It Never Stops Taking

When his 707 cleared the runway, he still did not feel safe and maybe he was holding his breath just a bit. When the plane cleared Vietnam, he felt better, but not entirely safe. When they landed in Oakland, California, he finally felt totally, completely safe. He felt that he could handle anything that came his way. Thirty years later, he had forgotten about the booby traps and the bullets that snapped as they flew by his head, but he noticed that he dragged his right foot when he walked and his right arm lacked movement—it hung limp like a pendulum on an unwound clock. The arm didn't swing anymore. The doctors told him it was arthritis from 2 back surgeries, but he wondered if it could be more than this.