I sit on the balcony of my old bedroom and watch the world go on without me. There is a comfort in that, knowing that I am not necessary, I mean. Of course it is not an entirely comforting thought, so I put it out of my mind and turn my eyes instead to the several children playing at being warriors below me. Their feet slap against the dusty stonework, their shouts and shrill attempts at war-cries, the thock-thock of their wooden swords dueling, all of it echo up through the courtyard to my room, and I smile to think of how not so long ago I was like them, playing at being a great man, slashing the grass with wooden swords, chasing sheep and cattle through golden fields under green mountains. I wonder if any of them will grow up to be great men.

I wonder if any of them will grow up to think I was a great man.

I turn back to my desk and glance at the manuscript I have just written out, checking it for mistakes of grammar or spelling, then roll it up into a neat cylinder, setting it on my desk. I am an old man, after all, I think to myself, and old men should be able to write their final words a little early, you know, make sure they have a little flourish. I pull out my pocketwatch and glance at the face. Three-thirty it says, and I slip the brass bauble back into the small pocket at my waist. The chain of it, the watch I mean, it reminds me of when I used to carry a leather sack full of overripe fruit and slightly spoiled cheese into the fields, of the afternoon lunches of simple food that tasted good, of the clean water I would wash it down with.

I walk back out to the balcony and sit down hard into my old rocking chair, hanging my jacket over the edge. My wife, when she was still alive, would often lecture me about that, hanging my coat over the edge like I do. She was always afraid it would blow off, and would tell me about her opinion over and over and over, her voice chafing in my brain like a cheese grater. Then she would pick it up (since I would always ignore her pleas to do it myself), beat off the red-brown dust that coats everything in this city and hang in inside on one of the pink quilted coat-hangers her mother gave us at Passover twenty years before. I don't miss her often, but sometimes, every once in awhile, I do, and I lay on my bed and close my eyes, clenching the pillow she slept on till the day she died, the pillow I don't use anymore, except when I need to remember her smell. But my wife is dead and I am not, so the jacket stays there, sitting on the balcony railing, twitching with imagined life as the wind blows its brown tweed folds.

The sun, the great and ancient sun, feels good on the bag of leather and stubble I call my face. It makes me remember other days, long past, days when I was young and strong and wise in the ways of the common man. I remember The Day, the day that changed me, that made me great, that insured that I would be immortal. I remember the that sun, the great and ancient sun, felt good on my smooth and handsome face. I remember the smell of freshly whetted bronze mingling with the pungent twang of warm wine. The wind was blowing on my face, the long grass was rustling, quiet among the shouts of two armies. Even as I stood there, waiting for the Giant, I was distant from the mobs. For a moment, I think, I knew God, I felt him. I felt him in the grass that brushed sharply against my shins, I heard him in the cry of a bird, fleeing the scene later than was probably wise. The ground, I noted, was dotted with the shadows of vultures, and I looked up and saw a beauty in their dance against the clouds, their dark forms impersonating Chinese kites on a stage of blue and white.

Then I looked down and across the fields, out towards another army, one of men whose tongue language and dress were alien from my own. I remember seeing one boy, not much older than me, holding a long pike, his face white with fear, and I wondered if his father had been a shepherd too. Then I saw the Giant, his armor shining in the sun, his face covered with a thick beard. He wasn't arrogant, not really, not like some people say. No, he was serious, concentrated, self-assured even, but not arrogant. That man had seen other men die, that man knew that no matter what things looked like, no matter what his officers told him in pep-talks over fermented milk, that man knew he could die. And so he was prepared to be merciless, to do whatever it took to go home to his children, to his wife. For a moment our eyes locked, and then we turned away from each other, not wanting to see the eyes of the man we were about to kill (or so we told ourselves).

The leather was wet in my hands, my own sweat soaking it through, but I remember the pleasure I took from the sound that wet leather makes when it is squeezed tightly. The next thing I remember, I am on the shoulders of a thousand warriors, all of them crying out my name. The air flashed with the colors of flags and banners, the earth trembled with the roar of voices and horns. "Hero!" they cried, and I lost my anxieties, threw my arms into the air and let the universe worship me, just for a moment. Damn it felt good.

Now my grandchildren are the only ones who ask about that day. My stories become the fodder of dreams and games as invisible Philistines fall before the wrath of six year-old boys. Only the children call me a hero now, but that is good, I think. When men call you a hero, you are a fashion, a passing thing. But I will remain in the dreams of little boys for many, many years, and perhaps, perhaps when people no longer read my poetry or sing songs of my empire, perhaps little boys will still cry out my name and that of my nation, will still strike down imaginary Philistines. Perhaps the children will remember me, and for a time, they want to be me. That, I think, is enough.

The mothers of little boys drag them to doorways to clean their faces and hands before dinner, wiping them hard and murmuring about how this lad or that will be the death of them. The court becomes quiet, with only the sound of the wind brushing against the old gnarled pine in the far corner breaking the silence. The sun sets over my city, dressing the sky in the colors of a street harlequin, and I watch it set. I consider pulling on my jacket, but decide against it, opting instead to feel the night come on, to feel the air become crisp and clean against my arms and my face.

I do not move for awhile, trying to take note of this moment of satisfaction, trying to remember it, to etch it indelibly onto my soul in hopes of being able to recall it in my dreams during the long sleep that comes soon. Then I begin to rock my old chair, slowly, listening to the creaking of old wood, smiling to myself, wishing I had the chance to do it all again.