RaDical MiDDle - ColdType

Radical Middle | 211
My surge of clarity died with him. It had lasted one London
rush-hour. How could I go back and be a journalist and a
businessman? David didn’t need to get killed. He was killed
because of the flaw. Whoever shot him believed that what David
stood for meant death and destruction. That shooter had to be
liberated, it was pressing. He didn’t have to love David, I don’t
suppose David would have loved him. He had to be liberated
to believe that life on the other side did not mean the hordes
raping his daughter and stealing his house and suppressing
him into impotence.
I remembered Jim Bailey’s “life more abundant”. He had
his own, all right, he wanted abundance extended to where
it was not known. David had the same target, different route.
He was gone now; another reducing, another sign of our lives
shrinking, shrinking, in soul, in spirit, in dead friends.
David and I were amiable, not bosom. I’d see him on Jorissen
Street; we shared coffees a few times. Once in adjoining barbers’
chairs we sparred the liberal/left debate with our heads stiffly
straight and our eyes meeting by mirror while our barbers
chris and albert groaned and wrote us off as kafferboeties. I
didn’t need David gone, the murderer didn’t need him gone, it
was a mistake, a mistake that wouldn’t happen when the sound
society came.
How could I go home to write safe readable pieces on life
as it was? I had to hold out life as it could be. Pathfinditis is a
dread disease.
When I got back to the office I told my colleagues that I
needed just a little more time out, four months, say, or maybe
six, to knock off one last book on making democracy work. This
would be the very end, really, I knew it. In the meantime, old
faces and new faces combined made five, or 51/2 with Sally, the
commandant of subscriptions. That was a big rich complement.
I’d drop out, for a while.
I didn’t know it at the time, and definitely didn’t intend it,
but that was the death-knell.
Don caldwell produced the next few editions. The idea,