Runners

“Runners” is the third chapter in my book The Ponies.  The idea for the chapter came about over the course of several years visiting this gravel pit over the course of seasons. I would often walk or ride my bike there and sit on a bank and imagine what could possibly have brought, or who could’ve left that bicycle. So it is in the book as a story written by my hero, Ben Bennett.

Runners

Besides all the artsy things we did in high school, Matt and I also ran on the cross-country team. Neither of us were particularly competitive, we didn’t hold Olympic ambitions nor the promise of college scholarships, but we enjoyed a good run, over the rivers and through the woods. We’d talk up a storm when we ran, a steady stream of chatter and laughter. It drove the coach crazy and he always threatened to kick us off the team. We ran because it was good, organized exercise, something we’d never do if it wasn’t a team sport. After I got settled into my apartment, Matt told me about some good running trails near the campus. I laced up my sneakers one day and ran off to find them. I hadn’t gone far before I found myself running too fast down a steep street. I stumbled, and rolled, and wound-up face down on the university Chancellor’s front lawn. As I pushed myself upright, I felt something metallic under one of my hands. I scraped some grass and leaves away, uncovering a brass plate anchored to a square of granite. The inscription on the plate was written in a fancy, cursive font and what I thought it read was:

“In Memory of Salatino Chreitien – Lost 1969”

            After that tumble, I lost interest in going on and limped back to my apartment to write my own version of Salatino’s story.

Runners

Salvatore Christian had a best friend named Jordan Acres. They had been classmates since kindergarten and were inseparable buddies. They lived on the same street in town, and they were both only children. They grew up in each other’s homes and were treated like family by both sets of parents. Through school they had the same interests, the same friends, the same ambitions. Being the best at whatever they did was something they excelled at, and strove for, and it was something they didn’t learn from anyone but each other. They were natural leaders and, predictably, they were at the top of their class year after year. Somewhere along the way they had made a pact, if they were taking a test, to intentionally answer a question incorrectly, just shy of perfect. The one time they coincidentally missed the same question on an exam, they were sent to the principal’s office, accused of cheating. Of course, they hadn’t, and it may have been the principal making a show to the other students that anyone, even the very best students, can be humbled by getting caught doing wrong. That they held each other in such high esteem does not mean they weren’t also fiercely competitive, and no place was this more obvious than on the tracks or the cross-country trails they ran. It would seem they had little time for study as they were frequently seen on the school oval,  jogging through town, or heading off on their bikes to do a twenty-mile loop to the city and back.

            In stature, they could not be more different. Jordan was tall and lean; Sal was stockier and carried a broad torso. The time they spent training in the weight room and gym was obvious. Neither carried a grip of muscle around the waist. The phys ed instructors were hands off when it came to Sal and Jordan and used their grit and determination as an example to others in the classes, even asking them to mentor other students and demonstrate the proper use of equipment. They were appreciative of the attention, and perhaps more so of the respect and adoration that came their way, knowing that they had only earned it through their hard work.

            There was, however, something special about Salvatore that distinguished him from his best friend. He had been adopted as an infant, never landing eyes on his natural parents. Don and Mackenzie Christian had raised him as their own from birth and Salvatore never had the faintest hint, they were not his honest-to-goodness parents until they told him, as they had planned, on his seventeenth birthday. The news did not disturb or surprise him, and he was not at all angry with his parents for telling him and sharing their reason for doing so at that point in his life. He accepted the news and the timing as something that was meant to be, and he was grateful to them and loved them more because of it. In light of this discovery, Salvatore made two requests of his parents which they agreed to honor. If it were at all possible, he would like to meet his biological parents and secondly, no one, especially his friend Jordan, would ever know he had been adopted.

            Several months had passed and Salvatore found himself being distracted and feeling unusually self-conscious. His concentration in school began to wane and Jordan called him out on it, expressing his concern. Salvatore shrugged it off as growing pains, or a phase he was going through. He knew he had to come to grips with it in some way, and soon. He spoke to his parents at dinner one night and asked them to help him locate his real parents. As a family, they began searching for the Silvas, the name recorded on the birth certificate of Salatino Esquebar Silva a.k.a. Salvatore Christian.

            The process of locating the Silvas did not take long. Their deaths were announced on the front page of a New York newspaper nearly a decade after Salvatore was born. They were named as two of the victims of a gas explosion that had leveled the food processing plant where they both worked. There was no mention of family or relatives in the article and further searching uncovered their obituaries which also did not mention additional family members. The obituary did provide the name of the small Catskills cemetery where they were buried and where Salvatore wished to visit.

            It was on the way to New York that tragedy touched Salvatore once again. They had just pulled away from a stop sign in a town in southern Vermont when a runaway dump truck came out of nowhere and slammed into them, rolled over on their car, and both vehicles were sent careening down a riverbank. The Christians died instantly. Salvatore and the truck driver had to be extricated from their vehicles with the “Jaws of Life.” The truck driver did not survive the week. Salvatore was put in a medically-induced coma.

            The shock of their terrible accident was unsettling and reverberated around town. Every day Salvatore remained unconscious in the hospital raised more questions and speculation. The Christians were the subject of conversations everywhere. How could they not be, the details of the horrific event had finally been reported, and everyone wanted to know why they were even there? They had not mentioned their plans for a trip to Vermont to anyone; Jordan, Jordan’s parents, anyone. Speculation gave way to grave concern. Would Salvatore ever wake up, and in what condition? Where would he live? No one knew for sure if the Christians had extended families elsewhere, would an aunt or uncle arrive from somewhere to take care of Sal? It was troubling to all, knowing all that could be known would only come in time.

            For Jordan, time was a nightmarish monster that wore on his thoughts and made sleep impossible. He could not stop thinking of the future, and his being in the present without his friend, and he would dwell on  uncomfortable thoughts, like the coma Sal was in, as a suspension of time, of life. He felt a tremendous guilt for experiencing each day that passed without Sal’s presence in it, and the enormity of thoughts like that were beginning to pain him in a way he could not explain or understand.

            In light of their son’s agony, the Acre’s committed themselves to seeing what they could do to help Salvatore. They started searching public records and speaking with the police departments looking for information about the Christians everywhere they could think of. They asked people who knew them from work, church and organizations they belonged to, and they even wrote down memories of their conversations with Don and McKenzie hoping to find something that might lead them to relatives, as well as a reason for their deaths. After weeks of effort, they were devastated to come up empty. 

            They sought the solace and reckoning of a pastor who suggested they speak to someone about obtaining guardianship of Salvatore, or maybe even adoption, considering his age. It depended on a lot of things, he cautioned, and it was important that they not set their hopes too high. Disappointment, he warned, could fracture their fragile family. They were starved for answers, and direction, and he feared and prayed for them. One thing they were sure of. When and if he was able, Salvatore would come to live with them until the necessary legal questions could be answered. Jordan was grateful for their commitment and genuine affection for his friend. In the days that followed, he would visit Salvatore at the hospital, sitting with him and reading to him for several hours every night.

            He had been in a coma for nearly three months. The night he opened his eyes he startled the attending nurse so unexpectedly that she dropped the bedpan she had only moments before pulled out from under him. He recalled that moment, remembering he was somewhat amused, and he and Jordan would laugh and joke about it in plenty of off-color ways. He felt sore all over and his head was pounding but he was otherwise coherent, and he thought he was breathing normally. It was dark in the room, the only light coming from the medical equipment, and his vision took a while to grow accustomed to focusing again. He told Jordan that one of his first wakeful thoughts was knowing his parents were gone and he was surprisingly peaceful and accepting of that fact. He did not struggle to fear it or avoid it. He said he prayed for them all and let them go. 

            It was the middle of March when Salvatore started the physical rehabilitation it would require getting back on his feet. Most of the doctors and specialists who had examined him thought there was little chance he would ever walk again. He was partially blind in his right eye, and he couldn’t hear a thing out of his right ear. He described the feeling on his right side, after many surgeries and reconstruction, as feeling like he had no feeling. His head tilted to the left and it stayed in that position, as he would say, like someone trying to understand a work of art. On his first day of rehab, he observed himself in the mirrors that lined one wall. He did not see the reflection of a crippled kid but rather a man on a mission.

            The Acres had installed a wheelchair ramp to their front porch and renovated a room for Salvatore on the first floor. He was released to their care a month before he and Jordan were to graduate from high school. The afternoon Jordan rolled him through the house to his new room was perhaps the happiest day in his life. Jordan stood in the doorway watching his friend marvel at the space he had helped to create. With the help of some classmates, and a compassionate judge, Salvatore’s personal belongings had been carefully packed and moved from the Christian home down the street. Trophies and awards, books and records, lined one wall. Against another was a fully adjustable bed, specially designed for someone with catastrophic injuries. When Sal had completed his review of the room, Jordan handed him a present wrapped in one of McKenzie Christian’s favorite scarfs. Sal unwrapped the object to find a small, brass picture frame that held a fading, black and white photograph of a couple holding the hand of a little boy who looked to be struggling to pull away. The couple was smiling, perhaps even laughing, at the little boy’s antics. There was a card attached to the frame that read: “You’re ours now and there’s no escape! — with all our love, Jordan, Carl, and Becky Acres.”

            Salvatore smiled when he read the note and studied the photograph more closely. Jordan may have thought, because of the photo’s age, that was him with his parents, Don and McKenzie Christian, but the only person Salvatore recognized in the photo was himself. He put it on the small desk in the corner by the windows and wheeled around the room. He was crying and smiling, overwhelmed by everything that had happened and everything he could remember from the mementos around him. They looked at trophies, awards, articles in the local newspaper over the years, and sat with a photo album, flipping through pages of photos of the two of them engaged in some activity or another, though mostly running. Salvatore recalled many of the events and places, but one left him totally clueless. It was a photograph of him and Jordan, both in sweats, standing on a rock ledge beside a pool of water. Behind them, the background dropped off abruptly. Jordan reminded him of the old quarry, and how they had run there, ten miles from town, to meet up with their families who had driven there to mine for gems. They had never been there until that day, and they were fascinated by the place. He was surprised he hadn’t remembered it, especially as Jordan went on and on about what a wonderful day it was, a true family adventure! He described in detail how they explored the caves and found all kinds of gems which they only left in the ground because their parents told them to. Salvatore still could not find himself there, in his memory, and told Jordan maybe they should go there again someday. Jordan laughed. It was gated now and rumored to have armed guards patrolling the area, though he had never witnessed it for himself. 

            Jordan had quit the sports team and the extracurricular activities at the school after Sal’s accident. His coaches and instructors all assured him his absence from participation would not put the many offers of grants and scholarships at risk. Salvatore as well had garnered the attention of numerous colleges and had been offered full scholarships as well. As the weeks before graduation dwindled to days, the two friends found their conversations inevitably winding around to the future, and where life would take them. Jordan had plans and he proudly shared them, hoping to inspire Salvatore to dream big as well. Salvatore would respond by playing down the importance of mapping the road of life ahead, favoring a more practical approach, given his set of circumstances. One day at a time, he told Jordan, that was his plan.

            The day before their graduation, they sat at a picnic table in the backyard, drinking lemonade and chiding each other as they took turns reading the speeches they would give. They were sharing the school’s top honors and they had plans as to how to make high drama of the occasion, plans that had gone back years. There were things they had discussed when they started thinking… “wouldn’t-it-be-cool-if-we…” and they recalled the pranks they had conceived, the ruckus they had envisioned, the embarrassments they might perpetrate, and the aftermath they foresaw, unbridled merriment for all! And their final curtain call was hatched with a toast and a promise.

            The therapy that had worked wonders on Salvatore had only worked because of Jordan’s insistence that Sal listen to his heart as much as any doctor. It was a triumph, the doctors agreed, to see Salvatore peddling a bicycle down the street at the heels of his Olympic-bound, childhood friend. As their classmates gathered at the lake for a pre-graduation celebration, Jordan and Salvatore took to the road instead. Salvatore’s bike was a retrofitted youth’s bike, with twenty-inch rims so he could touch the ground easily. It had a special sprocket he had designed to create the proper cadence for most terrains and a moderate speed. He would ride four or five feet off Jordan’s stride, like a trainer, just far enough to be heard without shouting. They decided to go to the quarry for their celebration run and they completed it in less than three hours. At the Acre’s dinner table that night it was the topic of conversation. There were no guards stationed at the gate which was wide open when they reached it. It appeared the mine had seen some activity in recent years, but it was abandoned when they reached it. Jordan had run further up the hill, leaving Salvatore to wait  on a rock speckled with mica by the quarry and was gone for nearly an hour.  When Jordan returned, he said the way the sun struck the rock it looked like Salvatore was sitting on a big diamond. 

            They shared a cake that night, the whole family seated around a fire Carl had started in the backyard pit. Salvatore felt a mix of joy and sadness, allowing for a moment, fear and panic to seep into his thoughts. He wondered where he would be in year, a month, next week? And he realized, he really wasn’t prepared for the changes he knew would come only too soon. He excused himself, saying the day had worn him out, but in a good way, and he wheeled back to the house, back to his room where he sat in front of a mirror and slowly unwound the bandages that doctors had insisted should not be removed for several more months. He couldn’t resist any longer. He needed to see who he’d become.

            The note Jordan read to his mother said simply: “Gone for a ride. See you later. Sal.” Sal had left it on the clothes he had laid out on his bed. A pair of, mix-matched, argyle socks, that he’d worn at every meet he had ever raced in high school sat on top of a CBGB’s t-shirt and his favorite, ripped-out jeans. This was similar to the attire Jordan was wearing under his graduation gown. Becky Acre expressed concern, perhaps they should go looking for him, but Jordan insisted they let him be, he’d be fine, and they soon left for the school without him.

            Years later, Jordan was putting up scaffolding outside the house he and his partner were building when he heard Kenny yelling from behind the house. Kenny had been directing the excavator where to dig so more drain pipe could be laid from the marshy area below the old mine to connect to the ditch that ran beside the street in the subdivision. He was screaming at the man in the bucket loader to stop digging. Kenny was standing on the edge of the marsh where the water had receded. They had been pumping water from the marsh for nearly a week and they’d discovered some evidence the area may have become a convenient dump for the mine on the hillside above. They began to see old tires, tools, and construction debris, metal roofing and the like, sticking out of the muck. 

            As Jordan approached the marsh, Kenny was tugging on the handlebars of a bicycle, trying to wrestle it out of the mud.

            “Look at this,” Kenny said as he freed it, pulled it to higher ground, and dropped it at Jordan’s feet. He shook his head and wiped his brow. “Whew, mama,” he said, “that must’ve been one hell of a ride.” They both looked up at the ledge Jordan knew was behind the quarry. It had been nearly fifteen years since he had been there with his friend Salvatore, but he still remembered the geography, and now the friend he had tried to forget.

            He put the pages down and slowly smiled. “That… is really good,” Matt said. “You should get this published somewhere. Really. It’s that good.” He waited for me to say something. I had nothing to add. He took another beer out of the cooler at our feet. We were out on a lake, drifting in the aluminum boat that came with the camp he and Jennifer had rented for the weekend. “It reminded me of us in a way. Did you write that about us?”

            “No, I don’t think so.” I said. “I was running up by the school one day and I stumbled on this plaque. No shit, I literally stumbled on this memorial plaque that was stuck in the ground. I call him ‘Salvatore,’ but his real name was ‘Salatino.’ He’s the real guy who’s missing. I guess he was from around here. He must’ve been important somehow, to have a plaque on the Chancellor’s front lawn? I got to thinking about him, and yeah, that’s the story.”

            “Wow,” Matt said, pulling the cord to the motor, “that’s fuckin’ choice. You can’t make this shit up.”

            “Yeah,” I agreed. “Truth be told, you can’t.”

            Jennifer waved from the camp as we started back to shore. That day was the last time I would see her and Matt together.