Issue link: https://www.e-digitaleditions.com/i/742011
82 • S P O R T I N G C L A S S I C S W hen I finally made it home, I slept. I slept like I had never slept before. The next morning it all began to seem quite silly. But what was so silly about fighting for your life with a killer? I tried to get him out of my mind, but couldn't. That brush with mortality had knocked me sideways, and I had enough questions in my head to start a quiz show. My hands shook so that I nearly cut myself shaving. Then I began to feel lucky. I had come face-to-face with death, and for now, beaten it. I had been living my life like money and success made the world go round. It was all I had wanted, but now whatever life I had left in me . . . I wouldn't trade for all of the dough in the world. I had been rescued from a life misspent. I had gotten a second chance—how many can say that? There is a particular life cycle for each species. The time of some insects is very brief—they hatch and die in a single day. There are tortoises that were living when Antarctica first became a continent in 1840. Whales are swimming the oceans with 200-year-old ivory spear points embedded in their flesh. Man, however, gets just three score and ten. Could that ever be enough? It's an adage as old as yesterday's newspaper: our years pass too quickly. Life is lived in a second. The rest is but memory—just a dead man looking back. The true measure of a life can only be found in its fullness, and the reach, and effect, that it is has had on the lives of others. In the great forest of time, our names are etched into trees. Though some names are short, their lives are rich and full; other names, long ones with many letters—but their lives wasted and lost. The timekeeper, the woodsman, carves our names. It matters not to him how we have lived; he is concerned but with the ending. In that forest there is a tree with the start of my name written into it. It was nearly completed before I decided to start living. I know the old man will eventually return to finish it, and I'll move on to eternity. Meanwhile, the days and that old clock on the wall tick off a lot faster. As they say, "No one lives forever; most people even less." I suppose we are all living on borrowed time, though I feel the weight of mine more than most. I have adopted Lord Chesterfield's advice: "Know the true value of time; snatch, seize, and enjoy every moment of it. No idleness, no delay, no procrastination; never put off till tomorrow what you can do today." So I swooped up Miss Coldpence, or rather I should say, Mrs. Hibbett, and headed to New England. We bought a little home and opened up a little law practice, where nearby, there just happens to be a little trout stream. Does anyone out there have a pattern for a Baetis tricaudatus? n "E." My throat was so dry you could've struck a match on it. I thought, So long Walter, it's been fun. All I could do is watch helplessly as death came my way. The world was trembling beneath me like a rumbling earthquake. Then a final whiplash of fear struck through me like a knife of fire. I gnashed my teeth in anguish and raised the rifle best I could, pointed it in his direction . . . and shot. The bullet ricochetted off the shining axe blade, knocking it from his heavy hand. I collapsed to the ground, contorted in pain, and stared across at the unfinished name etched into the trunk of the tree—"W-A-L-T-E-R H-I-B- B-E." . . . It was just that close. My breath came back to me easy and regular. The man—he was gone? But I had to find him, to make sure. I struggled to my feet, using the rifle as a crutch, and as my strength returned I began running. I was running like a frightened rabbit, firing the rifle wildly from the hip while screaming madly "Hibbett, Walter Hibbett—that's my name!" I had to keep going, keep running until I could find him—trying to ignore the pain still lingering in my chest, although the pain suggested otherwise. Every now and then a branch, heavy with dampness, would slap me in the face, splattering me with water. Then my foot caught on a root and I fell, nearly knocking my brains out on a rock. I opened one eye, then the other. The bells in my head were still ringing. I felt like one big bruise. The damp air was cold as I lay sprawled on the wet forest floor staring up into the night sky. I got up slowly, wondering why I was still alive, all the while thinking this must have been a dream. I had fallen and hit my head. That was all. The rest had never happened. It couldn't have. I walked for miles trying to pull myself together—to put it all together. I tried to find my way back to that enchanted place with the giant trees, but it and the man had vanished. The only forest I found was plain and normal, like it had stepped out of its heels and taken off all of its makeup. Then, just like that, I was back at the car. I looked at myself in the sideview mirror. I was a mess. My face was chalky white and crisscrossed with scratches. I couldn't have sold what I looked like for a five spot. My hands were clumsy; I was all thumbs, and my fingers shook as I put a cigarette in mouth and struggled to push the lighter in. Another glance in the rearview revealed all too well the day's affairs—I looked like death. Pine forest by francis lee jacques