Buckeye

by Patrick Ryan

When he doted on her, his boyish face became etched with concern that he was doting the right way.

Weeks went in between. They didn’t talk about it. Neither of them wanted the other to feel bad. Neither of them wanted to be the one with a problem—if, indeed, there was a problem, which there might not be, because neither of them knew how this was supposed to go and who had time to stop and assess? Problems, in this way, win out. Problems conquer the world.

The more time he spent listening to his crewmates, the more it became clear that they were all—including him—fighting to protect a way of life that didn’t include everyone back home, or even right here on the ship.

Along with the emergence of crow’s feet and the faint lines surfacing on her chin, and the gray she dyed away on a regular basis, there was a density, an opaqueness in her eyes. As if they were done receiving and projecting.

Nothing is quite as maddening as being angry at people who lovingly understand your anger.

The world will always bring you back into perspective, if you only bother to let it.

What is it about time that confounds us? We spend it. We save it. We while it away. We waste it. We kill it. We complain about not having enough of it, or about having too much of it on our hands. We regret what we’ve done with it. We give it away. We want it back. We say “time and again” when something is bothering us and “it’s time” when something is supposed to end. Felix saw it so clearly: all we should ever want of time is more of it. Life was so simple when it was reduced to the barest of necessities: more time; more air; more Duke Ellington.