road?”
“Yes.”
“You don’t
look
at the road, silly. You look at the stars.”
I grabbed the sides of Tug’s head right then and aimed his face skyward, my fingers
partway over his ears.
“In the gap,” I said. “Between the trees on the sides of the road.”
And stars did form an obvious lane, wider than Tug would have guessed, it seemed,
and I wondered if I had him tempted.
“That’s our path,” I said, and I took his hand, and we began. We ran slowly at first,
side by side, and, as he’d later tell me on the summer porch, he watched the center
of the lane of stars and heard my footsteps beside his and allowed the asphalt’s flat
grade to assure him. He thought of potholes briefly and slowed down some, but then,
ahead, the sound of my footfalls thinned, so he accelerated, hearing that false wind
sound that had always suggested freedom to him, freedom his paths had never led to.
Then he was beside me, paced evenly with me, worried less about what bothered him
most—that damned missing drum—and soon, rather than worry, he simply thought.
It’s just a drum, he thought. The fact that it’s gone means nothing. You can’t lose
your mind every time he loses money. The guy loses but he wins and things generally
stay the same.
But as Tug and I ran on, he thought more, now about his father’s long-held theory
that when you really want something and almost get it but then don’t—like when you
lose a bet on a long shot by a nose—you taste both success and failure at the same
time, and as a result, you feel nothing. When Tom had explained this theory to Tug,
Tug had wondered if Tom was trying to tell Tug, or maybe his own self, that he and
Tug’s mother had never quite been in love. But now, as Tug ran with me, he wondered
if maybe instead Tom had been preparing him, in Tom’s indirect manner, for a life
in which Tug neither ran a horse farm nor
practiced law, a life in which Tug’s career chose Tug rather than the other way around.
And that career, Tug now thought, might not be impressive, lucrative, or rewarding.
It might be only a job, just a way to afford a mortgage or maybe only rent. After
all, there were plenty of people in the world, many of whom were regulars in the Finger
Lakes grandstand in fact, who were ecstatic about any grunt work tossed their way,
and it
was
possible Tug would come very close but then miss out on becoming what he wanted to
be, then instead become one of those people.
If this is your fate, Tug thought as he ran on with me, get used to it. But then he
felt incapable of impressing me—because if he did end up being a grunt worker, he’d
never be in my league. For a long stretch under those stars I had just shown him,
he resented his parents for raising him as they had, but then he assured himself that
they’d done their best, which was, of course, all a guy could ask for, and then I
reached a crossroads brightened by street light and sprinted across it, and he followed
me into this new darkness.
And this darkness felt denser yet safer until the sound of my footsteps stopped altogether.
I’d quit to catch my breath, so he quit, too. He came to a stop and turned, then stepped
toward me and stood maybe three feet from me, each of us with hands on hips, both
of us breathing hard and loudly, our natural way, it seemed, of conceding that the
nervousness we often felt in each other’s company would never be the same, I closer
to being a jock, he closer to being whatever he’d become, both of us closer to marriage
and maybe children, and, regardless of all that, both of us now sharing a bond that
could always be our secret, since right now, on this road, only we knew that we’d
thrown ourselves into sprints in this darkness.
And it was then that I stepped toward him and stood smack in front of him like I was
pretty much saying:
Do it.
Kiss me.
And after several consecutive moments that
“Yes.”
“You don’t
look
at the road, silly. You look at the stars.”
I grabbed the sides of Tug’s head right then and aimed his face skyward, my fingers
partway over his ears.
“In the gap,” I said. “Between the trees on the sides of the road.”
And stars did form an obvious lane, wider than Tug would have guessed, it seemed,
and I wondered if I had him tempted.
“That’s our path,” I said, and I took his hand, and we began. We ran slowly at first,
side by side, and, as he’d later tell me on the summer porch, he watched the center
of the lane of stars and heard my footsteps beside his and allowed the asphalt’s flat
grade to assure him. He thought of potholes briefly and slowed down some, but then,
ahead, the sound of my footfalls thinned, so he accelerated, hearing that false wind
sound that had always suggested freedom to him, freedom his paths had never led to.
Then he was beside me, paced evenly with me, worried less about what bothered him
most—that damned missing drum—and soon, rather than worry, he simply thought.
It’s just a drum, he thought. The fact that it’s gone means nothing. You can’t lose
your mind every time he loses money. The guy loses but he wins and things generally
stay the same.
But as Tug and I ran on, he thought more, now about his father’s long-held theory
that when you really want something and almost get it but then don’t—like when you
lose a bet on a long shot by a nose—you taste both success and failure at the same
time, and as a result, you feel nothing. When Tom had explained this theory to Tug,
Tug had wondered if Tom was trying to tell Tug, or maybe his own self, that he and
Tug’s mother had never quite been in love. But now, as Tug ran with me, he wondered
if maybe instead Tom had been preparing him, in Tom’s indirect manner, for a life
in which Tug neither ran a horse farm nor
practiced law, a life in which Tug’s career chose Tug rather than the other way around.
And that career, Tug now thought, might not be impressive, lucrative, or rewarding.
It might be only a job, just a way to afford a mortgage or maybe only rent. After
all, there were plenty of people in the world, many of whom were regulars in the Finger
Lakes grandstand in fact, who were ecstatic about any grunt work tossed their way,
and it
was
possible Tug would come very close but then miss out on becoming what he wanted to
be, then instead become one of those people.
If this is your fate, Tug thought as he ran on with me, get used to it. But then he
felt incapable of impressing me—because if he did end up being a grunt worker, he’d
never be in my league. For a long stretch under those stars I had just shown him,
he resented his parents for raising him as they had, but then he assured himself that
they’d done their best, which was, of course, all a guy could ask for, and then I
reached a crossroads brightened by street light and sprinted across it, and he followed
me into this new darkness.
And this darkness felt denser yet safer until the sound of my footsteps stopped altogether.
I’d quit to catch my breath, so he quit, too. He came to a stop and turned, then stepped
toward me and stood maybe three feet from me, each of us with hands on hips, both
of us breathing hard and loudly, our natural way, it seemed, of conceding that the
nervousness we often felt in each other’s company would never be the same, I closer
to being a jock, he closer to being whatever he’d become, both of us closer to marriage
and maybe children, and, regardless of all that, both of us now sharing a bond that
could always be our secret, since right now, on this road, only we knew that we’d
thrown ourselves into sprints in this darkness.
And it was then that I stepped toward him and stood smack in front of him like I was
pretty much saying:
Do it.
Kiss me.
And after several consecutive moments that
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