The Long Run

by Joseph Bruchac

  “ASSISTED LIVING FOR ELDERS” it read. “Long-term residence for those who wish to spend their golden years in a friendly, worry-free setting.”

  Travis took note of the address and then shoved the brochure into his backpack. He went outside, made sure the door was shut securely, faced south, and started running.

  The sun was in the middle of the sky by the time he reached the place. It was at the edge of the city, on a hilltop in a quiet residential area. There was a really big meadow around the sprawling new three-story building. Bees buzzed through the beds of flowers planted all along the curving driveway. Travis heard a cardinal calling from the old maple trees at the edge of the meadow. He liked the way Deer Meadows had been built so that it wasn’t totally separated from nature, even though he did not like the idea of his grandparents being stuck in such a place.

  “ENTER” read the sign over the front door. But it was locked.

  Travis pressed the button next to the door.

  “Yes?” a woman’s efficient voice answered from the speaker above the button.

  “I think my grandparents may be here, ma’am.”

  “Name?”

  “Travis. Travis Hawk.”

  A metallic click came from the door. Travis pushed it open and went inside. An African-American woman in a white uniform was sitting at the desk in front of him. She smiled and gestured for him to approach. The name tag on her coat read “Ms. Hurston, RN.”

  “Travis Hawk?” Ms. Hurston asked.

  “Yes, ma’am. That’s me.”

  “Very good,” she said, looking at a paper on the desk in front of her. “Expected, I see. But I do require some form of picture identification. For security reasons, you understand.”

  “Of course, ma’am,” Travis said, swinging his backpack around to the front. He pulled out his driver’s license. “Will this do?”

  Ms. Hurston studied the license, then jotted something down, and handed it back to him along with a clip-on tag with the word “VISITOR” printed on it. “You’re all set, young man. Just keep this tag in plain sight.” She looked down at another sheet of paper on her neatly kept desk.

  “Lunch,” she said. “Excellent. As a guest of your relatives, you’re entitled to dine with them for free.”

  As she spoke those words, Travis’s stomach growled. It reminded him how hungry he was. The last thing he’d eaten was the stew from the night before. He was as hungry as the bear that had bowled him over.

  Ms. Hurston raised an eyebrow. Then she laughed out loud, and the businesslike look on her face turned into a warm smile. “Hungry, are we?”

  Travis smiled back. “I guess so, ma’am.”

  Ms. Hurston chuckled. “Then no need to dillydally. See the facility map on the wall there? They’ll be in the dining hall. They should be at . . .” She consulted another paper. “Table four. That’s their table. Right near the western window. I’ll call ahead for them to expect you.”

  “Thank you, ma’am.”

  “Don’t mention it. Now get along, Travis. Your grandparents are going to be delighted to see you.”

  Travis walked down the hallway to the right. He climbed a set of stairs and came out on a landing with doors open to both sides down a broader hall. Each door had the name of the resident whose apartment it was. No one seemed to be around. Probably all eating. Travis’s stomach growled again.

  The long hallway curved and then opened into a big room. Sun streamed in through the windows on three sides. Fifty or sixty people, most of them with snowy hair, were sitting at the tables placed all around the dining room. Travis began to walk forward. Elderly people turned to look at him as he passed. Some nodded; some said hello. Travis nodded back and said hello in turn as he tried to find the right table. It wasn’t that hard to see which was which, as each table had a stand in the middle of it with a big numbered sign.

  Table 21. Table 16. Table 8.

  Then he saw it. It was right next to a window, just as Ms. Hurston had said. Table 4. Just two people were at that table, and one of them was standing up—a tall woman with a straight back, her long hair in a braid that hung over her left shoulder. There was a happy smile on her face, and she was holding out her arms.

  “Nosis!” she said. “Grandson.” She pulled him into a strong hug. “Paakwenogwisian. You appear new to me. We are so glad you are finally here.”

  “Nokomis,” Travis whispered. His throat felt so choked that it was hard for him to speak. “I missed you so much.”

  A hand grasped his wrist.

  “How about me, grandson? You miss this old broken branch, too?”

  Travis looked down. It took him a moment to see clearly because his eyes were filled with mist. It was Grampa Tomah, all right. But why was he not standing? Then Travis saw the cane in his grandfather’s left hand, the wheelchair he was sitting in, and the cast on his left foot. He also saw how small Grampa Tomah looked in that chair. He seemed so much older and thinner than Travis remembered.

  His grandmother released him from her arms. Travis dropped to one knee, his hands on his grandfather’s arms.

  “Gramps, what happened?”

  “Dumb luck,” his grandfather said with a grin.

  “And don’t forget laziness,” his grandmother added in a teasing voice. She shook her head. “How many times did I tell you to mend that back step, old man?”

  Grampa Tomah reached up and took his wife’s hand. “She’s always right, you know.”

  They smiled at each other in the same way Travis remembered from the past. There was so much love between them, the kind of love Travis had not felt in his own homeless life for what seemed like ages. So many thoughts were going through his head now that he felt dizzy.

  He was so glad to see his grandparents, but he was also so upset at how weak his grandfather looked. He’d made it to them, but his dream of living with them had vanished. They were now in a place where he couldn’t join them. “Long-term residential care”—that meant forever. Then another thought struck him. They’d known he was coming. That had to be because his father had contacted them. Travis’s heart sank. He’d come all this way, and now he was probably just going to be sent right back.

  Grandma Kailin put a hand on his shoulder. He looked up at her.

  “Don’t worry, nosis. Here, take this.”

  She was holding out a cell phone. A cell phone?

  Grampa Tomah chuckled. “Yup, grandson. Your grandma and me have become nowadays Indians. We are all hooked into the worldwide web. Got us that Facetime and all. Now you take that call. My boy’s been worried about you.”

  Travis felt numb. But he took the phone. He held it up and his father’s face looked back at him through the screen. Travis almost pushed the red button to end the call.

  But his father held up a hand. “Trav, son,” he said. “I am so sorry.”

  Travis had heard those words often from his father.

  “You look good, Trav,” Rick Hawk said. “Real good.”

  “Thank you, sir.”

  Rick Hawk shook his head. “No. No. Don’t call me ‘sir.’ I do not deserve that. I don’t even deserve to be called Dad. But I am going to try. Look! Check this out.”

  His father moved the phone away from his own face. He swung it around so that Travis could see the room his father was in. It was a big room with other people in it. Some of them waved. Then it stopped at a big sign on the wall that read “Drug and Alcohol Treatment Center.”

  His father’s face came back on the screen. “I checked in here the day after you left, Trav. I figured out right away what you’d done. It was just as clear to me as why you felt you had to do it—run away from me, I mean. I thought at first about going after you.” His father shook his head. “Decided not to do that. When you run, son, there’s no one who can catch you. I guessed where you would be heading. And I decided there were two things I could do. The first was to trust you. The second was to accept what I’d done, what I’d become. And that is why I am here. Clean and
sober since you left.”

  Travis nodded. He’d heard all that before too. He didn’t say anything.

  “Do you believe me?” Rick Hawk said. “It’s okay if you don’t. But I really do mean it. I am really going to try. I want you to be as proud of me as I am of you.”

  Travis took a deep breath. He bit his lip. “You want me to come back now?”

  “What?” Rick Hawk shook his head. “You kidding me? No way, no how. You stay there with my mom and dad. They are going to need your help for a while.”

  Travis felt confused. “In here? But this is long-term care. I can’t—”

  Grandma Kailin leaned down next to his ear. “Not long-term, nosis. Just temporary. Your grampa used to be a guide for the man who directs this place. Pulled some strings to get us in here just until this old coot is back on his feet or we can find us a live-in helper.” She punched him gently on the shoulder. “You know anyone like that?”

  Rick Hawk’s face split into the kind of grin that used to be there before Travis’s mom died. “Hear that, son? If you’re available, you three can head back to their cabin right away. Seems to me that, in the long run, that’s the best place for you to be for a while.”

  Travis was smiling now, a broad grin that matched the one beaming up at him from the phone in his palm.

  “Thank you, Dad,” he said. “I . . . I love you.”

  “I love you, too, Trav. I just hope someday I’ll be able to make you respect me again. Now travel well and take care of yourself and your grandparents.”

  His father’s face vanished from the screen into a point of light.

  It was the old way of doing it, even on something as modern as an iPhone. You never said a long goodbye if you were an Indian. You just wished each other a good journey and then turned away.

  Travis lifted his head and looked out the window toward the west.

  “You, too, Dad,” Travis whispered. Then he wrapped his arms around his grandparents.

  About the Author

  Joseph Bruchac is a traditional storyteller and the author of over 120 books. His work often reflects his American Indian (Abenaki) ancestry and the Adirondack region of northern New York, where he lives in the house in which he was raised by his grandparents.

  A martial arts expert, Joseph holds a fifth-degree black belt and master’s rank in pentjak silat, and in 2014 he earned a purple belt in Brazilian jiu jitsu. He and his two grown sons, James and Jesse, who are also storytellers and writers, work together on projects to preserve Native culture, restore Native languages, and teach traditional Native skills and environmental awareness.