Ms. Bookbinder Has Serials For Breakfast

Pursuit

Chapter 7

     A pack of predatory humans, a smaller, terrified victim, and hot pursuit: In these three factors may be added up the sum of human misery since the dawn of rosy fingered time. The victim, a very small boy in a patchwork jacket much too light for winter, was running as fast as he could, but was being slowed down by a disproportionately oversized backpack. The pursuers, all disproportionately oversized older boys not encumbered by personal luggage, were gaining fast. The victim had done no crime, save for being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Being in the right place at the right time had not happened often for this particular little boy and, in fact, had been for him such a statistical improbability that he rarely even considered the option of anything else but failure and defeat. Not that he was a pessimist. No, this little boy was very adept at a feral kind of survival. But he certainly wasn't an optimist either. Such distinctions, however, are best left to the philosophers and poets. When one is in peril one usually has little time to consider such details.

     "Come on, guys, let's get him!"
     The smaller boy swerved abruptly and ducked down a side alley. Only moments later, the pack rounded in, got halfway down, and stopped in their tracks. It was a dead end, blocked by tall buildings, dumpsters, and the debris of a flourishing and functioning society, if by flourishing and functioning one means making an undue amount of noise and commotion. Their eyes narrowed as they fanned out, poking randomly into odd bits of rubbish in an attempt to flush their prey. Suddenly the small boy erupted, panting, from a pile of garbage behind them and bolted back towards the street.

     Their jaws tightened. Their eyes dilated. Their fists clenched. It wasn't all fun and games anymore. They had been deceived! Now it was about personal honor. With redoubled efforts they caught up with their quarry in front of a boarded up building and, after a few pleasant brutalities, left laughing with the backpack as their trophy. After examining its contents with waning interest, they grew bored and tossed it down a ravine, giving it a few rips for good measure before setting off in search of new adventures.

     The small boy lifted himself out of the puddle of slush in which he had been so thoughtfully left with a soft sob. It wasn't so much the cold water or the bruises or the loss of the backpack itself which saddened him as it was the contents of the backpack: A few odds and ends, a worn but still serviceable blanket, and...dare it even be mentioned...a cache of peanut butter crackers. It may not seem like much to some, but to that small boy the loss of these items represented the culmination of a series of major and minor battles, the crowning touch of a lifetime (albeit short) of sorrow, the final nail in the coffin that contained the camel whose back had been broken by the last straw. Awkward, yes, but grief is rarely tidy, and an all encompassing sorrow of such magnitude is not to be considered without a few ungainly metaphors.

     Under normal circumstances, with temperatures dropping and a blizzard imminent, the boy would usually be employed in fashioning a shelter for himself. During winters he had grown quite adept at finding or making warm places to ride out the inclement weather. When one is small it takes little: A shred of cardboard, a few comfy garbage bags, and voila! There you have a mansion of which a Rockefeller need not be ashamed. Alas, the fury of the storm was coming on fast. Time was lacking for the usual preparations, but worse than that, he simply could not do it anymore. His will to live had departed with the peanut butter crackers. No careworn mother would be waiting anxiously for him at the cottage door for his return, for there was no mother that his memory could recall, nor, for that matter, was there memory of anything approximating a cottage. No stalwart father was there to lift him up, brush off the already collecting snow, and carry him back to the family fold, wreathed in love and the faint smells of aftershave and cherry tobacco. Sigh if you will. Weep if you must. Grown men have lived and died for much greater and lesser things than a packet of peanut butter crackers.