Last spring he tore a tendon connecting
his left triceps muscle to the arthritic
elbow caused by falling off his kid’s
skateboard forty-years ago. At the end
of his left arm, the second knuckle of
his pinkie finger is twice the size
of any other knuckles from an old high
school baseball injury. It gets gout
in it quite easily when the man drinks
and it hurts like hell. While he hiked in
the woods near his home his left arm
fell onto the ground near the path, but
he kept walking. Last fall while pushing
against his right thigh to work his sore
IT band, he tore the meniscus in his right
knee. He had to stop jogging for five
months and had only jogged once since
then and the knee really hurt. A little
farther along the path, his right leg
fell off. Fortunately, he had a hiking
stick to hold himself up. He hopped with
just a left leg and right arm. They start-
ed to become sore and fell off toward
the end of the hike. He rolled down the
hill into the pond, saw a nice minnow
and took a bite. The next thing he knew,
he was being pan-fried with potatoes
and onions and heard his dad calling
his mother and sister to breakfast
while on vacation in the north woods
of Wisconsin. He wondered what would
happen to the hiking stick. It was
purchased at a Pow Wow of the Ottawa
Indians in Hart, Michigan and he really
liked it. However, it wouldn’t do him
much good anymore. In the distance he
heard Dvorak’s Largo from Symphony #9,
The New World, “Goin’ home, goin’ home,
Lord, I’m goin’ home.” After breakfast,
his dad wrapped the man’s innards in a
newspaper and buried them two feet in
the ground and well away from the lake,
which was what they did back in the day,
but the raccoons and opossum got to the
paper before he had a chance to read the
obituaries.