Walter didn't know it, but when I was competing I wore those shoes only to run. I wouldn't even wear them into the house from outside. If they were on my feet, I was running. But when I gave it up, I wore them constantly for months before burying them in that closet, waiting for a night like the previous one to ruin them. I could have bored Walter with the lugubrious tale—one of many in my personal anthology—but he probably needed a confidant as little as I did. I went over and picked up the shoes. They seemed fine—dry and basically undamaged.
"Ever run a marathon, Cal?"
"Boston twice," I said. "Once in New York. I even flew to Chicago so that I could run that one."
"Thought maybe you were one of them," he said. "What was your best time?"
"You a runner, Walter?"
"Tried it. Too tall, never enough muscle, knees always sore. Even so, I know a good marathon time. What was yours?"
"Two fifty-eight and change."
Walter's eyebrows rose as if the steam from the hot coffee were lifting them. "Jesus, you were good."
"Two-thirty is good, but I was all right. I trained a lot. I thought maybe I could break 2:40 someday, but I won't now. You get to my age and improving becomes geometrically more difficult."
"Geometrically, huh? Wow, that sounds serious. What does that even mean?"
"Just, you know, it gets harder."
"Hey, you're the English teacher. I just speak the language. Maybe," he said, "if the geometry isn't too difficult, you can start running again here. Lots of flatland, a few rolling hills, not many cars to bother you. Not too many triangles either—you know how geometrically disturbing they can be."
I smiled, but just in case he had pissed me off, he pulled back again, just as he had the night before.
"There's a marathon over in Moose every spring," he said. "You could be ready."
"Moose? Is that a place?"
"Near Jackson, you'll get used to the geography soon enough. Going to train for it?"
I wanted to ask him if he had actually been listening to me when I said I had stopped running, but I had probably established myself as a runner in his mind; and like Kurt from Keene and poor Julius killed by that ceiling fan, I was either destined or doomed to remain Cal the marathoner.
"I don't know if I could run in a town named Moose. I'll think about it."
"Ever hear of a town named Buffalo?"
"Of course."
"An animal's an animal, Cal. More moose in Moose than buffalo in Buffalo."
He meant New York I think. A few nights before I had passed through a Buffalo in eastern Wyoming and I was far from convinced it lacked wildlife.
"You know," he said, moving the conversation laterally again, "once the real snow starts here, we don't plow. We just pack it down and drive on it. It's as easy to walk on as hard pavement. Easy to run on too. You think about it. I gotta go."
"Go? Where?"
"Gas station. I work there."
"What about the restaurant?"
"Closed temporarily."
"Are you a mechanic?"
"Sort of," Walter said. "Not many cars in town, but I've gotten good with snowmobiles and snowcats. Plus I help run the little convenience store in there, me and another guy and his wife. Make yourself at home here. I'll see you later."
"Wait. Wait a minute. I live at the motel."
"You can live here too, or sleep there and live here. You decide, marathon boy."
"Before you go, can you just show me around?"
"Sage? Seriously?"
"Just to get my bearings."
"Bearings," he said with incredulity. "Come on."
He opened the front door and pointed in the direction from which I had arrived the night before. "East end," he said, then pointed the other way. "West end. Any questions?"
"Boots?"
"West end. When you leave, close the door. Don't bother locking it. Once that pass is blocked, the weirdos can't get past Billings. And I doubt if you'd be stealing anything. If you did, you'd have to run away," he said with a widening grin, "and you've quit running."
He went off to get dressed before I could formulate some clever reply, then left just as I was finishing the coffee, so I poured another coffee and gave myself a tour of his place. I don't know why I was surprised by the cleanliness—I had no reason to think Walter Trucks was a slob except that he was a guy living alone—a situation that practically defines disarray and clutter. Not Walter. Even little decorative items—the ones that don't get moved very often—even they were dust free: a brass horse on a black faux marble stand, a small copper ashtray like a miniature frying pan with a flip-up cover, a bookmarked and dog-eared copy of Great Expectations, even a gold cigarette case with the monogram R.E.L. emblazoned on it. Walter had mentioned someone named Laughton the night before, and that fact quickly squelched any excitement that it might have belonged to Robert E. Lee.
I washed the cups, laced up my perfectly dry running shoes, and sidestepped all the slush on my way back to the motel. I was half expected to see Mrs. O'Leary moving the cartons back into the room, having had a change of heart. But because she wasn't there, and because "my" room was still inhabitable, I did something I had seldom done in my life: I put my clothes, what few there were, into drawers. It used to drive Natalie distracted the way I would check the two of us into a classy hotel, then live out of my suitcase. I guess lots of things I did drove her distracted. I often wonder which one of them pushed her over the brink, what specific gaffe convinced her there was no place in her life anymore for Cal Hopper.
One afternoon shortly after we had split, I met her by chance in a Trader Joe's, a place she never went and never liked. I thought I was safe there; I wasn't. She called my name while I was concentrating on some sort of dry cereal expiration date. Our relationship had ended so contentiously that my first reaction was to use the carriage as a shield, but we eased into a benign conversation. I was on my best behavior—didn't light into her for showing up at my store—and I even walked her to her car afterwards. We waited a few minutes, then said a kind of casual goodbye and drove off in the same direction. I kept seeing her in my rearview mirror and I wanted to signal for her to follow me home, to follow me anywhere; but even in my desperate loneliness I knew the thought was ludicrous. After about a half mile she turned right and I turned left. By that time I had begun crying. I pulled over and sat on the shoulder of the road and prayed that some runaway eighteen-wheeler would hit me full force and send me to hell—a different hell from the current one. It didn't happen, and when the self-pity had evolved into mere dejection, I drove the rest of the way home. I never went back to that store; to be there without Natalie would simply have been more torture. And to see her there with Don would have killed me.
At least in Sage I was safe. And two thousand miles away, where crisp October breezes swirled those oversized oak leaves into drifts, Natalie was safe from me. Still, the trade-off was tough. I had grown up with cobblestoned sidewalks, rare book emporia, and little tea shops—and had now exchanged them for muddy thoroughfares, a two-table restaurant, and a one-room motel. Months before, when I told my colleagues of my plan to retire and go west, they thought