Marathon


Somewhere there is a man.
This man has trained everyday for the last few years to go to the olympics and race for his country. The marathon is all he can think of. He is the best his country can offer. He is dedicated. He believes in himself. He is ready.
And he will lose. In fact this man will come in dead last. Because ....well.......someone has to. And somewhere in the back of his head he will think,"I've trained this hard to come in dead last? Hell I could have just sat on the couch and watched tv and come in dead last! I should have just given up!"


He's probably French.

July 23

A passenger of the Titanic remarked years after the ocean liner had sunk, how to him, everyday was April 15, 1912. How, for the rest of his life, he would always live in that moment. I first read that when I was 13. To me it was just a line in a book that I could not truly understand.
When I was 12, I moved to Atkinson. It was my 6th school in 7 years.In Atkinson I did not get off to my best footing. I begged my Mom and Dad to move back to Kewanee or even Annawan. Initially I only had one friend, a boy named Billy Bull.
To make matters worse for me when I needed a new pair of shoes my Father bought me the gayest pair of cowboy boots to found in the Bi-State area. ( I am many things but I am not a cowboy.) The same day he took me to a barber that I'm fairly sure died of extreme old age the next day. The last act the cadaverous old goat did was to give me the most horrible lopsided crew cut ever.The next day at school I was greeted with chants of "Might whitey white walls!" ( this I guess had something to do with the fact that you could see the back of my very untanned ears.) Having to play in P.E. in cowboy boots did not help my day at all. Even my friend Billy joined in the mocking.
It was during this time that I began to notice a girl named Susie. I had first met her when she had asked some high school football players to please not beat me and Billy up one day after school. During the cowboy boots and bad haircut affair, I noticed that Susie seemed to be the only one not joining in. Whenever she would first see me in the day she would smile and say,"Hello Tomhernandez." She would say my name as if it was one word. As the months would pass I would come to believe she was saying my name the same way someone else would say Charlie Brown.
Halloween night that year Susie would do me an act of kindness that still resonates inside of me. To tell it would take too much time here, but it was, in all actuality, a very simple thing. But it was also a very decent thing. And decency was something I wasn't used to. After that no matter how bad my day was, seeing her could would always brighten it.
Susie had very light blue eyes. So light that they almost seemed silver. In my 12 year old mind I would imagine they were like that because of a light shining though the other side. Her smile was simply a thing of beauty. It was always genuine and sincere. This was again actually a very rare thing in my life up to then.
By the time my 7th grade year had ended I had settled in to life in Atkinson. I had more friends, and Billy and I joined the track team. My cowboy boots had met a tragic end in a leaf burning "accident", and the barber who had given me that very horrible haircut was now in fact dead.
I did not mourn him.
Our house was directly in front of the town park. Often I would find classmates across the street playing or just hanging out. During that summer whenever I saw Susie there I would make sure to go over and say "Hi". Every time she would smile, a real smile and say,"Hello tomhernandez". Billy seemed to be the only one to notice the change in my demeanor. He would mock how my voice would change whenever I spoke to Susie. He said I acted like a little girl around her. This usually resulted in me dumping my pop over Billy's head.
During the midpoint of my 8th grade year Dad announced we would once again be moving. My first reaction was to protest. Dad informed me that we were only moving 4 miles away. We would become the caretakers to the 40&8. It was a private park with camping and swimming. I happily went along with the move.It was only later when I realized what that 4 miles would mean. I would now be back in the Annawan school system. And away from my friends. My sorrow was short lived when Susie informed me that her Dad was a member of the park and she would come out quite often. ( I told Billy he was welcome to sneak in anytime.)A couple of months after I was back in Annawan, Susie and Billy did me another great favor. Susie asked the school if I could still go on the 8th grade field trip with the rest of my old class. When told they needed the money right then, Billy paid the 10 dollars for my ticket. So in May of that year I found myself with the rest of my old Atkinson class at Six Flags Great America, in what still is, one of my few perfect days. My Annawan classmates were not pleased. Annawan did not get a 8th grade field trip. As the Atkinson bus drove though Annawan I found myself waving to any of my Annawan friends I could see. No one waved back.
My first summer at the park came and went. My friends from both towns would come out and swim in my lake. I found that waking up and looking out my bedroom window to see girls in bikini's in my backyard was not the hardest way to grow up. I thought to myself, considering how my first 14 years had turned out that God owed me a couple of decent summers. Life was good.
Like most things in my life it was brief.
On Monday, October 29 1979 during my first hour class a classmate turned around and asked if I had heard what happened the night before. "No", I said. He told me a kid named Billy Bull had been inside a corn bin when the auger turned on. He was pulled down into the corn bin. Billy was crushed by the weight of the corn.Billy had died.I sat in my chair for the rest of that class. I stared straight ahead not speaking a single word. When class was over I went to the restroom and threw up. All I could think was I still owed him 10 dollars.
Billy was buried on Halloween that year. At one point before the service began, Susie came over and sat next to me, without speaking at first. Then she said, " You know Tom, Billy was your friend. He knew that you were his friend." She looked at me for a couple of seconds. "You know that right?" She sat next to me for much of the service. It was the second decent thing that she did for me on a Halloween. It was only later that I realized she had called me "Tom". To my memory it was the only time she ever did.
That Halloween night I sat home on my bed, thinking of my friend Billy. I hadn't talked to him much once school had started that year. He had called me a week or so before and I wasn't home. Many times I've wondered about that missed phone call. What we would have talked about, or who we would have made fun of.
Time passed. I didn't see as much of my friends from Atkinson as I once did. Some still came to the 40&8 pretty regularly. Among them was Susie. She would always stop and say hello. Everytime she did I would smile, and think to myself that the day just got a litle nicer.
One day in late June of 1982, when Susie left the park, I found she had left a little ice cooler. I thought to myself, "Hey this is my chance. When I call her I'll ask if she wants to see the movie Blade Runner with me in Kewanee." The fact that I had no car to take her to the movie did not seem a problem to me at all. The problem was, that after an hour of almost calling her number many times ( my finger just couldn't seem to dial that last digit), when I finally did get her on the phone my lips seemed frozen. After a horrible few years of silence( was it only seconds? It seemed much longer! ) I finally blurted out that she had left her ice cooler at that park and she could pick it up whenever she wanted to. She said thanks, to which I replied, "OK!", and hung up. When my mom came into the office she found me hitting my head on the desk, saying "stupid, stupid" over and over. To my moms credit she simply grabbed what she needed and left.
Friday July 23rd 1982 was one of those perfect summer days. The sun was shining in a clear blue sky. It was warm, but not humid, and the breeze off the lake made it even better. Susie came to the 40&8 with another girl from Atkinson around noon. They laid out a blanket to suntan, but within a few moments they were heading back to the car. When I saw Susie I asked her, "leaving so soon?" She smiled and said, "Hey Tomhernandez! We'll be right back." I was sitting next to my best friend from Kewanee and wanted to introduce him to Susie. Oh well, I thought, she'll be back soon.
I would never speak to Susie again.
A quarter mile from the 40&8 there are railroad tracks. To this day I don't know if they were racing the train or simply didn't see it. But the result was the same. The train hit the car on the passenger side.
On Susie's side.
It drug the car down the tracks gouging a trail through the gravel surrounding the tracks. The rescue squad from Annawan was there in a matter of moments. They got both girls out and raced to Kewanee with Susie. Her eyes, those beautiful almost silver eyes, were open the entire time. She would die only a few blocks from the hospital.
That night I woke up and walked down to the railroad tracks. I looked at the long scar in the gravel from where the car had been dragged by the train. I felt totally empty inside. My friend was gone. In my head I kept thinking, if I had only kept talking to her. If I had only kept her there for a few seconds longer.
A few seconds longer and that jagged scar in the gravel would not be there.
On a night when a Mother and Father, and brothers and sister were mourning her , my thoughts were selfishly of myself. "Did she know",I thought. Did she know how special I thought she was? Did she know she was my friend? I stood there until I heard a train whistle. I found it was now a sound that I hated with every fiber of my being.
We lived at the 40&8 for a little more than two more years. And in those two years I went over those railroad tracks countless times. And every time I would fall silent and stare straight ahead, not glancing at the scar in the gravel. But every now and then, late at night, I would find myself down by the tracks looking at it with weary eyes. It was almost as if the Earth itself had a scar.
Occasionally I would find myself walking the mile and a half into Annawan. I would walk to the church behind the library and silently ( and sometimes not so silently) curse out GOD. Mom would sometimes find out about my late night walks , and want to know what I was doing. I tried my best to explain. But I did not have the words to express my feelings or to describe what was going on in my head. One cold February morning when she was getting a little angry with me, I pointed at myself and said, "I think something is broke inside of me and i don't know how to fix it."
Mom was not helpful.
Time has not dimmed my feelings. Not a day has passed that I haven't thought of my friend, or that day in July. I don't know why she haunts me so. It would be easy to explain if it was the first bad thing that ever happened to me. It would be easy to explain if it was the first loss I had suffered. But it wasn't. It would be easy to explain if it was the last loss I suffered. But sadly it wasn't. I have been to more funerals than I care to remember. Each one is painful. And each one brings me back to my friend.
Occasionally I will wake up in the middle of the night knowing that I've just dreamed about her. The memories are fleeting and soon I find myself struggling to remember details, but it's like trying to hold on to a puff of smoke. I lay there for the remainder of the night frustrated.
Worse however are the nights that I remember the dreams. When Ethan was only about three or four weeks old, I dreamed I walked over to his crib, and there I saw Susie looking down at him. "He's beautiful isn't he?", I said. She nodded and smiled her kind smile. She never said a word. The dead never speak in my dreams.
The dreams I remember are worse.
The most recent time was a few months ago. I was suffering though a very bad case of vertigo. I lay in bed unable to move my head left or right. The medicine I take only really knocks me out for a few hours. At one point I opened my eyes and saw Susie sitting on the side of my bed looking down at me with those almost silver eyes. She seemed a little sad. I knew it was just a dream. I knew, even in that fog my mind was in, that she wasn't really there. That this was just some side effect to either the vertigo or the medicine.
And I didn't care.
All I cared was that I could see my friend. If for only briefly and if only in my mind, my friend was there. I tried to say the only thing I've wanted to say for all these years, but found I couldn't talk. I couldn't move. She put a finger to her lips and said, "Shhh." I looked up for a few more moments looking at her, wishing that somehow she could stay. I closed my eyes and fell back asleep. When I awoke, my vertigo induced hallucination was gone. I did not feel any better. If anything I felt a little more empty.
So sometime tomorrow, July 23rd , I will drive to Atkinson, and for the 26th time put yellow roses on her grave. I will tell my friend, in hopes that somewhere she can hear me, that I miss her very much. And that she would always be my friend.
Tomorrow the calender says it will be July 23. But that doesn't really matter. You see to me everyday is July 23 1982.