Running Man

by Michael Gerard Bauer

  ‘No, we couldn’t allow you to be locked up for hours on end with Mrs Mossop. You’d be chewing her ear the whole time and she wouldn’t be able to get a word in edgeways. Probably be the end of her, not being able to hear the sound of her own voice. She’d just shrivel away. Like that witch in The Wizard of Oz. You know, “I’m melting! I’m melting!” No, I won’t allow it. I couldn’t bear to see the poor woman suffer.’

  Joseph had begun to feel comfortable with Caroline Leyton. Even though she joked about him being quiet, she didn’t make him feel weak or stupid for keeping to himself the way other people did, and she didn’t speak down to him or fret over him as if he were a startled deer about to bolt.

  ‘Yes. Well, that narrows it down a bit, doesn’t it? You need someone with an interesting face but not too young; someone who lives close by and can spare the time for the sittings.’

  Joseph was well aware that the person who met all those requirements was at that moment across the table from him slowly turning an empty glass in her hand and deep in thought. For the first time in his life he studied Caroline’s features closely. Even though she was in her forties Joseph could still see a young girl in the way she bit her bottom lip and pushed her fair hair back behind her ear. He imagined trying to capture the sad, dark beauty of her eyes and the strong lines of her nose and cheekbones.

  It would be the most challenging drawing he had ever attempted, but one he now realised he wanted to try, not just for himself but also in some way for Caroline. He couldn’t explain the feeling because he didn’t really understand it, but as he watched the woman before him carefully place her glass back on the table, he felt certain that this was what she wanted as well.

  Caroline’s voice, when it came, was shy and tentative. ‘There’s only one other thought I have, but I don’t know what you would think about it.’

  There was an awkward pause, and Joseph wondered whether he was supposed to jump in to save her from the embarrassment of having to nominate herself. His own shyness, however, locked the words in his throat.

  ‘I just thought … perhaps …’ she continued timidly.

  Joseph smiled weakly in encouragement, ready to agree.

  Caroline looked at the young boy before her and seemed reassured by his open, friendly expression, but what she said next hit Joseph like an unexpected blow to the stomach.

  ‘I thought perhaps you could draw my brother Tommy?’

  That night Joseph lay on his bed but couldn’t sleep. His mind was swirling with the words and images from that afternoon’s conversation with Caroline Leyton.

  When Caroline suggested her brother as the subject for his portrait, it was as if something unspeakable had been thrust between them that couldn’t be taken away. He remembered how he had searched for words to say no, but had remained struck dumb, with a half-smile frozen on his face and his cheeks burning with embarrassment.

  What she had said was more of a plea than a question, and suddenly everything had been turned upside down. It was Caroline he wanted to draw, not Tom Leyton, and now the brother whose existence she had previously failed to acknowledge was being called ‘Tommy’ as if he were a harmless child.

  Finally Joseph had managed to stammer out a reply. ‘I … I don’t know … I’m not sure … Mum could drive me to my grandmother’s … I haven’t really thought about it …’

  Caroline at last seemed to take pity on him and replied sympathetically, ‘Look Joseph, it’s your decision entirely. It was just a suggestion. I’m not trying to force anything on you. But … maybe you could give it some thought. You know we’re very convenient here next door. Just think about it.’ She paused and raised her eyebrows. ‘OK?’

  ‘OK.’

  Joseph knew that he sounded unconvincing, but in a way he didn’t care. He just hoped she would understand that he didn’t want to do it and the whole idea would go away.

  Caroline collected Joseph’s plate and cup from the table, stood up and moved towards the steps that led to the back door of the house. She seemed distracted. As she placed her hand on the railing, she stopped and glanced back at him. ‘I’m sorry if I caught you off guard before. I shouldn’t have just thrown it at you out of the blue like that. I understand … you would have to feel … comfortable with your subject. I know that and I would never want to pressure you.’ She remained at the bottom of the steps for a few seconds before she seemed to come to a decision, and then turned to face Joseph. ‘I know my brother is the source of some gossip and … speculation for some people around here, but I know my brother, they don’t.’ Caroline closed her eyes and shook her head slightly as the words began to tumble from her lips. ‘Things happen in people’s lives that they don’t plan. Things they wish they could take back but they can’t. But those things aren’t them, even if they think they are and they hate themselves for it for the rest of their lives.’

  She stopped suddenly as if she had gone too far. When she spoke again, it was with a deliberate calmness. ‘It’s your decision, Joseph. I just thought it might be good for my brother to have you draw his portrait. I think you might be good for him. Of course I wouldn’t do anything until I’d spoken to your mother first. Maybe you could just try one session and see how you feel. If it didn’t work out that would be the end of it. I wouldn’t bother you any more. In any case, you do what you want. Just promise me that you’ll think about it … really think about it.’

  ‘All right,’ Joseph answered truthfully.

  Caroline gave a half-smile and added finally, ‘And remember, I would be there with you at all times. You would never be alone. I promise.’

  Now, as Joseph recalled their conversation, it was those last words that clung uneasily to him. Why had she thought it necessary to give him that reassurance? Was it simply to make him feel more at ease? Or were Mrs Mossop’s dark fears about Tom Leyton real?

  Joseph sat up and pushed open one of the windows beside his bed as the old neighbourhood rumours snaked their way into his mind. He looked out through the branches of the poinsettia tree that grew outside his bedroom, over the fence and into the Leytons’ large yard. A short driveway ran parallel to the fence and led to an old timber garage. Further up the yard to the right a big fig tree dominated the lawn and to the left a mulberry tree draped its straggling branches over a disused concrete incinerator. Beyond these stood Leytons’ large, rambling house.

  A light shone in the kitchen and a figure moved behind the open windows. It was Caroline Leyton. She had her head down and appeared to be washing up. Eventually she moved from the sink and entered what Joseph assumed was the lounge room. He could make her out only as a blurred shape through the frosted glass windows. Soon he became aware of a second, larger shape in the room. The two figures were facing each other, and Joseph could make out some waving of arms and at times the pointing of fingers. They seemed constantly drawn together and then pushed apart as one or the other retreated across the room.

  Eventually the larger figure moved rapidly away and disappeared from view. A door was shut with enough force for a dull thud to carry across the yard. Joseph watched the blurred outline of the smaller figure linger for a while before turning and drifting back to the kitchen. When Caroline appeared at the sink again, her movements were slow and deliberate. She washed a small item and placed it in a tray to dry. Then she leant heavily on the sink and bowed her head so that her hair fell over her face. From a distance Joseph feared that she might be crying.

  At the far end of the house a dull light blinked on and glowed through the heavy curtains of a window. Then some movement of the curtain caught Joseph’s eye. As he strained to see more clearly, he noticed that the curtain had been partly drawn. He became aware of a soft halo of light cupping the curve of a head and briefly catching the edge of a cheek and the tip of a nose. Someone was at the window and looking straight at him.

  Joseph flopped back down on his bed. He could feel his heart racing and for some reason he found himself holding his breath and lying perfectly st
ill, even though he knew that he couldn’t have been heard or seen from Leytons’ house. As he stared at the pattern of light and shadow on the ceiling, Joseph began to relax a little. So what if Tom Leyton had been watching him? Hadn’t he been doing exactly the same thing?

  He lay still in the darkness, thinking about his answer to Caroline’s proposal. The whole idea of it filled him with dread. It wasn’t that he was afraid of Tom Leyton exactly. It was just that he knew how awkward and shy he would feel. He just preferred to keep to himself. What was wrong with that? He couldn’t change the way he was. He knew his mother worried about that sometimes, but when she raised the topic it just made him more self-conscious. Once he had overheard Mrs Mossop say to his mother, ‘The boy needs a male in the house,’ and it made him burn with resentment.

  An ache of guilt slithered through Joseph’s body as he thought of his father. He tried to escape the feeling by turning his attention once more to Caroline’s suggestion. The more Joseph weighed it up, the more he was certain that he didn’t want to use Tom Leyton as the subject for his drawing. But every time he felt he had made up his mind, he saw that sad figure hunched over the sink and he remembered the passion in Caroline’s request.

  Just then Joseph noticed a subtle change in the pattern on the ceiling. A small section had darkened and, as he watched, other sections followed suit. He eased himself up on his elbow and peered over the window sill at the Leytons’ house. There were now no lights showing. Joseph lay down and pulled up the sheet, letting it float down to enclose his body. As his head sank back into the pillow his thoughts turned again to his neighbours. He wondered why it was so important to Caroline that he draw her brother? He tried to imagine Tom Leyton lying on his bed not more than fifty metres away. What had he been hiding from all these years? What would it be like to come face to face with him? What was he really like?

  Joseph drifted off to sleep still trying to bring the blurred image of Tom Leyton into focus, but it was to be a more familiar face that would loom chillingly in his dreams that night. It was a haunted face, wild and unpredictable, and it rushed towards Joseph in a nightmare that he thought had been buried long ago in his childhood.

  That night Joseph dreamt of the Running Man.

  CHAPTER THREE

  His mother referred to the ragged figure that scuttled down the footpaths of Ashgrove as ‘that funny fellow,’ but as far as Joseph was concerned there was never anything funny about the Running Man. He was, quite literally, the stuff of nightmares.

  Joseph called him the Running Man because he did just that – he ran, and he ran all the time. But when he moved, it was not in any graceful athletic way, but rather with a lopsided canter, as if he were being pursued by some demon that only he could see.

  To Joseph’s relief, their paths crossed only rarely, but when they did, his heart would race like the Running Man’s feet long after the frantic shuffling figure had disappeared from sight. And it was not just his desperate haste that made the Running Man unique. His clothes were old and worn and hung about his tall, thin frame like rags on a scarecrow, while his long and wispy hair sprouted chaotically from under a crumpled short-brimmed hat. To add to his unnerving appearance, wide, bulging eyes shifted wildly above his sharp cheekbones. His overall manner was of someone who had been in hiding most of his life and had suddenly been thrust out into a strange and startling world.

  Joseph knew that he was not alone in his feelings about the Running Man. Many people eyed him with suspicion or distaste. Most avoided him. Parents drew their children quietly but firmly away.

  Joseph would catch glimpses of the Running Man from time to time as he ghosted past Arthur Street and disappeared down Ashgrove Avenue, yet he usually had no idea where the Running Man came from or where he was headed. Besides these random sightings on the street, the only other time Joseph saw the Running Man was in St Jude’s Church at one of the Sunday services. He also remembered Mrs Mossop once remarking in disgust that the Running Man quite often turned up at funerals, ‘uninvited and unwashed’. In church, the Running Man never sat anywhere else but in the last row. There he perched on the edge of the pew with his body hunched up like a man sheltering in a blizzard, while his eyes darted erratically without appearing to look at anything in particular. His body, meanwhile, rocked ever so slightly but insistently. No matter how full the church might otherwise have been, there were always spaces around the Running Man.

  As soon as the service was over the Running Man would squeeze his hat on his head and dash outside, bent over, with his hands clasped at his chest, as if he were escaping from a burning building. Many times, Joseph had watched with a growing sense of relief as the Running Man’s wild form rapidly dwindled into the comfort of distance.

  On one occasion, however, Joseph came very close to the Running Man. From that day on, it seemed as if some link, like a fine silken thread, invisible but strong, was binding their worlds together and pulling them gently, but inexorably, closer.

  Joseph was eight at the time, and had only just started Grade Three at the primary school attached to St Jude’s Church. It was the second day of the school year. It was also the second day that Joseph would make the journey home by himself without his mother’s guiding hand.

  The previous day had gone without mishap. The route itself was quite straightforward. His mother had repeated it many times. He just had to cross the busy main road at the lights outside the school, stick to the footpath and follow the gentle curve of Ashgrove Avenue as it snaked around to the right, be careful crossing Crawford Street and then continue on to Mr Cousins’ grocery store and Mr Daly’s butcher shop. There, just across the road, was Arthur Street. On the corner was the Leytons’ house and the next one down was home. It was as simple as that.

  On the first day Joseph was both nervous and excited. He concentrated so hard on what he had to remember at each stage that he had no real idea of anything beyond the small space around him. He was almost surprised when he rounded the corner and saw the timber awnings of Mr Cousins’ shop and Mr Cousins himself standing on the footpath casually smoking a cigarette. This struck Joseph as a little strange, because he had never seen Mr Cousins outside before. He didn’t know that when his mother had been in the shop on the weekend and happened to mention that Joseph would be walking home alone on Monday, Mr Cousins had assured her that he would ‘keep an eye out for the little fella’. And there he was, fidgeting just a little nervously until he looked up and saw Joseph. Then his round face split into a smile and he flicked his cigarette butt on to the road and proclaimed, ‘All hail Joseph, the conquering hero!’

  You couldn’t help but like Mr Cousins, although Joseph’s father called him ‘a relic from the past’. He was a short, squat happy man with a round face and a bald, shiny head. He loved to talk, but for some reason his voice came out as a squeaky whisper, and that made everything he told you sound like a wonderful secret. And he loved his jokes.

  ‘Hey Joseph, did you hear about Mr Daly next door? Yesterday he sat on the mincing machine by mistake, and now he’s got a little behind in his work. Behind in his work! Geddit?’

  Mr Cousins always laughed more at his jokes than anyone else, but that’s what Joseph liked best about hearing them. In fact, Mr Cousins seemed to bring a little magic to everything he did. Joseph liked to watch him cut the ham using a machine consisting of a sliding tray and rotating blade. He loved to see the thin slices curl off and slap on to the tissue paper below. Then Mr Cousins would slip his hand under the paper, scoop up the slices and flop them on the scales. Without fail he would peer closely at the dial, raise his eyebrows and say with mock amazement, ‘Must have been a skinny pig!’ or ‘Must have been a fat pig!’ depending on whether he was under or over with the weight.

  And no matter what his mother bought, if Joseph was with her, Mr Cousins always had a special treat. He would tear open a packet of Snakes Alive and delicately extract one by clasping it firmly behind the head with his right hand. Then he would hold out th
e palm of his left hand and slowly lower the snake so that it coiled into his hand. Next he would place his right hand on top of the snake and rub both hands together with a circular motion. When he opened his hands with a flourish, the twisted snake would curl and arch as if it were really alive.

  Joseph never tired of this trick, and even though he could probably have done it just as well himself, it wouldn’t have been the same without Mr Cousins hovering like a big, pink balloon painted with a beaming happy face. ‘Be careful. If you get bitten by one of these lolly snakes, you’ll have a sweet tooth for life! Sweet tooth! Geddit? Geddit?’ Then the hissy squeak of his laughter would start up like a tiny motor in need of oil.

  When Joseph saw Mr Cousins on that first journey home alone from school, he knew he had made it. After he had been ushered into the shop and Mr Cousins had fussed over him for a while, Joseph was ready to complete the final stage. With Mr Cousins shouting guidance and encouragement from the footpath, Joseph cautiously crossed the road, walked down Arthur Street, past Leytons’, and into number three with his heart filled with pride and his mouth bulging with the remains of two raspberry snakes.

  With the experience of the previous day behind him, Joseph set off on his second solo journey with a much lighter heart and a greater peace of mind. There is little doubt, however, that if he had known the events that were to unfold that afternoon, he would never have left the bright and friendly walls of the classroom.

  On the second day Joseph’s departure from school was delayed by a missing pencil case. By the time he found it, he was already running twenty minutes late, and so he hurried out of the school grounds, crossed the main road at the lights and made his way quickly down Ashgrove Avenue. Just when the walk home seemed as if it would be as uneventful as the previous day’s, a small shiny object caught the sun and Joseph’s concentration wavered.