A lowside is a type of motorcycle accident. It typically occurs when a motorcycle is in a turn and its tires lose traction with the road. Without traction, centrifugal force causes one or both of the wheels to slide out beneath the motorcycle resulting in the bike and rider going down.

A highside is a motorcycle accident where the rear of the bike flips over the front pitching the rider off over the handlebars. This typically occurs when the rear wheel of a leaned-over motorcycle loses traction and then suddenly regains it. As the rear slides out and the bike begins to fall, a sudden return of rear wheel traction rights the bike violently causing the back of the motorcycle to cartwheel over the front.

Andy loved the Golden Gate Bridge. There was a grandeur to the scale of the bridge — the enormous volume and mass of the international orange cables and columns — that wasn’t apparent when you raced across at 60 miles per hour. You had to be standing in front of one of the colossal towers to appreciate it. Viewing the bridge through the windshield of a car, even motionless at rush hour speed, didn’t quite convey how big it was.

While he didn’t often have time to walk across, Andy got out to the bridge whenever he could. Almost once a week, he rode to the Golden Gate on the Honda 450 twin that he’d bought when he first moved to San Francisco. He’d take the old motorcycle — held together with muffler tape and pipe clamps — on a circuit from downtown S.F. to the Marin Headlands across the bay and then back. The route took Andy across the Golden Gate twice with postcard views of the bridge going and coming.

Andy hadn’t made it out to the bridge this week, and though he was meeting Bill at a bar downtown after work, he figured he’d have just enough time for a Downtown-Golden Gate-Headlands loop. In any case, even if Andy got there later, Bill would be fine at the bar by himself.

Rather than ride a direct route from the Financial District to the bridge, Andy preferred going out of his way to take the Embarcadero. From the office, he took Market Street to the Embarcadero, then turned left and rode in the slow lane to Fisherman’s Wharf. The strata of bike lane, sidewalk, and piers on his right were populated respectively with bicyclists and pedicabs, pedestrians and joggers, and sea lions and seagulls, all moving at their own speed.

Past the start of Fisherman’s Wharf at Pier 39, Andy began picking his way between lanes through the mass of minivans and SUVs slowed to a crawl by jaywalkers and Segway tours. Fisherman’s Wharf was thick with out-of-towners drawn to its mishmash of restaurants, tourist traps, and commercialized San Francisco history. A dry-erase board poll at work had determined the Wharf’s least authentic attractions to be: 1. the wax museum; 2. the Believe-it-or-Not Museum; and, 3. Hooters. Of the three, Andy’s only complaint was that the food at Hooters wasn’t very good. Dumping on tourist traps — and tourists — was the purview of locals everywhere, but Andy honestly enjoyed Fisherman’s Wharf and the crowds who came to visit it.

After the Wharf, Andy zig-zagged around Ghirardelli Square and Fort Mason to Marina Boulevard. From Marina, with its multi-million-dollar homes and yacht-club views, Andy found his way to 101 and then northbound to the Golden Gate.

By the time he reached the bridge, traffic was bunched up. Andy lane-split between the number one and two lanes, keeping a wary eye on an SUV that was aggressively — and futilely — trying to get ahead. A little boy in the back seat of a crewcab pickup saw Andy approaching and flashed a thumbs up. Andy returned the gesture as he passed.

It took two minutes for Andy to traverse the length of the bridge. He rode under the two massive towers and past the vista point where Golden Gate visitors parked to access the bridge’s eastern walkway. Hundreds of people were there now, walking, jogging, and biking the 1.7-mile span.

He took the next exit, then crossed under the freeway to the Golden Gate National Recreation Area. The apex of his circuit was less than a mile away — Hawk Hill, highest point in the Marin Headlands with views of the bay, the bridge, and the city.

The winding, uphill, two-lane road to Hawk Hill was dotted with vehicles driving up and down the headlands. Cars slowed here and there as people pulled off to park or to pass bicyclists making the same ascents and descents on sheer will– and leg-power. The road wasn’t busy, but that would change as it got closer to evening and people started arriving for views of the sunset.

Most people parked before they were halfway up. Was the view midway “good enough”? Didn’t they know the road kept going higher? Andy wondered these things each time he came up here.

Ultimately, the road itself didn’t quite reach the top of the hill. The last 60 feet of elevation was up a dirt path leading off from the road. Normally, Andy would park and walk up to the old artillery installation at the summit. Today, he didn’t have time.

He did pause, though. Andy turned off in the red dirt that made up the top layer of Marin Headlands hillside. He killed the Honda’s engine but didn’t bother to dismount or remove his helmet. He just looked out across the Golden Gate, the body of water for which the bridge was named. It was a clear day and, beyond the bridge, half of San Francisco was visible. Clouds drifted inland while container ships and tankers moved purposefully through the bay. In a few hours fog would race in from the Pacific and blanket everything — bay, bridge, city — and the view would be gone. Andy would be hanging out with Bill then, at Kate’s off of Howard.

“Time to go,” he thought.

Andy restarted his bike and headed onward. He drove through the turnabout at the end of the Hawk Hill parking lot. Most drivers made the tight circle here and headed back the way they came. Beyond the turnabout, the road became one-way, twisting and turning downhill along the coast to Fort Barry, a former Army base. Second to the view of the bridge, this was the stage of the ride Andy enjoyed most.

With no oncoming traffic, Andy rode faster, leaning more into the turns and making more graceful lines across the width of the road. He passed through a half-mile stretch above Black Sands Beach that had an unimpeded view of the ocean. It was beautiful and very nearly deserted — sometimes it felt like Andy’s personal coastal highway. The road ended at the former base hospital — now a youth hostel — and the turnaround point of Andy’s S.F.-Headlands circuit.

The route would take Andy inland now, toward highway 101 and back over the Golden Gate into San Francisco. Through the valley floor the road was flatter and straighter with long stretches of scrub brush between the occasional red-roofed army warehouse or barracks. The road was two-way again, but there was very little traffic to slow Andy down.

He arrived at the controlled tunnel that cut through the hillside back to the freeway. Normally, stop lights at either end of the tunnel determined which way traffic flowed through the single-lane passage. If the light was green on the freeway side of the tunnel, it would be red on the Fort Barry side, and cars could enter the tunnel heading into the fort. At some point, the signal on the freeway side would turn red, preventing any further traffic from entering the tunnel. After the last vehicle exited onto the fort side, the stop light on that side would go green, allowing Andy and whomever else to head into the tunnel towards the park’s exit.

He wondered about the system that kept the tunnel clear for opposing traffic. The signals appeared to operate on a timer, which bugged Andy as being terribly inefficient — he’d been red-lighted for several minutes before at the entrance to the tunnel with no traffic coming the other way.

Today, though, it was clear how tunnel access was controlled. A road construction flagman stopped Andy before the entrance — despite the signal being green. After a minute the flagman received the go ahead on his walkie talkie and waved Andy through.

The Baker-Barry Tunnel was usually lit in an orange sodium-vapor glow — now it was pitch black. “Electrical failure,” Andy guessed. He rode into the hillside void with the Honda’s single headlight leading the way, which, even on high beam, didn’t throw much further than 200 feet. The half-mile tunnel was mostly straight, and Andy had been through it dozens of times, and the road would be clear to the other side. He sped in.

Rushing through the dark, Andy had the sense that he was alone in the universe. In his helmet and heavy leather jacket, he felt like an astronaut launching forward into deep space.

Over a slight rise in the road, the tunnel’s freeway side would come into view. As soon as his sightline was over the crest, Andy would see it in the distance — the literal light at the end of the tunnel.

He rode up to where the road leveled out, and saw a large vehicle with no tail lights silhouetted against the exit.

“Too fast,” Andy thought. He let off of the throttle.

Headlights flicked on from the vehicle, obliterating the darkness between it and Andy.

“Shit,” Andy said out loud, blinded. He reflexively simultaneously pulled the clutch and front brake levers and depressed the shift and rear brake pedals. The weight of the bike dove forward as both wheels locked and the motorcycle skidded and slowed.

The bike started to fishtail to the right. Andy steered into the slide and eased off the brakes to get the tires rolling again.

The Honda’s rear drum brake released first. The back wheel started to roll, and catching the pavement, immediately righted the bike.

The front disc brake released a split-second later.

The back of the motorcycle, moving faster than the front, continued forward. With the still-locked front wheel holding its place, the bike’s rear went up and over, bucking its rider off in the process.

Andy somersaulted forward and pancaked onto the pavement on his back. The Honda catapulted past its rider and landed on its side.

A moment before, Andy’s world had been loud with the motorcycle’s exhaust echoing in the narrow tunnel, and dark with only the bike’s headlight picking out the roadway. Now, it was bright. Really bright. And, quiet.

Andy noted the odd absence of sound. “Have I gone deaf?” he thought. He tried to remember if deafness was a sign of concussion, and sat up abruptly.

A figure approached Andy from the direction of the headlights. He couldn’t make out the person’s features, but gradually realized a man’s voice was talking to him.

“Don’t get up,” the voice told him. “Lay back down.”

The man was kneeling next to Andy now. “You’ve just had an accident.”

Andy felt some pressure on his leg and then he felt very, very heavy. The brightness disappeared and Andy had the fleeting sensation that he was once again in space. This time, though, he was not moving forward at light speed. Instead, it felt like he was falling, and falling, and falling—forever.

Dallas was sitting at the bar in Brennan’s, finishing off a corned beef and Swiss on dark rye.

At some point in the last half hour, the widescreen above his side of the bar had switched over from basketball highlights to a golf tourney. He didn’t realize it, but it was the change in commercials that caught his attention more than the change in sports — Gatorade and Kias giving way to Lipitor and Cadillacs.

Dallas ate the last of the sandwich’s accompanying pickle, then pushed the plate and its uneaten payload of chips aside.

He used a napkin to wipe down the void left by his lunch plate, then opened his notebook and set it down in the space. Dallas had been trying to recall a dream he’d had the night before, and he’d remembered enough hazy details to record them.

He wrote:

“A young man, maybe 25, is standing on top of a concrete wall, looking into a river. It is a hot day on Kyushu, the southernmost of the four main islands of Japan. There are people up and down the banks and in the river — men, women, children — all Japanese — escaping the heat. The young man is the sole foreigner — America-jin, gaijin — and he is drawing attention with his height, white-turning-red skin, and sandy blonde hair in stark contrast to the hundreds of dark-haired, brown-skinned people here. The young man strips off his t-shirt, shorts, and underwear, and jumps off the wall, 15 feet into the river. The water is cool, not cold as he had expected it to be. He swims against the river’s slow current. People sitting on the concrete walls stare and chatter to each other about the naked foreigner. He hears the townspeople but ignores them. The young man has come to this small town in Japan to build bicycles — single-gear bicycles that are popular with bike messengers in San Francisco and New York. There is another reason he is in Japan, a more important one, but he willfully disregards it — the same way he doesn’t hear the people on the banks talking about the gaijin in the river.”

Dallas read back what he had written and wondered, “What the Hell is that about?”

He considered a third Guinness, thought better of it, and called for the tab.

Above the bar, a Cialis commercial ended before returning to golf in progress.

Outside, the breezy, overcast Berkeley morning had turned into a breezy, sunny Berkeley afternoon.

Dallas had biked down to Brennan’s for lunch and was now faced with the tedious uphill ride back to his apartment. He considered catching the 51B bus and letting AC Transit take care of the ride up. He also considered putting off the decision for another hour by heading to Peet’s for a leisurely, post-corned beef coffee.

He walked out of Brennan’s, weighing bus vs. bike vs. delaying.

Before Dallas could come to a decision — he had been leaning towards coffee — he saw an old man sitting on the bench near the bike rack. The old man was hunched, wearing dark brown trousers that fit a little too loosely with the waistline a little too high. He had on a plaid shirt and a dark brown suit jacket. A white ball cap covered what little left the old man had of his hair and white, Velcro’d running shoes were more for ease of use than for activity. He had a battered brown suitcase parked in front of him and was looking at an Oakland/Alameda County map folded open to show what Dallas recognized as North Berkeley.

“Do you need some help, sir?” Dallas asked as he approached his bike, the rack, and the old man.

The old man squinted up from his map to get a look at whoever was talking to him. “No thanks, son,” he said, seeing Dallas. “Just got off the Amtrak. Waiting for my ride.”

Dallas hadn’t noticed a train stopping at the station since he’d gone in for lunch over an hour ago. The adjacent Berkeley Amtrak station was little more than a platform, sign, and self-serve ticketing machine. The declining economy of passenger rail closed Berkeley’s mission-style train station in the 1970s. The station building that once served train passengers now catered only to restaurant and bar patrons — as the Irish pub Brennan’s currently and as a Chinese restaurant previously.

“How long have you been waiting out here?” Dallas asked.

“I’ve been around the station since about nine o’clock,” the old man said.

“Does your ride know you’re here?”

“Oh yes. Should be here anytime now.”

Dallas wondered if that was true. Or, correct. “Mind if I share your bench?”

“Suit yourself,” the old man said.

Dallas took a seat on the bench and dug his smartphone out of his pants pocket. The old man resumed studying his paper map.

After a few minutes of silence the old man turned to Dallas. “Do you have a map on that phone?” he asked.

“Sure,” Dallas said. “Can I look up an address for you?” He clicked his iPhone’s home button to close the photo editing app he had been experimenting with, and tapped the Maps icon to launch it.

The old man produced a bulging, letter-sized envelope. It was thick with sheets of folded up paper visible through the torn flap. He held up the face of the envelope for Dallas to read.

The envelope was addressed to Martin Smart with a street and apartment address in Chicago. The return address, a self-adhesive pre-printed label, sported an illustration of an American flag and was personalized for Mr. Ellis Kamm with an apartment address in Berkeley.

“Here.” The old man pointed to the Berkeley address.

Dallas thumbed the address into his phone. The map image on the screen slid sideways, shifting from Dallas’ current location at University and 3rd to Ellis Kamm’s North Berkeley address. The display stopped and details drew in on the screen. Oddly, the app’s red location icon was planted in the middle of a street intersection.

Dallas frowned. “This is where the map says the address is.” He showed the screen to the old man. “It’s not an actual address.”

The old man looked at Dallas’ phone. “It says it’s right here.”

“Well, yes,” Dallas began. “But, the map isn’t showing a building. This is the street address, but there’s no building that has that address.” Dallas checked the envelope label against the info he had plugged into the phone — they matched.

“Well, my friend lives at this address, so your phone must be wrong,” the old man groused.

“Must be,” concluded Dallas. He zoomed in on the map on the phone. None of the nearby addresses seemed to be the right one.

Dallas volunteered to call Ellis Kamm at his mystery address. But, the old man, who introduced himself as Marty — Martin from the envelope — said that he didn’t have Ellis’ number. When Dallas asked Marty how Ellis knew to pick him up at the Berkeley station, Marty responded:

“I wrote him.”

“You wrote him?” asked Dallas.

Dallas sat with Marty for a while.

The old man told Dallas that he had written Ellis, who Marty had known since they were both 10, three months ago to let him know he was coming to California.

Marty had left Chicago two weeks ago to visit his sister and her family in Spokane. He’d spent a week-and-a-half there, then traveled by train — his whole trip had been by train — to Seattle. He’d left the Puget Sound yesterday on Amtrak’s Train 11, which had arrived this morning in the Bay Area.

“I’ve known Ellis 75 years,” Marty told Dallas. The boyhood friends had grown up together on the outskirts of Chicago and were joined at the hip throughout middle school and high school. Their paths diverged during World War II.

Marty turned 18 first, volunteered for the Army and was sent to Europe as a B-17 gunner. He was shot down twice, severely injured the second time, and celebrated V-E Day in a stateside hospital bed.

College-bound Ellis was drafted into the Navy, pegged for OCS, and went to the Solomon Islands as an ensign. He was in the ruins of Manila on V-E Day and on a destroyer off of Okinawa on V-J Day, a week after Fat Man and Little Boy were dropped on Japan.

After the war, Marty returned to Chicago, got married, worked for his wife’s father, got divorced, then found a new job. He traveled a lot for work, but never flew.

Ellis reenlisted, and was stationed in Japan and then Hawaii. After the Navy, a job opportunity took Ellis to California. He worked, was promoted, then lost his job when the company was sold. He started his own company, became successful, then sold it, taking care to reward his two employees in a way that he hadn’t been. He started another company. Ellis married later in life.

“The last time I saw Ellis was in 2002,” Marty said. “His wife’s funeral. They were only together 12 years.”

Neither Marty nor Ellis had children, though Marty was close with his niece. She wrote him often, and encouraged him each time to move out to Spokane. She worried about her uncle living alone in Chicago with no close family or friends.

Marty asked Dallas about himself. Dallas said he lived in Berkeley and had been born and grown up in California. He tried to explain to Marty his job at the university as a social media coordinator, but couldn’t adequately convey what that meant. In the end, Dallas said that he was in advertising, because interactive marketing communications seemed like it would require too much explanation to a person like Marty who had no smartphone, computer, or even a home phone.

Mid-afternoon turned to late-afternoon as shadows from the overpass above the train platform grew longer. Dallas suggested waiting inside Brennan’s where it was warmer and they could get something to eat, but Marty insisted that he was fine. He remained unconcerned that his friend had not shown up; that he had been waiting for six hours; that afternoon would be turning to evening.

“You go on home now,” Marty said. “I appreciate you keeping an old man company, but I don’t need a minder.”

Dallas looked at Marty and his worn, brown suitcase. How old was that case, and how many miles had it traveled, never once on a plane?

If Dallas unlocked his bike, said good bye, and rode back to his apartment, how long would the old man sit here, waiting for the result of a letter he had mailed three months ago to an address that didn’t exist?

“Hey, Smarty!” a man’s voice called.

Dallas looked up to see a lanky old man approaching.

“Martin, you old so-and-so,” the man said as he reached Marty and Dallas. “When are you going to join the current century and get a cell phone?”

Marty stood up, stiffly, to greet Ellis, who he introduced — “Dallas, this old goat is Ellis Kamm. Ellis, this young man is Dallas, who was worried I might wander onto the train tracks, so he’s spent the better part of the afternoon with me.”

Dallas stood and Ellis shook his hand, thanking him for keeping an eye on Marty. Mr. Kamm had been helping a friend deal with medical issues which had cropped up in the last few days. He’d tried to reach Marty at his sister’s house in Spokane, but was too late. He then contacted Amtrak to relay to Martin to wait at the Emeryville station which was staffed and had a waiting room, cafe, and restrooms.

“They gave me the message on the train,” Marty revealed.

“Then why did I have to run around all over the place to find you here?” Ellis asked.

“Because I paid for a ticket to come to Berkeley, not Emeryville.”

Ellis said nothing.

Marty continued, “Plus, I figured I’d give you something to worry about trying to figure out where I was.”

Ellis shook his head then bent down to pick up Marty’s small suitcase. “You see what I have to deal with?” he said to Dallas.

“Give me that,” Marty demanded, taking back his luggage. He turned to say goodbye to Dallas, “Nice meeting you, son.”

Dallas said goodbye in kind. He unlocked his bike from the rack as the two older men walked away to Ellis’ car.

“Your sister and I stopped worrying about you years ago,” Ellis said.

“My niece still cares,” Marty replied. “She wants me to move to Spokane.”

Ellis nodded. “She’s a good girl.”

“She is.”

It’s early evening at Peet’s and Dallas is at one of the metal café tables outside. His steel commuter cup sits on the table, lid off, allowing his latte to cool down.

Dallas, like many of the people seated around him, is looking at a smartphone. He scrolls to the end of his iPhone’s camera roll and taps the last photo taken — the image expands to fill the display. He studies the photo of Marty and Ellis walking away at the Berkeley Amtrak stop, then takes out his notebook to write about a man with no phone number and a man with no address and how they have remained in contact for 75 years.

From Henry and Miranda. Available digitally on iBooks, and in softcover from Amazon. (Hardcover, too)

Henry was walking. He was outfitted for hiking, but with no destination, it just felt like he was walking.

He had left his car in the abandoned home improvement store parking lot six hours ago. The car still had gas in it, but Henry no longer needed it — the car, his cellphone, driver’s license, credit cards, business cards, swipe ID, Blockbuster card — he left them all behind. Whoever found the car and assorted bits of Henry’s identity could have them. “Someone else can be Henry Lee from now on,” he thought.

What Henry did bring was his hiking and camping gear: tent, sleeping bag and pad, poncho, multi-tool, etc. He had a bunch of fruit and nut bars from the kitchen at the office. Someone had put a box of them out on the counter with a Post-it stuck to the side: “Bought these. Didn’t like them.” It had probably been Melody, one of the other programmers, who was always buying boxes of things at Costco. Henry switched out of his cross trainers and sport socks in favor of heavier socks and hiking boots. He added the sport shoes and socks to the gear in his backpack.

He’d refilled his water bottle from the two-gallon disaster preparedness water in the trunk. After riding around in the car for six months, the water had taken on the plastic flavor of its container. Henry had supposed that in a disaster, you wouldn’t mind a mild plastic taste in your water, but he wasn’t that enthusiastic about it now. This wasn’t really a natural disaster. A personal disaster? Whatever the case, the only water he had come across since starting walking was stagnant irrigation water or ag runoff — he couldn’t tell which.

Henry’s walk had started off behind the vacant big box property where he’d left his car (in his mind now just ‘a car.’) It had adjoined an undeveloped lot which transitioned into farmland — acres and acres of farmland. He walked through fields which were just dirt, almond orchards (some healthy, one withered), thousands of earless cornstalks, and fields of what appeared to be cotton.

After four hours, a set of train tracks cut diagonally across the farmland and Henry’s northbound path. He had oriented himself north for no particular reason, and now, presented with a route to follow, Henry simply did that. He walked along the tracks as they angled northeast and when the tracks coincided with a county road and turned north, Henry followed suit, walking between the disused train tracks (the rails and ties were pulled up in some places) and the road. In an hour walking alongside of the two-lane blacktop, only one car, heading north, drove by.

It was a clear and cold midafternoon, but the walking kept Henry warm.

An hour later, Henry saw the car again. It was parked, facing him, off his side of the road. The driver must have made a U-turn. Henry saw two figures as he approached. They were standing together a short distance away from the car, looking out across a plowed dirt field. One was an old man with thin, white hair. He looked like he had been a large man, once. He was skinny now, but not frail, and despite the chill, wasn’t wearing a jacket. His companion, though, a middle-aged woman with dark hair, was engulfed in a big, puffy coat, zipped up from top to bottom.

When Henry first saw the car parked up ahead, he considered crossing the road to avoid an encounter, but decided that doing so would seem: 1. silly; and, 2. rude. The old man saw Henry and waved. Henry waved back.

“Hello!” the old man called out. His voice was surprisingly strong.

“Hello,” Henry croaked. He realized he had not said anything out loud in five or six days. He cleared his throat and tried again, “Hello!”

“Looks like you’re travelin’.”

Henry shrugged as he reached the old man and stopped. “Just out walking.”

“Good weather for it.” The old man grinned.

Henry smiled, and shifted his pack to get moving again. Before he could take a step, the old man bade him: “Take a spell, young fella, and have a bite to eat. Elena here makes the best fried chicken.” The old man gestured to the woman in the puffy coat. She smiled, Henry guessed, from the way her eyes wrinkled, since her nose and mouth were hidden by the high collar of her coat.

Henry hedged. He didn’t really feel like talking to anyone, but the offer of something to eat besides Melody’s rejected fruit and nut bars — Henry found that he didn’t like them either — was appealing. “Thanks, I’m happy to join you.”

He stood awkwardly while Elena set out folding canvas camp chairs and a table from the trunk of the car. The old man would try to reach into the trunk to pull something out and the woman would swat him away. “Put the food on the table,” she told the old man, managing him.

The old man carried a big tote bag, the recycled plastic kind you get from a grocery store, out from the back seat of the car to the table. He unloaded a large, airtight, plastic container and a loaf of sliced whole wheat bread onto the folding table. “Have a sit down,” the old man said, beckoning to Henry and seating himself. A roll of paper towels was the last thing to transfer from the bag to the table. The old man tore a square sheet off the roll and tucked one corner into the neck of his shirt like a bib. Henry undid his pack, set it on the ground, then sat at the table with the old man.

Elena brought a small cooler from the car trunk and set it on the ground near the table. “Water?” she asked, holding out a cold bottle of water to Henry.

“Thank you,” Henry said.

Elena took out a bottle of water for herself and set it on the table. She pulled out a can of light beer, set it in front of the old man, and opened it.

“Let’s eat!” the old man said. He took the lid off the plastic container, reached in, and grabbed a chicken drumstick. Elena untwist-tied the loaf of bread, reached in the bag and took out a slice which she handed to the old man. She offered the open end of the bag to Henry. He took out a slice of bread, bypassing the heel the same way the woman had.

The chicken was cold, but good.

And, Henry realized just how hungry he had become over the past several days. And, it felt like it had been a long time since anyone had talked to him. But, for some reason, or no reason, this old man was talking to him now. He said to Henry, “I’m a hundred years old this year.”

Between bites of chicken and cold wheat bread and sips of light beer, the old man told Henry that he’d grown up in a tiny town in North Carolina called Pleasant Garden. At 17, he’d lied about his age in order to join the Army and fight against Kaiser Bill in World War I.

“We just called it the Great War, then. Didn’t know there was going to be another one, or another three.”

He was on the front lines in Europe for six months before the Army found out that he had been too young to enlist. In that time he saw not much more than mud and trenches and wounded and dead soldiers. When he was sent back to North Carolina, he decided he wanted to see something different and headed west for California.

“No highways in them days,” the old man said. He looked up at some unseen aircraft marking a contrail headed east. “No airlines for regular folk, neither.”

The then-young old man made his way west on foot and by hitching car, wagon, and tractor rides. He’d stop and make money by working for a week or a day, then head off again. It took him two months to reach Chicago where he fell in with another Great War veteran who introduced him to the world of unticketed freight train travel. Hopping trains, the old man crossed four states to reach Oregon’s eastern border in five days, then saw the Pacific Ocean one day later.

The old man wiped his fingers and mouth on his bib/napkin, removed it, and stood up. He looked out across the unplanted field they were dining next to. “There used to be a siding here,” gesturing to where the car was parked, “and, this field was all young corn. Too young to eat, but perfect for hidin’ and waitin’ for a freight.

“I was right here, ’bout 70 years ago, when I decided to stop wanderin’; knew where I needed to be.” The old man considered Henry and his backpack. “It looks like you’re wanderin’ now. Someday you’ll know where you need to be.”

Henry sat for a moment, looking at and imagining the old man in this place as it was then. Henry wondered what prompted that 30-year-old to stop traveling.

“Thank you for the food,” Henry said, getting up. He re-donned his backpack. To the woman: “The chicken was delicious.” She nodded.

The old man walked up to Henry. “Take these with you, young fella.” He held out his right fist, palm down. Henry put his open hand under the old man’s hand. Two weighty objects dropped into Henry’s palm — coins.

Henry looked at the coins — silver dollars with Lady Liberty’s head on one side and an oddly-proportioned eagle on the reverse. “Are you sure?” he asked the old man.

“For luck on your journey,” the old man said.

Henry pocketed the silver dollars and shook the old man’s hand. He waved to Elena, who had started putting the camp chairs back in the car. She waved back.

Henry struck off north, again, walking between the side of the road and the rusted train tracks. When he looked back a few minutes later, the car, old man, and woman had gone.

From Henry and Miranda. Available digitally on iBooks, and in softcover from Amazon. (Hardcover, too)

It was a beautiful day in Berkeley where Dallas sat at a patio table outside the cafe at the undergraduate library. It was a little after three and he was just getting to lunch — he tried to time his break for when the place wasn’t overrun with students. On the whole, Dallas thought highly of the university’s students. Many of them, from challenging socioeconomic backgrounds, were the first in their families to go to college. And, being accepted here — the top public university in the country, if not the world — was a doubly impressive feat. Dallas respected that.

The undergrads, though, were still young, with outsized enthusiasm for — and inexperience with — everything. For Dallas, prematurely old-man cranky at 29, the students’ energy was infrequently inspiring and oftentimes annoying.

His coordinates in space-time on this occasion were unfortunate. Dallas’ favored spot, a table and chair partially obscured by a support column at the back of the patio, was removed enough to be out of comprehensible earshot of the rest of the seating. On this day, though, someone or thing had left a sizable and unidentifiable mess on the chair. The tables and chairs all being fixed, Dallas chose his second-favorite of the patio’s rectangular array of seating, the corner spot furthest from the door to the cafe. But, the adjacent table was soon occupied by three noisy freshmen. Before it became clear that they were going to chatter nonstop through their and Dallas’ break, the other tables had filled up, leaving Dallas with no alternative.

The freshmen’s energetic conversation bounced from TV shows they were watching to classes they were taking to politics and social justice (or injustice) to the world at large.

The young man seated nearest to Dallas was in the midst of changing topics. “I’ve figured it out,” he said.

Seated diagonally across the table for four, the second young man answered, “What?”

“The dark stuff that’s making the universe expand,” the first freshman explained. “I’ve figured out what it is.”

The third freshman, sitting across the table from the first, was finishing the last of his milk tea. “Dark matter, not stuff.” He slurped his drink. “Or, is it dark energy?”

The second young man turned to the third. “I thought dark matter and dark energy were the same thing?”

The third responded, “No, they’re separate. He’s saying ‘stuff,’ so…” he turned to the first freshman, “You must mean dark matter.”

The first freshman, sidetracked, asked mainly to himself, “Dark matter or dark energy?” He stared, blankly, into his memory, attempting to recall from astrophysics what was dark matter and what was dark energy. His two friends glanced at each other.

Reaching over the table between them, the third freshman shook the first out of his trance. “Hey, genius, what’s your theory?”

Brought back to the conversation, the first answered, “Oh. Right.” He blinked his tablemates back into focus. “The expansion of the universe is caused by…” He paused dramatically, “…alternate timelines.”

The third freshman grimaced. “What?” he said. The second added, “Timelines?”

The first freshman leaned across the table. “Think about it! Something is causing the universe to expand, right? It’s actually expanding faster and faster!”

The third freshman, remembering the dark matter/energy difference that was eluding his friend, said, “Dark energy is causing the acceleration of the expansion of the universe. Dark matter is the mass that’s keeping galaxies from flying apart.”

“Yes!” said the first freshman. “The universe is expanding at an accelerating rate. We can’t determine what’s causing it, so we’re calling the force dark energy — ”

“And, by ‘we,’ you mean actual scientists,” interjected the second freshman.

“Of course,” said the first freshman. He continued, “I think dark energy is actually all of our alternate timelines. As the timelines branch, they take up more room causing the universe to expand. As timelines branch exponentially, the expansion grows faster and faster!”

It was the second freshman’s turn to make a face. “You’re saying alternate realities take up space.”

The first replied, “Why not? They have to go somewhere.”

The second freshman did not agree. “Brilliant theory, Star Trek.”

The third freshman, mulling it over out loud, said to the first, “The entire universe, in any moment, has a certain mass. You’re saying anytime the timeline branches — like when someone flips a coin — another universe we can’t see and with equal mass is created in our universe, and that extra mass is growing the universe at an accelerating rate.”

The first freshman was excited. “Yes, that’s it!”

The third freshman continued, “Sure. So your idea of all timelines occupying the same universe could explain all this mass we can’t see — dark matter. Dark matter and dark energy would be the same thing.”

Reaching across the table again, this time to clasp his friend on one shoulder, the third freshman said, “You’re on your way to getting a Nobel Laureate campus parking space, my friend. As soon as you can prove and publish all of this, I’m sure the prize committee in Sweden will call you up to let you know you’ve won. I offer you pre-congratulations.”

Dallas, his attention sucked into the conversation, realized he had been staring at the same page of his book for at least 10 minutes. He appreciated the leaps in thinking that the students were displaying, but decided he needed to find a different time and place to have lunch if he was ever going to get through his book.

In an alternate timeline, a seagull had not landed at Dallas’ favorite table early that morning, and Dallas, sitting away from the three freshmen, had finished his book. It had not been particularly well-written, and he was glad to be done with it.

From Henry and Miranda. Available digitally on iBooks, and in softcover from Amazon. (Hardcover, too)

Mia Saapuloa loved giraffes.

The first one she ever saw was outside a hotel on the way to the doctor. Her father drove past the giraffe whenever Mia had a hospital stay or visit. It was a life-sized sculpture of an adult giraffe, and Mia imagined it walking around outside the hotel, eating unattended lunches off of people’s balconies and watching TV through the sliding glass patio doors.

There was something fascinating to Mia about the way giraffes moved — her dad tried to explain to her that they walked by moving both left legs at the same time and then both right legs at the same time. She didn’t understand, so he bent over, planted his hands on the floor and showed her.

“Left-left,” he said, walking his left arm and left leg forward. Then his right arm and leg, “Right-right.”

Mia stared, then laughed as her father walked, giraffe-style, back and forth in front of her. Her two older brothers and sister joined in, temporarily conducting a giraffe parade in the living room. “Left-left, right-right!” Everyone laughed, including their mom, sitting on the couch with the cat.

Mia’s father tried to coax his wife to join them. “Come on, Mama!”

She declined. “I’m not like a giraffe, I’m like the cat.”

Mia’s oldest brother stood up. “But, Mama, cats walk that way too!”

This bit of animal locomotion information caught the rest of the family by surprise. They turned to look at the cat which had been trying (pretending?) to sleep through the racket. Now that it was the focus of attention, it briefly opened one eye, then closed it.

“Well, I’m still like the cat,” Mrs. Saapuloa said. “I’m just going to sit here on the couch.”

Mia’s siblings resumed their giraffe-walking for their youngest sister, moving around (and in and out of) the living room. By the time they finished playing and started getting ready for dinner, everyone completely forgot to watch the cat to see if it walked like a giraffe.

The Saapuloa family went to the San Diego Zoo once, when Mia was still able to travel. There were hundreds of species of animal at the zoo, but of them all, Mia’s father wanted his youngest daughter to see the giraffes — she had never seen one in person before.

At the giraffe enclosure, three adult giraffes moved around from one feeding station to the other taking only occasional notice of the people on the other side of the fence. Mia gawked at the animals from her perch on her father’s shoulders. She watched the giraffes amble about, reaching with their long necks the acacia branches placed for them in feeders high above the ground. Captivated by the animals’ gait, Mia whispered to her father, “Look, Daddy, left-left, right-right.”

In the enclosure there were two giraffe calves — 5– and 5-and-a-half-month-old cousins. A zoo staffer explained to the onlookers that mother giraffes didn’t lie down when they delivered their babies. Giraffe calves were born — dropped really — from six feet in the air, could stand minutes after being delivered, and could run within an hour or two.

Mia’s oldest brother, the tallest in their family, picked his little sister up from their father’s shoulders and held her up above his head. “Now you’re a baby giraffe, Mia. What do you see?”

Sticking up from the crowd around her, Mia caught the attention of one of the adult giraffe cows. Curious, the giraffe leaned out over the enclosure wall and brought its head close to the little girl.

Mia looked at the face of the mother giraffe. She looked into the animal’s big long-lashed eyes and imagined that it was her mother as a giraffe and that her whole family were giraffes living in the grasslands of Africa. Mia saw herself as a giraffe calf with long legs and a long neck, standing, walking, and running just like her brothers and sister. They would spend their days eating leaves from high up on trees while being wary of lions and crocodiles.

In that instant, with Mr. and Mrs. Saapuloa holding hands and watching their youngest daughter mesmerized by an inquisitive giraffe, the family shared a near-perfect moment. It is often how Mia’s parents and siblings would remember her years after she had gone.

From Henry and Miranda. Available digitally on iBooks, and in softcover from Amazon. (Hardcover, too)

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