Those that have been injured often find that there's a trick to healing, and it is to never stop moving. Slow down, even to a crawl if that's all you have, but if you stop completely, if you give up, everything will knit and harden, muscles torn from the shoulder will drop around the ribs to clench; before you know it you're crippled. Jim believes he is not crippled. It hurts to run but he does it most mornings. Thudding lopsided past the cricket field, he's in his stride.
The cold is in his ears making his jaw ache but there's heat running down his chest. He listens to the hollowness of his own breathing and calms it deliberately, slow in through the nose, slow out through the mouth. Above him a crow wavers in the air, drops down to the leafless branch of an alder to scream at him. He picks up his pace.
If you don't keep moving the past will calcify you. He's not dodging. What he is doing, he tells himself, is replacing each bitter brick of the past with now, with the crow, with the soggy bramble and the crisp of late frost, with the simple drum of his feet in the mud, with the wide gray sky, with the young voices carrying on the wind, with the ache in his shoulder, with a different pain, one that he can handle.