Saturn 3/3
Night Hawk
The Egyptians saw Saturn as Horus, a god of light. But his was a harvest of innocents: he ate children.
The night my mother locked me out for good, strewing my clothes across the driveway, I decided to walk as far away from her as I could. To burn off some of the rage.
I walked from Cleveland Heights where we lived, down Mayfield Road, past the cemetery where President Garfield – one of the unlucky ones to be assassinated and also fatherless from an early age – is buried in a tomb, down into Little Italy and then onto the university campus.
It must have been six or seven miles, and, by the time I got there it was very late. Hardly any cars passed me on Euclid Avenue as I paced on the grass, wondering why I had come.
Just then a car slowed, a power window slid down and a figure leaned over.
‘Want to go for a ride?’ a voice asked.
I was so tired and depressed by then I nearly said yes, even though instinct told me to recoil.
‘No, thanks,’ I said, backing off
‘Are you sure?’ the voice pressed.
I heard a door open and quickened my pace. I didn’t want to answer that question because I wasn’t sure – of anything, least of all what I wanted. The worst thing was wondering if he’d detected any ambivalence in my answer.
Maybe Fate had sent him as a mid-course correction. It had nothing to do with sex or money but the choice of orbit.
As the Catholics used to say, perhaps just imagining yourself in the scene was enough to scar.
By morning I could have been found under a mound of black plastic. But, for that single shooting star of indecision, I couldn’t have cared less.