Like much of my life until that sixteenth year, it was a sunny day. A Sunday afternoon. I was in Carol Eckert’s house on Pine Street. We were in the living room. Carol was telling me about her new boyfriend, and I, as always, was the good listener.
The doorbell rang. It was my younger brother, Bill, panting. “Lucky was hit by a car!”
Lucky was our dog.
I didn’t know what to say except, “Where?”
“Johnson Highway.”
I apologized to Carol and left with Bill. We ran. We ran down Pine to Roberts, down Roberts to Locust, and up Locust toward Johnson Highway. As we came near, I wanted to say to Bill, “You look. I’m not stopping.” I wanted to cross Johnson Highway and not look down but run on, run out of town, out of time, out of myself, because I was having a bad year, and it was too few hours ago that I was king.