Talese Inspired Post

David clenched his left ear as another snowball whizzed past his head. “I’m concussed!” he yelled as Thomas packed another snowball from the fresh snow that had fallen the night before. Their flight to Norfolk, Virginia wasn’t leaving for another three hours, and instead of waiting in a small dimly lit airport terminal with over priced sandwiches and tacky merchandise for sale, they spent their last few hours of freedom roaming the desolate streets of Brooklyn on this Sunday night in February.

David scraped snow off the windshield of a rusted red minivan and hurled the densely compacted snowball at Thomas. Thomas ducked and the snowball broke into tiny parts as it passed through a chain link fence of the neighborhood park. Thomas had fast reflexes, quicker than David’s. He was a good aim too. When he was in high school in Seattle, he had been expelled for shooting an air soft gun on school grounds. A stray pellet found its target—an unassuming 9 ^th grade boy with thick-rimmed glasses he remembered.

David was an easy target coming up at 6’3. He was large, robust, and towered over the much shorter Thomas easily. However, despite his height, he had an agility that belonged to a much smaller petite man. David pulled out from his pocket a headband his brother had knitted for him and pulled it snug over his ears.

Both were contemplating the flight back to Virginia and the countless hours they would soon be logging running miles at the crack of dawn. Thomas longed for home and his mother’s experimental cooking—a southern inspired recipe of mac and cheese one week, and a kale salad with cannellini beans and Parmesan cheese the next—while David eagerly awaited the next challenge before him. He would begin his training as a rescue swimmer in the following weeks, a task that inspired and excited him. However, after Virginia neither friend knew when they would see each other again.