I can't stop the fear. It's 3 am and I stumble up the stairs, listening to the thumps and curses and knowing what the rest of the night will bring.  I will stare wide-eyed at the ceiling, flashlight in one hand and tennis racket in the other, my body curled tightly into the corner of my favorite chair, and I will be afraid, and I will feel the pain of death. All of this from a bat in the bedroom in the middle of a September night.  

"Where did you leave the tennis racquets?" (My partner's weapon of choice.)  

"I don't know. It's three o'clock in the morning. I can't find my feet." 

Eventually the rackets are found and we stand outside the now closed bedroom door.  Neither of us wants to lead the way. We open the door together and duck under our rackets.  We strike.  We try and face the danger. It sweeps over us, weaving through the air until we learn its rhythms, and unbelievably, I make a hit. Motionless, we stand together, looking at the bat curled on the floor, brown and furry and smaller now, and very still.  Gingerly, I pick it up with the rackets and place it outside beneath a tree. But fear follows me back into the house. Will there be another? If I fall asleep, will I awaken before the next bat settles into a dark corner that I won't notice in the daylight, from where it will emerge to haunt me again, night after night?  

Once these thoughts have begun to circle, I can't sleep, and instead I watch the dawn sky for traces of shadows that move too close, listen in the dim light for sounds above my own heartbeat and dry swallows. I search my mind for clues (where are the bats coming from?), and I question my courage, or lack thereof, and my unintentional kill. 

The sun finally rises. My body moves feebly on the few minutes of sleep I've snatched in the crook of the chair with the racket and flashlight close to my chest. I straighten up stiffly and look with an accusatory eye at my sleeping cats, silently asking, "Why can't you do this?" to which they answer, "We only know play.  We've not yet encountered true battle--real death."   

The phone rings and in between yawns with sweatpants drooping around my calves, I listen to the soft, thin voice of Shirley, my elderly neighbor, droning from the answering machine.   

"Please, come and take my dog.  I'm too sick to let him out."   

She hangs up in the middle of a chest-breaking cough. Ill-prepared for this emergency, I take in a deep breath and hold it, then blow it out to the trees waving above me as I step across the few feet of patchy grass to her door. Her dog greets me as I enter and follows me to the back room, which is hot and smells of cigarette smoke and ripe bananas.  Shirley is lying sideways on the bed, her face tight and pale, her tongue too thick and dry to speak.  For the third time this year I call for an ambulance.  Within moments, her impossibly light stick-body is placed onto a gurney, and she is unaware of my hand slipping from hers as the paramedics carry her down the stairs. I phone her children while the siren fades away, street by street. Her dog answers the siren's call, his head and ears back, his mouth a circle around each "O".   

The fear returns.  Death is too close.  The one lesson I cannot learn, don't want to learn. Life ends. If, however, we are lucky enough to live its length, even with all the joys and richness the years may bring, the final passing can be exceedingly slow and difficult. I am afraid of the pain more than the death itself.   

I walk back to my house, put the water on for coffee, and reach up to tear August from the calendar.  My eyes become fixed on September 11.  Again, I see the images and feel the loss.  Sudden death is no better. A young death is not easier. The loss of any one life will always bring pain, no matter the reason or lack of it.  

I can't stop the fear. I can't lose the pain. In accepting that, I find courage.   

Just in case, though, I think I'll keep the tennis rackets handy.

Author's Biography

Nancy Knauer is a 50-year-old who has recently discovered writing and is currently learning and exploring the craft at The Loft Literary Center in Minneapolis, Minnesota. 

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