Dec 2024 / Jan 2025

Single Track

Jared Beasley
Dec 2024

You’re never ready for that call. Especially not the first one. It was early on a Thursday and my mom’s voice was on the other line, deliberate and heavy. “He’s...”

She didn’t have to complete the sentence. I knew. He was my father. He was the closest I’d ever been to another human being and he was gone.

I was out the door of 307 West 79th Street in a burst, stumbling toward the Hudson. I had to get away from people. I didn’t want anyone to see me. The world was blurry. My eyes were burning.

I ended up at the track—the old, abandoned track along the water. There, I sat on the concrete steps and stared out at New Jersey. After an hour, maybe two, my shirt was off and I was running. I didn’t know why. Eight laps to the mile, a small infield of unmown grass, the only sound was my shoes crunching on the cinders.

They divorced when I was five. He never even dated again. He was born in the house in Alabama and died in that house. But everybody who I called family was back there. It had been six years since I’d left. I didn’t know why, not really. But this track with the small amphitheater of concrete and rusted railings felt like the closest thing to home now. I had no answer for that either. I’d come alone and in need. Soon, I would find that there were others like me.

It drew certain people. There’s something about abandoned places, thoroughly lived in and haunted. They call to some of us with familiarity.

You’d never know it was in New York. From the street, through a tunnel, down a ramp and there it lies – a 200-meter track along the Hudson River. Lined on one side by crab apple trees and surrounded on three sides by maples, it was a guarded oasis. No one came there then. Well, almost.

It drew certain people. There’s something about abandoned places, thoroughly lived in and haunted. They call to some of us with familiarity.

Joe was there every day around dusk, no matter what. In his late 80s, he wore a blue button-up short sleeve, blue work pants and a flat cap over his bald head. He never needed anything else. He walk-hopped his miles. Hip surgery kept him from moving any faster. He would walk two steps then skip as if trying to run, then back to his walking stride. But he never missed his miles. When it rained, he walked with an umbrella. When it snowed, he wore boots.

Ages ago, Joe had been a body builder in Venice Beach, California. Back then, it was the center of the muscle universe. He lifted with Jack La Lane and other celebrities. He was an extra in films like Spartacus. He’d also written books in Russian. And he was single, always single.

“I’m on my way out,” he’d say, plain but never morose. “But you’re looking fit. Keep doing it.” He had a way of standing a little too close when he spoke. Maybe that was part of the reason he never married.

During the early afternoon, there was the “Wildman.” There was nothing else to call him. Word was, he was from Columbia, had been homeless at one point and used to eat out of the garbage cans. He had also been extremely heavy. Now, he was trim, wore thick glasses and liked to compete with anyone who dared to be on the track with him. He ran with a Walkman – a cassette tape Walkman – with big headphones, sometimes singing loud in Spanish. But if you passed him, he’d speed up to get ahead of you. We had some epic battles.

There were days when he didn’t run at all. Instead, he’d box the trees like sparring partners and scream up at the sky.

A retired cop came in the mornings and moved in a style that was similar to speedwalking. He wanted to run, but his legs were so bow-legged, I imagined it hurt him to just stand.

One of the regulars never ran. Hawk Man. He lived on a boat on the Hudson. He was in his 70s with long, blondish-gray hair. He’d worked on Wall Street once, had a bad run and lost his wife. Then, he started a business with a friend. “Never go into business with a buddy,” he’d say. Now, he rode an old-timey bicycle with a basket. If you didn’t see him on it, he was sitting on a bench by the water, staring up at the trees. He followed hawks around Riverside Park and one day, with a finger over his mouth, he showed me a nest of hatchlings, screeching for food.

My personal favorite never said a word to me. He too had a bike but never rode it. He walked it like it was some kind of steer. It had two bull horns attached to the handlebars. He looked Native American and wore a straw hat with a feather and had dark, leathered skin. And there was a shirt he liked to wear on summer days that had the words, “Leave me, don’t love me,” written on it with magic marker.

Even in Manhattan you can see stars – four, maybe five. Sometimes at night, I’d sit there by myself, look up at them and wonder, why are so many of us so alone? And why do so many of us seem to really like it that way?

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