The BUCK stops WHERE? Part.03

A recent story by Bob Buckeye of Middlebury, VT.


Buckeye links:
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_hb3544/is_200203/ai_n8361544
http://lakewoodobserver.com/home.php?which=columns&col=14

At Columbia, a sea of expectant faces, the country of the young.
Part 3
by Robert Buckeye

***
--I'm going for a run.

These days he had to. Dylan could no more explain it to himself, let alone someone else. He put his hands against the side of the house and stretched out hamstrings and calves. His left calf was tight. Sometimes when he lay on the couch to read the Times after dinner it cramped. If anyone asked

Let it go, Sarah said. We can't do anything unless it follows some routine you've come up with, why, no one understands, let alone you, but we have to follow it anyway. Don't ask, you say. Can't we do anything but take the back road to town? The highway takes you there, and it's quicker.

He bent over, touched his toes and held the stretch for a count of ten. Every morning the paper had something disturbing to report. Every night the television brought it up to date. It was the best of times. It was the worst of times. Every generation must think that. He twisted his torso to the right, then back to the left, stretching the muscles of his chest. When his grandfather first arrived in New York he thought there would be gold on the streets

You get what you deserve, but no one said it was payback. These last few weeks his chest was always tight. He was drinking too much coffee. He rotated his neck in a circle, first clockwise, then counter-clockwise. His mother never could handle stress. She worried everything to death, never let it go, even when it was gone, and, later in life, had to take nitroglycerin for angina.

He never asked Gayle why Jake left, and she never said anything. She had a photograph of him on the end table next to her bed, and one day it was no longer there. The man in the photograph was a stranger. This summer Dylan was obsessed by why he left, but it did not seem to have to do with Jake.

You think I enjoy this? he wanted to yell to the three lean, fit cyclists in brightly-colored jerseys who went by. He clasped his hands above his head and stretched them, lengthening the muscles of the back and shoulders. He loves Sarah. She's attractive. A good woman. Why does he feel apologetic when he runs a hand down her back?

He remembers the blonde teller at the bank yesterday who had a turned-up nose, pale blue eyes, a sweet smile. She was young, so young. The muscles of his quadriceps stretched, taut. It felt good. He was in better shape than he thought.