Andre Dubus III - Townie: A Memoir

I DID NOT LOOK into the mirror, not yet, not in the morning. My body was still so small and I only looked at it right after the weights when my muscles were filled with blood. There came the tap of my fathers horn outside. We were going running together, but what about shoes? All I owned were a pair of Dingo boots, the square-toed kind with the brass ring cinched in at the ankle. The horn tapped again.

I stepped into my younger brothers room. Jeb was sitting shirtless in a chair, playing chords on his guitar in time to the metronome his teacher had bought him. His hair was wild and there was brown fuzz across his chin and cheeks.

Jeb, you have any sneakers?

He shook his head, kept playing, the metronome ticking, ticking, ticking. I ran into Suzannes room. My older sister was just about to turn seventeen, and she was curled asleep, her back to me. Her room smelled like dope and cigarette smoke. There were album covers spread on the floor at the foot of the bed: Robin Trower, Ten Years After, the Rolling Stones. In a swath of sunlight her blue sneakers lay side by side next to balled-up hip-huggers.

Suzanne, can I borrow your sneakers? Im running with Dad .

She mumbled something, and I knew she wouldnt be up for another hour or two anyway. I grabbed her shoes, stole some white socks from her drawer, and ran outside.

It was a Monday in August, the sun almost directly above us in a deep blue sky. We only saw Pop on the occasional Wednesday when he saw each of us alone and on Sundays when he would drive to our house and take all of us to a movie or out to eat, but the day before, at the Carriage House just over the Merrimack line, hed studied me over the table, his oldest son with his newly hard body I wanted to be so much bigger than it was. He looked curious about something, proud too. You should come run with me sometime. Then he said hed come pick me up the next day, his thirty-ninth birthday, and wed go running together.

I waved at him behind the wheel of his old Lancer. He waved back and I stuffed my feet into Suzannes sneakers and ran to the car and climbed in.

Hey, man.

Happy Birthday.

Gracias. He pulled away from the curb. He wore running shoes, shorts, a tank top, and hed tied a blue bandanna around his forehead. He didnt have much muscle, but he was trim. His chest and arms were covered with dark hair. He kept glancing at me as I leaned over and tied the worn laces of Suzannes blue sneakers.

You sure you want to do this?

Yep.

Its gonna be long and hot.

I shrugged.

Okay, man.

I sat back in my seat. I was hungry and wished Id eaten something first, or at least drunk a glass of water. But what bothered me more were my feet. Suzannes sneakers felt two sizes too small, my toes squeezed together, too much pressure on my heels. A few minutes later, when he pulled into the gravel parking lot and I got out and shut the door, I could feel each stone through the soles of my sisters shoes.

Pop and I were walking toward the woods and the five-and-a-half mile trail. Already there was an ache in both feet. I should tell him. I should tell him these arent my sneakers. Theyre Suzannes and theyre too small. But when I looked over at him, the sun on his face, his trimmed beard looking brown and red in that light, he smiled at me and I smiled back and we started running.

My father had been a runner longer than hed been my father. When he was still living with us, hed finish his morning writing, change into sneakers and shorts and a T-shirt, and go running. Hed be gone for an hour, sometimes longer, and when he walked back in, his shirt dark and wet, his cheeks flushed, it was the most relaxed and content hed ever look. This was the sixties and early seventies. Nobody jogged then. It was a habit hed formed in the Marine Corps, and when he ran down the road, people would shout from their lawns and ask if he needed any help. Where was he going?

I had run with him once before when I was eight years old. It was at our old house in the woods in New Hampshire, one with land to play on, a clear brook in the trees. It was a summer day, when Mom and Pop were still married, and Pop had asked me and Jeb if we wanted to go with him. We said yes, though Jeb lost interest pretty quickly and walked back down the country road Pop and I kept running on. I lagged a few feet behind him, the sun on my face, sweat burning my eyes. At the one-mile mark, he turned around and I followed him home where he left me and set back out on a longer run. But Id run two miles and when I stepped inside our cool, dark house, I yelled up the stairs to Mom, I ran two miles with Daddy, Mom! Im strong! Im strong ! And I punched the wall and could feel the plaster and lath behind the wallpaper, though I had no words for them.

Now I was twice that age and hadnt run since, and even though my feet hurt with each stride, it felt good to be running outside with Pop on his birthday, spending time with him that wasnt in a restaurant he couldnt afford on a Sunday, that wasnt in his small apartment every fourth Wednesday. It was easier not having to look directly at him across a table, to have him sometimes look directly at me. And this was a part of town I didnt even know about. For a while it was hard to believe it was the same town as the one I spent all my time in; we were running on a wide dirt trail under a canopy of leafy branches. To our left, the trees grew on a slope and leaned over the water. To our right was a steep wooded hill, the ground a bed of pine needles and moss-covered rock, deep green ferns growing up around fallen logs and bare branches. I was in weight-training shape, not running shape, and fifteen minutes into it I could hear myself breathing harder than he was, but I didnt let myself fall behind him and I found if I relaxed my toes each time I lifted a foot, then tensed them just before it hit the ground again, the pain wasnt quite as sharp. I figured Id have to do this another thirty minutes, maybe forty-five, just two or three times what wed already done. I could do that, right?