Today I kept running, trying to make the most out of the lingering daylight, because I was
running late, because a graveyard was definitely not where I wanted to be after dark. I had
watched too many movies for that.
The pathway snaked the cemetery and eventually led through a fence of overgrowth and trees. I
ran into the opening of the field of weeds and into the projects. The projects were a city
within the city, a bouquet of high-rise public-housing apartment buildings built by the good
people of Callister. What they really were was ugly and, as far as I could tell, barely
habitable. They were built quite hastily by the city in the middle of a large piece of land—an
unusually large, vacant, removed, industrial piece of land. The city’s plan was to keep the
poor off the streets, or away and out of sight from the rest of the city. Entering the projects
was like entering another world.
While the cemetery had been virtually deserted, the field around the buildings was veiled with
people. It had been the first really warm day of the year. The sun was shining, and the city—
even the city within the city—was suddenly coming out of hibernation. Hard-up kids played and
screamed in the tall grass, families were grouped around tiny barbeques, rap music was blaring,
and foot traffic congested the walkways. So I made my way through the crowd, weaving in and out
of the foot traffic to the beat of my breath and Bob Marley on my headphones.
Contrary to one of my roommate’s theory, I wasn’t trying to be retro with my ancient Walkman.
I’d discovered it in our basement when we first moved into the house. It was free, and free was
all I could afford. Yes, the Bob Marley tape that was already in there had melted into the
Walkman. And yes, I was forced to listen to the same tape over and over again. But it didn’t
matter—it was all I needed to quiet the voice in my head long enough to put one foot in front
of the other without tripping.
But when I ran through the crowd today, I started to realize that something was different, wrong
somehow. People were staring at me, maybe even more than usual. I stared ahead and tried to keep
my mind on my pace, on my breath, away from my delusions.
Except that I wasn’t being paranoid—people were definitely staring. And then they were moving.
Away from me. Parting to the sides as I ran past, like the sea in that book—though nothing
about this felt biblical. Was there something on my face? I brought my hand to my sweaty face,
as coolly as I could, quickly passing my fingers over my skin. As far as I could detect, there
were no nose bleeds or anything else that was abnormal—abnormal for me. That was when I noticed
a lady in front of me a few yards away. The fact that she was wearing a yellow hat, and had a
plastic yellow purse made me notice her more than the fact that she was looking right at me. She
was mouthing something, but all I could hear was Bob’s voice.
Before I could grasp that she was telling me to watch out, a large black shadow had sped to me.
I never had time to react. Something hard and heavy had rammed into me from behind, and I was
brought down to the ground.
I came crashing, face-first, into the pebbled walkway with barely enough time to pull my hands
out in front of me to break some of my fall. And that was where I laid—pinned. Then something
bounced off my back, and I felt something hot, wet and sticky on my face. It wasn’t blood.
Glimpsing up, dazed, I saw the cow-sized head of a dog too close to my face, very big teeth,
leash hanging freely from its neck. I heard a winded voice but I didn’t think that I could
respond. Even if I could, I wouldn’t—afraid the dog’s tongue would slip into my mouth if I
tried to open it to speak. A man had come to grab the massive beast’s leash and pulled it away
from my now-licked-clean face. I felt a strong hand on my arm, and I was tugged up to my shaky
feet.
While I came back to life, I investigated my hands. They were pretty scraped up. And though I
couldn’t see any tears in my sweatpants, I knew that I would have plum-sized bruises on my
kneecaps tomorrow. On the ground I saw my prized Walkman, shattered to pieces all the way down
the walkway. I pulled the now useless earphones away from my ears and let them drop to the
ground.
“I’m okay,” I finally answered, though I wasn’t sure if anyone had asked me.
Glancing up, facing the westerly setting sun, I brought my hand to my forehead to rim my eyes
from the blinding light. What I could see was the dog’s owner, the shadow of a boy or a man in
a gray sweater. He was tall, and his face was hidden by the darkness of his gray hood and the
ball cap that was pulled down to his eyebrows.
We stood there, studying each other like boxers do after they step into the ring.
I was waiting for what would generally come next after a dog attack, like an apology or an offer
to get my clothes dry-cleaned or his lawyer’s name so that our lawyers could connect easily
when I filed a lawsuit.