Marathon

Low sounding thunder echoed through the streets twice.  It sounded like the sounds you hear under a bridge, when the heavy traffic is speeding above you, as the wheels move over metal planks.

Baboom…. Baboom….

A woman on the news compared it to transformers.  I looked up at the sky and around the tall buildings in search of the source.

We ignored our questions, and walked towards Back Bay station, a couple blocks away.

“Excuse me!” said a policeman who pushed his way, running through the crowd.

Dad was tired and sometimes tears came down from his eyes along the way, since his time had been so disappointing.  Hoping to break 3 hours, he had come in a little after 4.  After having trained for months and been looking forward to the marathon for awhile, this was unfortunate.

I took a picture of all the people heading up towards the subway from Dartmouth street.  I didn’t know that on the other side, people were running for their lives, or to help people, or to find a way out of the city.  As I crossed the street, I overheard a man on his cell phone, “Yeah – what the hell happened?”  I kept walking but also kept glancing back at him, half of me wanting to know what had happened, but also not really wanting to know.

I looked around at the people walking into the subway station.  But before we entered, we approached the security guard in front.

“Two bombs exploded downtown.  They've called in the military.  I wouldn't get on that subway.  Just saying, I’m being nice.”

I looked at my tired father and worried that we wouldn't be able to get out easily, but didn't want to make him walk.  We all looked at each other, trying to decide what to do in those few seconds.

“Ah, he doesn't know what he’s talking about,” said my brother.

So we decided to get the first train we could out of there.

We entered the Back Bay subway station.  I looked around for signs of chaos, trying to listen in on people’s phone conversations.  I was walking quickly to buy a subway pass, while my brother walked quickly to the bathroom and my mother helped my father catch up with us.  There were some transit police roaming around the gates, but I didn't want to know anymore information about what happened.

“Shit.” I said, in front of my family, while waiting anxiously for the next subway train to push through the tunnel.  My brother had just read a text from a friend, but only said outloud, “Man, if what Kevin is saying is true…. something about wheeling people away without limbs?”

“I don’t want to know.  Don’t tell me.”

We had no idea what it had been, that sound we heard twice.  I just wanted to get home.  Suddenly the city felt dangerous – packed with so many people I don’t know, so many people who could do something crazy.  Suddenly I was in the US, conscious of potential enemies who would look to hurt a booming east coast city.  The buildings seemed so big now, the tunnel that I was in seemed like the perfect place for an explosion, and everything was moving so slowly.

A train pulled up.  We walked on and sat next to people who were just sitting on the subway, as usual.  Then the guy next to me said, “Excuse me, but did something happen?”  I can’t remember what I said to him, but probably something along the lines of that we were at the marathon, and now we were heading home, and that’s all I wanted to know.

The doors of the train remained opened for longer than usual, so it seemed, and a voice came over the speaker saying, “This train will not be stopping at Downtown Crossing.  This train will not be stopping at Downtown Crossing.”  It began to move away, out of the underground to where I could see a view of the Copley Square buildings.  The sky was blue and everything seemed normal before we popped back underground again.

I was glad that we sped through some of the stops, but were we heading away or into where something had happened?  At the next stop, a couple of women and their daughters got on the train, carrying shopping bags.  They were on their phones.  “What is going on?”  They asked us.  The train was quieter now, as people were trying to overhear people’s answer to that question, or on their phones themselves.  A stop or two later, a woman had an image on her phone and was staring at it.  She was sitting next to my mother, who looked over her shoulder to see.

My mother gasped and raised her hand to her mouth, “It’s the Finish Line!”

I could hear a crack in her voice, signaling tears in my eyes immediately.  She went on to say, “Look at the people!  Oh my gosh….”  Shock was pushing them out of my system, my body couldn't hold all this water.  Immediately I thought about the announcers, the spectators, the tired runners, the people selling t-shirts, the security guards, medical people, and everyone who I had just seen standing around that area.  Were they……. what were they?  Were they okay??

I leaned on my father, the stumbling marathon runner, and didn't know what else to do.  I was thankful that we weren't in an emergency room, or worse, on my brother’s birthday.  We left the train, we walked home.  We made it home.  We were home.  That was all I had been wanting since we heard those sounds and it had happened.  I had never been so thankful to cross the threshold of that Somerville apartment, together.