The Fair Exchange - Part 4

I awoke three days later in the hospital. On the floor above my own Joey was fighting for his life. It was Little Ed who told me about it, taking an opportunity to give me a few minutes of unfriendly attention.

“This isn’t over, ass wipe,” he finished with quiet menace. But either he had changed or I had. I didn’t see the hulking brute that I had long feared – only a scared little boy pretending to be a man.

After I had stared at him sullenly for a long time he finally hissed “Did you hear me?”

“Would you like to know how you die?” I asked him abruptly in return.

The question nearly floored him, his eyes widening briefly in undisguised horror. But once he recovered his composure he growled –“I know how you’re gonna die.”

“No, you don’t,” I answered evenly. “I already know how I will die, but you will be dead and forgotten long before.”

His thin veneer of intimidation lifting, he was exposed for the little boy he really was. He wanted to leave the room, to avoid the possibility of my telling him what he did not want to know, but he also wanted to leave the room under the same terms that he had entered it, the one threatening rather than the one being threatened. But it was too late. I just looked back at him blankly till he turned and walked away, his little boy feet shuffling across the floor.

Ed’s voice abruptly snapped me back to the present, “What do ya think?” he asked, mirror in hand.

“Looks great.”

After paying him with cash I started to pull a few additional bills from my wallet. But Ed said with a wink “I was serious about you buying that first round. You might want to save some of your tip for that.”

Marty’s Place was a small hobby bar, just big enough for a couple of Foosball tables and a short row of bar stools. A couple of young guys played at a table while their beers sweated on a narrow shelf along the opposite wall. Other than them and us the place was empty.

We sat at the bar and talked with Marty – mostly about Joey – quickly finishing the first three pitchers, our consumption only flagging mid-way through the fourth. They chatted at some length and with increasing warmth about Joey’s turnaround and the many good works that he founded over the years in Glenville, but the role I had played in the accident continued its absence from their recollections.

After Joey’s recovery the myth that grew around him could not accommodate his former behavior or my consequent suffering and so it was excised from the town’s history. In their eyes at the very least I had predicted Joey’s crippling and at the very worst had mysteriously caused it to happen. It was as if the only thing that the town remembered was my threat. Walk away or something terrible will happen … to you, I had pleaded. It earned me multiple visits from the local police. They continued to harass me till the driver who hit him was located and they failed to establish any connection between us. But failure to prove my guilt did nothing to exonerate it. I heard He’s as guilty as hell spoken behind my back again and again.

On my 18th birthday I dropped out of school and joined the Marines – swearing an oath to never return. And yet there I sat drinking with the two men who helped Joey beat me unconscious, laughing at their jokes and listening to them praise the man responsible for it. But the residual anger that had built up within me over the decades and with it the desire for revenge seemed strangely absent. Instead the memory of the crossroads began to buzz in my thoughts even as I tried to remind myself of who the true victim and perpetrators really were.

A part of me wanted to confess that Joey’s crippling was a devil’s bargain made one moonlit night and at the same time castigate them for expunging my role from his story. Would Joey have turned his life around without first beating the living crap out of me? Would Glenville have built its charitable reputation without the lies told at my expense? But once two hours had passed and we had almost finished the fifth pitcher without even a passing mention of my role in the story I began to fear that I would have to bring it up myself or leave it forever unspoken.

And then something completely unexpected happened.

“You want to know why Joey ran in front of that car?” Ed suddenly asked me, Marty staring at him in alarm.

“He didn’t watch where he was going?”

Ed snorted. “Joey was running away. He had just beat a kid at Glenville High almost to death.” Exchanging a sidelong glance with Marty he clamped his mouth shut as if suddenly regretting speaking. For two or three minutes he just stared down at his empty beer glass as Marty morosely sipped on his. Finally, Ed sighed. “No one in town ever talks about that kid.”

“Why not?”

“Fear and a collective sense of shame, I s’pose. But mostly fear.”

“Fear of what?”

“After the kid got out of the hospital he changed. He started telling people their future. Not the general mumbo jumbo you get from fortune tellers, but specific, died in the wool, such and such will happen to you, on such and such a day. And whatever he said, no matter how fantastic, would happen.”

“That sounds pretty hard to believe,” I replied, especially since I knew it wasn’t true.

Ed looked truly unhappy for the first time that evening, his eyes moving slowly from his empty glass to Marty who sheepishly shrugged his shoulders. The beer had definitely taken its toll. Leaning forward he jabbed his finger accusingly at me. “I know what you’re thinkin’.”

“What am I thinkin’ – Ed?”

“That I’m tellin’ tales out of school. Listen,” he said, this time poking me in the chest with his forefinger, “ask anyone in this town. They’ll tell you the same.”

“I’ve seen some strange things in my life as well, Ed.”

“Ya think? I’m bettin’ you never saw anything like him. He only predicted when bad things would happen. Eventually even his friends were afraid to talk to him. If they saw him coming they would turn and walk the other way. I saw him empty a crowded hallway once just by clearing his throat.”

I guffawed in disbelief, but Ed just shook his head, his eyes returning unhappily to his beer glass. But once he finally lifted his gaze he asked hopefully “You want some more beer?”

“No thanks … I already had too much.

“Marty?”

“I’m good.”

Pushing his glass aside, Ed sighed a second time. “I don’t know why I feel the need to unburden myself after all these years.” Scratching his head, he finally muttered what I had come to Marty’s hoping to hear. “That kid said something to me that I’ve never shaken. Joey was in intensive care at the time,” he said as his hands shook with suppressed feeling, “we didn’t know if he would survive.” Gulping with emotion he continued - “The kid Joey beat up was in the hospital too – on the floor below Joey’s.” Too moved to speak for a moment, he stared at the ceiling to keep tears from streaming down his cheeks, his face now disfigured by shame. “Listen. I’m not proud of this. I wanted to hurt that kid – or at least to scare him real bad.” Ed looked me in the eyes, unsure if he could continue. But it didn’t matter anymore.

I looked back at him with my best Sunday smile. When I asked, “Would you like to know how you die?” – both he and Marty jerked upright on their stools.

Ed stared open mouthed as I looked blankly back. He finally whispered – “Jamie? Is that you?” and I grimly nodded. “So … so how do I die?” he asked hoarsely.

I just shrugged. “I haven’t the foggiest idea, Ed.” Marty leaned back and roared with laughter as Ed sat stunned, his wet eyes nervously moving back and forth between Marty and myself.

You don’t have any idea?” he asked incredulously.

“Of course not, Ed. I can’t tell the future. I never could.”

“Then what happened with Joey?”

“I wish I knew.”

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The Fair Exchange - Part 5