On the Run

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In his dreams there was light and color, remembered faces and old accusations, and in his dreams his voice seemed to go on and on, explaining, justifying himself to skeptics.

But he would come out of the dreams, out of a remembered litheness, back into a body ninety-two years old, to the hush of a house of illness. He knew his impatience was irrational. The body had always healed itself in time. Sickness had always been temporary. But this business of dying seemed to involve so much waiting.

He envied the other old ones, dying all over the world, envied them for their blurred minds which made brief and glancing contacts with reality. But he in turn could be envied, he knew. There was no pain. The lower spine was gone, the legs dead. And there was the money, of course. Money kept you from dying among charitable strangers. Money was a deodorant, keeping you sweet and sanitary and inoffensive despite the mess of helplessness. But how the clear mind roamed all dimensions of the mortal trap, deploring past acts, dreading blackness, whining about truth.

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