It was an experiment.
Somewhere.
I was running. It wasn’t fast. Snow was on the ground and in my hair and eyes. But I was running, somewhere, and that’s all that mattered.
It was dark. Not overly so. Shadows from the trees danced around the snow, and the cool smell of a distant burning lingered in the air. There was a fire, somewhere, and it was warm.
The fire was bright. It burned my soul. He gave me food, perhaps his only food left in the world, to eat as he told me of his life. He had a life, here, and it was freer than mine.
His name was Bill. It was once George. He started out as a businessman and then he became a cook. He had a book published, somewhere, but it’s no longer on shelves.
He once sold stocks. Mostly to criminals. They wore pinstriped suits and had shoes made from alligators and suitcases to match. One of them was put into a jail somewhere, and now he writes country songs on love and death.
He had a limp. The war took his gait. He was shot on a damp and humid day because that‘s what happens during wars. The bullet is still in his leg; somewhere there is still a bullet inside a Korean.
He had a child. Almost fourteen. He had last seen him on his sixth birthday when his wife took him and moved in with her lover. Though he smiled when he talked about him; somewhere his child could be smiling too.
He left last year. June or July. He followed the stars because the stars was the only trail he ever knew. Someone, somewhere, was looking at those stars with him.
It wasn’t money. He had plenty. He took a ten dollar bill out of his pocket and he filled it with tobacco and he lit it on fire. I watched as the ash blew in the wind; somewhere that ash would help trees grow.
The fire died. His spirits too. His limp was prominent and he used a stick to walk himself deeper and deeper into the woods. He was leaving to go somewhere that only the trees knew.
He was running. It wasn’t fast. Snow was on the ground and in his hair and eyes. But he was running, somewhere, and that’s all that mattered.
