Savage Tales

few seconds before turning to descend. But the door opened behind me and her voice said, "Dr. Kruger, you're back! So good to see you. Do come in. Where's Rod?"
    And I couldn't hide it. It must have shown on my face, so alien to anything else she had seen from me. I felt like I'd been kicked in the balls and the nausea crept up through my stomach and into my heart.
    She began to cry and say No, no, no.
    Her husband came to see what the matter was, and he too picked up on the vibe, until both of them were crying and yelling and confusion reigned and the facts, the facts, they had to be known.
    But what mattered facts. What mattered words. I went in to face their wrath which was more consolatory than anything I might have expected, and I found forgiveness where I had no right to any, and finally I left, berating myself far more than they ever could.
    I must have walked for three or four hours across the city that day. I was a zombie. I didn't see anything and it's a wonder I didn't walk into a bus accidentally and end it myself.
    Somehow I found myself near Limehouse along the Thames and staring into the water. It seemed like it wanted to speak, but could only go on and on. I could imagine Roderick just the same, clawing through and ghostly pale from another place and trying to speak, but nothing. Nothing.
    Had he even known he was dying? Or had it all been over before pain, regret, and sorrow, might be comprehended? Did it even matter now?
    I am a strong man, despite circumstances, and I never once considered jumping into those waters to allow myself to slip under and end it as invisibly as Roderick had gone. But something in my eyes must have told the tale, because an ancient man came to my side and looked me over, caught my attention from the corner of my eye, and tried to convey a smile.
    "You all right, son?" he said.
    "I am," I said. "I'm just trying to forgive myself."
    "Done something wrong, eh? Well, that's nothing new. At least you can see it. Be thankful for that."
    "And why?"
    "Because some can't, or won't, and never will. Because they will go on to do it again, and at least you have the mind to see it for what it is."
    "Yes. Yes, that's true. But the pain of what I have done lingers."
    "And maybe it'll get better and maybe it'll get worse. But you got to live with it. And maybe one day you'll forgive yourself. Just don't throw your life away."
    "Throw my…? Look, I had no plans to do anything of the sort."
    "That's not what I was seeing. Maybe you would have been under before you knew what you'd done."
    "It wouldn't be so bad."
    "For you, maybe, though I don't fancy getting a lungful of that slimy water myself. But don't leave us a mess to clean up."
    I smiled to reassure him and patted his shoulder, then left.
    Above in the sky the clouds were curdling over to blot out the sun and I thought of an African sun thousands of miles away and a gang of boys that never meant harm and could not be called murderers but who had somehow lured a boy from another, strange land into their midst and magnetized him from his path and instructions to ten seconds of foolhardiness that had ended him before he even knew what had caught him. Those boys were still there, wandering and playing, no doubt. How long would the white boy linger in their memory as a spirit, taunting them? Would they ever realize the good he intended, or was his death as mysterious to them as it had been to Roderick?
    A cracking sound in the sky and water began to fall, slow at first, and then in waves. Carry this water across the earth and soak them, and the boy's grave. Let it sift through dirt and find out the body and soul and push it under, away from the rank scorch of the sun. Let it sink and decay and never meet the metal shards again, passing through the bellies of earthworms and into the weeds that leeched upon that soil.
    He walked until he hailed a cab, and returned to his flat. When neatly enclosed within his home, he sat in a rocking chair, saturated with rain, and bore the weight of a million wandering boys in his head.

NEW YEAR

    New Year's resolutions make me feel so bound by time. Why must I resolve to be anything but what I am? What belief in the future? Why me.
    Every day I would wake and make a list. It would be the things I wanted to change. But I soon realized I was making battles where there were none. I would begin a campaign denying that Lincoln really was shot. I would start an organization that worked to give animals all the