In the light from the deck he worked the saw, cutting logs until he had a huge pile. He did that for an hour until his hands felt fused to the machine-as if the muscles of his arms had grown over the grips and up the blade of the rotor, its high-whining barbs powered by the heat of his own blood and blotting out all awareness but the raw pleasure of grinding through the timbers and spitting up dust and smoke and filling his head with a gratifying roar.

He chainsawed until he ran out of gas, then refilled it and continued cutting, knowing in the back of his mind that he had passed into some crazed auto-mode.

Someplace deep down a voice whispered of things he couldn't forget-three of them.

Adam.

He snapped off the saw and bolted back into the house. The baby was in a deep sleep still. "Good," he whispered, and shot outside again.

A flick of his arm, and the chain screamed into action, and he cut until the motor choked out again.

You 're forgetting something

Adam's fine, he told himself. So he refilled the tank and pulled the cord to action.

Something else. Wendy. Pick up Wendy… Where, though? Where was Wendy?

Bus station.

Lake Placid.

The thoughts came to him in little periodic bursts. Bursts that were getting farther apart. Lake Placid. Plenty of time.

time

What time?

He put the saw down still idling and ran into the house and checked Adam. His eyes passed by the clock, but nothing registered. Not the fact that it was 9:45 and he was supposed to be on the road by now.

Back outside he revved the saw then screamed through another ten-foot trunk of oak until he had neat fat logs in a pile.

forgot something else

time

Adam

something else

He turned it off the chain saw and looked around as if expecting somebody to step up with a cue card. He walked toward the lake. The surface was a brilliant sheet dusted with diamonds. It was a magical scene, and for a long moment he just stood by the banks taking it all in, his head still buzzing from the saw.

Without thinking he plopped onto the ground. He was sweating profusely, his shirt icy against his skin. He rubbed the cold metal band of his watch. In the moonlight he noticed the small hand on the eleven, the long one on the three. But it didn't register because he felt faint.

He got up hoping that movement would help. Guided by the moonlight, he began walking but instead of heading toward the house he moved into the woods without thought. Deeper into the thick he stumbled until he was totally disoriented and feeling fainter, driven onward in hope of remembering just what he had forgotten to do.

Wendy.

He braced himself on a tree. "Where's Wendy?" he said out loud.

Coming home

"Have to get Wendy. Almost forgot."

You forgot something else

He turned and saw the moonlight through the trees and he felt his body jolt.

"It was horrible. He just shriveled up like that."

"Oh, God, no. Nooooo…"

He stumbled toward the moon, thinking it was the warm bright lights of home, with Wendy inside and Mom and Dad and baby Adam all by the fire. And a big bed.

and in the big bed was…

gotta get back before it's too late.

not enough time.

gotta take my shot.

no, not the insulin

ELIXIR

ELIXIR

He saw the bed, open and clean white glistening sheets so wide and smooth… I want to go home. Not feeling good. Body sore. Hurts me.

me hurt

He flopped on the bed and spit out a tooth. The tip of his tongue found the gaping hole. He put his finger inside and felt another wiggle. His teeth were breaking off in jagged pieces. It was horrible. They filled his mouth and he spit them out.

His head ached. He pulled off his gloves and ran his fingers across the scalp. Large clumps of hair came off in his hands. His head felt cold. He was going bald by the second.

In the moonlight he saw his hands.

His hands, they screamed with pain, and before his eyes they shrivelled up to small knobbed things. He brought one to his face. It had gotten tiny and dark. His fingers hurt, but he barely felt the pain. His face felt totally unfamiliar. It was full and flabby, the creases too deep, the flesh under the chin too loose, the neck too thin. It was like touching somebody else's face. And his head all smooth with thin fuzz in the back.

Then the pain erupted. And he suddenly saw himself from above, lying on the bed of snow in a clearing, his body convulsing with agony as he began to shrivel up and die-like Methuselah and Jimbo-

Like Dexter Quinn-

Like Sam-

But then the pain stopped and he felt his mind slow down as if under rapidly dimming power-a thing old and weary and barely able to process the few sad moments left, wishing it would get itself over with, wishing he could for one last time see his wife (don't let her find me like this), sensing himself going down a long spiral stairwell, not bumping his way step by step but moving smoothly because he couldn't walk since his feet were all gnarled and twisted which explained why he was slouched up in a big metal chair with wheels on the side locked in place and on this special escalator that corkscrewed down toward a small ball of white light at the bottom that grew larger and brighter as he descended, his poor eyes fixed in horrid fascination on the glow which in no time became a dreamy white light, not hard or harsh, but like fog lit up from within-a warm incandescent blankness that closed around him like a shell, the interior growing dimmer and quieter until all he registered was the soft raspy sigh of his last breath before the long long night closed down on him.

Three

21

The kid with the blond ponytail under his cap was good.

He was from Pierson Prep where they had an experienced team and a dedicated coach who trained his wrestlers as if they were heading for the Olympics.

Wally Olafsson had watched the kid's last match earlier that afternoon. He had pinned the captain of Appleton Tech in a mere thirty-nine seconds. He wasn't too tall, but he was well-built, fast, and balanced. Worse, he knew some fancy moves Wally's son, Todd, hadn't experienced before, including a cunning reverse cradle. Unfortunately, Todd was facing the kid for first-place finals in the 135-pound weight class for the region. If Todd won, he'd go home with a two-foot-high trophy. If he lost, he'd take second and a fourteen-incher.

It was after seven, and the gym was packed with wrestlers and spectators filling the stands and pressed five deep around the three mats where the matches had been running continuously since ten that Saturday morning. Parents with cameras were squatting on the edges, hooting and hollering for their boys.

Wally sat high in the stands so he could get an overhead zoom of Todd through the video cam.

All around him were wrestlers-young hardbodied Zeuses smelling of Gatorade and testosterone. The heat of their presence took him back to his own high school days when he played varsity baseball at Buckley High in Urbana. Now he was fat, bald, and grossly out of shape. His joints cried out just watching the boys twist each other into crullers. Yet, there was a time when he, too, was lean and made of hard rubber. But, sadly, at fifty-seven, Wally Olafsson had decided that he was beyond physical fitness and had settled into middle age ripeness. George Bernard Shaw was right: Youth is a wonderful thing; too bad it's wasted on the young.