PROLOGUE
Running, running in the woods. He was no
nature boy. He was no boy at all, though he often thought and felt like he did 40
years ago at the age of 13. He liked running in the streets best because
there’s so much more to look at. Houses of all shapes and sizes and stages of
repair. Cars and busses, road construction, not to mention the vying between
runners and cars and bikes sharing the same narrow strip of asphalt. Smells of seared
pork, savory potatoes, and fried eggs mixed with the hovering stink of skunk
roadkill. The woods just gives you the woods. Relative quiet, trees, bushes,
tweeting birds, nervous deer, wildflowers and gurgling brooks. But also trail
bikes, babbling hikers, other runners shouldering past on single track trails. What
a bother…and boring.
Soft dirt and leaves were the
attraction of trails, less wear and tear on the legs. On 53-year-old knees. On
surgically repaired knees.
As a runner he was close to Nature
and its atrocities. Too cold winters and too hot summers. Chilling rain and icy
snow and blasting winds that buffet a body just doing its best to stay in shape
and fend off the ravages of time. Nature. The force that fostered aging and the
entropy that eventually led to the Universal Stasis.
But running was the good time for
Anderson Hot. The time he can be alone and enjoy the company of his favorite
person. A time not to think or plan or speak or care. Just a time to enjoy
motion and doing it well. One foot in front of the other in rapid succession. His
running is like a low frequency hum—an amplifier on standby. Arm swing
controlling his cadence, hands held loosely and never crossing the axis of his
sternum. Chugging up hills, short mincing steps up a dirt bluff in Hartshorne
Woods or managing the decline of Cooper Ave. with lengthening strides to
exploit the vagaries of gravity—another Nature adversary.
At his age, Anderson Hot’s personal
records are behind him. He’ll never again break 7 minutes per mile in his
five-mile races and the day grows closer when sub-four-hour marathons will be
in his past. But speed was not the point and it’s not why he runs.
No the running is something he can
do well, do alone, do as a defiant act against Nature. Today Nature was kind;
no breeze, temps in the low sixties and a cloud cover stifling the sun’s glare.
And he felt good, once he sneezed the dirt out of his nostrils and shook the usual
stiffness and creakiness from his joints in the first mile. He glided in his
too-short shorts and 25-year-old rust-stained singlet and he felt like a specimen.
An Olympian. His motor hummed at a cruising rpm, and his brain squeezed out all
thoughts and concerns of his present life and mortal predicament. It was just
about the next bend, the next path, the next street, the next hill, and the contentment
of escaping within the physical body where the autonomic systems wield control.
Today was his six-mile route at a
moderate pace. Given recent events, his energy level was higher so he mixed in
a couple of fartleks—race to that tree. To that STOP sign. To that fire
hydrant. Get the pumper pumping and then slow to a jog and feel the pounding
pulse in his temples. He was sweaty and alive and lost in the moment of his
body. His legs were springy like when he was a lad of 13; when the idea of
running six whole miles was an impossibly freakish concept. Still, Hot was not
a runner’s-high type of guy. The longer he ran, the more the fuel gauge
declined and euphoria was the last thing on his mind. And the fartleks, such a
good idea at the time, eventually took their toll on his stamina and thus Hot
was relieved as he burst from the woods and down the main drag of West Stemper
and, a mile later, a right down Lawrence where he lived at number 724. There he
saw two long black limousines and a curb lined with cars belonging to an array
of friends and family members, a sight that snapped Anderson Hot from the world
of blessed solitude.
Yes, this was expected. And he was
late for the gathering.
What a trick—the way Nature snatched her.
CHAPTER ONE
A warm day in April—a gift from the
weather gods. Anderson Hot dug out the summer running shorts and one of his
better racing singlets that was new enough that it retained some of its wicking
capabilities. Per custom he hit the streets without stretching, a recommended
practice he dispensed with years ago as a waste of time given his unelastic
joints and muscles. This condition made other recommended practices such as
yoga, Pilates, Tai Chi hazardous and a source of past muscle strains, pulls and
sprains that led to protracted stretches away from his most beloved pursuit:
running.
Running was about knowing your body,
and Hot knew from 25 years of running that his body could not stretch, could
not deal with ice baths after long runs, could not run late in the afternoon,
was at its best before first light in the morning, hated temperatures below 30
degrees and was becoming increasingly intolerant of runs above 83 degrees.
Knowing his body saved Hot time.
There was no cool down after speed work or hills because cool-downs did nothing
for him—he was sore afterwards with or without cool-downs, stretching, or
muscle rollers. So he did none of those things and gained a few precious
minutes to his day and added an ounce of smugness to his attitude of being a
successful flouter of runner orthodoxy.
Following a long, bone-shattering
freezing winter, Hot welcomed the sprouting bubbles of sweat on his fore head
after the first mile, which he wiped off with a swipe with the tail of his
shirt. After months of tights and sweatshirts and fleeces and long-sleeve
technical shirts and hats and gloves, the chance to wear a track outfit for the
first time this season lifted Hot’s mood and made this morning’s tempo run less
like work.
The downtown was empty, as it
usually was at 5 a.m. when Hot generally worked out and he breezed down the
center of the main drag. On either side West Stemper’s restored downtown were
the usual array of drug stores, restaurants, hair salons, banks, community
theatre, and so forth, but whose facades were rendered in a pleasant design
replicating Ye Olde Tudor style of white stucco and implanted wood beams and
faux gas lanterns dotting bricked walkways. Attractively bland and derivative,
the downtown managed to attract shoppers near and far who dutifully fed the
parking meters that threw off sufficient revenue to keep a reasonable lid on
local property taxes.
But that was his wife’s business. Whatever
qualms Hot may have had regarding the lame aesthetics of the commercial district
overhaul, it was certainly not offensive and was a point of pride to Lottie,
who, heaven knows, wasn’t an easy person to please.
Speaking of whom, Hot remembered
that she asked him last night to get her up early because she needed to polish
her remarks before the Career Day crowd at West Stemper High school this
morning. To that end Hot had planned the dark roast Sumatra blend in the Chemex
and his special shirred fried eggs and braised asparagus side that was her
favorite breakfast. He knew it would
boost her spirits—Lottie was not a morning person and she hated writing
speeches. But this was about schooling the next generation. The next
generation! Hot admired his wife’s discipline and sense of responsibility and
supported her the best way he could—through her stomach. But this elaborate
breakfast would entail an hour of prep, which meant taking the shortcut home
and cutting short his planned six-miler.
A quick right just before the ocean and down Bath Avenue and the seaside
bungalows and seasonal rentals and then up a maple-lined West Park. Hot shifted
into a higher gear as he mounted an assault on a slight incline, the sweat now
staining his shirt and shorts in a pleasant way. A shorter run but a hard run and he saw not a
single car or another runner and for a brief period the world was his.
Turning into his driveway he noticed
an odd aroma—it was the aroma of coffee. Cheap coffee, the acrid aroma of…instant coffee. An outrage! This struck
Hot as…curious. He told her the night before regarding the prospects of Sumatra
dark roast. Freshly burr-ground. Dripped into a Chemex carafe.
What
was Lottie thinking?
Hot removed his running shoes and
came in through the back door, which opened into the laundry room, where he
deposited his shirt and socks in a plastic bag containing the malodorous
byproducts of the week’s strenuous runs. The instant coffee odor was especially
strong, most likely due to the large puddle of spilled coffee on the kitchen
floor. More disturbing, however, was the form of Hot’s wife lying face down in
the middle of the steaming puddle, legs splayed, arms extended over her head. Narrow
brooks of dark red blood streaming from her nose and ears.
Hot withdrew, then came closer. He
knelt by his wife, placed two fingers on the side of her neck. Gasped.
Then he wondered what to do.
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