towns separated by thirty miles of cotton and tobacco fields. He’d grown up in this part of the world, on a small farm outside Williamston, and the landmarks here were familiar to him. He rolled past tottering tobacco barns and farmhouses; he saw clusters of mistletoe in the high barren branches of oak trees just off the highway. Loblolly pines, clustered in long, thin strands, separated one property from the next.
In New Bern, a quaint town situated at the confluence of the Neuse and Trent Rivers, he stopped for lunch. From a deli in the historic district, he bought a sandwich and cup of coffee, and despite the chill, he settled on a bench near the Sheraton that overlooked the marina. Yachts and sailboats were moored in their slips, rocking slightly in the breeze.
Paul’s breaths puffed out in little clouds. After finishing his sandwich, he removed the lid from his cup of coffee. Watching the steam rise, he wondered about the turn of events that had brought him to this point.
It had been a long journey, he mused. His mother had died in childbirth, and as the only son of a father who farmed for a living, it hadn’t been easy. Instead of playing baseball with friends or fishing for largemouth bass and catfish, he’d spent his days weeding and peeling worms from tobacco leaves twelve hours a day, beneath a balled-up southern summer sun that permanently stained his back a golden brown. Like all children, he sometimes complained, but for the most part, he accepted the work. He knew his father needed his help, and his father was a good man. He was patient and kind, but like his own father before him, he seldom spoke unless he had reason. More often than not, their small house offered the quietude normally found in a church. Other than perfunctory questions as to how school was going or what was happening in the fields, dinners were punctuated only by the sounds of silverware tapping against the plates. After washing the dishes, his father would migrate to the living room and peruse farm reports, while Paul immersed himself in books. They didn’t have a television, and the radio was seldom turned on, except for finding out about the weather.
They were poor, and though he always had enough to eat and a warm room to sleep in, Paul was sometimes embarrassed by the clothes he wore or the fact that he never had enough money to head to the drugstore to buy a Moon-Pie or a bottle of cola like his friends. Now and then he heard snide comments about those things, but instead of fighting back, Paul devoted himself to his studies, as if trying to prove it didn’t matter. Year after year, he brought home perfect grades, and though his father was proud of his accomplishments, there was an air of melancholy about him whenever he looked over Paul’s report cards, as though he knew that they meant his son would one day leave the farm and never come back.
The work habits honed in the fields extended to other areas of Paul’s life. Not only did he graduate valedictorian of his class, he became an excellent athlete as well. When he was cut from the football team as a freshman, the coach recommended that he try cross-country running. When he realized that effort, not genetics, usually separated the winners from losers in races, he started rising at five in the morning so he could squeeze two workouts into a day. It worked; he attended Duke University on a full athletic scholarship and was their top runner for four years, in addition to excelling in the classroom. In his four years there, he relaxed his vigilance once and nearly died as a result, but he never let it happen again. He double majored in chemistry and biology and graduated summa cum laude. That year he also became an all-American by finishing third at the national cross-country meet.
After the race, he gave the medal to his father and said that he had done all this for him.
“No,” his father replied, “you ran for you. I just hope you’re running toward something, not away from something.”
That night, Paul stared at the ceiling as he lay in bed, trying to figure out what his father had meant. In his mind, he was running toward something, toward everything. A better life. Financial stability. A way to help his father. Respect. Freedom from worry. Happiness.
In February of