"James Patrick Kelly - Don't Stop" - читать интересную книгу автора (Kelly James Patrick)

only reasons she survived her senior year. He didn’t care that kids thought she was
weird; all he cared about was that she could run a mile in 5:11. After she graduated,
Lisa used to see him all the time around town but they rarely met on the run. She
liked to work out in the morning and he preferred afternoons, a habit left over from
three decades of after school practice. She has told him several times that she’s
sorry she missed his funeral. He just shrugs.
“Want company?” he says. “Where you headed?”
“All downhill from here.”
“Always the wiseass.” He takes off down the other side of Bride’s Hill Road.
They trot easily, shoulder to shoulder. Coach Ward runs slower than Lisa
would like, but she lets him set the pace. He cuts off onto Aberdeen, which drops
down the steepest part of Oak Hill.
“Race you to the stop sign.” Coach isn’t even breathing hard.
 Suddenly they are galloping, each long stride a rebuke to gravity. The houses
flash by. Lisa glances over at Coach and recognizes the expression of fierce joy on
his face. This is his classic training strategy: speed play. Interspersed through each
practice run must come several bouts of sprinting. He always made a distinction
between running and jogging. Jogging is a mental activity. You do it because you
ought to. Running is a physical activity. You do it because there is no choice. Ought
doesn’t win races. You win the race because there’s a tiger chasing you or because
you absolutely have to get home in time or maybe just because it’s a beautiful day
and you’re seventeen and life is impossibly sweet. Coach no longer looks
sixty-eight. He is seventeen all the way to the bottom of the hill.
Lisa can feel the bulk of the entire planet in her knees as she slows to the stop
sign on Howell. She and Coach arrive at the stop sign together, but he slaps his open
hand to it a beat before she does. “Don’t stop, Schoonover,” he says, bouncing in
place, his feet never leaving the sidewalk. “Never stop.” They eye each other,
breathing hard and grinning. This is where they must part. She has to get ready for
work. He’s buried in Old St. Mary’s. She has put flowers on his grave several times
since the first time he appeared to her.
Crispin pulls up behind them and reaches over Lisa’s shoulder to tap the stop
sign. Coach stares at him with his usual disapproval and Crispin retreats to a
respectful distance.
“You still have the legs, Coach,” says Lisa. “I hope I’m still sprinting like that
when I’m your age. How old are you anyway?”
“Seventy-four on November fifteenth.”
“And you were what, sixty-eight, when you died? They still keep track of
birthdays in heaven?”
Billy Ward licks his forefinger and draws a check mark in the air. “See you,
Schoonover.” He winks at her and a smile lights his craggy face. “Don’t forget to
stretch.”
“Will do, Coach.” Lisa waves and takes off for home.
Lisa has lost six jobs in five years, although a couple of the layoffs weren’t
her fault. Dolly Hitchens had closed Best Kept Secrets when she got divorced and
Carlson’s Hardware burned down. These days Lisa works at the DVDeal on
Grandview at the Dover end of the Squamscott Bridge, although business is
ominously slow. But that’s where she met Matt, who will sit through just about any
movie about sports. When Lisa quoted Annie’s speech from Bull Durham—his
all-time favorite—about the Church of Baseball, Matt asked her out on the spot.
Lisa had started at the DVDeal just a week after she had checked herself out