Lauren went out with her mother and Lucia Wednesday night to get their nails done and to have dinner at the Mexican restaurant Cancun. Still battling my not-Micah-Parsons cold, I didn’t feel like making dinner, so I brought Graham to KFC/Taco Bell in the neighboring town of Bridgewater. The store used to have Pizza Hut, as well, and my father-in-law Leon always called it “Heaven,” as in, “I feel like a chicken sandwich. Who wants to go to Heaven?”
You know that scene in The Santa Clause where Scott Calvin takes his kid to Denny’s after burning Thanksgiving dinner? Roughly three other dads are there with their kids on custody visits? Yeah, that’s what “Heaven” was on this particular Wednesday night. Here in this corner was a dad with a gray goatee settling down his two kids with their KFC boxes; at the counter was a paunchy dad in an orange shirt picking up two Nacho Fries Cravings boxes to go; and there I was with Graham being told by the large customer service guy, “No, sir, you are order 1571. Those two boxes are his. He is 1570. He got the same order as you, but that is not your order.” I could go on about Massachusetts service manners, but let’s be real—I would have wanted to say the same thing to me if I were him.
After Custody Dinner Night at Heaven, I swung through Walgreen’s to pick up some medicated cough drops, and I impulse-purchased some Christmas candy that we would be buying for stockings anyway at some point. Naturally, I didn’t have my special loyalty Walgreen’s card on me, so I probably paid about $95 more than I should have. When I got back in the car, I said to Graham, “All right, pal. Guess we can head home. Nothing else going on tonight.”
“Or you could show me your old running routes in Bridgewater like you promised,” he said.
“Shoot, yeah. We could do that. Nothing else to do. Let’s do it.”
We drove to our old home in Bridgewater, a half-duplex at the end of a cul-de-sac. We lived there for ten years, and it’s been a bit more than ten years since we moved. In that era, Lauren and I trained for and ran at least three half marathons, and I also did the Hartford Marathon. I had promised Graham that I would show him some of the old routes I ran because he is always pointing out steep hills where he has run. I had assured him that I had done many tough hills while training in those days.
The end of the street is the bottom of a hill. As we turned to go up it, I said to Graham, “So keep in mind, I had anywhere between two and four of you goons at home when I was doing these runs. So my five-mile runs really could not be longer than forty-five minutes. I had to help with baths, stories, bedtimes, and I was often doing extra work for my job or work for Church callings. So I would walk out the door and immediately start running.”
“This hill right away would suck,” he said.
“Yes, sir,” I said. “It usually took me about a mile to feel like I had gotten into the run, and of course, the first quarter mile was up our street, which is actually this pretty tough hill.”
We turned left at the top of the street and rolled on. “And this part is kind of rolling hills, so not so bad.”
“And didn’t Bridgewater people yell stuff at you?”
“Yeah, that’s the thing I never understood,” I said. “But you get to late summer or early fall when Bridgewater State students are back in school and it’s still light out at night and the weather is nice, and I’m running along, and kids would roll by and honk or give me the bird or yell ‘Fuck you!’ Some girl flashed me once. In a rainstorm, I had a truck spray a puddle all over me. And it was worse for Mom. They would catcall her and yell, ‘Nice ass’ and stuff like that.”
“Did you ever do anything about it?” Graham said.
“What’s there to do? I’m running nine-minute miles. They’re driving forty miles per hour. I just never understood why yell at the fat old middle age man just trying to get his run in.”
We crossed over Route 18, and I said, “So this is where it gets kind of rough. It rolls along and then you have this small climb, and then you have to switch sides of the street to stay on the sidewalk. But that sidewalk is actually a bridge, and one icy night, I stepped up on it and immediately went down and absolutely pounded my hip. Bridges freeze faster than roads. I got bad scrapes and bruises and stuff. And then of course, you have to tiptoe down the hill so you don’t slip again. You get to the bottom, and off to your left is town conservation land where the old Stanley Iron Works used to be. Kind of a cool, historic spot. Used to make cannon balls for the USS Constitution. But look at what’s ahead of you.”
“A huge hill,” Graham said.
“Exactly,” I said, and we started up the hill in the car. “And you get to what you think is the top, but it’s not—it’s an optical illusion, and it goes further. And then you go again to what you think is the top, but it’s another illusion and still goes further right up to that stoplight.”
We crossed over Route 28. “Up here on the right is the Catholic Church. Smooth sailing along here. That street to the right, though. You probably don’t remember Cam McGill, but he’s Craig’s youngest son. He had a buddy get killed in a car accident on that street. The kid’s dad was a Bridgewater firefighter who took the call at the station.”
“Wow, that sucks.”
“Yep.” I motioned to the right. “When I wanted to extend my run a bit longer, I would do a loop right through that cemetery there. See how dark it is?”
“Yeah.”
“Creepy as hell running through it at this time of night. When you first turn in, there are two guys buried right there who were killed in World War I.”
“Dad, do you think things would have been different with us kids if we had stayed in Bridgewater and gone to Bridgewater-Raynham High School?”
“Great question,” I said. “It would have been different but hard to say how. I’m not sure Grant would have gone to Xaverian. BR always has a tough football program—they were in the state championship a few times when Grant was younger. And their youth team that was his age was hellacious. Plus, there was a kid Grant’s year who wound up as a tight end at, I forget . . .”
“Fordham,” said Graham.
“Right,” I said. “Fordham. So we might not have sent him to X. They also have a great wrestling team, including a girl that won sectionals last year. So Lindsay could have been great at wrestling there, too.”
“I think I’d be the same either way,” said Graham.
“True. Running is running.”
We passed the high school, turned left in front of the police station, and rolled toward the center of town. “That fountain there in front of town hall is where I cooled off the night I nearly killed myself doing seventeen miles.”
“Did you jump in it?”
“I put my whole head in it and put handfuls of water all over me.”
We passed through the center and headed down past a Tedeschi’s corner store. “So you see that this part is mostly downhill, but what you can’t see easily is that behind those apartments over there is the Bridgewater Waste Water Treatment Facility. On a warm summer evening, it literally smells like shit.”
“That sucks,” said Graham. “There’s a place in Kingston we run past like that too.”
We turned left back into the neighborhood at Hayward Street. “So here’s the last mile,” I said. “What do you notice about it?”
“It’s all uphill.”
“Yep,” I said. “All uphill till you get to High Street.”
“Is that why it’s called High Street?”
“Probably so.” We made the final turn.
“And this is where you started your final sprint, huh, Dad?” Graham said with a laugh.
“I never once sprinted, Graham.”
“You must be incredible at pacing if you did it every time in forty-five minutes.”
“I’m not bad at pacing,” I said.
“So how did you plan out a route like this in the days before Apple Watches?”
“There was a web site called walk-run-jog.net. It shows you a map, and you drag a cursor across the streets.”
“So like low-budget Strava?”
“Yeah, I guess.”
Back at our house, I opened HBO and saw that the new Boston Globe documentary on the Chuck Stuart murder was posted. For the uninitiated, in 1989, Chuck Stuart murdered his wife, Carol, by shooting her in the head. Then he shot himself in the side, called police, and claimed to have been the victim of a carjacking. He alleged that his assailant was a black male wearing an Adidas track suit. The allegation set off a firestorm of racial incidents, highly dubious searches and seizures, and so forth. I told Graham to come watch with me and learn some history. As soon as he saw the first few frames, he exclaimed, “Tremont Street! That’s where the Reggie Lewis Center is!” The Reggie is where indoor track meets are held. You see, all things relate to running—even Boston true crime.
I whipped out my phone and pulled up a map. “In fact, the place where the police found the car was just a half mile from the Reggie,” I said.
“Have you figured out the plot twist yet?” I said.
“The husband did it, right?”
“Right,” I said.
“And blamed a black guy. Of course.”
His Smile Lit Up a Room and Other Things to Say at My Funeral 