He sat at the back with the daydreamers, thinking of flashing theater signs and the brothels of Little Lonsdale. After months of running for warmth, Charlie found himself drawn to the sleazy streets. His feet tore and burned in his father’s boots, which were the only thing the man had to give him. He ran for hours, jumping puddles and dodging drunks in seedy streets. After the first night of running, Charlie took to the streets like a drunk takes to the bottle, swallowing them up. After a few miles around his neighborhood, he crumpled in an exhausted and warm heap. To be poor is to be cold, Charlie says, but he refuses to let the cold take him.Ĭharlie digresses to explain that one night, he started running to keep warm.

People strip the wood from their floors to burn it. In the slums of Richmond, people most crave warmth, and thus dampness is their enemy, as it rises inside the walls like a cancer. Charlie comments that the cold killed his father he had seen his father coughing blood until he died. Frigid wind whistles through Charlie’s ragged coat as he walks. As Charlie leaves for school, Ma tells him to sit front-row-center in class he lies and says he will. Redmond compares the black sky to his wife’s rotting teeth. That morning, Ma, Charlie’s mother, gazes up at menacing clouds and discusses with their neighbor, Cecil Redmond, how black the sky is. The day marks the start of heavy rains in his hometown of Richmond, Melbourne. Set in 1919 and written from a first-person, past-tense perspective, Robert Newton’s Runner opens with Charlie Feehan, the novel’s narrator and protagonist, recalling the day he began working for local crime boss Squizzy Taylor.

Runner by robert newton