2003B FRQ #2

        That time in our lower driveway, by the brook.

        I was straddling my bike staring down into the water. 

        Fast-flowing clear water, shallow, shale beneath, and 

        lots of leaves. Sky the color of lead and the light 

5      mostly drained so I couldn’t see my face only the 

        dark shape of a head that could be anybody’s head.

        Hypnotizing myself the way kids do. Lonely kids, 

        or kids not realizing they’re lonely. The brook was 

        flowing below left to right (east to west, though at 

10    a slant) and I stood immobile leaning on the railing 

        (pretty damn rotted: I’d tell Dad it needed to be 

        replaced with new planks, we could do it together) 

        until it began to happen as it always does the water 

        gets slower and slower and you’re the one who 

15    begins to move—oh boy! we-ird! scary and ticklish 

        in the groin and I leaned farther and farther over the 

        rail staring into the water and I was moving, moving 

        helplessly forward, it seemed I was moving somehow 

        upward, rising into the air, helpless, in that instant 

20    aware of my heart beating ONEtwothree 

        ONEtwothree! thinking Every heartbeat is past and 

        gone! Every heartbeat is past and gone! A chill came 

        over me, I began to shiver. It wasn’t warm weather 

        now but might have been late as November, most of 

25    the leaves blown from the trees. Only the evergreens 

        and some of the black birches remaining but it’s a fact 

        when dry yellow leaves (like on the birches) don’t fall 

        from a tree the tree is partly dead. A light gritty film

        of snow on the ground, darkest in the crevices where 

30    you’d expect shadow so it was like a film negative. 

        Every heartbeat is past and gone! Every heartbeat is 

        past and gone! in a trance that was like a trance of 

        fury, raging hurt Am I going to die? because I did not 

        believe that Judd Mulvaney could die. (Though on a

35    farm living things are dying, dying, dying all the time, 

        and many have been named, and others are born 

        taking their places not even knowing that they are 

        taking the places of those who have died.) So I knew, 

        I wasn’t a dope, but I didn’t know—not really. Aged 

40    eleven, or maybe twelve. Leaning over the rotted rail 

        gaping at the water hypnotized and scared and 

        suddenly there came Dad and Mike in the mud-

        colored Ford pickup (Might as well buy our vehicles 

        mud-colored to begin with, saves time, was Dad’s 

45    logic) barreling up the drive, bouncing and rattling. 

        On the truck’s doors were neat curving white letters 

        sweet to see MULVANEY ROOFING (716) 689-8329. 

        They’d be passing so close my bike might snag in a 

        fender so I grabbed it and hauled it to the side. Mike 

50    had rolled down his window to lean out and pretend 

        to cuff at my head—“Hey Ranger-kid: what’s up?” 

        Dad at the wheel grinned and laughed and next 

        second they were past, the pickup in full throttle 

        ascending the drive. And I looked after them, these 

55    two people so remarkable to me, my dad who was like 

        nobody else’s dad and my big brother who was—

        well, Mike Mulvaney: “Mule” Mulvaney—and the 

        most terrible thought came to me. 

        Them, too. All of them. Every heartbeat past and 

60    gone. 

        It stayed with me for a long time, maybe forever. 

        Not just that I would lose the people I loved, but they 

        would lose me—Judson Andrew Mulvaney. And they 

        knew nothing of it. (Did they?) And I, just a skinny 

65    kid, the runt of the litter at High Point Farm, would 

        have to pretend not to know what I knew.