I want to believe I will have the courage walk on my own legs and that they will not have to drag me, as I have seen them drag others. At the edge of the great well, they will say prayers to ask the god to accept us and bring an end to the drought. And then we will jump into the cenote, or we will lose our nerve, and the priests will pick us up and throw us in. If we survive the fall, they will pull us out of the well, and the god will give us the gift of prophecy.

I want to be brave. I want to make this sacrifice for the sake of our people, but especially for my parents and for my little sister. But I am not sure that giving up my life will bring the rain. I am young, but I am not too young to remember last year and the year before that. The priests gave victims to the gods, but the rain still hasn’t come. Why do they think that this year will be different?

Once my father was gone for eight days, scouting with a party of warriors. When he came back, he told me about a man that they met in the jungle to the west. The man was tall, with long limbs, and he told them of a place many days’ march to the north where rain falls nearly every day, and of places far away where the gods make rain flow across the ground in a kind of roadway of water.

I don’t want to die. I want to escape to a place where the gods don’t ask so much of their people.

© 2009 Edward F. Gumnick

Did he feel any warning signs of the cardiac event or cerebral accident, or was he enjoying his run until the moment he was struck down?

What good Samaritan came upon him first? Who saw him stumble to his knees, perhaps, then fall the rest of the way to the ground? Was his breathing labored, or did it stop abruptly? Did they hesitate before beginning to administer CPR, hoping that he might recover on his own? How long did it take for someone to call 9-1-1? How much time had passed before I came upon the scene of his agony?

How had the paramedics passed their Thursday evening before the call came in? Did they wait in keen anticipation of the call to save a life, or did they hope for a quiet night? How long did it take them to find their way to the tableau: victim, would-be heroes, and the curious gathered under the streetlamps by the driving range? Did our suggestions to the 9-1-1 operator about where to enter the park provide any help? How long had we been keeping vigil there before we heard the sirens?

Did those nine young men in blue uniforms feel the pressure of our hope as they set up a makeshift trauma room on the gritty path? Do they know how we admired their concentration, their seriousness, their selfless efforts on behalf of the fragile life laid out on the wet clay? Did they notice how we prayed or talked in hushed voices or stood in silence while they took vital signs, hooked up a monitor and an intravenous tube, and wrapped the man’s frail ribcage in the device that was both defibrillator and chest compressor? How many ampoules of medicine did they inject into his IV? Did their optimism fade (as ours did) each time they shocked him and looked in vain for hopeful signs on the monitor? How long had we been standing there before the paramedics received the instruction to take him away by ambulance?

Who was waiting for the man to come home from the park? When did the call come? How many friends and family members will try to grasp the circumstances that accompanied the end of this life?

What had changed among us as we made our way back to our vehicles? How connected did we feel at that moment to these strangers we see without recognition every day?

When the rain comes and washes away the footprints and the few bits of plastic the EMTs left behind, will we forget what happened there? Or each time we make this circle, will we think of the man whose life ended beside the running trail?