The Runner

by Cynthia Voigt

  “No, I’m not,” he promised her. Her head nodded once, sharply. What a life for her, he suddenly thought, angry and sad again. Why didn’t she get out, why doesn’t she?

  “You don’t know,” she said.

  “No, I don’t think I do,” he told her. Then a sudden question drove everything else out of his head.

  “Do you think I should have carried her home? Do you think a vet could have done anything? Momma?”

  She asked him to describe the wound, so he did, his answers as quiet as her questions. He didn’t try to explain how it happened, just talked about what OD looked like. His mother thought about it, then shook her head. “No, bringing her home wouldn’t have been any good.”

  Bullet believed her, but he couldn’t be sure.

  “Besides, we’d have had to sail into town to find a vet,” his mother said.

  “And I wouldn’t have liked to bury her in the water,” Bullet said.

  “Agreed.”

  They sat in silence. Bullet was cold, he realized. “You should go inside,” he said.

  “I am tired, I am that.” But she didn’t get up. “And my feet hurt.”

  “Take off your shoes. Why didn’t you take off your shoes?”

  “And ruin a pair of perfectly good stockings?”

  “Take off your stockings too.”

  “Bare feet are common,” she reminded him.

  “You don’t think that,” he told her. Talk about boxes.

  She didn’t answer. He guessed he knew why.

  “Maw?” he said. “You’re the stubbornest old woman in the world.”

  A smile moved across her face and was gone. Watching that, Bullet thought: How long has it been? What a life for her, and then, loud inside his own head, I won’t let him do this to her.

  And what are you going to do? he asked himself. What can you do?

  Something.

  You’re the breaker. You destroy. You forgotten already?

  No. No, I haven’t.

  He thought maybe he could tell her about Frank’s visit, just about the picture of the kid. But then he recognized that that wouldn’t be much joy to her, finding out she had a grandchild, and maybe two, that she didn’t even know where they were and wouldn’t be able to get off the farm to go find them even if she wanted to. That would just be adding more boards to the side of her box, making her box squeeze tighter on her. It would be like turning her into prey, sticking his lion’s claws and teeth into her. He couldn’t get her out of her box any more than he could unshoot the shot that got OD. There was nothing he could do.

  Everybody was in the same box, helpless. She was and he was—and maybe even the old man, although Bullet couldn’t see that, but maybe she could—and everybody. What a world.

  “I don’t recall any orders about me cooking for you, do you?” Bullet asked his mother. He stood up. She looked at him.

  “You used to have a sense of humor,” she told him. Her hair, streaked with gray, hung in a braid down her back.

  Bullet couldn’t make any sense out of that remark. He wondered if he’d been wrong about her, overestimated her strength.

  “A good one,” she said, thoughtfully.

  “I still do,” Bullet told her and wondered if she was cracking up, had been cracking, slowly, over the years, while they—him and the old man—lionlike, devoured her.

  She snorted. “You could fool me.”

  Then Bullet saw what she meant and did smile. “I doubt that—I never could fool you. I’ve got eggs and some bacon. I fry me a mean egg. We could eat standing up.” He wanted to give her something, even just breakfast.

  She shook her head. “No. No I can’t do that.”

  Anger rose up in Bullet again, and again sad. “Stubborn,” he told her, “stubborn and proud. I dunno, Maw, you’re gonna get yourself into trouble.”

  That brought another smile to her face, a sudden smile, as suddenly gone. She knew what he was thinking. “You, boy,” she said.

  He left her there on the back steps, with her face turned to the garden, the marsh, and if she could have seen beyond it, the water.

  CHAPTER 15

  Bullet dozed his way through that morning’s classes. He would enter a classroom as the bell rang, slouch down in his seat with his legs stretched out, let his chin fall down onto his chest and close his eyes. Images played against the dark screen of his lowered eyelids, and voices sounded inside his head, all the pictures and sounds jumbled together. He couldn’t keep track of them. He felt off balance, as if his muscles were running without any central controlling agency, and he would sense outward to where his ankles crossed, or his arms folded across his stomach, to reassure himself of his own stillness. Then he would doze off. Next thing he knew, the bell rang and he got up to go to his next class.

  He ate lunch outside, feeling pretty rested, considering, as he leaned back against the bricks and chewed at his sandwiches. A chilly wind blew against his face and the sun shone sharp. He wouldn’t be able to sleep during shop. They didn’t even have chairs, just tall stools. So he turned away from the lines of moving students, drifted around the back of the building and headed for the street. Once there, he started to run. He ran fast, hard, the three miles to Patrice’s. Whatever else, his body was in good working order, working well to his orders.

  Patrice opened the door, surprised to see him, the dark eyes sharp and curious, although all he said was, “Come in.” He had covered his table with newspapers and spread the parts of a motor on that. He was cleaning the parts, with gasoline in a plastic basin. “You have come early.”

  Bullet peeled off his sweater and sat down. Patrice got back to work, his hands scrubbing, polishing. “When I think of it, you are the opposite of that dillar-a-dollar scholar—you come a little earlier now. You aren’t racing with your team,” he added. Bullet looked up. “I deduce this from your name not being mentioned in the newspaper.” He reached out a hand and dripped gasoline onto an article in front of Bullet. “The sports section.”

  “I didn’t know you read the paper.”

  “It is only once a week; they send it to me for nothing. Sometimes, when I spread it out, my eye glances over it.”

  “You’re laughing at me.”

  “Yes, a little. Do you mind?”

  Bullet shrugged.

  “If you want to do something, you could clean these spark plugs. Not that lazy scraping with a screwdriver, but with this steel wool. Do you want to do that?”

  “Okay. But I wondered, there are a few hours, we could go out for some oysters.”

  Patrice shook his head. Bullet got up and stood looking out a window toward the dock. “I have emptied the gas tank, there is a leak. . . .” Behind him, Patrice’s voice went on, describing how he would solder the cracked metal. Bullet let the words flow around him, not listening. He would have liked a few hours of hard labor.

  “Hello, hello,” Patrice said. Bullet turned around. “It isn’t that you need the money, is it?”

  Bullet shook his head. “I just thought,” he said. He sat down again and picked up a piece of steel wool. “Is this for the fourteen-footer?” he asked.

  “No, for that one I’ll get a new motor, I’ve decided that. Nothing but the best. It will be my best work, that one.”

  They worked in silence for a long time. Bullet stared at his own hands, working patiently, slowly. He concentrated on his fingers, scouring at the crud and chemical deposits on the spark plugs. Patrice soaked, scrubbed and polished dry, not talking for a change. Bullet’s legs and shoulders wanted to move, wanted to work, but he concentrated on his fingers. Finally, Patrice asked, “Something is wrong?”

  Bullet met the bright dark eyes and said nothing, did nothing, didn’t even shrug. His mind seemed frozen, caught in some kind of panic, like a cramped muscle. Patrice waited and Bullet answered him at last. “Yeah. Something I did, I don’t like it. What I did.”

  “This is a phenomenon?”

  “Yeah. I know how that sounds, but it’
s true. Always before I liked what I did.” He smiled reluctantly. “I know it’s funny.”

  “I don’t know about funny, but lucky.”

  Bullet did laugh then. Lucky.

  Patrice saw the humor, but protested: “I mean it. There comes a time when you can no longer compromise. I’ve amused you again, but I mean that. I could be wrong, but I do mean it.” He got up from the table. “If you will put these things away, please, and clear up the mess, I’ll begin dinner. You’ll stay?”

  “Sure.” Compromise? Well, maybe.

  Carefully, Bullet took up the parts of the dismantled outboard, setting them down on fresh newspapers spread out on a shelf. He gathered up the soiled papers from the table and shoved them into the wastebasket. He washed his hands, to get the gas off them.

  Patrice took a chicken out of the refrigerator and set it on the counter, where he disjointed it with a cleaver. Bullet didn’t want to talk about OD, but there was something he did want to know: “How’d you know?” he asked Patrice’s back.

  The shoulders shrugged beneath a plaid woollen shirt. “You have the appearance of having slept in your clothes. You have stubble on your head. You usually take care of your appearance; not because you are vain, I think, but proud.”

  Bullet ran his hand over his scalp, then over his chin. The scant hairs on his face were soft, but his head felt rough, scratchy. “I forgot.”

  “Which is not like you,” Patrice said.

  Bullet didn’t say anything.

  Patrice dried the pieces of chicken with a paper towel. Then he took out mustard, oil and a head of garlic, from which he pulled off two cloves. He crushed those, then mixed all the ingredients together in a small bowl. He melted butter on the stove, brushed that over the chicken pieces and set them under the broiler. He started some rice, cut two tomatoes in half and put them on a baking sheet, then sat down to shell some peas. Bullet stood watching, waiting for Patrice to speak. It was obvious that there was something Patrice was going to say.

  “When I was fifteen, and the Germans came,” his light voice said as his fingers clumsily pulled apart the pods, “I had no family in our village. The couple who had raised me—they had a dairy herd and a small business for making cheese, they needed a boy for the labor. When the Germans came, they had fled the village. I was nothing to them, just a boy for the labor. So I became a messenger for the Macquis—the Resistance? You’ve heard of it?”

  Bullet had. He sat down across from Patrice. When his mother shelled peas, it was with one hand, holding the long pods at her fingertips, then squeezing until they split open to let the green pellets fall into the bowl. Patrice, missing fingers, needed both hands.

  “I was small and clever. I knew the countryside. I was a courier, a runner. I had my message memorized; we never used anything written down. I was too young, too—weak, physically, to be used in raids or as escort to travelers. They called me L’ancien, the old one. So you see, I even had my own code name. And I was proud.

  “When I was brought in for questioning—

  “You see, we had destroyed a bridge, a railroad bridge that spanned a broad ravine, a supply route. Our work was to plan and achieve such destruction, to impede and hinder whenever possible. After a success, of course, the enemy reacted strongly. As we had known they would.

  “You see, we were a country town, a farming town, unimportant, except for their pride. So when I was brought in—

  “What I had to conceal was a route along which we could move people, our own or those who were escaping from the country into the mountains, into Spain. The enemy knew—because we also had our traitors—that there was a party of men traveling at that time. They did not know where, or when. That, I knew. Why their choice fell on me, I don’t know—except that perhaps they realized at last that a boy with no ties, no family upon whom retribution might fall, was a boy the Macquis might use.”

  Patrice looked straight at Bullet, who sat listening. “They were correct. And very angry. They had been made to look foolish—a Resistance cell operating under the very noses, under the very moustaches. The interview did not take long, and much of it I do not remember. Memory selects—I do not recall the fear, or the pain—which is not surprising. Those are physical sensations. They are either to come, present, or past. When present they dominate. Before, after—they are not. That is curious, isn’t it?”

  Bullet wasn’t interested in the speculative question. “What—?”

  “If I work for it, I can bring up the sound of the voices, questioning. Even after all these years. I can see the cleaver—an ordinary kitchen cleaver very like my own—with which they threatened me, and my hands I can see, spread out onto the sheet that covered the tabletop. Because the blood shoots out so.”

  Patrice looked down at his hands. Bullet had his eyes on Patrice’s gnome face.

  “Courage I have. Of vanity . . .” He shrugged, and his eyes were humorous. “. . . little. They questioned. I continued my pretense of ignorance, and the terror was no pretense. I remember it, as if it were not my own event, as if I had not been there, myself. The boy at the table and the men around him. Then, I hear a voice behind me, some officer who has just come into the interrogation room, and he asks, Who is this boy? and then my courage failed. They could know by asking, and nobody had been interested—just another boy, orphaned and ordinary, a scrawny and uncared for boy who survived somehow. But we knew by then the workings of their minds, and what they did to such as I.”

  “What do you mean such as you?” Bullet wondered, but Patrice went on.

  “So I told them—how large a party, from what direction, along which route, at what time. Even then, I hoped to warn the party. That was what I hoped, to make meaningless my betrayal. I knew the countryside, I was quick enough, the information would be useless to them. They were pleased. They pulled a brand from the fire—it was October then, too, and cold, as it is in October in my own country, frosts there begin in September. They cauterized the wounds—an act of mercy perhaps. I fainted.

  “You see, I had not known I would faint. You can understand that. I had not known I would lose those minutes—how many were lost I do not know, except that they had carried me outside and left me. For anyone who passed by to see, and take warning. So that when I arrived at the place I had told them of, a long passage between hills, a narrow pathway, which I approached from a ridge . . .

  “I was too late. The party—too distant to call out—they moved like shadows among trees, among rocks. The enemy lay in wait, concealed along the hillside, silent. The party had some arms, rifles, pistols, knives of course. They moved like herded sheep into the ambush.

  “While I watched.

  “I had to stay to make the report. Six men, twenty soldiers—the soldiers moved to encircle the party before they made their attack. They wanted captives, of course. This the men knew.

  “All of the soldiers commenced firing at a signal, to wound and disable. We were accustomed to act quickly and take what shelter afforded. For a few minutes, the air was filled with gunshots. I watched and counted. The enemy closed its circle. When only two of the party were left alive—there is a stillness to the dead that is unmistakable, and a man whose brains lie outside of his skull will not live—the enemy ceased firing. The soldiers stood to rush. One man was on the ground, helpless; the other stood against a tree because his leg ran with blood. He had some time, he had some ammunition. He shot his wounded companion, then fired into the rush of soldiers, who automatically fired back as their captain called out orders to stop them.

  “Of the twenty, eight returned unharmed, and they bore with them five wounded. Of the six, none.”

  Patrice’s hands went back to work. Bullet waited for the point of the story.

  “This I reported, that same night, because it had to be known what information the enemy had. This I reported weeping with shame and regret. ‘Don’t be a fool,’ they told me. ‘Your body betrayed you—you did not betray us.’ They sent me away, to the coast.”


  Patrice dumped the pods into the garbage. He turned the pieces of chicken in the broiler. He ran a pot of water for the peas, putting a spoonful of sugar into it. He stirred the mustard mixture and took a jar of bread crumbs out of the refrigerator.

  “Why tell me about it?” Bullet asked. “I don’t get it.”

  Patrice answered without turning around. “I have told only two people, who needed to know if I was equal to an assignment. They both felt—pity, mercy, compassion—although that was not their main concern, nor why I told them. After many years I tell it again. And you, you are pitiless.”

  That was true enough. “What good does pity do?”

  “I don’t criticize. I didn’t tell you for the pity of it. I only observe.” He pulled the pan of chicken out of the broiler and proceeded to paint it with the mustard coating, then cover each piece with bread crumbs and dribble butter over that. “Chicken diablo,” he announced, slipping it back into the broiler. “After the years of hunger, I never tire of food.”

  “Patrice, I really don’t understand,” Bullet said.

  “Ah. Will you set the table? I didn’t know if you knew you didn’t understand. It’s good to know that.”

  “You aren’t making any sense,” Bullet said. He got up and set the table, knives, forks, napkins, glasses. He wanted to know what the story was supposed to mean, because he had a feeling it meant something, and Patrice thought it would mean something to him.

  “Because my body betrayed me, but I think your spirit betrays you, and you can no longer compromise that. I should have warned you, it is speculative thought.”

  Well, Bullet was willing to consider that. “I didn’t think compromising was what I did,” he said.

  “As if you had no heart,” Patrice told him.

  “Look, Patrice,” Bullet warned the man. Patrice’s face was not afraid, just concerned; the eyes steady and the full mouth still. Bullet felt his shoulders sag. He couldn’t work out the connections, but he could feel them. He poured himself a glass of milk and set the carafe of white wine by Patrice’s place. Because he could see that he might have been betraying himself—and Patrice was right, the provocation was no excuse. “Can I use your phone?” he asked.