Chapter XIX: The Long Run

Chapter Nineteen: The Long Run

The Sagamore Creek Bridge floor is a metal grid that catches tires and demands concentration to cross. I’ve been over it so many times that I’ve developed a theory why grid bridges are so hard to navigate on a bicycle. The problem isn’t the cross grids that make it bumpy, but rather the parallel grids that catch the front tire in one row but the rear tire in the groove next to it. The trick to riding over a grid bridge is to keep both wheels in the same row. Since the rows are only slightly wider than the tires this takes some concentration.

Break Island Avenue officially turns into Wentworth Road after the bridge, but I still think of it as Break Island Avenue. Even though I had just left Break Island, I still felt isolated. The Wentworth Country Club and golf course lies opposite a house my mother lived in before she moved to Queensland and met my father. Then I entered a forest neighborhood that smells like Pine and Smoke and dreamy Onion Rings. After Memorial Day, the Ice House Restaurant sells homemade ice cream, grilled cheese sandwiches with bacon and Onion Rings. You can read the painted menu and ice cream flavors off a big wooden board or off the laminated menus in the dinning room. Pretty seventeen-year old girls wearing cream colored shorts over tanned and shaved legs take your order in between talking about the local lifeguards. Since no one gives me free ice cream anymore, I hadn't eaten there in five years. In the winter, leaves gather in the gutters and pile up near the empty Ice House entrance. A “See you in May” sign hangs over the take out window. Chairs were stacked upside down on the picnic tables inside the dining room like abstract sculptures. The day I coast around a gentle bend in Break Island Avenue and encounter a giant neon sign and a flashy menu inside a chain restaurant, is a day I dread.

Down a small hill is another docking area for local fishing boats and a dry dock for repairs and storage. I pedaled on now because I was hungry. It's surprising how little mileage you get out of a Twinkie and a banana. Break Island Ave ends about 100 yard further on at a ‘T’ intersection of Break Island Avenue and Rt. 1A, otherwise known as Sagamore Drive leading east into Langdonville or west to Bone Harbor. The gas station/garage where Vance and I bought the car he was driving is there on the corner, and I think a brief history would be appropriate.

Four months earlier, August 1991, I'd been touring Break Island, much like you and I just did, when I passed the garage and saw a vintage Datsun 200sx with $75.0.0 painted on the cracked windshield. I assumed it meant $750.00, which still would have been a steal, but decided to take a closer look out of curiosity. I wasn't really in the market for a car, having just returned from Ecuador, but I'm always on the lookout for a bargain. A closer inspection revealed the decimal point after the first '0' was actually seagull shit. The real decimal point was after the '5.' $75 bucks? What? I confirmed this with mechanic who said redundantly, “Ahyup! It's priced ta sell. Shore is.”

Because I trusted Vance to decide if it was a good car to get us to Mexico (a perpetual dream since I saw “Indiana Jones” pillage a Mayan Ruin), I immediately called him. After a violent test-drive, we decided to buy the car, fix the various mechanical problems, and drive it to the Yucatan Peninsula as soon as possible. To our credit, we did fix a few minor things like the steering and the exhaust, but Vance needed a month to wait for the Toronto Blue Jays beat the Minnesota Twins in the American League playoffs. I grew impatient with my father's repeated requests for me to get what he called “a job”, and looked for other ways out of town.

That's all the history you get for now, but don't worry, I'll fill in the gaps later. Remember, I'm hungry and want to get home to eat some Okra.

Pirates Cove, a tribal beach in Langdonville, is another two miles east on Route 1. I might have been able to continue for a few more hours with bright July sunshine, and probably would have biked down for some Blinks fried dough and Galaga in Whaleswood Beach, but the December shadows already fell long as the sun set over Greenfields. Where had the day gone?

I turned right, west, back into Bone Harbor, past the Golden Egg Eatery next door to a convenient store once called The Little Goose where I worked after quitting my job at the Industrial Park. My summertime responsibilities at the Little Goose included filling a wooden barrel with ice to keep single cans of beer cold, stocking the refrigerator with soda and beer, and bagging ice. Mostly, I drank chocolate Yoo Hoos in the walk-in refrigerator, sitting on cold crates of beer hoping no one would notice I was gone. Sure, I may have stolen a few copies of Hustler and Playboy- but only the back issues that were slated for destruction at my previous job with Huggy at the warehouse. I'm not a monster, after all.

One July day I went to work depressed because Erin and Skipper and Cristo planned to drive to Boston for a Sox - Angels. My boss got on me as soon as I walked in the door.

“Did you get those Ice Bags, Ogden?”

“I did 'em yesterday. Say, do you really need me today? My buddies are...”

“Look, Ogden. You don't hardly do any work when you're here. Yes, I need you today.”

“But...”

“The freezer is empty, Ogden. Make about twenty more bags. Then so the barrel. And what happened to all the Yoo Hoos? We ordered a crate last week.”

I coughed. “I don't know. Must be selling. Its hot.”

“Bullshit! I found three empties in the walk in. That's two bucks out of your check. Lucky, I don't fire you.”

How people like my father had taken this type of abuse over the course of their working career, is a mystery to me. I mean, they treat me like a bootblack, rob me blind, piss in my milk bowl and then dump me when times get tight. What kind of life is that?

“Yeah,” I started, “with luck like this who needs a curse?”

“What you say?”

I don't really like confrontation so I said, “The Sox are playing today. Maybe I could leave early. My friends are...”

“You just asked me that. No! You only come in for three hours a day as it is, man.

Three hours? It felt like a lifetime.

“How much more slack you want?”

I said nothing and walked into the freezer to drink my morning Yoo Hoo. How had I gotten involved in this industry, I wondered. At least at the paper warehouse, I could make fun of people. At the Little Goose, there was just humiliation. Did people really live like this?

“Goddamn it! I just told you to bag ice. So you come in here and drink a Yoo Hoo?”

My boss was spying on me through the Pepsi compartment of the beverage wall.

“I was just...”

“You were just doing nothing. Go!”

The boss pointed through the steam at the ice chamber, the plastic bags, the wrinkled pornography, the stale bags of chips: My office.

I pretended I was bagging ice until a line of customers had my boss's attention at the register. Then I packed a Styrofoam cooler full of beer, cherry coke and candy, strapped the cooler to my bike rack along with a few torn “Leg World” magazines and essentially quit my job at The Little Goose to watch the Sox lose 3-12 to the Angels.

I pedaled across the singing Sagamore Bridge where Tucker “Tweak” Weeks had executed a near perfect four-foot hop on his BMX bike, over the rails, and into the green water below. A 100 yard hill was my final opportunity to test myself so I worked hard to the top, cursing Ray Knight for extra motivation. From the top of the hill I coasted down the long slope into Bone Harbor proper, past the South Street Cemetery and the entrance to the dump.

Remember cutting that rope? Tell the story about when you cut the rope and Vance fell into the river. Sing the song about how he died and you didn't tell the police. Remember? Remember his mother's grief? Remember? One more strike. Remember? Who are you? War no more. War...

More flags were waving in the dusk next to more steel medals. More pine boxes sat beneath the earth with more forgotten songs. I hurried past the graves. Usually I like to stop at the South Street Cemetery to search for Mack's grave, but I was too hungry and I could hear Darcy's sock calling to me. I leaned into South Street and hurried back past Gentle Gena's house onto the empty Elwyn Avenue. My father’s car sat waiting in the driveway. Darcy's sock would have to take a cold shower. I had taken too long. A postcard from Lacy sat on the kitchen table. The photo was a picture of a dog dressed up as a hobo.

“Oggy--This is what you looked like last time I saw you. I hope you have decided to shave and eat more. Even Piper couldn't help me read your last letter. Your handwriting is illegible. I have no idea what most of the questions were, but they were probably about the Sox. I told you before that I don't like baseball. It's a dumb sport. That's who I am. Too bad about your fights with your dad. I fight with my dad too when he is around. Stop asking if I will marry you. Happy Hanukah. Lacy.”

A message from Lacy to my deserted social island should have given me hope, but it didn't.

“Ogden? Is that you? I picked your sign up off the street this morning. Maybe you can find a neutral yard to put it in.”

My father was in the living room. He was talking about my “Bring the Troops Home!” sign that I had planted in the front lawn. Alas, there would be no sock-humping today but maybe, just maybe, Schiraldi could slip a screwball past Knight for strike three.