The summer moon was full and I came bounding out the front door of my
house, feeling no pain, in hot pursuit of a pack of cigarettes that I had left in
my car. I didn't see the jogger at first. He was passing the house as I was
coming out, and I must have spooked him. He took a tumble on the
sidewalk, and, naturally, I wanted to see if he was OK.
"That looked like it hurt," I said. The young man made a grunting sound.
I gave him a hand to help him up and I noticed that he had blood running
from his knee. "Your leg is bleeding," I said.
"That's a good sign," said the jogger. "I'm more worried about the other
leg."
That's when I noticed it - the other leg was made of stainless steel or
something like stainless steel. It looked like something from The Terminator.
The jogger was rubbing the little ball of his knee cap, which was perfectly
round, checking it for scuff marks. Two slightly angled steel rods with a
space of open air between them took the place of what would have been
lower leg bones, and those rods met at a complex ankle joint engineered to
disappear into a special New Balance running shoe.
I could see why he was so proud of the fake leg. He hopped up and down
on it like a pogo stick and declared himself fit. Before he could go, I
extended my hand again and introduced myself. "I'm Howard," I said.
I didn't remember seeing him around before, but he said his name was Matt
and that he lived down the street not too far. He wasn't very old, several
years younger than me by the looks of his face.
"Do you mind telling me what happened to your leg?" I asked. I couldn't
help it; I didn't want to let him go until I found out the story.
He gave me an odd look, as if trying to decide whether or not I was worth it.
"Most people are afraid to ask," Matt said. "So I guess I can tell you."
He shifted his weight onto his good leg and started talking, and he didn't
give me the short version either.
"I was going down the road with a guy who was maybe 19. While this kid
was driving, he was telling me all about the sluts he'd done it with back
home. Crude stuff. But here we were and we were laughing and joking. The
kid had also been farting all morning. He thought that was so damn funny.
Finally, I decided, what the hell? I might as well make a contribution..."
Matt put his weight back on the fake leg now, snorted, and looked down at
the ground before continuing.
"And that's when all hell broke loose. It was like I had ignited the
atmosphere. I could feel my leg exploding and then everything was on fire,
everything around me was red. I don't remember anything else until the
hospital. They must have pulled me out of there fast."
He looked up. I nodded, and I guess he felt like it was OK to keep going
some more.
"I woke up in some hospital, I don't even know what country it was in.
Everything was hazy, but I tried to sit up and look around. I was
surrounded by all of these patients, you know, and I could already see that
they were missing arms and legs. I wasn't even thinking about my own leg
at this point. I think I was probably crying or laughing like a mad man,
waving my arms, trying to get the attention of a nurse. I had this
overwhelming feeling that I had blown all of these guys up, you know, that it
was all my fault."
He studied my reaction now. "Crazy," he said, as if that summed it all up.
"No way," I told Matt. "You're probably the biggest hero I've ever met."
I don't know if he was buying it, but he looked relieved. I didn't ask him
what happened to the kid he'd been driving with.
"I've been back for a while," Matt said, "but I'm just now trying to push this
thing a little at night, you know, when not a lot of people are out. Walking
works fine, but apparently I don't have the running thing down just yet."
He jumped up and down again. He didn't really bounce that much, but his
leg really did make a sound like a pogo stick makes.
"You like to fish, Matt?"
I don't know why I asked him that. It was right out of left field. I just felt
like he should definitely be able to get away and do the things guys like to
do, that it was important. But, for all I knew, he already had buddies to go
fishing with.
"I haven't been fishing in a long time," he said. "I used to know a few places
to catch bass."
"I know a pond," I said. "You wanna go some time?"
"Tell you what," Matt said. "Next time you see me, ask me again. I just
might be in the mood to catch a few one of these days."
I didn't see Matt again for a month or so. To tell the truth, I had pretty
much forgotten about meeting him. The Fourth of July came and went, and
then I saw him again. I was on my way to the store to pick up a 12-pack
one night when I saw him jogging in the neighborhood.
I pulled up right beside him but didn't spook him too bad. He was trying to
figure out who I was.
I had the windows down. "It's Howard," I said. "Remember, you had a fall in
front of my house."
"Oh, yeah," he said.
"So when do you want to go fishing?"
He moved closer to the car. "OK, then," he said. "When do you want to go?"
He told me where his house was and we decided to go the next day.
It rained the next morning, but by late afternoon there wasn't a cloud in the
sky. I loaded the poles carefully into the car and put my tackle box and a
cooler of beer in the trunk. I put on my fishing hat and felt good about
things. Then I got back into the trunk to get a few beers for the drive.
I don't know what Matt's story at home was, whether he was living with his
parents, or if he had a girlfriend or a wife, maybe even kids. He came out the
front door before I had a chance to honk.
We headed south out of town a few miles. A guy I used to work with had a
nice pond that was full of small-to-medium-sized largemouths. They liked to
take purple plastic worms, and I had rigged up both poles.
We drank a beer on the way out there. "I can't say much for your taste in
beer," said Matt, looking at his can of Old Milwaukee. "This stuff will probably
give me the shits, but it sure does taste good right about now."
We parked on the side of a gravel road by the pond and then unloaded the
stuff. I could have kicked myself for not bringing the folding chairs, just in
case. "We'll just fish for a while," I said. "It shouldn't take long for us to
catch about a dozen."
We drank another beer beside the car and then hit the pond. The bank was
muddy from the morning rain, but we were able to find a spot where the
mud gave way to some harder dirt and grassy weeds. You could practically
cast from one end of the pond to the other, so positioning ourselves close
wasn't a big deal.
"Just bring it in real slow," I told Matt after he made his first cast. "They like
to tap it first."
Before I could get my line in the water, Matt was already reeling in a nice
one. He had the biggest grin on his face. "Hot damn," he said.
By the time the sun was starting to set, we had lost count of how many
bass we'd caught and released. We lipped all but one. Matt threw it into a
mess of cattails on the side of the pond. Set the hook a little late on that
one," he confessed. "Oh well. A little something for the turtles to eat."
This is where it gets kind of weird, and I'm almost ashamed to tell it. But, as
we were making our final casts of the evening, I got the urge to break wind
out loud. I thought it would be funny - you know, guy stuff. But as soon as
I farted, and it was a big one, Matt jumped forward and went down like his
hair was on fire.
He was crouching by the water, covering his head. Things had been going
so well, and now this. I walked over and tried to give him a hand. He looked
up, disoriented, embarrassed, and maybe a little disgusted. "I'll manage," he
said.
But when he tried to stand up, he was stuck in the mud. The New Balance
running shoe attached to his fake leg was really planted. He pulled hard on
the leg with both hands. He finally got himself free, but the shoe was still
stuck.
It took us a few minutes to dig the special running shoe out with our hands.
Matt tried to laugh once and even said he was sorry for freaking out, but he
didn't say much of anything else. The foot on his fake leg was like a little
clamp. Without the special shoe attached, everything was difficult. He had to
hop on his real leg until we got completely away from any mud and he was
able to put some weight on the nubby device at the end of his other leg.
In the car, Matt just stared at the muddy shoe in his hands. I don't know if
the clamp was broken or what, but he didn't try to reattach the shoe.
"I guess I wasn't ready to go fishing yet," he finally said as we pulled into his
driveway.
"It's my fault," I said, feeling horrible about what had happened back at the
pond.
Matt hobbled out of the car, holding his shoe. He started to head for the
house, but he stopped and glared back at me.
"Don't apologize," he said. "You were never even there."
I thought he was going to leave it at that, but then he said something else.
"Couldn't they have thought about it a littler harder before they put us in
this position?" he asked.
He didn't wait for an answer, but it wasn't hard to imagine what he was
getting at.
I still had five or six beers left by the time I got home. I put on a Nirvana
disc and felt stupid and contagious. Then I tried like hell to scrub the fish
smell off my hands. I used half a bar of Lava, but, no matter how hard I
tried, it wouldn't go away.
Is it really true that fish don't have any feelings? Everything felt red to me.