Death is the figure in trench coat and fedora at the end of the street, head down, thin coil of smoke. You cross the street looking straight ahead, you keep walking.
Death is capricious. On the farm we rode loosely on the running boards of trucks and tractors, sometimes got bounced off, found our feet, got back on, no harm done. What could go wrong, we do this all the time. Dad was not at all careless, it was just the way of things then. Occasionally in the district there would be another tractor accident and another funeral.
Once he legged me up on to the family racehorse, and I suppose the idea was to let the boy have the thrill of sitting astride a champion thoroughbred. It took the merest inadvertent flick of my foot and the horse picked up the jockey’s signal and just exploded forward. I grabbed the mane and pushed my bare knees in, clinging grimly. Dad yelled to me to bail, possibly because that was my best bet for keeping clear of thundering hooves, possibly because he wanted to stop a Group One winner from careening into a fence.
