By Mark Miner

    Rain leaked in the sides of his Keds, the Velcro did a poor job of sealing.  He looked at his jeans, or rather into them, and saw blood welling through the mud on his knee.  Hair glued itself to his forehead and across his eye.  He brushed it higher, sticking it up out of the way, and felt a sting in his hand and a scratch on his skin.  Lips trembling, he picked the pea gravel out of the heel of his hand, one at a time until they were all gone.  His stomach hurt in a line across it, probably where the handlebars had hit.  The bike was halfway across the small field at the bottom of the hill.  His hat was a few feet beyond the tree that had at once tripped him with a root and stopped him with the trunk.  He had mixed feelings about the tree.  Walking was hard, and he limped his way down the rest of the hill, slipping and catching himself on his good hand every now and then.  It wasn't a tall hill, when you weren't bleeding.  Now it seemed to stretch on to eternity.  He must be almost in Bellevue by now, it felt.  Fifty feet later, he had his BMX back.  It was ok, but the rubber on the end of the grip had torn off.  Oh well.  He pushed it beside him and began to trudge back to his house.  The rain fell harder.  A motorist slowed down and asked if he was alright.  He sniffed and nodded at them, with eyes that said otherwise.  But they left him alone.  He always wanted to be left alone when he got hurt, except that he wanted his mom.  She was allowed into his sanctum of hurt.  Though the Solarcaine stung, it was the pain of being cared for, and his mind could grasp that.  So on he went, the longest quarter mile he had ever walked, back home.

 

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