A Fragile Balance

At 5 a.m. on August the 21^st Edward Damian Clark received a phone call. A ringing woke him.

“Yeah, hello.”

“Did I wake you, Ed?”

“Naw, it's fine, what's going on, Bill?”

“I reckon you better get dressed and come down here.”

“Where are you?”

“4^th and Oaks.”

“I'll be down.”

He dressed. He made it to the scene without event.

Mike Watt was a young man of promise and character. Local sports writers engaged in competitive hyperbole on the subject of his magnificence:

“He's a wild beast without limits!”

“He's strong as Bunyan!”

“I honestly think he may be the next step in some evolutionary chain.”

Ed bent onto a knee, a few inches from the body, in what appeared to be a practiced maneuver. 


"Bet he never even saw it coming, musta just blindsided the poor kid."


This conclusion struck Ed as unlikely. He checked the ears, all gummed up with wax, and chalk, and mud.

“You see all that there?”

“Well, I'll be. How long you reckon that's been piling up in there?”

“Oh, millions of years, I'd say. Couldn't be any other way, really.”

On August 22^nd, the paper broke news of a tragic accident. In response, Ed crafted a compelling and cogently argued letter to the editor, an accusation of libel. The editor sighed and filed the piece in a folder containing all of Ed's submitted work, his carefully worded explanations of the happenings of this world.