Leonard Fontaine

Russell Tuttle's knees are the reason, though you would never say so. Before the sun is up in Atlanta you stand in his kitchen with a mug going cold in his thick fingers. The stairs this morning cost him a breath he did not have to spare. The belly presses the counter edge. The moustache itches. You have been Russell for less than a minute, and already you know what he cannot do: he cannot run. You want to move. You press the screen and the wheel turns.

Then the canal path is under you, mid-stride, and your left foot is already in the air.

Your pace breaks for two steps. A stumble that never lands. The running resumes on the other foot, arms lower, head still. Cool air goes in through the nose and comes out as a pale breath. Something in your ears is playing a steady beat. On your wrist a watch buzzes a split it has no record of you holding.

The first thing to come is the jacket. The zip is cold against your chin, and suddenly it is last night: his thumb smoothing the fold of these black sleeves onto the bed, a wife asleep, the closet door eased shut so the hinge would not wake her. He laid the clothes out like a man who has learned the value of quiet mornings. The sleeves are narrow at the wrist, and he pushed them up the way he always does, to feel the watch.

The watch brings mile four. Then it brings a hospital hallway, years back, and a doctor saying a number about his blood, and a promise he made himself, and the long dry stretch of mornings since. There is no drink in him now. He chose that, and the choice sits in his chest like a second, steadier heartbeat.

Your right hand is closed around nothing, and the thumb is flicking. A small wheel, a spark, a flame. A lighter is not there, but the hand still has the habit. He never smoked. The lighter was his father's, and it lives in a dish by the door at home. Your thumb keeps working the memory of it, and with it comes a church, wax smell, a mother's hand on the back of his neck, the Our Father said under his breath on a bad day.

The shoes bring the rest. Rubber slaps asphalt. Sixty-two years of knees take each landing without complaint, and the calves are tight and honest. The lungs are open. Two children are in the stride somehow, grown and gone to their own cities. A wife is somewhere behind a pastel balcony rail, coffee waiting. And an earlier wife, a long-ago kitchen, a door closed gently, a thing he still carries for her and does not speak aloud. The ring on his left hand presses the bone as the fist swings.

It is all so easy. This body wants to go on.

You slow. You look at your hands. You turn one over, and the band catches the first light off the water. Then you raise your eyes to the lens, and your voice comes out low and a little amazed.

"Four miles. And it still wants more."

Somewhere under it, the question that never leaves you: how long?