only time lately that I don’t have the spells. I’m grateful to O’Grady and the Blessed Virgin for their help. I think working each night with O’Grady is helping me break out of it. So I may not have to talk to anyone after all. Or run away to St. Martha’s so I can be with Clare for a while. Time will tell.

  7

  * * *

  THERE ARE TWO homemade flashlights, which Father Cross pieced together with batteries, bits of copper, bulbs, and electric tape that Rags uses for the hockey sticks. They work beautifully. Blackie uses one, leading the first pack, which consists of Shorty Richardson, Murphy, and Kavanagh. I lead the second pack, which consists of Ryan, Brookes, and Father Cross. Bug was dropped from Blackie’s group because he passed out during our first run. The only reason Blackie gave him a tryout is he feels sorry for him. Bug complained so much about being dropped that Blackie made him chief timer and promised him some money.

  Oberstein coordinates the backup, as Blackie calls it. Blackie loves a backup plan. Oberstein calls it the contingency plan. That’s the plan we’re to use in the event that we’re caught night running. We call it the Runners’ Watch. We’re usually gone about ninety minutes, depending on the weather. If it’s really bad out, we return in less than twenty minutes. Oberstein starts the watch, and half an hour later he wakes Bug, who mans the watch for thirty minutes and then wakes Spencer or another designated Klub member. Only a few boys Blackie trusts get a turn in the rotation.

  If Spook, the night watchman, or one of the brothers finds out we’re missing, the backup kicks in. Whoever is on Runners’ Watch at the time of the discovery will tell Spook or the brother in charge that Shorty Richardson is a sleepwalker and that he went missing. The watchkeeper is to say that he got up to use the toilet and discovered Richardson’s bunk empty on the way to the bathroom and immediately woke Blackie and a bunch of the boys, who are outside looking for Richardson. The watchkeeper is to say that he’d been looking for Spook since we left. The brothers all know that Spook frequently falls asleep while on duty.