The runner
I’ve pretty much my entire life been a runner. On a hill in Virginia covered in apple trees, three pre-schoolers began running down the hill toward the cabin where the apple butter was cooking in a kettle. We ran so fast we couldn’t stop and my Grandfather Richard, my mothers father and her two brothers Kermit and Don had to lock arms to catch my cousins Donna and David before we hit the cabin.
A few years later on another hill in Monticello, the coach had a race down the hill to the guardrail and back to determine the fastest third grader. Having moved from Sopchoppy, where all we did was run freely all over town, the new kid in school outran everyone. It was the ice breaker, for from then on, the boys wanted this fast third grader to be their friend.
Years and years later on a sweltering hot July Saturday in Jasper, that little boy yet on that Virginia hill emerged from the shade to run down Hatley Street to take second in the 10k among so many friends cheering the boy home who wouldn’t stop.
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