Running for Your Life: Thurb Time

Thurber, K’s dog, is a handful, a glorious mutt that in the beginning presented as part-bloodhound, part-coonhound, part-red bone, nothing but a hounddog with a coat the color of burnt toast and a dog’s head for the Pyramids, now nine months old, the puppy is long – six feet from tip to toe, excluding tail – and not a great deal taller, think greyhound or vizsla, the mind muddies the answer to the simple question, “He’s beautiful; what is he?”

Still, he loves to run. K and J had been in Washington two full months before they were back for a proper visit with Thurb in tow. (Or the way T rolls, J and K in tow.) More than two full months since I shed my tears when my regular running companion padded off to a new life in DC, and now I’ve got serious miles to get in, Thursday (St. Paddy’s), a minimum fifteen, I’ve promised myself, out across the Brooklyn Bridge, not since the run-up to Steamtown, mid-September, six months ago, and I’ll be back along the Hudson, and as much as I’d like Thurb alongside, he’s, like I said, a handful, and will yank me into crowds, even on my own I’m at risk of turning one of these weak ankles and I’m down in a heap, Boston-dream done, so Thurb won’t be staying this time for a Brooklyn visit, here for just three short days, Saturday night through Monday afternoon, and Sunday I put in a long run on my own, but early Monday Thurb, M and I are in the park, off-leash hours where he steals every stray ball and runs like a maniac, mostly away from us despite the cut-turkey treats we’d thought to pack, knowing Pyramid-head is one bolt away from fleeing because he’s born to run, and to see the way he is among these terriers and shepherds and stay-at-home bitty dogs, running hell bent for leather, pure pleasure, and somehow, a miracle every time we trick him into coming back to us, we re-leash him and walk on home, an hour later I harness him up for our run, the first since late December, and it is like old times, Thurb falls into an easy gait and more than once I feel the sensation of flying when for not long but gloriously we match each other’s pace, and it is about this time, when we are on the hill-climb near the entrance/exit at Grand Army Plaza that a cyclist I recognize as a fellow hound-runner yells:

“Thurber’s back!”

“Yes, but only for today,” I say.

“Today is okay!” he says, as he waves and cycles on.

*

Back in late September, I met Z, the rogue urban forester. I was walking baby Thurb, and RUF Z had landed on the block, think scene from “Men In Black,” clever and outre, creative, so far from everyday, the tree wrecking crew circle him like he’s Kevin Costner, “Dancing With Wolves,” memory clogged with movie references, and RUF Z’s near-manic energy, brought to the ’hood to take down a thirty-footer, weakened in the tornado – winds of March so many, so scary that I wonder what’s ahead, a few weeks ago there’s a tornado-like blow and a retaining wall of cement blocks and brick and plaster collapses not far from home, crushing three cars in the TD Bank parking lot, often as not with families inside th cars, waiting for the depositor or the cash-getter to return but this day blessedly free of people so no one dies, but now no place is feeling safe, a sanctuary in the extreme weather, not your supersized SUV, or Mini with the Thule carrier-top; RUF Z, jumpy with nerves, in a minute I learn his life story, Irish-Jew, petting the Pyramid-head of Thurb, saying he’s the owner of five successive bloodhounds, “No other breed will do, yeah, they like to run away, but you get a fifty-foot rope for a pair of shower flip-flops (?!) and show him whose boss.” (Amped-up now, hair every which way, eyes buggy at 10 in the morning.) “Who is the alpha? If it is him, then you are f$#@&. Like my 18-year-old, a math and science genius, but can’t get his act together, so he’s in the Navy, not the Marines, better in the Navy (because of the Seals, I don’t know), getting himself in trouble, at this time in his life, only natural, and maybe the Navy will be just right because he’s at the stage when he’s dumb, fun and full of c%#.” Thurb is pulling on the leash, soon in the dog run, stones in the soft of his puppy foot pads, but now I’m looking up, RUF Z in the hydraulic bucket, chainsaw whirring, chewing live bark, boyhood dentist-sound, limbs and trunk parts twenty times the weight of RUF Z, lowered to the ground by the crew, each holding lines like seaman, RUF Z yelling, “How long?” No answer, and he’s back at it, sawing, a drinking game, and in a flash the arbor, one of the biggest trees around, is gone, this part of the sky invisible, light blocked and softened, for twenty years and now, literally, a new day. “HOW LONG?!” “Forty-five minutes,” the crew elder cries. RUF Z raises the saw over his head, slaps his forehead with the flat of his free hand. “He was gunning for forty,” the crew elder says.

*

Payoff: First big run (St. Paddy’s) since 3:33:08 Steamtown, kicking the harshest winter in a hundred, the lame hammy, killer Pain in the Four Foot, and I’m finally good: out the door, across the Gowanus, the Brooklyn Bridge to the Hudson and 34th Street and back, thirty-five years after the hospital and I’m on the ultimate home stretch, two hours-fifteen at 8:30 per mile, about 16 miles. And sure there are aches and pains, but I feel great, and a month from now I will be boarding the bus for Boston. Thanks so much for coming along.

Next: Running for Your Life: Slow Health