Life Expectancy

accessorizes my leg bones, but sometimes in the winter, I am able to discern the location and precise shape of every plate and screw.
        When I figured I was two thirds of the way up the slope and had not seen a flashlight or any other indication of a man on his way down, I paused. Certain that my footing was secure, I rose to full height, the better to survey the crest of the slope, which still lay over a hundred yards above me.
        Even if the Hummer were parked along the shoulder, I didn't expect to see it at this severe an angle. I thought I might detect the aurora of its headlights or parking lights, but the crest was defined only by the faint gray ambient glow of the open snow-filled sky over the highway.
        I didn't believe that the attacker would have left the scene. After being so determined to stop us, he would never have driven casually away. And if his intention had been to kill us, he wouldn't trust in that steep but negotiable hill to have done the job.
        Patience is required of a good pastry chef, but occasionally mine was short even in the kitchen. Standing there, waiting for our assailant to reveal himself, I grew as irritated as I sometimes did when making creme anglaise from egg yolks, sugar, and milk, which requires steady stirring with a wire whip and low heat so that the yolks won't scramble.
        My yolks were starting to scramble, in a manner of speaking, when a rushing sound came from overhead. This was not merely a quickening of the wind but something formidable plummeting from the high canopy of branches.
        Considering that as a student I'd had no head for history, Greek or otherwise, I thought it strange that I should think of the razor-sharp sword suspended by a hair over the head of Damocles.
        I looked up.
        Pale, cutting the air with a whoosh, many blades descended in an arc, but softer than steel: pinions forming a six-foot wingspan. I saw luminous round eyes and the sharpness of a beak, heard its familiar question-"Who?"-and knew it was an owl. Nevertheless I cried out in surprise as it passed over me.
        Scouting for forest rodents, the great bird swooped north-northwest, descending with the slope, gliding soundlessly now. It crossed the trail that the Explorer had made on its downward journey-and sailed past a man whose presence had until then not registered with me.
        Even to dark-adapted eyes, visibility was poor in those woods. The patchwork of bare earth and faintly luminous snow had the eerie quality of a dreamscape, seemed always to be shifting, as if it were a black-and-white mosaic at the bottom of a slowly, slowly turning kaleidoscope.
        He stood thirty feet north of me, maybe twenty feet downslope, visible between trees. In mutual stealth, we had passed each other, un aware.
        Although brief and not loud, my cry had revealed me to him, and the owl had drawn my eyes to his silhouette. I could see no details of him, not even the fleecy collar of his leather coat, just an unmistakably human form.
        I had expected him to reveal his position with a flashlight. He couldn't possibly have followed the Explorer's tracks such a distance in gloom as deep and deceptive as this unaided by a lamp.
        I wondered if he could see me at least as well as I saw him. I dared not move in case he hadn't yet pinpointed the source of the cry that had alerted him.
        He opened fire.
        Back at our house, when he had first gotten out of the Hummer, the weapon had resembled military ordnance. Now the distinctive acketta-acketta-acketta of an assault rifle confirmed the initial impression.
        Louder than whip cracks, high-powered rounds lashed trees to the left and right of me.
        Astonished that the spray of bullets between those two hits had all missed me, I took no comfort that this was not one of the five terrible days on Grandpa Josef's list.
        I stood rooted like one of the evergreens. For a moment it seemed that Jimmy Tock, man of action, would do no more than dump an abundance of biological end products in his pants.
        Then I ran.
        Racing all but blindly south across the slope, I wished the majestic trees grew closer together. I weaved among the huge trunks, seeking what cover they might give, chased by another extended burst of gunfire, a death-drum para diddle in which any beat could mark a bullet in my back.
        I heard the thock when a tree was