THE JOGGER

   Jogging is dangerous. The thought had occurred to Ridley Carmichael on a number of occasions as he practiced his almost daily ritual. He jogged a three mile trapezoid-shaped route that began and ended at his house on Maple Row in the small village of Appleton in upstate New York. If he was feeling good, he could easily expand the route, turning it into a four or five mile run. This he did less frequently than in the past, because the fact was, even though Ridley would ever admit it, he did not do the amount of mileage he had done when he was younger. Not that he was ancient, but men, especially men who like to think of themselves as athletes, hate to concede an inch. Pride. It goes with the territory.
    Ridley was a retired government employee. He had been based in Washington, D.C., but the job had called for quite a bit of travel. He had become an old hand at the comings and goings inside the Beltway, but now that he was retired, he was extremely happy to be rid of the pressure and the hectic pace of the Washington scene. The traveling had made the job bearable. His wife Sandra was originally from upstate New York, so that’s where they decided to retire. At sixty, Ridley was trim with a minimum of aches and pains. His hair was dark brown courtesy of L’Oreal, with graying sides courtesy of mother nature. Never over do it, he had said. You can’t fool anybody about your age, but you can give them pause to reflect – gee, he looks good – graying, but only a little at the sides. Vanity. That went with the territory, too. Vanity and pride, when exhibited with the distinct male spin, was also very useful in shielding the ego from the inevitable.
    And the jogging. Sure, Ridley loved it, but it was even beyond that. Whether he loved it or not, it was so much a part of him that there was an unbreakable physical dependency. Did he think it would delay the inevitable? Possibly, but in the end, he knew there was no stopping it. There was a here-and-now kind of thing that was even more important. There was mental dependency. He had to jog. It kept him sane.
   Leaving from his house, Ridley would head down Maple Row, make a brief right