Matter of Balance
...k all sound surrounding them, “Around them, the forest was silent. Not a bird called, not an animal moved. The moss that covered the rock and soil, the moss that clung thickly to the tree trunks, the moss that hung in long strands from the branches, deadened everything, muted it, until there were no sharp lines, no certainties” (28). If Harold were to leave the bikers where they sat, one, at the edge of the cliff and, the other merely six feet from the edge, surely no one would find them. When Harold saw the two bikers on the bridge, he had a sudden flashback of the elementary school bullies, When he had attempted to ignore them and go around, they had shifted with him to the boulevard, then to the road and, finally, to the back lane. As his mother was washing off his scrapes and bruises and trying to get the blood off his shirt, he had kept asking her why, why did they do it?” (19). “Only later, when he was much older, had he understood that their anger was not personal and, so, could not be reasoned with” (19). Harold had wished that he was on the other side of the bridge so he wouldn’t have to pass them when he went to cross back over to his car. The thing that made Harold even more uneasy was that the biker, “raised his right hand, pointed two fingers like he would a pistol, and pretended to shoot” (19). Harold saw the gesture as childish, even though it still made him restless. In the beginning Valgardson portrays the bikers the same many people do. Tough, scary, and dirty looking, “These two had their hair chopped off just above the shoulders and, from where he sat, it looked greasy for it hung in tangled strands. They both had strips of red cloth tied around their heads. The dark-haired boy, he thought, then corrected himself, man, not boy, for he had to be in his middle twenties, was so short and stocky that he might have been formed for an old-fashioned beer keg. They both wore black leather vests, jeans, and heavy boots” (18-19). Closer to the end of the story, the bikers seemed to let down their guard and, slip into a more vulnerable position, making Harold’s negative outlook of the chase, take a turn in a positive direction. They followed Harold through all the paths, were smart enough to split up, then realized that Harold was on the granite slate, the bikers then tried to maneuver their way down to him, not thinking about the lack of experience they had. “Suddenly, a piece of lichen peeled away and his left foot slid out form under him. Instead of responding by bending out from the rock and pressing down with his toes, he panicked” (26). Harold was smart. He planned his whole route, “He fitt...