Chapter 10
We climbed high to Kerry and Sam’s condo where we watched the evening news and then switched the channel to catch the end of a Chicago Cubs and Braves game while we drank a twelve-pack of Stroh’s Beer. My eyes cased one wall of their condo where Sam had exhibits of all of his photography; he had close-ups of budding tree branches and aspen leave silhouettes that starkly contrasted with the straight lines and church ceilings of his cathedrals. Sam’s photography reminded me of Ingrid’s masterpieces of oil. Sam was an architect. The rain continued outside when a sudden clasp of thunder rang throughout the valley, nature’s cathedral, and jolted our conversation in a flash.
“Wow! Now that is one of those cracks that I haven’t heard since Ohio!” Decky jumped off his seat on the couch.
When the rain cleared, Declan had to do his laundry which was piling up (this is why he was down to wearing his crazy pink shorts). Luke and I decided to go running and set out on a trail right outside the condo that disappeared into the aspen wilderness above us. As we ran, I was happy at first that the long nights of summer still graced these mountain evenings, but the slowly disappearing light made the greens and browns of the enchanted forest quickly move to a sudden haziness of purple and gray. The air felt cool and clean. The mountain brooks overflowed with the new-fallen rain; they rushed beside the hard dirt path we climbed. An occasional runner passed us by, going in the same direction as the stream, some of them nodding to us in acknowledgment. We ran the three-mile loop that the path took us on, eventually descending and arriving again at the entrance to the condo.
We wanted to be disciples of everything life. In high school, I ran track because my father told me that if I quit the marching band, I had to do something else. Running was the only other thing in life that I was good at, so I pursued it. I could never be the first to hit that tape at the finish line though, for no matter how hard I tried, I always seemed to finish in second place. Because I loved the music of the Rolling Stones, I would play “Gimme Shelter” over and over again in my mind as I ran in all those races . . . be it the quick 220, the quarter mile 440, the half mile 880, or even the cross-country course in Wayland with Roberto Orozco finishing the race ahead of the world. Roberto Orozco was the top runner in New England at the time. I remember him just going off into the woodlands at the cross-country meet finish line like his first-place finish had just been nothing more than an Olympic warm-up. He just kept on running.
On our run in the aspen forest, in between breaths, Luke talked about trying to play team handball when we got to Europe. Maybe, I thought, but really, team handball? Was I agreeing just to agree? Did I really in my wildest dreams ever want to play team handball? No. I wanted to make movies.
After the run, we cleaned up and Kerry, Declan, Lucas, and I went to a few bars in town. Sam stayed home to do architectural stuff. The first club we hit had a jazz band playing, the second bar was a good soft rock-and-roll speakeasy place, the third one had two mirror image video screens playing at opposite ends of the hall, and a fourth place was more like an all-out disco. The unnatural progression of three decades of music was all rolled out in sequence into the night with insanity at the end of it all. Finally having enough, we escaped the crazy disco and in our relief, turned cartwheels in the street, falling right into and then ordering crepes from a roadside cart before heading back to the condo and eventually crashing hard.
Before I hit the floor, I slowly counted my remaining money. I came up with a sobering two hundred twenty more dollars to get me across the rest of the country. I was one hundred dollars into the three-twenty that I had started with. Then there was one hundred ninety-two to get me a one-way ticket to London and only eight hundred left for everything after that. Kerry and Sam would be married in Aspen on Monday. They both seemed to have found the finish line, I thought. Roberto Orozco was resting there.