Raoul came by to see me one day but I wouldn’t let him in. He could see me, and I could see him, but I just kept sitting at my typewriter, pecking words out, and he started knocking and it went on for a long time. He shouted something, several things, but I didn’t listen. I’d about decided not to listen to anybody for the rest of my life. He kept knocking, and I got up and went over to the stereo and put Johnny Winter on and ignored him. He kept knocking. I started writing a story about a woman and a man with a little child going down a sidewalk late at night, the little girl in a long white dress and having to run to keep up with her mother and father, who were running from something beyond bad. I saw that it was on a dark street somewhere in New Jersey with the rain falling and I wondered what was going through the little girl’s head. She was running to keep up, her mother barely holding her hand, her bare feet flying over the wet sidewalks, up and down over the curbs as they crossed the alleys. Her hair was long, brown, and her arm was stretched out in front of her as she held onto her mother’s hand, and her feet were flying. I kept that image with me, desperation, flight, fear, until the knocking stopped and Raoul went away, I knew sadly. I went to the refrigerator and got a beer. I sat back down at my machine. I had to find out what they were running from. I had to find out if the little girl was going to be safe. I didn’t know if she would be or not. But whatever it was she was running from, I knew I had to save her from it, and that I was the only one who could do it. They were running, running, the cars going by, and I could see the slippery sidewalks, and the lights in the stores, and I could see my mother and my father looking back over their shoulders at whatever was chasing us, and I ran as fast as I could, terrified, not knowing how it would end, knowing I had to know.

A Roadside Resurrection