Runaway

A teenager named Hawley Bolton stopped by the motel room where Walter and I were arguing and announced that he wanted to run away from his father and his school and become a racetracker. Hawley was six-three, a pasty kid wearing a blazer and a navy-blue and silver necktie. He certainly didn't look like any runaway to me, but right away he started telling us that he was going to school at St. Mark's that morning and that was it. He wanted to leave with Walter tomorrow. That's when I stepped in.

"Believe half of what you see and none of what he says," I said to Hawley.

Right away Walter was pushing his hands at the air like a quarterback asking for quiet. Then he touched at his shirt for his cigarette pack. He said, "This appears to be a morning for misunderstandings."

"Not the first time I've heard that, either," I said.

Walter's face pooched at the center while he lit his smoke, then he waved out the match. "Do you know Helen?" he said to Hawley.

"Of course," he said, giving me a little wave, like I was already farther away. Hawley had high cheekbones, light brown eyes, short auburn hair. When he tried talking tough it just made him seem more wimpy. He'd worked the summer in A. C. Jefferson's barn, seemed a little scared of everything, but had stuck it out until his school term began. He was frowning now, probably thought he'd enter this room with a life more messed up than anybody's. Of all the people he wanted to run away with, he'd picked Walter? The Walter Furlo I knew was a five-foot-tall jock agent, my agent, a longtime acquaintance with a good hard tool, a man who frequently liked to stick the truth in the blender and make it unrecognizable. In his mid-forties, he was older than me—not by much, but older: dishwater-blonde hair, some gray at the temples, something always percolating behind those light-blue southern-boy eyes.

What could he have been into with this kid? One was never sure about these things, but I didn't think Walter was bisexual. He did, however, hunt wealthy greenhorns of all shapes and sizes. I looked at Hawley and said, "What did he promise you?" and Hawley touched his index finger to his chest. "Come on, sweetheart," I said. "That's right, you."

"He said he'd make room," he said, sort of stooping forward. Walter was shaking his head, and Hawley squeezed his eyes shut, then opened them again. He glanced down to Walter. "I'm running away," he said. "I told you that. I want to go with you."

"I said I'd think about it," Walter said.

"I'm running away," Hawley said. "That's final, okay?"

I was licking my lips again and thinking, right, high school. Fitting in. I said to Hawley, "Is your old man the guy who drives around the gray 450?" He nodded. "Wears that outback hat?"

Hawley pointed at Walter with his thumb. "He said he would help me if I wanted to become a racetracker."

"It was something friendly to say," Walter said quietly.

Hawley didn't respond, but I understood that he was afraid. I was about his age when I ran off to the races, but I guess I wasn't leaving as much behind. People who grew up around money always seem to have the most pitiful-sounding problems, but I knew enough to know that it hurt to be young and have your eyes wide open. I actually felt sorry for old Walter boy too. He'd been a jockey once, a pretty good one, but then he'd taken some falls, including a serious spill at Oaklawn Park. He recovered from a cracked spine, but after that he had the yips, wouldn't take the chances a rider has to. There was a saying: No brain, no problem; but no heart meant no rider.

About a dozen years back he'd become a...