Future Ship

Saved

80 Saved once i saved someone, actually saved a man’s life, though it was nothing like the movies— heart-stopping tension, imminent peril, body crashing through a holocaust of special effects. i was out for a walk one morning in lung-burning cold when i heard a groan, and something in me froze—steps away, slumped a man—crosslegged , a Buddha posed against naked brick. it was early, perhaps 8AM, too early for the stores, and i knew he’d been there all night in his thin jacket fast asleep against the wall. When i approached, he raised his head heavy as concrete, flesh gray, eyes frigid stars of snow, condensed and blank. Stay there i choked, stupidly, and ran for help, my body skittish, racing out ahead of my will, or perhaps it was my will that led my body, dragging it along the street. At the station, i delivered my report—breathless, half in shock. i never saw the man again, but called to find out what became of him: twenty more minutes, i was told, and he’d be dead. And so i saved someone, though “saved” is not quite right with its freak bravado, and “assisted” is a weak word, too timid for the violence of my flight. He’s probably dead by now, anyone that careless, that drunk, and this is just a story, though often i consider what he must have seen— another person hovering near, ashen figure congealing out of nowhere, one ghost rescuing another. ...