by Tom Murphy
I looked at Pop, who wore the same stoic expression he had as he rode in the motorcycle side car with Kathrine Switzer, but as Roman’s group pulled out cellphones setting big plans in motion, I felt Ellen slip away. I recognized this as the first brush of a current that would pull her along, then sweep her up in the rising tide of fame, and as I watched. I realized Ellen didn’t belong to us any longer. She belonged now to something larger, the whole world, and I knew her life would never be the same again.
The break in the clouds at the end of the marathon Sunday had continued overnight, giving us a brilliant fall day on Monday as I drove Pop home. Past New Haven Pop asked if I’d pull off Interstate 95 and pick up the old Route 1. I was enjoying his company as he told story upon story of the old days and I savored that I had the “Casey Stengel of Running” as my private tutor.
My favorite story was the one about “fear the man with a paper bag.” Pop told how Jimmy Henigan, a plodder colleague who won Boston in 1931, used to say, “Pay no mind to the man with the dime store uniform. Fear the man who brings his running gear in a paper bag, that’s your real runner.”
I got off I-95 at Old Saybrook and we wended our way to Route 1, a two-lane road that hugged the Connecticut shore. Pop told me this was the road he had taken when he had first emigrated to America from Galway and had hitch-hiked during the 1930s to Boston from Philadelphia for the Boston Marathon each April. He had been a carpenter in Philadelphia, when he could get work, and he lived in a rooming house in South Philly on nuts and tomatoes from the trash bin at the farmers’ market.
A faraway look appeared in his eye as he peered down the road, alternately turning his head side to side to see if anything remained the same. “There, there. Stop!” he said.
I pulled over in front of a tiny stucco structure with a flat wooden canopy held up by two rusty metal poles, an old gas station. Today it was a t-shirt shop and God knows what else it might have been in between.
“I spent two days and a night here in ’36,” he said, when the tiny structure had been a gas station. He got out and I followed. We went inside the t-shirt shop where a long-haired hippy in a Led Zeppelin t-shirt sat behind a picnic table and said, “Howdee. Any special kind of t you want? I got a Mo Vaughn, or you want something from my Rock ’n’ Roll line?”
Pop didn’t hear him as he shuffled through the cramped room, turning his head in all directions, surveying the place from top to bottom, while I explained to the fellow who looked like the guy on Zig Zag rolling paper that this was Pop Gallagher, former director of the Boston Marathon, and this was a place where Pop had stopped while hitching to Boston during the 30s.
“Cool,” the guy said, and I saw he was not absorbing any of it, having gone one toke over the line himself many years back.
In the car as we drove again, Pop told me how he had been stranded at that gas station without any money and that had cost him his chance for gold at Boston.
“Several papers in Boston had picked me to win in ’36. I had consumed my fruit I had brought, since the journey had taken me longer than I expected, nearly a week, and I was famished.”
“It took you a week to hitch from Philly?”
“Yeah, and I helped the owner by pumping gas to earn 75 cents so I could buy some food and eat at least. Finally, a salesman going to Boston pulled in for gas and offered to take me the rest of the way. His car had the old isinglass curtains instead of windows, so there was no seal on the window beside my shoulder and I froze in the car as we drove all night. The salesman took me to the start at Lucky Rock Manor because I was so far behind schedule getting into town and we arrived just before the noon start. The salesman was a heavy-set sort and never exercised, but he admired the ‘plodders,’ as we were called, and he offered me $5 if I promised to win the Boston Marathon for him. But of course, I couldn’t take it.”
“Why not?”
“Because we were amateurs and that was against the rules. If I had taken money, I would have been barred from running again, ever.”
“Officials would have had to hear about that first.”
“Those were the rules,” he said, flatly.
I nodded and he continued.
“I led for the first half, but I cramped in Wellesley. My legs were still tight from riding in the cold all night. Then Tarzan Brown caught me on Heartbreak Hill, just before he caught Old Kel. I caught Kel too, on Beacon Street in the stretch, but I cramped again before the turn onto Exeter Street, and Old Kel caught me again for second place. I got third.”
“Did it bother you, that you never won?”
“Yes, but that won’t be a problem come April. When Ellen wins.”
I realized the depth of his pride, and the source of his desire. I understood why he worked so hard to help Ellen, so she might participate with him in the writing of the final uncompleted chapter of his life.
“It will be a great honor,” he said, adopting a faraway gaze. “To have my kin do what I couldn’t do.”
I was shocked and I glanced at him to see if he considered the irony.
“Bridget’s your kin, too, if you look at Ellen that way.”
He turned to me with a fire in his eyes I had not seen, and had only heard about in stories. I saw in his expression an anger that made me shudder. It was as if I had pushed a boulder to the brink of a cliff and it teetered now, a thousand feet above ground, over my head.
“Don’t mention that name to me.”
He had awakened my competitive juices, however, and I felt like I had when I played ball and we were down by one run in the ninth with one chance left to bat.
“Why? Why do you hate Bridget so much?”
“Hate’s not the word.”
“Then what?”
“Bridget thinks about only one thing,” he snapped, and he turned away as the car rolled past a dozen white stripes in the road, and I waited for him to give me the missing piece. “Bridget thinks only about Bridget.”
“She gave you credit for training Ellen.”
He looked at me. “She said something about that?”
“During the race yesterday she told me, ‘Pop knows his stuff.’”
“She said that?”
“She gave you credit for Ellen’s strategy.”
I had pushed the boulder dangerously close to the edge, but now possibly I was rolling it back. But no luck.
“Don’t talk to me about that ingrate,” he said, and the rock rolled away from the precipice, but something else rolled away as well: I sensed the connection between us snap as we rode the final fifty miles to Dorchester in silence. As I pulled to the curb in front of his house to let him out, though, he leaned back into the car and spoke softly, as if all his air had been expended—except for one last bit.
“Tell Bridget thank you.”
“I will,” I said, and I waved good-bye.
Neither knows how to say they’re sorry, Ellen had said. Old Irish, which I knew something about myself.
But, hey, maybe we were getting a thaw.
Nope!
I got a call from Bridget as soon as I checked into the station the next morning. She was in New York, following up with Roman to report on our visit to Sister Josephine and share news that Margaret was dead.
“I want to keep Roman on our side,” she said.
“How many Tylenol did you need?”
“Several cases, but both the car and I are OK. Now let’s get back to work. Roman just shared with me that they found Delia, and I need you to get her on tape.”
“Found Delia?”
“Yes, she works in the cafeteria at a middle school in Dorchester, at the Washington Irving. I told Stan to give you a camera and a truck. I need you to get over to that school, Colin. And when you do, call me, I’ll talk you through the interview I need you to do with Delia Delaney.”
“But if Margaret’s
dead, doesn’t that end all this?”
“You’re in the news business, Colin, you should know better. We never go with one source.”
The school was located on a hill, across the street from wooden houses, once stately, which sagged now under scraggly brush. Behind the school’s chipped gate the lawn had turned to dirt and the brick walls of the tired building carried indecipherable messages from various gangs. I rang the bell on a metal door and eventually someone answered, a stooped custodian, who pointed in the direction of the cafeteria.
“What’s the news want?” said a heavy-set woman in an A-line dress who spotted me with my camera in the basement hallway. She stepped in front of me at the entrance to the cafeteria as she directed the flow of kids barreling down the stairs for lunch.
“Are you the principal?”
“Assistant principal. What’s up?”
“Tell her we want to talk to a lady in the caf,” Bridget told me over the cell phone, which I had on speaker so I could take directions. “Tell her we want to talk to Delia Delaney.”
“Who’s that?” said the AP, meaning on the phone.
“My boss. Bridget Maloney. Channel 6 News.”
Her eyes widened disapprovingly. “Listen, I don’t care how many Oscars or Tonys you guys have won. You need to go upstairs and sign in at the office before I can let you down here.”
“Tell her we need to ask Delia Delaney a few questions,” Bridget said, but the AP heard Bridget over the speaker and shook her head.
“I can’t help you. We got rules.”
“Who wants to see me?” said a stout woman. Tall, with a stern, bony face, she stepped out of the cafeteria into the hallway and glared at me as she ran her palms along her white apron. She was in her sixties with broad shoulders and gray hair. She wore a hairnet and beads of sweat had collected on her brow from serving lunch.
“Ask her if she knows Pop Gallagher,” Bridget said.
“Do you know Pop Gallagher?” I said, and the stern woman’s eyes showed shock, as if I had picked her up and set her back two spaces on the black and white tile floor.
“No,” she said, but I know when someone is lying.
“Look, you’ve got to go upstairs,” the AP said, blocking me. “We’ve got rules.”
“Get her on tape, Colin,” Bridget said, and I raised my camera and pointed it at the cafeteria lady, but she was strong and she put her hand over my lens and pushed the camera away.
“Ask her if she ever had a niece,” Bridget said, and I could tell from her tone on the phone Bridget knew things were not going well.
The stout woman heard Bridget, and she turned away. She stepped hurriedly back into the cafeteria and closed the door.
I went to follow her, but I had to jump back to let a group of kids rush by me into the cafeteria, including the kid from the sporting goods store, the one with the Mariners cap, which he wore backward still.
“What’s happening?” Bridget said.
“The kid,” I said.
“What kid?”
“From the shoe store,” I said, as the kid scampered past, turning over chairs as he dodged other kids in a game of “Got you last.”
“That’s Samuels,” said the AP. “One of our lesser angels.”
“Do you know we caught him stealing recently?”
“Yes, I do, sadly.”
“How did he get readmitted to school so soon?”
“‘Released into parental custody,’ they call it,” she said.
“What?”
“The parents vouch for them, in his case his guardian, and if our Principal signs, which ours did, we take them back. The juvenile courts are jammed and we keep them here before their hearings.”
“You’re kidding?”
“No, our principal has taken a special interest to help that boy.”
“What’s going on?” Bridget said. “Where’s Delia Delaney?”
“She’s gone.”
“Gone?”
“Look, I’m sorry,” said the AP. “But if you want to come down here, talk to the Principal upstairs and get permission. Otherwise, I’ve got to ask you to leave.”
“Whose policy is that?”
“School policy. You need a slip.”
“No, I mean the ‘parental custody’ thing?”
“You think I make the rules? Go upstairs and ask them. They get paid the big bucks, I just enforce the rules. Look, I’ve got to get this area cleared out before the next crowd hits on third lunch.”
Bridget who was following the action on the phone told me to get my camera running as I climbed the stairs. “Get the principal on tape. I want her on record giving you permission to interview Delia Delaney.”
“Excuse me,” I said, as I entered the Principal’s office, a cramped, cluttered room on the main floor, filming as I came. The principal, a spry, elderly woman in a floral dress, stood with her back to me. She was speaking on the phone, arguing with downtown administrators for funds. She hung up, and I focused in tight on her eyes, capturing her shocked expression when she turned to me.
“Can I speak to you?” I said, filming.
“Yes, certainly,” she said, her voice more tenuous now than it had been moments earlier on the phone. “What do you need?”
“Ask her to call Delia Delaney to the office,” Bridget said on the phone.
The woman looked at the phone in my hand, then at me, as I honed in tight on her blue eyes.
“I have Bridget Maloney, Channel 6 News, on the phone,” I said. “We’d like to speak with Delia Delaney.”
“Who?” the woman said.
“Delia Delaney.”
“No, on the phone?”
“Bridget Maloney. Channel 6 News.”
“No,” she said, and I was put off, not by her refusal as much as by her tone, the finality of it.
“What’s going on?” Bridget said.
“She said no.”
“She can’t say no. We have a right. Tell her.”
I told the principal. “We have a right.”
“No,” she said, again, shaking her head, and she covered her eyes to escape the camera. I believe I saw a tear.
“Why not?” I said, anticipating Bridget.
“This is not the way,” she said.
“We have a right,” I repeated, again anticipating Bridget.
“Look,” Bridget said. “If she won’t give you a permission slip, ask her this question. You said you saw that kid downstairs. Ask her how she let someone who stole from a store back into school.”
“She didn’t. They have a policy.” I couldn’t believe it, here I was locking horns with an elderly principal over a permission slip, while arguing with my boss in New York.
“Just do it, damn it!”
“Why did you let Samuels back into school?” I said, but still the woman shook her head and waved her hands in front of her face.
“What’s so special about him?” Bridget said.
“What’s so special about him?”
I saw tears well in the old woman’s eyes, real tears, and suddenly I felt like I was back in Philadelphia with the Food Bank director grabbing my ankles.
“What’s going on?” Bridget said. “Did she give you the permission slip yet?”
“No,” I said, and I turned my camera off as the woman buried her face in her hands crying.
Good lord, I said to myself. What am I doing here?
The elderly woman turned to me, looking twenty years older than when I had walked in. She followed me to the door where she caught up to me and with her composure restored, but with tears in her eyes still, she fixed me with clear blue eyes and said, “All my children are special to me.”
“What’s going on?” Bridget said. “What’s happening?”
“Nothing,” I sa
id, and a moment later I was out the front door and heading back to the truck, as Bridget badgered me to get back in there and get them all on tape.
“You’re not going to use this tape, I hope,” I said on speakerphone as I drove back to the station.
“Damn right I’ll use it. I’ve already called Stan. We’re going to show how one school is harboring a criminal.”
“But it’s not the principal who makes policy. You can’t put her on the air for letting the kid back in.”
“You’re missing the point, Colin. The point is leverage.”
“Put her face on TV tonight and you’ll ruin her career.”
“I damn right will put her face on TV if she doesn’t give us a permission slip to talk to Delia Delaney.”
“You’d do that?”
“You bet, then watch how fast they call tomorrow with the slip.”
When I reached the station, Junior met me at the door asking what I had from the sporting goods store.
“Oh, Christ, what does Junior want?” Bridget said.
“Who’s that?” said Junior.
“Bridget,” I told Junior. “I got her on the phone.”
He took the phone out of my hand. “Maloney, does your boy have the tape you shot with the girls in track shoes last week?”
I could hear her clearly. “Colin’s got great stuff,” she said, and I knew what she meant.
“Get in there and edit the piece,” Junior barked at me. “I want to make 5:30 with your story.”
I hung up with Bridget and walked to the editing suite, but as I sat in front of a monitor the phone on the desk rang. I picked it up. It was Bridget from New York again.
“Grab the tape,” she said, and I reached for my camera.
“No, not that one,” she said as if she were psychic. “The one from the running store.”
I was proud of her as I found the tape we had shot at the Prudential Mall and I worked quickly, mixing images of young girls bouncing on their toes in their “Women First” shoes. Bridget was silent on the phone as I worked, but I knew she was following the progress.
“Done,” I said.
