Separate Flights Read Online Free PDF Page B

fuckers that make ’em.’
    There were tennis players in the locker room. We had lockers next to each other and I glanced at him as he pulled up his jockstrap then gym shorts.
    â€˜Jesus, don’t you ever get fat?’ I said.
    â€˜I’m fat now.’
    He pinched some tight flesh at the back of his waist.
    â€˜Bullshit,’ I said.
    I rarely believed that Edith preferred my flabbier waist and smaller cock. But sometimes I believed it and, when I did, I felt wonderful.
    â€˜You smell like beer, man.’
    â€˜I had a couple.’
    â€˜I’ll carry you in.’
    â€˜Watch me go, baby.’
    On the clipped grass behind the gym we did push-ups and sit-ups and side-straddle hops, then started jogging on a blacktop road that would take us into the country.
    â€˜Five?’ I said.
    â€˜I oughta do ten. Run off my Goddamn frustration.’
    â€˜A page a day’s not bad.’
    â€˜Shit.’
    It was a hot, still day. We ran easily, stride for stride, past the houses where children waved and called to us and women looked up from their lawns or porches. I belched a couple of times and he grinned and punched my arm. Then the houses weren’t close together anymore, the country was rolling and we climbed with it, pounding up the blacktop, not talking as we panted up hills, but going down or level we talked: ‘Goddamn, there’s that lovely orchard.’ ‘Hold your breath, mothuh, here comes the hog stench.’ ‘Jesus, look at that cock pheasant.’ Then he was all right, he had forgotten his work, he was talking about shooting pheasants in Iowa, walking through frozen cornfields, the stalks lying brown in the sun. We ran to the top of a wooded hill two and a half miles from the gym and started back, still stride for stride: it would be that last two hundred yards when he’d kick. We ran downhill through sudden cool shade between thick woods; in fall the maple leaves turned orange and yellow and scarlet, and it was like peeping at God. Then on our left the woods stopped, and the hog smell lay on the air we breathed as we ran past the cleared low hills and the barn, chickens walking and pecking in front of it, then past the hog pen and the gray shingled house. A white dog came out from under the porch, barking; he had missed us on the way up, and now he chased us until he was almost at our legs, then we looked back at him and yelled ‘Hey white dog!’ and he trotted away, looking back at us over his shoulder, sometimes stopping to turn and bark. Running has taught me that most dogs are cowards. But there used to be a Doberman pinscher living on this road: he loped after us so quietly that we never knew he was there until we heard his paws on the road and we’d yell and turn on him and crouch to fight, watching him decide whether he wanted to chew on us. He always looked very detached; that’s what scared us. Then he’d trot back down the road, dignity intact; we were glad when last year he moved away. All the other dogs were like the white one at the farmhouse. Past the farm there were trees again, pines motionless in the still air, and then to the right, up a long green hill, the apple orchard.
    â€˜You’re a little screwed up this summer,’ Hank said.
    â€˜Do I look it?’
    â€˜Yep.’
    â€˜Should’ve taught summer school.’
    â€˜Maybe not.’
    â€˜Thought I wouldn’t this year. Needed a break, I thought. Now I need the money.’
    â€˜Need the work more.’
    â€˜Bothers me. You’d think a man would do something. All that time. Read. Even think. Noble fucking pursuits. I run errands. Makes me wonder what’d happen if I didn’t have to make a living.’
    â€˜You’ll never find out.’
    â€˜Good. Probably mean suicide. Man ought to be able to live with himself. Idly. Without going mad. Women do it.’
    â€˜Not so well.’
    â€˜Work is