That was a cheerful, sterile school reunion fund raiser. The successful and braggadocio show up at these events. I am not cheerful nor sterile nor braggadocio but I wanted to know what happened to Runs. Runs’ name rose up, tucked in a corner of the last alumni magazine, as deceased. I knew Runs from Grade 3 to launch. I thought he was in a body cast (that’s an inside grade school joke) but when I saw his name leap decades ahead (class of 1986) among deceased alumni from the 1940s and 1950s I wanted to learn what I could. He offed himself. I remember Runs as pointedly and helplessly angry. From childhood. In grade school he lied like any child might, making up bullshit stories, but he took the disbelief to his mine. I remember how his left eyeball quivered and his eyelids sunk in disdain when the classroom cackled with disbelief at his “body cast” lies.
In high school he jumped and shouted from the benches, laughing with a vengeance, dark and lively, kicking.
I felt out of place tonight, among the near-celebrities and the priests, but as I think about the dead I think only of the body, the heavy corpse, the once-writhing grins.
