Page 542 - A Little Life: A Novel

lilac, and he stared at it frantically, trying to seize a picture of it and hold it
in his mind, before he was poked forward.
At the car Dr. Traylor held open the trunk and jabbed him again with the

fire poker, and he could hear himself making sounds like sobs, but he
wasn’t crying, and he climbed inside, although he was so weak that Dr.
Traylor had to help him, pinching the sleeve of his shirt between his fingers
so he wouldn’t have to actually touch him.
They drove. The trunk was clean and large, and he rolled about in it,
feeling them go around corners and up hills and down hills, and then along
long stretches of plain, even road. And then the car swerved left and he was

being bounced along some uneven surface and then the car stopped.
For a while, three minutes—he counted—nothing happened, and he
listened and listened but he could hear nothing, just his own breaths, his
own heart.
The trunk opened, and Dr. Traylor helped him out, plucking his shirt, and
shoved him to the front of the car with the fire poker. “Stay there,” he said,

and he did, shivering, watching the doctor get back into the car, roll down
the window, lean out at him. “Run,” the doctor said, and when he stood
there, frozen, “you like running so much, right? So run.” And Dr. Traylor
started the engine and finally, he woke and ran.
They were in a field, a large barren square of dirt where there would in a
few weeks be grass but now there was nothing, just patches of shallow ice
that broke under his bare feet like pottery, and small white pebbles that

glowed like stars. The field dipped in the middle, just slightly, and on his
right was the road. He couldn’t see how big the road was, only that there
was one, but there were no cars passing. To his left the field was fenced
with wire, but it was farther away, and he couldn’t see what lay beyond the
wire.
He ran, the car just behind him. At first it actually felt good to be

running, to be outdoors, to be away from that house: even this, the ice under
his feet like glass, the wind smacking against his face, the tap of the fender
as it nudged against the back of his legs, even all this was better than that
house, that room with its cinder-block walls and window so small it was no
window at all.
He ran. Dr. Traylor followed him, and sometimes he would accelerate,
and he would run faster. But he couldn’t run like he used to run, and he fell,

and fell again. Each time he fell, the car would slow, and Dr. Traylor would