The Memory of Running - Softcover

McLarty, Ron

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0143036688 ISBN 13: 9780143036685

Verlag: Penguin Publishing Group, 2005

Inhaltsangabe

"Smithy is an American original, worthy of a place on the shelf just below your Hucks, your Holdens, your Yossarians." —Stephen King

Every so often, a novel comes along that captures the public’s imagination with a story that sweeps readers up and takes them on a thrilling, unforgettable ride. Ron McLarty’s The Memory of Running is this decade’s novel. By all accounts, especially his own, Smithson "Smithy" Ide is a loser. An overweight, friendless, chain-smoking, forty-three-year-old drunk, Smithy’s life becomes completely unhinged when he loses his parents and long-lost sister within the span of one week. Rolling down the driveway of his parents’ house in Rhode Island on his old Raleigh bicycle to escape his grief, the emotionally bereft Smithy embarks on an epic, hilarious, luminous, and extraordinary journey of discovery and redemption.

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Ron McLarty is an award-winning actor and playwright best known for his appearances on television series, including Law & Order, Sex and the City, The Practice, and Judging Amy. He has appeared in films and on the stage, where he has directed many of his own plays.

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My parents’ Ford wagon hit a concrete divider on U.S. 95 outside Biddeford, Maine, in August 1990. They’d driven that stretch of highway for maybe thirty years, on the way to Long Lake. Some guy who used to play baseball with Pop had these cabins by the lake and had named them for his children. Jenny. Al. Tyler. Craig. Bugs. Alice and Sam. We always got Alice for two weeks in August, because it had the best waterfront, with a shallow, sandy beach, and Mom and Pop could watch us while they sat in the green Adirondack chairs.

We came up even after Bethany had gone, and after I had become a man with a job. I’d go up and be a son, and then we’d all go back to our places and be regular people.

Long Lake has bass and pickerel and really beautiful yellow perch. You can’t convince some people about yellow perch, because perch have a thick, hard lip and are coarse to touch, but they are pretty fish—I think the prettiest—and they taste like red snapper. There are shallow coves all over the lake, where huge turtles live, and at the swampy end, with its high reeds and grass, the bird population is extraordinary. There are two pairs of loons, and one pair always seems to have a baby paddling after it; ducks, too, and Canada geese, and a single heron that stands on one leg and lets people get very close to photograph it. The water is wonderful for swimming, especially in the mornings, when the lake is like a mirror. I used to take all my clothes off and jump in, but I don’t do that now.

In 1990 I weighed 279 pounds. My pop would say, “How’s that weight, son?” And I would say, “It’s holding steady, Pop.” I had a forty-six-inch waist, but I was sort of vain and I never bought a pair of pants over forty-two inches—so, of course, I had a terrific hang, with a real water-balloon push. Mom never mentioned my weight, because she liked to cook casseroles, since they were easily prepared ahead of time and were hearty. What she enjoyed asking about was my friends and my girlfriends. Only in 1990 I was a 279-pound forty-three-year-old supervisor at Goddard Toys who spent entire days checking to see that the arms on the action figure SEAL Sam were assembled palms in, and nights at the Tick-Tap Lounge drinking beers and watching sports. I didn’t have girlfriends. Or, I suppose, friends, really. I did have drinking friends. We drank hard in a kind of friendly way.

My mom had pictures set up on the piano in the home in East Providence, Rhode Island. Me and Bethany mostly, although Mom’s dad was in one, and one had Pop in his Air Corps uniform. Bethany was twenty-two in her big picture. She’d posed with her hands in prayer and looked up at one of her amazing curls. Her pale eyes seemed glossy. I stood in my frame like a stick. My army uniform seemed like a sack, and I couldn’t have had more than 125 pounds around the bones. I didn’t like to eat then. I didn’t like to eat in the army either, but later on, when I came home and Bethany was gone and I moved out to my apartment near Goddard, I didn’t have a whole lot to do at night, so I ate, and later I had the beer and the pickled eggs and, of course, the fat pretzels.

My parents pulled their wagon in front of cabin Alice, and I helped load up. They were going to drive home to East Providence on the last Friday of our two weeks, and I would leave on Saturday. That way they could avoid all the Saturday traffic coming up to New Hampshire and Maine. I could do the cleanup and return the rented fishing boat. It was one of those good plans that just make sense. Even Mom, who was worried about what I would eat, had to agree it was a good plan. I told her I would be sure to have a nice sandwich and maybe some soup. What I really was planning was two six-packs of beer and a bag of those crispy Bavarian pretzels. Maybe some different kinds of cheeses. And because I had been limiting my smoking to maybe a pack a day, I planned to fire up a chain-smoke, at least enough to keep the mosquitoes down, and think. Men of a certain weight and certain habits think for a while with a clarity intense and fleeting.

I was sitting in the Adirondack chair, drunk and talking to myself, when a state trooper parked his cruiser next to my old Buick and walked down to the waterfront. Black kid about twenty-six or -seven, wearing the grays like the troopers do, fitted and all, and I turned and stood when I heard him coming.

“Great, isn’t it?”

“What?” he asked, like a bass drum.

I had leaned against the chair for support, and it wobbled under my weight and his voice.

“The lake. The outside.”

“I’m looking for a Smithson Ide.”

“That would be me,” I said, a drunk fighting to appear straight.

“Why don’t you sit down a second, Mr. Ide.”

“I’m not drunk or anything, Officer ... Trooper.... I’m really fine ... not ...”

“Mr. Ide, there’s been an accident, and your parents are seriously injured. Outside of Portland. Mr. Ide was taken to the head-trauma unit at Portland General, and Mrs. Ide is at the Biddeford Hospital.”

“My mom? My pop?” I asked stupidly.

“Why don’t you come with me, and I’ll get you up there.”

“My car ...”

“You come with me, and we’ll get you back, too. You won’t have to worry about your car.”

“I won’t have to worry. Okay. Good.”

I changed into a clean pair of shorts and a T-shirt. The trooper tried very hard not to look at me. I was glad, because people tended to form quick opinions of me when I stood there fat and drunk and cigarette-stained in front of them. Even reasonable people go for an immediate response. Drunk. Fat. A smoky-burned aroma.

The trooper, whose name was Alvin Anderson, stopped for two coffees at the bake shop in Bridgton, then took Route 302 into Portland. We didn’t talk very much.

“I sure appreciate this.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Looks like rain.”

“I don’t know.”

Pop had already been admitted when Alvin let me out at Emergency.

“Take a cab over to Biddeford Hospital when you’re done here. I’ll be by later on.”

I watched him drive away. It was about five, and a rain began. A cold rain. My sandals flopped on the blue floor, and I caught my thick reflection stretched against the shorts and T-shirt. My face was purple with beer. The lady at Information directed me to Admitting, where an elderly volunteer directed me to the second-floor trauma unit.

“It’s named for L. L. Bean,” he said. “Bugger had it, and he gave it. That’s the story.”

A male nurse at the trauma reception asked me some questions to be sure that this Ide was my Ide.

“White male?”

“Yes.”

“Seventy?”

“I ...”

“About seventy?”

“Yes.”

“Artificial valve?”

“Oh, yeah ... about ten years ago, see.... It really made him mad because—”

“Okay. Take this pass and stand on the blue line. That’s where the nurse assigned to your father will take you in. There are thirty trauma cells, glass front, usually the curtains are drawn—but sometimes they’re not. We ask you, when your nurse comes to take you in, to promise not to look into any of the units other than yours.”

“I promise,” I said solemnly.

I stood on the blue line and waited. I was still drunk. I wished I had put on a baggy sweater and some...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Penguin Publishing Group
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2005
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 0143036688
• ISBN 13: 9780143036685
• Einband: Taschenbuch
• Anzahl der Seiten: 384
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: gpsr@libri.de; gpsr@libri.de; ; Europaallee 1; Bad Hersfeld; 36244; Deutschland