George Running Poles

Michael Shay

Two teen boys walk along the asphalt bikeway in Riverton, Wyoming. George Jumping Bull pushes a shopping cart he found abandoned in the winter-brown grass. He’s wearing black sweatpants bunched over white running shoes and a red bandanna tied around his close-cropped hair. Jimmy Jones wears his black Oakland Raiders cap sideways, its bill pointing east. He milks a pint bottle of vodka as he walks. George reaches for it.

“Not so fast,” Jimmy says.  He slurs his words as he swats at George’s hand.

“Let me try some, man,” George says.  “We’re cousins.”

“I’m older so I get more.”  A smile creases Jimmy’s round face.  A chip is missing from one of his upper front teeth, a souvenir from his father’s fist.

“Where’d you get the bottle?”

“Papa.”

George laughs.  “Sure, Uncle Luke just gave it to you.”

“I didn’t say he gave it to me.  I took it, and then I hitched a ride into town to share it with my favorite cuz.”

“You’re in a shitload of trouble.”

“No I’m not.”  He pulls on the bottle.

“Give me a sip.”

Jimmy stops. “First you gotta run ten poles.”

George looks at the line of weather-beaten wooden power poles that flank the bikeway.  Beyond them, open fields merge into the half-finished houses of a new development. “I just ran ten poles.”  He points behind him on the path.

Jimmy shakes the bottle at his cousin.  George is almost a head taller and a lot thinner. “Don’t argue with your coach.”

“I already got a coach.”

“Yeah, a city boy from back east,” Jimmy says. “Doing his good deed for the Indians.”

“Coach Simmons is an O.K. guy.  He runs with the team, keeping up most of the time.”

“But I’m your cousin.” Jimmy takes another sip. “And I’m your elder, so you gotta listen.”

“Ten months older.”

“I was premature, born three months too soon.  So I’m really more than a year older.”

George stops and stares at his cousin. “That doesn’t make sense.”

“Sure it does.  I was born three months too early.  If I was born when I was s’posed to, I’d really be thirteen months older than you.”

George knows it’s pointless to argue. “Whatever you say.”

They hear voices and turn to look.  Two white women in sweat suits head their way.  They wear dogged expressions, as if they’re the only two entrants in some fat-woman marathon.  The taller of the two casts a wary eye at the boys.  Jimmy quickly slips the bottle into his jacket pocket.

George moves the cart off the path so the women can pass.  He knows it looks odd, he and Jimmy out on the bikeway in the middle of a school day.  But he could always say they were on their lunch break.  The school allows you to leave for trips to fast-food joints.  Most Indian kids stay put to eat the cafeteria’s free lunches.  George always did.  It gave him enough strength to make it through track practice.  And he never knew if he’d get dinner, what with his mom either working nights or out with her new boyfriend.

George and Jimmy stand quietly as the women pass by.  The one closest to Jimmy cocks her head slightly, probably tempted to see what these Indian boys are up to, suspicious as all-get-out here in broad daylight.  But the plump women walk on, picking up the pace.  As they pull away, George focuses on their asses.  But they wear shapeless, too-big sweat suits and there’s nothing to see.

George speaks first. “Those two need to walk a lot of poles if they want to drop some pounds. Hundreds of poles.  Thousands, maybe.”

“Hop a lot of poles, you mean.” Jimmy guffaws, punches George on the arm. “Get it?”

“I got it.” But he doesn’t want to imagine it.  Instead, he thinks about the thousands of poles he has passed in his runs all over the county.  Miles and miles of power poles.  When George was younger, he spent a lot of weekends with Jimmy and his parents out on the Rez.  George ran all of the reservation roads.

Jimmy’s father tried to warn him away from the practice. “Some drunk’s gonna run you over,” Uncle Luke would say, usually in the evenings after getting toasted in Riverton and driving his sorry self home.  Aunt Regina – his mom’s sister – would make a snide comment about Luke being the main drunk to watch out for.  The fights would start and George would escape to run. Sometimes he dragged Jimmy along, just to get him out of the house.  Jimmy would jog for a half-mile or so, and then slow to a walk.  George would run ahead, marking his progress with power poles or cars or some other landmark, and then circle back to report to Jimmy: “five poles” or “twenty cars.”  And Jimmy would say, “Do five more, do twenty more,” and George did.

Mostly, George ran by himself.  In the dark, he ran facing traffic and kept far over on the shoulder, sometimes running through the dry grass.  In the summer and fall, when the sun had yet to set, he ran with traffic but still kept his distance from the road.  To occupy his mind, George counted the litter in the fields.  Soda cans and liquor bottles.  Wind litter, too, hung up like ragged flags in the sage: newspapers and plastic trash bags and discarded school assignments from Wyoming Indian High.

Jimmy slips the bottle from his pocket, unscrews the top, and drinks.  He brings the pint down and hugs it to his chest. “I’m thinkin’ of dropping out, leaving town.”

“You only have another year and a half of school.”

“But I flunked eighth grade and got kept back.  I should be graduating this year. I’m just gonna get a job in the gas fields.  Know how much those guys are makin’?  Bert Antelope got on before he graduated and he’s making twenty bucks an hour up near Pinedale.”

“You’re not eighteen.  How you going to get one of those jobs?  And you don’t have a car.”

“I’m strong,” Jimmy says.  He makes a muscle with his bulky right arm. “Not as tall as you but plenty strong.” Jimmy pauses, seems to be contemplating his options. “I hate this place,” he says finally.

“Stay in school, graduate, and the Marines will take you.”

“Did a lot of good for my father – and yours.”

“Join up and maybe they’ll send you to some nice place like Japan, or Italy.”

Jimmy laughs. “Indians like me go to Iraq or Afghanistan to kill muj.  Papa told me to steer clear of recruiters.  Said they will promise you computers and then hand you a rifle.  Said that’s what they did to him before they shipped him off to that first Iraq war.”  He hesitates, and then says, “I’m not smart like you, cousin.”

“I ain’t that smart if I’m skipping school with you and I can’t get anything to drink.” George reaches again for the bottle.

Jimmy holds up his hand. “Uh uh,” he says. “First you gotta run those ten poles.”

“Ten poles?”

“Gotta keep my cousin in shape.”

George shrugs.  He pushes aside the shopping cart and looks north down the bikeway.  The two women are at least three poles down the path.  A tall guy on a racing bike is pedaling their way. The cyclist wears an orange helmet.  A big gray mustache is pasted on his face.  He nods at the boys as he passes.

George asks: “Five poles up and five poles back?”

“By my calculations, that’s ten poles up and ten poles back.”

“That’s twenty poles!”

“You can count.” Jimmy bares his chipped-tooth grin.

“Screw you.” George takes off on a slow trot, warming up his legs. Ten poles or twenty, it doesn’t matter because I can run any distance any time.  As he gains speed, he feels his heart kick into second gear and then third.  He can imagine the blood’s path through his body.  Like cars on a racetrack, corpuscles jostling to get ahead, to bring George Jumping Bull in ahead of the competition.  He passes the third pole and he hasn’t broken a sweat.  He detours into the grass to swerve around the walking women, and likes the sound his soles make as they again make contact with the bikeway pavement.  The legs of his sweatpants rub together and make a swishing sound. Builds up a rhythm as he runs. Swish-swish, swish-swish, the beat like powwow drums.  The sun’s behind him, but he can feel its warmth on his back.  He could remove his jacket but then he’d have to carry it.  Best just to sweat a little.  He can run in shorts and t-shirt almost any day of the year, except those days when bitter Arctic winds howl down from Canada.  He can see past the bikeway and the stacked hay bales on distant fields and trailers parked in a row off to his right.  He can hear truck traffic over on Highway 26, and the whine of a commuter plane taking off from the town’s small airport.

He counts seven poles and then eight.  He passes an old woman walking her miniature dog.  The dog barks. The woman says, “Hush, Petunia.” Petunia? Pole nine, and when George gets to the tenth pole he just keeps right on running. I’ll show my cousin.  Fifteen poles up and fifteen poles back to make it an even thirty. Hell, I could run forty or fifty if I wanted.  But he stops at fifteen and turns, again passing the dog lady (yapyapyap) and the walking women and the old guy with the mustache on his return trip.  He sees Jimmy in the distance, leaning against the red shopping cart, red so store staff could find them along lonely Rez roads and weedy fields.

About this time last year, George received a letter from his father.  Letters were rare anyway, but a communication of any kind from his father was the rarest of things.  Sidney Jumping Bull, a good grunt in Vietnam – or so they said – but not such a good father.  George was only five when he and his mom fled Pine Ridge for Riverton.  He had dim memories of his father looking fine as part of the honor guard for powwows and funerals.  But after that always came the party, and his father was always in the middle of it, or leading the caravan bound for the liquor stores in Whiteclay (as his mom said, “white people go to hell, Indians go to Whiteclay”). 

In the letter, his father said he’d stopped drinking after attending a traditional sweat lodge ceremony with some other veterans.  He apologized to George, writing that he wanted to make amends for the bad times. His mom – Sidney Jumping Bull’s third (and much younger) wife –  received a letter too.  She was skeptical, but the two of them planned a July trip to Pine Ridge.  Two days before departure, they got a phone call.  Sidney Jumping Bull was killed in a car accident on his way to Whiteclay.  Sidney had been sober, but the other driver was not.  So the trip to Pine Ridge was for a funeral, not reconciliation.

When he got home, George donned his sweats and spent the next two weeks running the dirt roads and rugged trails of the Wind Rivers.  He ate what he could find, even raided unlocked tourist cars and campground dumpsters.  Slept under pine boughs and in caves.  One day he ran all the way up Warbonnet Peak.  He could see almost all the Rez from up there, and Riverton and the gray Owl Creek Mountains beyond.  To the northwest were the pinnacles of the Absarokas.  George saw mountains upon mountains marching off into the horizon.  Could he run them all?  If he did, would he find anything worthwhile on the far side?  He watched an airplane, bound for the east, pass high overhead.  Other planes, headed west and south, creased the sky.  An eagle rode the thermals, turning gracefully in the warm summer air.  The eagle screeched, and George heard his own name.  He thought he might be in the midst of a vision, the kind the elders talked about.  But later, as he looked back, he knew that it was probably more hunger than spirit, his body dropping weight faster than he could feed it.  He sat up there for the longest time, until a thunderstorm had forced him off the high ground and he ran back down the mountain, with lightning chasing him the whole way.

George pulls up a few feet short of his cousin.  Hands on hips, breathing moderately hard, he walks loops around Jimmy.  When his breathing returns to normal, he stops in front of Jimmy and says, “Thirty poles.”

Jimmy grins. His eyes are unfocused, his face a puffy mask. “From this day forward, George Jumping Bull will be known as George Running Poles.”

“Yes, oh wise elder.”

Jimmy guffaws and holds up the bottle.  Less than an inch of clear liquid sloshes around at the bottom.

George grabs the bottle and unscrews the top.  As he brings it up to his mouth, the vodka’s odor invades his nose.  It burns his throat going down.  He pushes the bottle back at his cousin.

Jimmy snags the bottle. “What’s with you?”

“Sorry,” George says, rubbing his nose. “It burns.”

“We’ve been drinking before.”

“Beer, though.  Not vodka.”

Jimmy tips the bottle and drains it.  He tosses the empty into the weeds along the bikeway. “Whoa.”  He wobbles, leans against the shopping cart to get his balance. “I think I need a ride.” Jimmy throws his right leg over the side of the cart.  He grabs the sides and pushes but doesn’t get very far as his left hand slips its grip. “Whoa.” He pushes again, balances briefly with one leg in and one out, and the cart begins to fall.  George grabs it and pushes it upright. “Thanks, cousin,” Jimmy says. He swings in the other leg and lurches backwards in the cart.

George gets behind the cart. He looks down at Jimmy’s Raiders’ ballcap – its bill turned cockeyed, worn like big-city rappers.  His older cousin looks like a little kid crouched in the shopping cart.  They roll out of the grass and onto the path.  He and Jimmy have nowhere to go for two hours until George’s mom goes to work and they can hang out at his place.

“Let’s go get something to eat.” Jimmy waves a beat-up leather wallet.

“You have money?”

“Papa does – this is his wallet.” Jimmy laughs.

“Damn, Jimmy, Uncle Luke will kick your ass.”

“No he won’t,” he says. “He won’t do that ever again.”

George stops. “What are you saying, Jimmy?”

“You know what I’m saying.” Jimmy’s voice is stern, yet distant. “I just couldn’t take another punch.  Know what I mean?”

“What happened?” George asks. “An accident, right?  A fight, right? You punched him and he fell and banged his head?  Maybe you just knocked him out.”

“Nah,” says Jimmy. “I cut him.  He’d dead.”

“Maybe he’s… “

“Ain’t no maybe, cousin.” Jimmy keeps his head lowered, talking into his jeans. “He was drunk, I was faster.” Jimmy pauses. “It was once too often, you know?"

George knows.  Uncle Luke has battered his way through his family, even hit George more than once, back when he was little and couldn’t run away.

But now George can fly from danger, run back to the mountains and keep running.  Jimmy isn’t equipped with the gift of speed.  He can stand and fight – he was tough after all.  But what good had it done?  He was alive – a good thing – but his daddy wasn’t.

“Push us down to the store for some food,” Jimmy says.  He waves his father’s wallet again. “Watching you run made me hungry.”

George turns the cart and pushes it down the bikeway toward the convenience store.  He wants to run, just jump over the cart and head up to the hills.  Tension builds in his legs, just as it does before a race.  But he can’t run away from his cousin, not now.

George pushes Jimmy down the path, taking one pole at a time, counting as he goes.

This story was a breakthrough because it caught the attention of writers I admire and forced me to keep at it. I wrote it after getting stuck for two days by winter-closed roads surrounding Riverton, Wyoming. The bike path was cleared but surrounded by snow. I walked the path and came across two young Native American teens. One rested in a grocery store shopping cart. He hugged a liquor bottle. The other pushed him. I asked myself, What are those two guys doing on the bikepath on a school day? I wrote the story and submitted it, but no takers. I sent it for critiques at the Jackson Hole Writers’ Conference and got helpful comments from John Byrne Cook, Tim Sandlin, and Craig Johnson. Cooke liked it because it was about real people doing real things and not more self-absorbed fiction from MFA grads (I’m one). Cooke liked that I challenged myself to write about another culture, to imagine myself in their lives. He edited the story and urged me to submit it to The New Yorker. I did and got a quick rejection. After more rejections and rewrites, I submitted it to an anthology, Blood, Water, Wind and Stone: An Anthology of Wyoming Writers (Sastrugi Press, 2016), and it was accepted.