In the summer of 1988 it was hot as balls, and my dad died. I graduated from high school in May of that year and in late July, he died. I did a decent amount of running that hot summer, sometimes at odd hours like 11 at night when I couldn’t fall asleep and the stress of my household was pressing on me like a great weight and I’d sneak out of the house and just go. Anywhere. I’d sneak back in during the middle of the night and lie in bed soaked in my own sweat but so exhausted I’d just drift off. Then I’d get up the next morning and go to work painting houses for TJ Bane & Co. He died on a Saturday night. I remember sitting on our front porch shortly after and calling over to a friend’s house where I knew there was a party going on that most of my friends were attending. I asked for my buddy, Sean, and when he came on the phone I just said, “Hey, Sean, my dad died.” “Ah shit, Mike, I’m sorry,” he said. “Yeah, I know…just tell the boys, will ya?” Shortly after that they all started rolling up in front of my house and a bunch of us were sitting on the front porch when the funeral home people wheeled him out the front door and took him away. A couple of weeks later--after a day spent standing on ladders in the hot sun--I came home, rinsed off under the hose, changed shorts and threw on some trainers and drove down to the high school to meet Sean. We’d agreed to meet that night to run “The Lynnfield,” our 10-mile loop from track. I parked my dad’s Civic by the edge of the baseball field and waited for Sean for a few minutes until he rolled up on a little motor scooter he’d “borrowed” from another one of our friends, Jess. We chatted for a few minutes and then when we heard the big bell in the Old South Church toll for 5 o’clock, I tossed my t-shirt and watch through the open window of the car onto the front seat, Sean tossed his t-shirt on the seat of Jess’ scooter, and we headed off. Getting underway we chatted about the usual stuff like girls and work. We joked and made fun of each other like normal. I’d spent the day climbing ladders in the sun and Sean had spent it stocking beer in the basement of a bar. Aside from the fact we were the negative image of each other—I was dark and made darker by the sun; he was white as a ghost with blonde hair and blue eyes--we looked like we could be brothers. We rolled on up Pearl Street, went right on Franklin and then turned left on Haverhill and headed into North Reading. It was flat here and we were jogging along carefree. When we crossed into North Reading and turned onto Chestnut Street around the 3 mile mark, the intensity started to build. It was nothing serious at first, just a little faster. The conversation began to die down as the pace increased approaching the Lynnfield line and by the time we hit the stretch of rolling hills there things had gotten pretty quiet. There was still the occasional word here or there, something added to a previous argument or a funny expression said randomly to get a laugh. But mostly it was quiet. When you run the Lynnfield, at the end of Chestnut Street in Lynnfield you approach the 95/128 highway but just before you get there, you make a hard right onto Bay State Road by the Lynnfield Animal Hospital. Here the road is pancake flat as it runs parallel to the highway for a mile or so. The rush-hour traffic on 128 about 150 yards to our left was heavy enough that we were going as fast, or faster, than the cars. And so the sound we could hear over low traffic noise was the rhythmic, “pfft, pfft, pfft, pfft,” of our feet striking the ground in unison as we hammered along that flat, black asphalt with the little heat ripples rising up into the hazy sky. We crossed into Wakefield and passed the Elks lodge then the road veered slightly away from the highway and we were left with just the “pfft, pfft, pfft, pfft” and our breathing and the fact that neither of us had said a word in quite a while now and, lets face it, we were flying. We hauled past the National Guard base and across the Wakefield rotary and headed up Salem Street toward Reading Square. The road goes from flat to slightly uphill around memorial park here but we barely noticed as we slid along faster than the cars on the street, backed up for the light at the square. Just before Main Street there’s a short, very steep uphill that was the bane of every teenager learning to drive stick, but to our legs of steel that night it was just a bump. I don’t really remember looking to see if any cars were coming as we tore ass across Main Street through the square and right in front of the Old South church. I’ve often wondered what we must have looked like—two young, fast, shirtless, skinny ass teenagers ripping through town at five something pace in the midst of the afternoon rush. I wish I could have seen us. Passing the Laurel Hill cemetery and turning onto Highland Street, we crested the highest hill on this route and it was all downhill now back to the high school campus. We were racing unabashedly. Neither of us was going to blink. Our feet slapped the ground as we hurled ourselves down the steep but mercifully short downhill just before the end of Bancroft and the sharp right turn onto the path of the high school campus. Immediately after turning onto the path we slowed to a jog and then a walk and then stopped at the water fountain by the little creek and just like that, it was over. We took turns intermittently guzzling water from the fountain and letting the water flow over the backs of our necks and heads and at some point during this soaking we heard the big old church bell slowly sound out six times. As we walked across the basketball court and the little field to my car, we still didn’t speak. We just looked at each other and grinned and even giggled a few times sort of shaking our heads as if to say, “What the hell was that?” We made our plans to meet up with a few buddies later that night and then went our separate ways. Ten hot miles in the books. A few weeks later I went off to Providence where I found out Ray Treacy had no use for a 4:45 miler who’d never run more than 50 miles a week. And so I drank beer, played some rugby, lived like a regular college prick and that was that. Sean had one last year of high school during which he lit up the track and then he went to Umass Lowell where he ran for a few seasons before a recurring knee injury got too much and he hung it up too. Over the years I got pretty out of shape and went many long stretches without running a step. But I always, stubbornly perhaps, considered myself a runner and always had a pair of trainers in the closet and knew where they were just in case. Eventually running called me back and I began, tentatively and painfully at first, to undo the damage of years and sloth and idleness. And now, a runner for sure, I know that it was not the memory of any schoolboy triumph, or individual win, or relay, or team championship, or race of any kind that kept me from ever getting so far gone that I couldn’t come all the way back. It was just a random hammerfest.

Good stuff. Very very good stuff.

Mikey Mike L Parker. That was well written Mike. Thoroughly enjoyed it. When can we expect the next installment?

That was excellent.

You should start a blog or something. The mikeymike fucktard blog. That has a ring to it.

I wish I could have seen us.

Great line. Nice work, Mikey.

Nice

Thanks, Mike.