There Was A Boy
October 27, 1998
6:29 a.m.
There was a boy, and he was running as hard as he could run. His hair was streaking back from his head and his eyes looked like they were watering from the wind.  This is an image from this past weekend down in Louisville. I had just walked back from the stadium, and was standing on the top level of a five story parking garage, looking downward. I was ahead of everyone else, and could take a few minutes to just watch people as they trudged toward their cars. The time was late afternoon. The sun was still up, but would be gone in another thirty minutes or so. A train moved slowly over the tracks to my right. People were decked out in red and black--U of L's colors, and they were tired from an afternoon's baking in the sun. Old men shuffled along, young men walked, and women seemed to pretty much just put up with the whole thing (yeah, I know, I know). Everyone, I mean everyone was just strolling along, taking it easy. Everyone except the boy, of course. The boy ran. He ran hard across the parking lot, all by himself. His legs pumped at a thousand cycles a second, and his arms whipped back and forth, his fists clenched tightly. he ran harder with every step, his head thrown back. For a moment I wondered where his parents were, but I quickly became engrossed--afterall, I knew I was watching. The boy was safe as far as I was concerned. The run was easily twenty seconds long. Maybe thirty--which is a damned long time to sprint at the top of your capability. And I wondered, toward the end, why? Why run so hard so late in the day? Across a barren parking lot of gravel, for crying out loud. He neared the end, and the thought actually nagged at me. Why is this boy running? He came to the parking garage and he threw up his arms in victory. "I did it!" he cried, dancing around like a boxing champ. "I beat the train!" I looked to my right, and sure enough, the locomotive hadn't yet disappeared behind the building. The boy looked up then, and he saw me looking at him with what must have been a goofy grin. The look of horror on his face was obvious. He had been spied upon, and for a moment I felt embarrassed for having watched. Without really thinking about it, though, I leaned over the railing and looked at the boy from five stories up. And I started clapping, applauding him for the champion he most certainly was. The boy glanced up, smiling with teeth white in the light shadows of late afteroon. Then he ran back across the parking lot to join his parents.   Started the rewrite of the second story I wrote in LA a couple weeks ago. Spent most of the morning re-reading the critiques of my fellow class members. Did a bit of tweaking. The major rewrite starts tomorrow.  Daily Persistence is © Ron Collins |
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