the running man

When I see you, all I see is after. Gravel upturned by that beige Chevy. Pavement sun-baked and time-worn, like most Mississippi roads. You love the highways. You drive by, sunglasses and Miller Lite caps on a string, without noticing I'm headed in the opposite direction. I don't have time to regard the dust cloud because there's a cop idling nearby.

You've always been headed in the opposite direction.

When I was fifteen I didn't understand. Couldn't have. You can't read another language until you learn the right words, wrap your brain around the meaning of those foreign sounds and inflections. I couldn't read you because I didn't want to. It was easier to be angry and ignorant. It's always easier.

Five years later - five years of investigation, of difficult questions and even more difficult answers - I know you better than I ever thought I could. It wasn't any effort on your part, of course. Not your style. For you, existence defines itself - you have no reason to justify your condition. I respect that. But understanding requires knowledge, and I've been collecting. A good student knows how to research.

You haven't been running for twelve years, you've been running longer than my lifetime. Whatever your reasons or affections, I know now - marriage was an escape from a homelife you didn't want to understand or remain part of. Yet somehow in trying to avoid your father's mistakes and their consequences, you emulated him near-perfectly. Except you're too proud to take your own life. I admire that.

I suppose I should be thanking you, as you've taught me lessons I find invaluable. I don't hate you, and I can't say I'm angry at you anymore. Understanding brings acceptance, for better or worse. And what I understand is that you've given me more than your DNA and I'm a better person for having known you, with all your flaws and shortcomings. Not many people have the chance to witness a demonstration of "what not to do" during their formative years. Trust me, the conclusions I've drawn from that will stick with me for the rest of my life.

You are after. You're cigarette smoke lingering on the breeze, taillights dimming down the road. I think of your old dusty rifle sitting in the corner and the letterman jacket I spilled tea all over. They're relics, left in the wake of a man who's more of a boy, a boy who never stops running. Running from age, from family, from heartache.

What happens when you're too tired to keep running is up to you. You told me I have the power to change my future with one decision. I wonder if you'll make your own with that gravity in mind.

(I am future. I am daydreams of spacemen and gods and dawn, and I do not fear what is behind or ahead. The choices I make are not to escape what was, but to embrace what is. That is what you've taught me. Whatever I do, what I am becoming, I will not be in retaliation to you or to anyone. I have a role to play, one that I will choose of my own volition. That's why we're different. You act as if you never had a choice at all.)

Maybe someday we'll go driving together, and I'll show you the highway that leads toward instead of away.