Me and Leon
Me and Leon God of mercy and compassion look with pity upon me Father let me call thee Father, tis thy child returns to thee Jesus Lord I ask for mercy, let me not implore in vain All my sins I now detest them, never will I sin again G.B. Pergolosi d. 1736 There were many ways to climb into the cold, boreal forests of the Catskills, some easier than others. Freddie and Leon always took the hardest, steepest, rockiest trails there were because that’s what the Army would have wanted, even though it hurt Freddie’s legs now and sucked his lungs dry. He had asthma, arthritis, age. Once “Fabulous” Freddie was a mess. “Sucks getting old,” he thought, but in a sick kind of way it helped seeing Leon wear down too. They’d enjoyed a fellowship of shared suffering that had been the Army for two years, and many years of pleasant hiking since. It had been tough lately, though. Watching Kabul go down in trillion dollar flames brought b...