May

     May Carlisle got out of bed every morning except Sunday at 6:00 a.m. and ran, not jogged, two miles before breakfast.  She never missed, even when it rained, except for once during the winter when there was a blizzard going on and the snow was too deep and the wind too strong and cold.  She was quite proud of the fact that she could do the two miles, when the whether was fit, in just under fifteen minutes.

    She ran in a vacant field not from her apartment, and she knew it was two miles, because she had taken her car down one Saturday afternoon and driven around twice to check the mileage on the speedometer.

    Her roommate, Sally, though she was crazy and said so every chance she got.  Sally believed in sleep in the mornings.  She had her toilet routine timed down to the minute so that she knew exactly when she had to get up and start in order to get to her job at the stroke of eight.  She was very cranky in the mornings.  May was cheerful and boasted of how good she felt in the mornings, and sally suspected that she felt just as lousy as she, Sally, did but was too damned stubborn to admit it.  The mornings were the only time when they did not get along.  The rest of the time, they were best friends and were quite happy in each other's company.  They had shared their apartment for over three years, and they were accustomed to each other's habits by now.  Sometimes Sally worried, because they were like a couple of old maids, and she didn't want to become and old maid.

    May, on the other hand, was an activist in everything that she did.  She did not appear to worry about things, when she saw a problem that needed fixing, she got to work and fixed it.  She was involved in all sorts of activities and organizations, and sometimes Sally suspected that a good share of the groups were working for diametrically opposed goals.  But May didn't care about that, it was the participating that counted.

    May's only real handicap, and it was the one that she could not conceal, was her love life.  She was atrocious with men.  She either scared them to death, or else she got into raging arguments with them about such absolutely unromantic things as politics, or business, or even, of all things, sports.  May had had more first dates than any girl in the city.  And she had had an equal number of last dates.  Sally knew that her lack of success with men bothered her, and she tried to counsel her about how to act with one of the elusive creatures, but May was, among her other attributes, stubborn.  She was convinced, or rather she had convinced herself, that the reason that men were not turned on to her was because they were somehow inferior men that she had been dating.  She stated that she was confident, that when the right man came along, he and she would fit together and mesh like two cogs.  If she were to change her personality just to attract men, then she would be dishonest and would wind up being unhappy besides with the mate that she finally settled for.

    Another of May's problems was that she was good at most of the things that she attempted.  She skiied well enough to show up most of the men in the ski club that she belonged to each winter when they took their ski vacations.  Her bowling average was 175, she had studied on her own and could speak quite well, German and French; she was a member of a sky diving club, she shot skeet, and she was one of the best sports car rally drivers in the city.  She was also a competent skin-diver and held a private pilots license.  It was no wonder that May had trouble with men.  She could do everything better than most men, and that is an almost impossible handicap for girl to overcome.  To make matters even worse, she was an excellent tennis player, and her gold handicap was 14.

    Her friends had arranged dates for her with every sort of male that they could think of.  They had talked to her beforehand and cautioned her to play submissive, and to let the poor guy win at least occasionally.  But May was a competitor.  There was something about a challenge of any kind that drove her beyond the edge of restraint.  Competition of the most ordinary sort kindled her spirit and, like an alcoholic, or food addict, there was nothing that she could do to stop herself until she had mastered her opponent.  She usually ended her dates standing at her front door while the relieved young man scurried for the elevator promising himself never to be caught in that section of town again. 

The Field

     The vacant field behind the housing development where they lived held more interest for the boy than all of the organized playgrounds that the city provided to keep the children occupied.  The playgrounds, mowed and clipped and cleaned, were antiseptic areas where kids could do those things that the playground had been designed to allow.  The vacant field was wilderness.  There were no rules there, only those that had obvious and just penalties attached to punish violators.

    The boy's parents merely counseled him at first.  They told him that the playground was the safest and the best place for him to play.  They looked meaningfully at each other when he replied that he preferred the field.  You should play with the other children, his father said.  But the boy found the other children dull and stupid.  The games that they played had no purpose, other than noise and dirt as far as he could tell.  The field held all sorts of wondrous things for him to explore and watch, and he never grew tired because it was impossible to see it all.  There were so many new things occurring each day, that he felt as if he were entering a fresh world every day after school, and he hurried out into the field because he didn't want to miss anything.  Later, his parents became more insistent and tried to make him stay out of the field.  The gave him the choice of either going to the playground or staying his room.  He chose at first to go to the playground, but after a day or two, he just stayed in his room and looked out the window at the field.

    After a week of this, on night after his parents had fallen asleep in their room, the boy lay quiet in his bed, his head turned toward the window and the field.  The moon was out and full and the light spilled in through the window and washed a large section the carpet.  It was quiet in the house, but there were sounds out in the field, not loud or even of the sort that would attract attention, but they were there just the same, and they could speak to you and tell you things if you knew how to listen and to interpret their language.  The boy lay for a long time after his parents had gotten quiet in the other room, and then he rose carefully from the bed and went to the window.  It was a sight that took his breath away.  The moonlight had changed the colors of everything, so that the tall grass was silver and black, and the huge willow tree up in the corner with the spring flowing from beneath its roots, looked grotesque and fearsome with its unfamiliar shadows.  Out in the middle of the field, something moved, and the boy switched his gaze to that spot.  The grass was shorter there where a grader had been brought in and scraped the roots out for some now forgotten reason.  He stared at the spot for a long moment, but it was impossible to see clearly in the dim moonlight.  He unfocused his eyes and moved is eyes off to one side, so that he see the spot slightly off center in his vision.  He had discovered that this technique enabled him to see better at night.  Then he was able to see the rabbit sitting motionless.

    He had never liked to play with the other children.  His inability to laugh at the things that amused them, caused him to be ignored at first, and later, as his strangeness became the object of their interest, just as a new item of playground equipment would hold their interest until the newness had worn off, they began to actively pick on him and make him the butt of their cruel games and taunts.  When he refused to respond to even this form of communication, they became violent and attacked him with epithets and then blows and stone.  He suffered this indignity until the other children grew weary of him, and moved on to other forms of entertainment.  After that, he was merely an outcast and they didn't bother him except to taunt him occasionally just to keep him in his place, or when they were temporarily bored and in between amusements.  He didn't mind so much after it got to that stage, for the did not seek their companionship, but rather much preferred to be alone.  He liked it that way, and was one of those solitary souls who function best alone.  That was why he grew to like and to prefer the field to the playground.  The other children did not play in the field because because they were forbidden by their parents.  Just as he was, but he found that parents do not watch their children constantly and it was easy to slip into the tall grass at the edge of the field and to remain in there out of sight for a whole afternoon without being detected.

His mother warned him to beware of snakes in the field.