I was thinking this as I sat up there on the deck and looked out and saw them down by the water’s edge.  They were holding hands and seemed to be so small and slow as they walked, with the whole damn Sea of the world behind them moving and shining coldly in its green even as the storm piled up far out and down to the horizon. The heavy air was pouring in from over the water, wet and as wild smelling as a song.  The air poured in and around them and they made their slow way through the salty thick and talked as if they would live forever and always be as they were, confident of the future and happy.  She was wearing her red shirt that fit her loosely and flapped like a flag and held your eyes when they had just been passing over and made you think if you had really ever seen red before you saw her wearing that shirt or if you were seeing it now as if you’d just been born. 

So people were always seeing new things around her. 

They made their way along the edge of the great deep green and didn’t seem to look at it once as if they remembered every piece of it from their long crawl out. 

I sat up there and watched them until they passed behind the edge of the wall to my left and after that I looked at the wall for a long time and went out into space somewhere in my mind, way out beyond the deep green that was in front of me and the storm that would break in a little while and soak everything. 

I thought about how I’m nothing but a small and slow-moving shape in front of the deep sea of green and at the bottom of a deep sea of air and at the top of the deep sea of my heart.

I thought about how the two of them and me and all of us really are Ocean deep and wild inside but sometimes we hide it or only see the top of it in each other. 

I thought like that for a long time until the glass door behind me slid open and brought me back.  It was Annie.  I smiled hi and the corners of her mouth stretched a little as she turned and closed the door.

“Join you?”

“Sure.”

She pulled a chair a little closer and sat down.

For a while we just looked out over the water and were quiet.  The wind had picked up.

Then I looked over at her, at Annie.  Every once in a while when I really look at someone I’ve known for a long time I start to see and hear and feel again the time that we’ve spent together and the places we’ve been.  So when I looked over at her and her far-looking green eyes that barely squinted just now as she saw the storm and studied it and I saw her hair as it fell short around her neck and her soft square of a face that would point right at you when she talked and was brave too, my mind ran back and back and deep into the ocean we shared, splashing out into it all.

We had floated on our backs in the rolling saltwater and seen the deep blue and the gulls flying.  Our arms were floating out and our hands had brushed but kept moving. 

We had stood hunched out in the hard cold because that was the only place we could go to talk right then and she had to tell me about her choice, about moving West just for the summer.  I had smiled and we had laughed about what was ahead for us in a few months but in my legs I felt vertigo and wanted to step back or grab something. 

We had sat and stared at the table when I told her about Papa dying and she hadn’t looked at me when I broke down and was shaking and couldn’t stop.  She had let me do that as if I was alone in the world but after I had finished she looked up and showed me in that look that I was not alone and couldn’t be.  Ever since that day I’ve seen a warrior inside her. 

And then almost a year later to the day when she told me about the accident and her sister and the coma and it was my turn to look away and let her be and then look up at her the same way, I did my best. 

So looking at her then, on the deck, those other times rose up in my chest and caught in me.

Her eyes were still far off on the storm as if she was sitting there alone.  I looked out over the water too. 

We sat there and looked out as if we were orphans of the world.

John and Sara made their way back along the beach; Sara’s red shirt was flapping so hard I could almost hear it.

“You know,” Annie started, still looking way off.  She took a deep breath.

“Yeah?” I said.

Now she looked at me and smiled.

“There’s so much beauty here and we can’t escape it.”

She laughed and pulled me into it.

And the rest of that day?  Well, it passed.

It was that kind of lake.

It looked warm and still in there until I swung out as far as I could and flung myself in, then I could feel how cool it was and how new the old water seemed to be. It was like being in a new place, with the coldest water down around my feet and it gradually warming all the way up along my body until the line around my shoulders where there was no more water because my head was in the July air and I was breathing it in.

They were all closer in, splashing and scrabbling back up the bank to the rope and swinging out again and again. I watched a little and they started calling out for me to get out and swing in again, and to try doing the back flip this time. I looked over their heads and then leaned back in the water so that I was floating and my ears were underneath and there was nothing but the muffling pressure of the lake sounds, the slow music of the water than kept its own strange rhythm.

Lazing out towards the middle, the Sun was across my face and with my eyes closed the world was bright red and weightless and eternally caught up in the contented sadness of the afternoon.

I flipped over and dove down.

I kicked hard and pulled the water past me and reached down.

It was cold and my ears were crushing in.

Nothing.

Kicking harder, pulling more and more and more and then my hands brushed the reeds and I knew the mud was close; the silty black of the lake floor.

In a slimy rush my hand went in up to my wrist and I grabbed two fistfuls of the stuff before kicking off and rising up to the airy light and feeling the mud slipping out through my fingers as I gripped it so tight because I wanted it all to come back up with me, into the day.

My eyes were open and the bright spot was growing, was coming down to me. Then I was through.

Shaking the hair and water out of my eyes I smeared the mud across my face and my hair and felt like part of the lake, and old like it was. I felt deep and dark and cold and muddy all the way down as I swam in, and I thought about how the day is always young and dark when it dies and how high the stars are and how many peoples’ hearts were beating at the same time as mine right now this second ba-dum ba-dum ba-dum.

I bet a lot of hearts were. Would we all have recognized each other or known we had anything in common or would we just look at each other and think oh, he’s fat or she’s really little or any of the other dumb things we think that never mean much.

So I thought about those things and swam in slowly and dove under once to get the mud off.

So wear whatever you want, but if you want to change then you have to be the one changing.

And if you want to change then rejoice, because you are in the land of wants but your want is a good one, and difficult.

There are thunderclouds piling up over a highcorn field and a cooler, wetter, breeze coming in too that he can smell, that is filling his lungs as he continues down that road, lengthening his stride so that he can maybe make it home before all the water falls.  The tempo of pavement hitting feet, gh gh gh gh, increases and then holds steady as all that fills him is the stride, the breath, his fixed eyes on the end of the road.  The pavement ends up ahead, with a stop sign and everything.  And the pavement; It’s gravelly concrete, old and rutted and narrow and silent but for his feet and his breath and the corn rustling breeze.  Gh gh…gh…gh…and he has reached the end, hands on his hips and turning.  Looking back down the flatroad past the square clumps of trees and toward Town.  The corn is green and higher than his head.  Fast growing fields this year, with all the rains.  The clouds have drawn up overhead, blackly piled castle-high and reaching low, weighted down.

A drop hits and then four more.

He starts running back, really running.  As the rain begins bombing down he catches a bright flash in his left eye.  Gh gh gh gh gh gh and then the crack of it.  It’s maybe half a town over.  He’s drawn even with the trees when flash gh gh gh gh crack.  He runs faster, form breaking apart now.  Underneath the spotty tree canopy, now, the rain is lessened, feels more remote.  Slowing up, wiping off his brow and eyes he can see more clearly up the road. It is empty of everything but the dark press of rain; The air is full of the rolling rumbles, the flashes.

He is standing there, soaked and panting, considering it.

“It will end.” he says

The trees are roaring with the storm.

Reaching a decision, he sits facing the field and the black sky, pulling in the thick wet air.

“It will end.”

—————–

Part 2

The Sun has already quickened high overhead by the time Danny steps out of the house that Monday.  Sloping down through the riot of a lawn and hitting the sidewalk in stride, self-consciously shoving his hair over, checked shirt neatly tucked, stomach full of Apple Jacks cereal, feeling, in short, that almost everything is in its proper place, that he is ready for this, he sets course to the exit from The Grove.

Clipping his way past the modest square houses, the modest square yards, the modestly planted smallish trees, through the wide rivers of unshaded pavement, he began to imagine what everyone would say when they all met.  He and Sarah would talk first, then would propose it.  DJ would love the idea but be too busy to go.  He could give them good ideas of what to do.  Annie would sit and smile and speak last, when they asked her what she thought she would say something sweetly open-ended.  Eddie would want to leave tomorrow and would forget about it by the end of the week.

Maybe it would end up with only him and Sarah actually going; Maybe.

Hunching around the corner, hitting N. Main and heading south, he can see Joe D- up ahead.  People say that Joe always carries a gun.

“Hi, Joe” he says.

Joe just looks at him and nods.

The rest of the walk to Simple he thinks about Sarah, wonders if she’ll remember they agreed to meet early.

He hits Union St. and turns left, walks half a block, turns, opens the door, walks in.  The sign over the door says:

Simple Coffee

since 1980

He glances around, steps to the counter.

“Just a coffee for here.”

“$2.50″

“OK. Thanks.”

He glances around again.  Nobody.

Just as he’s settling in, Sarah walks in, comes over without making any move toward the counter, sits, looks at him.

“Hey, we should…” he starts.

“I heard you had an adventure yesterday,” she cuts across.

Her eyes are open wide but he can see a smile somewhere in them.

“You could say that.  Got poured on during my run.”

“And you stood under a tree? For an hour? In the lightning and everything?”

“Who’d you talk to?”

“Eddie thought it was hilarious.”

“I was sitting down, actually. And I don’t think it was an hour.”

She crossed her arms now, leans back.

“What?”

“The one time you run without me.” she says.

“The storm of the whole summer.” she says.

“Sitting under a tree is stupid.” she says.

“I know.” he says.

She sighs to her feet, orders a coffee.

Watching her there, he knows that when she comes back they’ll talk about nothing and soon the others will be there.

Right at 2 o’clock, Ed and Annie walk in.

Ten minutes later DJ boils into the room, out of breath.

“Sorry, lighting took a while.” he says.

“That’s OK, Danny?” Sarah leads off.

Looking around the table, taking a breath,

“Let’s all go on a road trip to Chicago.  We can leave in two weeks, stay up there with my uncle.  He’s got a nice place right in the city.  We can stay there as long as we want. It’ll be fun.”

Sarah gives him a look, then,

“We could stay until school starts, explore the city! It won’t be expensive because Danny’s uncle will let us stay with him and probably pay for a lot of the other stuff.”

“That’s right.” he says.

Eddie is fidgeting excitedly and looking around at everyone’s faces.

Annie is looking down but the corner of her mouth is turned up.

DJ is frowning,

“I’m running audio for Bob and his guys that Saturday. Maybe I can reschedule with them or something.  The trip sounds cool.”

“OK,” says Danny.

“You know, let’s sleep on it.” says Sarah.

“Yeah.”

—————–

Part 3

Two weeks shaking themselves out.  Two weeks take off the sweatshirt after the warm up and run past, stretching legs out for the heel-led impacts.  Two weeks in a conversation in the corner, wrapped up, oblivious to their own passing and then, the next time you life your eyes from the latte and the paper they’re both gone and you don’t know when they left or where to.  But they are gone and for good, you know that.

This is how the next two weeks passed: Quickly sliding by while Danny’s head was down.  Moving through the door and into the right.  They left and Danny realized; My God we’re all leaving tomorrow.  Chicago is happening.  What do I need to do?

The van he already had.  The uncle, part of the gas money, the idea still unformed but shot through with the outside bright and the inside hope and the images o the others swimming out somewhere northwest of him, where the great city lay.

The city.  He’s been there only once, driving through I-94 from south to north through the heart of the city up to ___ Lake, for the wedding of a family friend when he was still small but not too small to remember.  And then the drive back down from north back into Indiana again through the entrenched heart of the city, the train keeping pace with the car and now lagging behind, the overpasses flashing past the sunroof in the dark as he held the moon in his eyes and meditated on that deep interrupted dark between the moon and him and dreamed of casting up some bridge to go out there to it, or some rope to draw it down into the deep busy lit-up dark of the great city.  He would draw it down if he could, but not to keep it for himself, to put it in his pocket.  He would draw it down to the moon-low point just above his head that was still high to him, small as he was, and, leaping, embrace it.  He would hold it high up overhead and everyone on the street would see it and know that he had drawn it down but not to keep, but to give it away.

In this way Danny thought of the time they would share together in the great city.  Blurred streetlights and the well-known faces and that high round light looking down from spheres above; the pale light that saw them all and was seen and that he would draw down, one day, and give to her.

But we get to pick where we’re planted, sometimes.

Until there is only one left and you can just hear the shifty step. Your neck pricks with the animal knowledge that you are seen.

“Hi.” she says. She sounds little.

“Say something.” she says.

“Hi.” you say.

The fog was everywhere.  Once or twice I opened my eyes and looked down the highbeams stretching out 20, 30 feet.  Like bridges.  Or, harnesses pulling us on into whatever was out there.  On into long conversations with family we haven’t seen since last Thanksgiving, since the last long drive.

Somewhere in Ohio we hit a bump and I realize that I’ve been asleep.  Lifting my head, letting my leg slide off the bench, feeling it hit…what?  My bookbag, packed up with textbooks I won’t open but feel unarmed without along with a rumpled copy of The Great Gatsby.  That’s the same copy that I read through twice in the week that, well.  That’s something else.

Closing my eyes again I can see the frozen roads and the naked trees.  Everything is hard and empty.  The fields are full of shin-high corn stalks: remnants of another hot green year.  One more street, now a hard turn and I’m there again.  Not knocking or going in, just standing outside and looking through the walls into whatever there is.  Speak, memory.

Another bump and my eyes are open again.  The sun is shining down into my face now and how have I slept through so much light?  If I took the amount of daylight I’ll have slept through by the time I die and added it all up, what would I have?  A month or two?  Six?  Years, even?  Enough time to fall in love or learn to dance.  But that whole time my eyes were closed and I was somewhere else.  Right now I’m the closest to hating sleep that I’ve ever been.  Maybe I won’t sleep again for the rest of this trip.  I could go back to school hungry and with heavy lines under my eyes to balance out all the rest of the well-fed and well-slept Midwesterners.  For two hours of grey pavement, swelling green hills, and obscure towns my intention was set.  I would take no rest.  I would force myself to think through all of this, to be fully here for this long drive.

—

Sitting on the bank of the river Mark pulled in a deep breath and was still for a second and I knew he was about to say something.

“We need to kayak this river.”

“Yeah.”

“When do you want to go?”

“Uh…next weekend?”

We just sat for a second and watched the light dance.

“We could put in up at Powers Ferry, leave my car down at the bluff and probably be out there for a few hours,” he said.

“Cool.”

—

I’m sitting at a Caribou a few days later, just letting my mind wander.  I look out at the perfect squares of grass and cement and think about how well everything fits together.  One day fits against the next one just so, glued together by a couple hours of TV, a couple beers, a couple friends just sitting around.  We’re so well organized.

But then Amy walks in and I get up from my chair, go over and stop thinking and start talking.  We talk about anything.

“I feel like I have a phantom limb,” I start.

She smiles back with her lips parted a little and I know she’s going to say something back.  She’ll say something clever and offhand.

Amy’s great.

—

The next Saturday I’m out on the river in a kayak; Mark’s got his about fifty feet downstream.  He’s doing some nice paddling but mostly I just float along and padde sometimes to catch up.

It feels like hiking on a well-worn trail because people are out on this river all the time.  It feels like a nice, safe, afternoon adventure and so, at the same time, feels nothing like an adventure.  But the clean air smells good and the current is strong so we float on.  Somewhere down there in the shade Mark’s car is parked on the gravel and it’s getting hot inside.  By the time we sit down on those vinyl seats they’ll burn the back of my legs pretty good.

But that doesn’t matter now.  For the next two hours I have a plan and my course is set.

I’ll be OK.

“My body is a furnace.” He would mutter to himself.  It is also true to say that he would be thinking this, because this is how Jack thought: in an undertone.

But all of this would happen in 21 minutes exactly, because when our story begins the time is 6:16 and Jack is still asleep.

There is a car in motion on Jack’s street at 6:16 and the driver is running late.  She is young and she has a job to do.  She has memorized her 348 paper route by sheer repetition.  It changes little over time.  During the course of a given week perhaps 2 or 3 homes will be added and a few others will be taken away but there is a core of houses that have always been on the list.  Jack’s house is one of these.  She has been outside of his house nearly every day of the year for the last two and a half years.  She has seen it in rain, in the hard winter darkness, under the slow warmth of summer mornings, in every possible combination of season and precipitation.  She has neither noticed it nor failed to notice it.  It has been just one more piece of the morning scenery.  But today, while appearing undifferentiated, is a special day.  Because today she will make a mistake.

There is a tightly-rolled paper lying on top of the dwindling pile in her back seat.  It wears the same orange sleeve as the others, but underneath the plastic blush it is different.  It is one day old.  It lies content, unconscious of what it will soon set in motion.  And then she swipes it up and gives it an unconcerned toss out the passenger window.  Smack!  It hits the driveway, rustles and is then stilled.  It too is caught up in the searing pause of that morning, a frozen moment between two glorious warm days.

———————–

The display on Jack’s clock reads 6:28.  His bedroom is hushed, stale, and cold.  He is sleeping on the far left edge of a king size, sprawled deeply in the unreserve that comes only with sleep.  The room is large and empty but for a dresser across from the foot of the bed.

There is one small picture on the dresser next to the clock.  The two objects stand there like soldiers on a great brown bare expanse of unadorned hardwood.  Between the edges of the gleaming frame there is a heavily creased picture of a man holding a baby boy.  The man is looking straight into the camera wearing a joyously distracted grin.  The boy is looking to his left and reaching out for something.

6:29.

The man’s smile appears contained, somehow, behind a natural reserve.  But his eyes are open, unrestrained.  His hair lies thick and thoughtless and brown.  He is holding the boy lightly.  The boy is twisting hard in the man’s arms, his mouth fallen agape, all of his energy focused on something just out of view.  They might have been surprised in the midst of play.  The man may have just picked the boy up, or just caught him back out of the air.  He may have done many things.

6:30.

The alarm goes off and Jack rolls to his feet quickly, makes the six-step journey across his too-large bedroom and turns the alarm clock off.  Standing there with his hand on top of the clock/radio he stares challengingly at the bright green display.  6:30.  His lips move slowly, deliberately, as if weaving an invocation.  The silent words rise up through his throat and wisp out his mouth:

“Stop.  Stop.  Stop.”

They are a breath, a glimmer.

Nothing happens.  And then,

6:31.

This is a blow.  Jack mutely replies:

“Slow.  Slow.  Slow.”

The words are round and, rolling down, they envelop the clock.  They imprison it, crystalline and impenetrable.  But then, shatteringly, it is 6:32.

Bowing his head, dropping his gaze, Jack’s shoulders slump a little more.

He stands there – lumpy gut and unshaven face sagging – for a minute or maybe more.

And then, while everywhere else he is still, Jack’s eyes begin to move.  They inch up, up, and continue up the face of the dresser.  He has moved past two drawers, now three, now he is to the top.  Still, his eyes creep across the smooth top, gaining ground.  His gaze moves around the frame, circling it once, slowly drawing in every detail, every time-worn indentation.  And now he is looking past the man and seeing only the boy.  Seeing him jerk and squirm, seeing him reach and explore.  There is a fathomless sadness that reaches out from Jack’s eyes.  He stands staring at the boy with his head pitched forward, as if ready to receive sentence, for as long as he can bear.

With his head jerking up the connection is broken and, turning quickly, he dons his robe and slippers and stumps downstairs to start the coffee.

He moves lightly around his bare kitchen, starting the Mr. Coffee that he had prepared the night before [“The ‘start’ button should be labeled ‘sputter,’” he remarks], putting his cast-iron skillet on the stove and heating it up for his morning eggs, putting down toast and pulling out a bottle of his Tuesday breakfast beverage, medium pulp orange juice, from his black refrigerator.

His preparations are clipped, honed to a razor’s edge.  He disembarks from the kitchen, taking the usual number of steps through the front entry to the door.  Four locks later he is on his porch, lengthening his stride out to the waiting paper and it is 6:37.

He walks back into his thin-walled tract home and sets the paper down heavily onto the island in the kitchen.

The coffee has all dripped down through to the pot.  Jack quickly fries up four eggs over easy while buttering his light toast.  He is moving smoothly, quickly, ready to finish his breakfast routine so that he can move on to the shower and then get dressed.  The paper will play only a tangential role, something to occupy his eyes and short term memory while his mouth and hands are busy.

Breakfast is set and he picks up the paper, sliding it out of the plastic.  He rolls the rubber band off and whips it open.

“What.”

Sitting heavily, arms extended, eyes roving, dark brow furrowed, he is a picture of incredulous disbelief.

There is a long pause.  The stillness in the kitchen momentarily joins that of the outside world.

His throat convulses briefly, stills.  He slowly lets his arms fall, the paper crumpling face down before him.

“You made a mistake; how?  No.  What’s the meaning of this?  No, too formal.”

He thinks for a moment.

“Was this a prank or something?  How did this happen?  Yes, that’s it.”

With this preparation complete, his furrowed brow smoothes.  His head bowing, eyes growing quiet once more, he quickly eats the eggs and toast.

———————–

His day passes in industrious solitude.

———————–

The next morning as the clock reads 5:17 Jack is lying flat on his back, staring unblinkingly up at the ceiling.  He is waiting for the alarm to sound, for his day’s opening bell.  Crunching up slightly in his bed, he glances over at the clockface.

“Almost an hour.”

He seems to digest this thought.  Then he lurches up, swinging his skinny legs over the edge of the bed and rising.  His day is beginning earlier than usual, but this is necessary.  He must be vigilant.  The paper boy could come at any time and he must – must! – be ready.

Slumping quietly downstairs he finds himself breathing too heavily out of anticipation for the meeting.  He begins working himself up to full readiness, ignorant as he is of the moment he will be called upon.

“Was this a prank or something?  How did this happen?  Hmmm…”

“Was this a prank or something? How did this happen?!  No, no.”

“What is this to you?  Huh?  A prank?!  Are you some sort of prankster…or, or something?”

Shrouded implications rest heavily in that final word.  His voice is becoming powerful, working up the circulation in his head and chest.   As time passes he quiets down, but continues mumbling the words “prankster” and a heavily, almost absurdly, emphasized “something” as he finishes preparing his morning refreshment.

And then, sitting with coffee in hand, he waits.  Loosely gripping his favorite black and white piano key mug he sits staring out the door to his kitchen at the front window.  He has opened it slightly, letting in some of the frigid air but also permitting entry to the morning noises.  He will hear the engine and then he will rush out.  His bathrobe will surely billow impressively behind him, his clear voice ringing ominously through the suburban morning hush.  His head ringed with thickly matted bed-hair, haloed as it were.  The hot black coffee will still be burning in his ulcerated stomach and his words will similarly rise forth to strike the negligent delivery boy with righteous conviction.

“Yes.  Your time is coming.”  He mutters slowly, letting the words drip down onto the table.  Darkness rests on his brow, a mug-shaped lightning bolt clutched warmly in his hand.  He is ready for battle.

Fourteen minutes later the neighborhood hush is struck own by a loudly rattling muffler.  The sound lands heavily across Jack’s kitchen and with that the first blow has been struck.  Well, the second actually.  The paper was the first.  He must respond!  Honor demands it.

Rising like the tempest, billowing through his kitchen and out the already unlocked front door he flashes.  The offending paper clutched naked in his left hand, held at readiness, the cooled, splashing, and ignored coffee still unconsciously gripped in his right, he strides powerfully across the lawn.  He can see the car now, rounding the corner.  It moves at an impressive pace, papers slinging lightly out of its front windows.  Inside, the cab is dark and in the low light he cannot clearly make out the driver.  There is only a shadowy form constantly twisting, reaching, throwing.  They seem to be driving mostly by instinct.

Sizing up his adversary, he slows his pace and feels his energy flow through him.  It is the energy of rising early and going out into the morning chill with a job to do.  He has stopped moving now.  He is just standing, slightly hunched over, coffee dripping heavily from the soaked sleeve of his robe, paper clutched to his chest in defiance, righteous indignation rising in his chest.  It rises to his face, making it grow hot and red, making his eyes flash.  The final possible moment for action is fast approaching and now, now he is frozen.  He has become rooted.

The car rattles nearer, the noise building.  It is perhaps 30 feet away now.  It is time.

“PrankSTER!” his rasped pronouncement becomes a roar, a battle-cry.

Lunging forward into the street the mug falls forgotten, irrelevant, into the dewy grass.  There it rests, bleeding out the last of its life in one final rush.  His slippers hit the pavement and, slightly off balance, he crashes across the street to meet the car as it draws even with his house.  Now, in his hour of greatest need, words fail him.  The blood is pounding at his temples and behind his ears, the pressure building.  It must find expression.  He reaches the opposite side of the street a moment before the car does.  He turns quickly to face the onrattling beast.  He raises the paper up and begins to issue his judgement:

“Was this a…” he begins hotly.  But then the obvious realization crashes through him a moment before the car does.  His legs are blasted backwards, feet sliding instantly out of his slippers leaving them where they lie, his indignantly ballooned chest dents the hood an instant before his head and raised arms crack the windshield.  His widened unbelieving eyes lock for the splittest of seconds with the shadowed eyeholes of the prankster controlling the rattling beast from within the darkness.  The moment of shocked unrecognition is broken as he rolls over the hood and windshield back to the pavement.

Thud.

———————–

Looking down from a great height one could take in the whole scene with a wide lens.  There, further outside his house than he has been in years Jack lies prone, shattered.  His legs are splayed at an absurd angle, arms spread wide, head tilted back unreservedly resting on the pavement and he is not moving.  The car is still running, driver-side door ajar, skid marks left behind and beneath.  There is a young woman kneeling next to Jack.  She has not succumbed to shock.  She is quickly dialing a short number and now speaking in low measured tones to an operator, describing her emergency.

Jack’s head is inclined towards her and his eyelids are fluttering lightly in the cold air.  His eyes are still and gazing up into the infinite sky.  His eyes are glassy and clear, liberated by the collision and the endorphins.  He says nothing.

Looking down, one could see further toward the middle of town a blue and red light beginning to flash, a tinny siren sounding.  The light moves quickly toward Jack through a series of right angles.  Further back a red light flashes on a heavier vehicle and a different siren sounds.  They grow closer, closer, four and some minutes later they arrive.  Jack is assessed, gently and quickly lifted, wheeled, laid down, doors are closed and he is off.

The young woman stands speaking with an officer.

“What happened?”

“He…shouted something, I think.  I heard it.  Right when I looked up, there he was in front of me.  I couldn’t stop.  I…”  she shakes her head and trails off.

“Do you know which house he lives in?”

“No.  I’ve never seen him before.”

“Do you know their names?  The people you deliver to?”

“No, only the addresses.  They pay the Herald and the Herald pays me.  I never see most of them.”

“Okay.  Officer Dean has a few more questions for you.  We’ll take your information down and be in touch.”

She nods and crosses her arms, looking off to her right.  She stares at each house down the line, questioning them.  As the first officer turns away and begins to walk back to his squad car she reaches a decision, takes four quick steps and reaches out for his arm.  He turns.

“When you find out what his name is, could you give me a call?”

“Yeah.  I’ll do that.”

“Ok.  Thank you.”

———————–

Jack lies stiffly on a small white bed.  Everywhere, white linoleum, bare walls, cheap furniture.

He is looking at the small bed stand to his right.  His brow is creased, his breathing deep and even.

A young nurse walks into the room.

“You’re awake,” she begins, “good.  How are you feeling?  You had quite a day yesterday.”  She says all this quickly and continues exhaling after the words have ended.

Jack says nothing, but turns slowly to look at her where she stands next to the foot of his bed.  Carefully, his eyes move across her face as if memorizing it.

“What do you remember?” She continues.

He sits silently for a long moment, studying her as she moves around his bed, checking the displays.  She finishes and appears to be in the verge of turning away, continuing on her rounds, when his voice finally cracks across the curtained room.

“I remember sitting at my table.  I remember getting up and walking out to the front lawn.  And then…I remember crashing down onto the ground.  The cement.”  His voice slows.

“I felt…” he trails off.  Then, he begins again.

“I felt strange.  Something had been broken down.  It was, uh…” losing his train of thought, he begins to think of an old picture he has seen.

“What had been broken down?” she asks.  She has half turned away; other patients and other responsibilities are pulling at her even now.  But this man’s words are different.  He is speaking from across a great expanse, from out of the abyss.  She can see that and wants to understand where he has been, what the abyss is like from the inside.

“What was it?” she repeats, softer now.

The softness of her voice catches his attention.  He has his thought completed, the image set in his mind.  The barest shadow of a grin has lightly caught up the corners of his mouth as he begins afresh.

“You know of the Berlin Wall?  Yes?  You have seen the pictures of the wall as it was falling, being torn down?  There was one picture that I saw that had a hole in the wall.  It was large enough for a man to step through, but nobody was going through it.  There was a boy on the east side and a boy on the west side.  They weren’t going through the wall, they were both just sitting there and looking at each other.  Maybe they said ‘hi’, I don’t know.  But that was what I felt.  I felt like I was laying down and looking out.”

Wide-angle pan out.

The nurse smiles slightly at him then, taking him in.  She nods her recognition, looks down, leaves the room.  Jack watches her go.  Now she is gone and he once more resumes his contemplation of the bed stand.

Fade to black.  Roll credits.