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56 Something Happens Someone once said something to somebody else, who distorted or tweaked it a tad, then gave it to you: passed it on, maybe twice, and it clicked. Those words made you an opthamologist, or stayed your hand when about to hit a child, or sent you the long way to work one morning, avoiding a traffic fatality. But something happens today. A guy says au revoir!, steps off an interstate overpass, landing on a car (small, blue), taking a family with him. And so that someone is gone. Cameron or Walt or Rasheed or Eddie has passed, but something they said survives: an off-hand comment slipped along, passed to you fourth-hand, years earlier. These things happen. And so, one morning, you take the long way to work. You stop your car to let ducks usher their young (fragile, puffy) across the road. Children stand behind them, careful not to cross, watching, wanting to learn this and everything you’ve stopped questioning. You, too, take it all in, oblivious of even a chance of hearing sirens speeding on the interstate. ...

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