Velocity

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Vito and Lynn Cerra, Ross and Rosemary Cerra.

I’ll never figure out why Gerda said yes to me.

But now your family has a crazy wing.

A man can be destroyed but not

defeated.

—Ernest Hemingway,

The Old Man and the Sea

And now you live dispersed on ribbon roads,

And no man knows or cares who is his neighbour

Unless his neighbour makes too much disturbance,

But all dash to and fro in motorcars,

Familiar with the roads and settled nowhere.

—T.S. Eliot,

Choruses from “The Rock”

5

PART 1

THE CHOICE IS YOURS

Chapter 1

With draft beer and a smile, Ned Pearsall raised a toast to his deceased neighbor, Henry Friddle, whose death greatly pleased him.

Henry had been killed by a garden gnome. He had fallen off the roof of his two-story house, onto that cheerful-looking figure. The gnome was made of concrete. Henry wasn’t.

A broken neck, a cracked skull: Henry perished on impact.

This death-by-gnome had occurred four years previously. Ned Pearsall still toasted Henry’s passing at least once a week.

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