“No. Susan told me that.”
“Well, she’s crazy.”
“I know you don’t know any better, but that’s against the rules.”
“What?”
“Speaking badly of another person’s beloved, you know? I don’t want you to speak ill of her.” We were in Fryeburg Center.
“Sorry.”
“Okay.”
We were quiet as we drove through the small open town with its pleasant buildings. It was maybe fifteen minutes to North Conway. We bought Paul a pair of Nike LDVs just like mine except size 7, and a pair of sweat pants.
“You got a jock?” I said.
Paul looked embarrassed. He shook his head. We bought one of them and two pairs of white sweat socks. I paid and we drove back to Fryeburg. It was ten when we got to the cabin. I handed him his bag of stuff.
“Go put this stuff on and we’ll have a run,” I said.
“A run?”
“Yeah.”
“I can’t run,” he said.
“You can learn,” I said.
“I don’t want to.”
“I know, but we’ll take it easy. We won’t go far. We’ll run a little, walk a little. Do a little more each day. You’ll feel good.”
“You going to make me?” Paul said.
“Yes.”
He went very slowly into the cabin. I went in with him. He went into his room. I went into mine. In about twenty minutes he came out with the new jogging shoes looking ridiculously yellow and the new sweat pants slightly too big for his thin legs, and his scrawny upper body pale and shivery-looking in the spring sun. I was dressed the same, but my stuff wasn’t new.
“We’ll stretch,” I said. “Bend your knees until you can touch the ground with both hands easily. Like this. Good. Now without taking your hands from the ground, try to straighten your knees. Don’t strain, just steady pressure. We’ll hold it thirty seconds.”
“What’s that for?” he said.
“Loosen up the lower back and the hamstring muscles in the back of your thighs. Now squat, like this, let your butt hang down toward the ground and hold that for thirty seconds. It does somewhat the same thing.”
I showed him how to stretch the calf muscles and loosen up the quadriceps. He did everything very awkwardly and tentatively as if he wanted to prove he couldn’t. I didn’t comment on that. I was figuring out how to run with a gun. I normally didn’t. But I wasn’t normally looking after anyone but me when I ran.
“Okay,” I said. “We’re ready for a short slow run. Wait till I get something in the house.” I went in and got my gun. It was a short Smith & Wesson.38.I took it from its holster, checked the load, and went out carrying it in my hand.
“You going to run with that?” Paul said.
“Best I could think of,” I said. “I’ll just carry it in my hand.” I held it by the cylinder and trigger guard, not by the handle. It was not conspicuous.
“You afraid they’ll find us?”
“No, but no harm to be safe. When you can, it’s better to deal with possibilities than likelihoods.”
“Huh?”
“Come on, well jog. Ill explain while we run.”
We started at a slow pace. Paul looked as if he might never have run before. His movements seemed unsynchronized, and he took each step as if he had to think about it first.
“Say when you need to walk,” I said. “There’s no hurry.”
He nodded.
I said, “When you’re thinking about something important, like if your father might try to kidnap you again, it’s better to think of what the best thing would be to do if he tried, rather than trying to decide how likely he was to try. You can’t decide if he’ll try, that’s up to him. You decide what to do if he does. That’s up to you. Understand?”
He nodded. Already I could see he was too winded to talk.
“A way of living better is to make the decisions you need to make based on what you can control. When you can.”
We were jogging up a dirt road that led from the cabin to a larger dirt road. It was maybe half a mile long. On either side there were dogberry bushes and small birch and maple saplings under the tall white pines and maples that hovered above us. There were raspberry bushes too, just starting to bud. It was cool under the dappling of the
