10

His bones were paper, his skin the loose outside of a plucked chicken, stretched over his face, falling into accordion pleats on his neck. He was probably 20,000 years old.

A young man held him by the arm, tightly, as if a grip could lengthen a life, as if you held on hard enough and with enough wishing you could make it last forever.

It was slow going for them as they walked across the parking lot. I believe every imperfection in the smooth of the asphalt leapt in front of them to ensure their passage would be slow, their going tedious. I could see it from where I stood. The broken glass - sprinkles of white-hot lava. The potholes - endless chasms of the deep. The tufts of crab grass - fierce jungles that must be cut through with the feeble force of an orthopedic shoe.

Midway through their journey, they stopped short. The old man’s shoe was untied. Gently, the young man bent down and slipping the laces around his fingers tied a beautiful bow. I guess the mistake lay in the second security knot. Perhaps he pulled the loops too tightly, or perhaps the old man became disoriented, or perhaps it was a design of old, and this was a moment destined to be. At any rate, the old man lost his balance and fell over the young man’s outstretched arms, looping gracefully towards the gravel. In that split second when I believed everything was lost, the time between the shot and the buzzer, the time between the red light and the rush of cars, the piece of time that will remain forever suspended in a great, shuddering question – the young man’s arms slipped under the old man’s body, cradling it above the ground, cradling a man like an infant.

They stayed in that position for a moment. Then slowly, tenderly, the young boy rose to his feet with the old man still safe in the crook of his arms and walked the rest of the way across the parking lot.