“I broke loose and I ran.

Through the brush by the creek.

I fell going down the bank, that’s the scrape, and I lost one of them in the trees, and I got back here to the diner.

And I kept the bag.” He said the last part not as a boast but almost as an apology, as though the danger he had put himself in were a thing he owed me an explanation for.

And I could not bear it another second.