Pity Him Afterwards

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He pulled his left leg up, and then his right. Moved his left hand forward, and then his right. On hands and knees, and then upward to his feet, leaning forward into the slant of the hill. He took three staggering steps upward, always teetering just short of falling backward down the hill toward the flickering flashlights down under the trees. Then he remembered the suitcase, still lying where he’d left it, three paces back. He shook his head heavily from side to side, grimacing and growling in exasperation, and, bent far forward, thudded his fists against the turf.

There was nothing for it but to go back. The suitcase was necessity.

He scrambled back down to the suitcase and grabbed it in his right hand. He glared quickly downslope, saw the flashlights closer, nearly to the upper limit of the trees, and growled deep in his throat. (He wouldn’t talk to the doctors, and couldn’t talk to the other patients, and there was no one else to talk to. He’d gotten the habit of talking to himself, but mainly silently, in his head, with only grunts and growls coming to the surface, a mannerism common among men who live alone or work alone. It was not a symptom of his madness, but of his solitude.)

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