Second Nature by Alice Hoffman Page A

often followed in his patrol car, close enough to keep an eye on him but not so close that Stephen would notice. But of course Stephen knew anyway, and he paced himself accordingly whenever Roy tailed him, never revealing his true speed. When Roy told his buddies Stephen wasn’t nearly as good as everyone was saying, and practically limped after a quarter-mile, he thought he was telling the truth, and got white with anger when no one believed him.
    Stephen had given up any hope of ever learning to drive. The last time he’d tried he’d plowed right into a parked car, denting the front end of Robin’s truck. There were too many rules and regulations, but with running he could just let go. At first, the foot that had been shattered in the trap seemed to have trouble keeping up with the rest of him. The sneakers on his feet were uncomfortable and the asphalt was harder than dirt, but after a while these things didn’t matter so much. He concentrated on the road to Poorman’s Point, where the trees were twisted by the wind. He listened to the sound of the gravel driveway as he passed by the place where the tulips once grew.
    Ginny left the door open for him; that way she didn’t have to go up and down all those stairs. She often set out a snack on the dusty cherry-wood table that filled up the whole dining room, though she never would have admitted that the cookies or shelled pecans were for Stephen. Usually, Ginny was fast asleep in front of one of her programs at this hour, a pot of cold tea on the table beside her. Stephen took off his shoes at the front door, so he wouldn’t wake her or track mud inside. Sometimes the old man was asleep, too, and Stephen would sit in the chair by the window and read the newspaper until he woke up.
    “What are you? A cat?” Old Dick would say when he opened his eyes to see Stephen’s bowed head as he read editorials and comics. “Don’t you announce yourself? Don’t you ask before you steal a man’s newspaper?”
    Stephen would fold the newspaper then, and pretend to put it away, until Old Dick suggested that since he was fiddling with the Tribune anyway, he might as well read it aloud. Old Dick, who could grumble about almost anyone and anything, never once criticized the halting way Stephen read. Birds often came to the window, as if to eavesdrop, but perhaps they were there only because Old Dick had taken to leaving crumbs along the sill. Old Dick had lived longer than anyone else on the island; he was the first to choose a place for himself in the cemetery, on the highest knoll, with a view of the north beach and the marshes. More and more headstones were raised each year, and still Old Dick’s piece of ground continued to wait for him; the grass there grew taller, wild asters bloomed. To Stephen, it didn’t matter that Richard Aaron could no longer move from his bed or that he needed his food softened by boiling. Old Dick knew things someone younger couldn’t begin to imagine. Every day, as the light began to fade and the shadows across the lawn grew longer, Stephen tried to ask him what it meant to be a man, and every day his tongue wrapped around itself so that he could not ask.
    “What?” Old Dick sometimes said for no reason at all, when he drowsed off, then woke suddenly. “What is it?” he asked.
    And still Stephen could not ask what he needed to know. Instead, he readjusted the old man’s pillows and closed the window, to make certain the night air wouldn’t chill him.
    “Don’t think you have to come back here,” Old Dick often called out when Ginny brought his dinner in on a tray and it was time for Stephen to leave.
    “Pay no attention to him,” Ginny whispered, even though it was clear that Stephen paid more attention to the old man than anyone had for years.
    Stephen always took the same route back, but it was more difficult for him to pace himself on the way home, and he often ran flat-out. His plan was the same as it had always been, even now that