Page 29 - Where the Dream Ends ebook

The Yellow Peril

“And how long do you think a high seat like this is good
for?” he asked, trying to sound casual as he let the binoculars
fall around his neck.

“Oh, I don’t know,” Tissie said. I suppose about twenty
years or so.”

“Aren’t you afraid of rot?” he asked, startled by the casual-
ness of her reply. It seemed apparent to Harry that Tissie, who
was 84, and the high seat, which was 17, were approaching
their respective destinies at about the same time.
“My dear, if it’s your time, it’s your time,” Tissie said. “Can’t
be concerned about such matters.”

That’s what he was afraid of. As a matter of fact, death con-
cerned Harry a great deal. Harry was smack dab in the middle
of life, or so he hoped — and while he wasn’t in the midst of
any particular crisis at the moment, save for how to get down
from the high seat, he was not ready to die, especially by falling
from a tree. Harry had given a good deal of thought to dying
lately, and there were two — no three — ways he did not want
to end his life. First, he did not want to die by falling from a
high place, especially as in a plane crash, or from a high seat;
second, he did not want to die by drowning; and third, he did
not want to be tortured, though technically torture was not a
way of dying, per se. Actually, Harry had always been afraid to
admit any of this to anyone because it is well known that tor-
turers use that kind of information to torture people, so that if
ever Harry was going to be tortured, anyone who knew what
kind of death he feared would be sure to torture him either by
pretending to throw him out of an airplane or by holding his
head under water.

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