Run Before the Wind Read Free Page A

don't know exactly what you want to do?" my father asked.
    "Well, sir, I'd like to go ahead and visit Grandfather in Ireland, the way I'd planned [that would please them] and then .. . I'd just like to keep going for a while, take a year and travel."
    "Travel where?"
    "Everywhere, anywhere." I honestly didn't know.
    "I see. How were you planning to finance all this travel?"
    "Well, I can get about a thousand for my car, and I've got my calf money." We lived on a cattle farm in Meriwether County, near the town of Delano. The land had been in my father's family since the 1850s, but it was my mother who had been the real farmer, building up the place after World War II, when my father was starting his law practice and his political career.
    "That's a little over three thousand dollars. I can get a student air fare and hitchhike in Europe."
    My mother was looking at my father and shaking her head.
    "Billy, I am not going to have him hitchhiking.
    "Tt was my first inkling that they were not going to try to talk me back into law school--not yet, anyway. I looked back to my father.
    He went through his drill of silence again before speaking.
    "Tell you what," he said.
    "I'll loan you another three thousand. Buy a good used car--no hitchhiking. You can sell the car when you come back and pay me back then." It was typical of him to make it a loan.
    "In September of next year you either go back to law school, or to graduate school if you'd rather, or you're on your own in the cruel world. Fair enough?"
    I found that I had been holding my breath, and in my sudden exhaling I found wind to say back to him, "Fair enough."
    A few minutes later I passed the study door and heard them talking quietly.
    "Maybe it's a good thing for him. Billy," my mother said.
    "Maybe," my father replied.
    "I was just thinking about all those unfinished model airplanes when he was a kid. Those just about drove me crazy."
    "I know," she said.
    "He was never much for finishing things. I hoped he would get over that."
    "Maybe he will. He still may go back and finish."
    "I hope so. I won't count on it."
    Young men who cannot be counted on should not listen at doors;
    it shames them and stings their eyes. I got out of the house as quickly as possible.
    THE TWO-HOUR FLIGHT to New York and the six-hour flight to Shannon gave me an opportunity to think--or rather, forced thought upon me. I was running, I knew that; I had done a lot of running from problems in my short existence. I also knew that, had I wished to summon all the persuasive powers at my disposal, I could have convinced Dean Henry to let me remain in law school.
    I was good at convincing. Had I remained, though, I would soon have disappointed him again. I would not have been able to back up my persuasion with performance. A long series of childhood and school day incidents had brought me to know that as a part of myself. I didn't like it, but I didn't know how to change it. I looked out the jet's window at the floor of rosy cloud beneath us and tried to summon the resolve for an assault on my flawed character, but I was cautious about making promises even to myself. Instead, I began to look forward to my newfound freedom. Maybe in Europe I might find something in myself that I could admire without shame.
    I arrived in Ireland with a sense of freedom only partly gained.
    I had the obligatory family visit ahead of me before finally cutting the bonds. I approached it impatiently. My grandfather didn't know quite what to make of me, but he was kind. I had not visited him in County Cork since I was twelve, but he and my grandmother had stayed with us in Georgia when I was sixteen--and she was still alive. He seemed much, much older, and though in good health, shrunken in his appearance and careful in his movements.
    He had become accustomed to solitude and was not anxious to change his habits.
    I exercised his hunters--he was grateful for that in the off11
    season--galloping them over long stretches of densely