Resolution

What I was thinking about, when he was talking about being a ghost, was how I could change everything if I could keep this moment together and somehow get the mohawk-man to the police. Visions of sitcom crime-fighters and neighborhood heroism, complete with a key to the city and the gratitude of a shaken but now reassured public. I could take that moment, and turn it all around. (Surely, this was the result of the surge of endorphins or whatever it was that surged around when you had a high-tension situation like chasing a home invader through the streets of your hometown.)

Then everything went black, owing to a surprisingly fast moving IBM Selectric II typewriter hitting me from my quarry's general direction.

And what I remember next is this: When I was a kid, I fell off a rope swing during a snowstorm in the dazzling, dizzying days between school's end and Christmas itself. I was pretty young, though I don't remember my exact age. My parents had separated -- or maybe divorced -- relatively recently, and goofing around on the rope swing in the snow felt lighter than air. It felt like the easiest, most wonderful thing I had done in forever. Everything else had been so hard lately. Christmas was going to be hard. Going to Catholic school with divorced parents was hard. Pretty much anything life could gin up at that point left me exhausted.

I was in the backyard of a kid who wasn't really a friend anymore. The snow and the general breakdown of the rules of neighborhood play -- the normal groupings, the rivalries, the mean blow-offs that defined the carefully nuanced world of pre-teen boys -- put a bunch of us together who were old friends by proximity, but who really meant nothing to each other at the moment. That these boys weren't really friends probably contributed to my lightness; I felt I had nothing to lose.

Twilight was quickly turning to night, my hands were cold, and I have no doubt that the bones in my hand were certain they were gripping the old rope swing as tightly as they could. Once I hit the ground, I recall figuring that it was probably better -- definitely easier -- to just remain where I fell, listening to the sound of these half-stranger former friends run to get their parents, experiencing the exquisite pain of a greenstick fracture of my wrist, lying on my back in a foot of snow, and feeling more land on my face and neck.