Hard to Find and Lucky to Have

Scott was going to be the new kid in class and spent most of the summer dreading the prospect of making new friends. Even at his age, he knew he was not blessed with the gift of socialization.

As luck would have it, the boy seated directly in front of him was Todd, a gregarious child whose personality was quite the opposite. He was friends with practically everyone in the class, but he made it clear to Scott on the first day of school that he always had room for one more.

Over the course of that year, the boys saw their bond grow stronger. Scott only managed to forge connections with a couple of other classmates, but Todd became a loyal ally through what would have otherwise been an interminable year of solitude and exclusion.

By the time fourth grade began, Scott was no longer such an outsider, though he continued to lag far behind his friend in terms of popularity. He knew it was his association with Todd that provided him the limited clout he held in the halls of Hannibal Hamlin Elementary School.

When puberty hit, a tall and muscular Todd saw his ability to make friends morph seamlessly into a knack for attracting girlfriends. Scott, meanwhile, dealt with the twin tragedies of acne and orthodontic braces, neither of which improved his tendency toward social awkwardness. Nevertheless, they were practically inseparable throughout their teenage years.

On Scott’s sixteenth birthday, Todd introduced him to beer. At first, Scott hated the taste, but a lifelong love affair was born by the time he’d forced the contents of two more cans down his gullet.

Plenty changed during those formative years, but one thing stayed the same. On Scott’s birthday, Todd showed up with a case of Draper’s Light. When Todd’s birthday rolled around, Scott supplied the beer -- whichever brand was cheapest.

The Madigans always struggled with money, which contributed to Scott’s persistent feelings of inadequacy. His father earned a meager wage as a factotum for the local transit agency and his mother stayed at home to take care of their three-room cottage and tend to the humble adjacent garden.

In yet another stark contrast, the Farley family was conspicuously affluent. Todd’s parents were frequently featured in newspaper articles highlighting their philanthropy or simply marking their presence at another black-tie affair.

Nevertheless, they both attended the same state college. Scott, through equal parts determination and an anemic social life, pushed himself to graduate among the top ten in his class of more than three hundred peers. For his part, Todd exited high school as the baseball team’s ace pitcher and, naturally, homecoming king. Even without the athletic scholarship, his family could have afforded to send him to virtually any university in the country -- but he wanted to experience his first years of adulthood with his closest friend.

Along the way came jobs, late-night cram sessions, their first serious romances, and plenty of diversions that served to weaken their bond. Then, when they were juniors, Scott met Fallon. A petite bombshell two years older than Scott, she was a waitress at the diner near campus where he would occasionally grab a late-night slice of coconut pie.

His clumsy efforts to woo Fallon meant he had less time to spend with Todd. At first, he made excuses for canceling plans. After a while, though, it became clear that Scott could not maintain both relationships. Even when he still thought there was room in his life for an old friend and new girlfriend, Fallon intervened to disabuse him of that notion.

Over time, Fallon grew more direct in her admonitions, frequently characterizing Todd as “bad news” and insisting that he would lead her steady boyfriend down a path of depravity.

But Scott feared this would be his only chance at romance, so the courtship led to a proposal just a few weeks before graduation. She said yes and almost immediately began planning the wedding. Of course, the groom-to-be had a limited role in the process -- until Fallon began planning out the guest list.

An inquiry about his best man threw him for a loop. He’d considered the topic on rare occasions in the past, but it had now become a reality. He knew a few of the guys at the university and had even gone out for drinks after work with some of his coworkers at the supermarket where he was a part-time clerk. But asking any of them to be his best man would have been a massive leap.

It left him with only one name to consider.

Knowing it would be a tough sell, he gingerly broached the subject a few days later. Fallon was in an unusually good mood after spending several hours discussing nuptial details with her best friend. Scott knew this would be his best opportunity to mention that he wanted to include his oldest chum in the ceremony.

“You know, I think I’d like to ask Todd to be my best man,” he said in a nonchalant manner that belied his underlying nervousness.

As it turned out, his neurosis was justified. Scott and Fallon spent the next hour arguing over the suggestion that Todd would be an invited guest -- not to mention a prominent member of the wedding party. The quarrel ended when he meekly recanted, vowing to choose someone else to fill the role.

Scott’s twenty-second birthday was about six weeks later. He knew it would be impossible to spend the evening drinking with Todd that year. Fallon would have something planned for him and would expect him to be available all day. Even if he could get away, he’d have to lie about where he was going -- and she could always see through his deception.

Fate intervened when Fallon’s younger brother was hit by a pickup truck as he walked across the road one night on the way home from work. Jovian survived the gruesome incident but was clinging to life in the intensive care unit.

As soon as she got the news, Fallon made travel plans and surprisingly left it up to Scott to decide if he would join her or not. Her family lived about three hours away and he’d never met them in person. In addition to the personal nature of the visit, he cited upcoming final exams in his decision to stay behind. Of course, in the back of his mind was the opportunity to finally hang out with his oldest friend.

Todd knew that Fallon was the reason for the growing rift in their rapport, so it was easy for them to pick up where they left off. They decided to get together at Todd’s apartment the next evening to celebrate Scott’s birthday early.

It was just like old times. They stayed up all night, trading stories, drinking beers, and even passing a few doobies back and forth. Nothing about the celebration left any indication that it would be their last. By the time Todd’s next birthday rolled around, Scott and Fallon had already eloped, effectively cutting off any further communications between the two young men.

Six years later, on the afternoon of March 4, 1977, Todd’s motorcycle drifted across the oncoming lane as he sped down a winding country road, escaping the pavement and crashing into a tree. He died instantly.

It wasn’t until weeks later that Scott learned his one-time comrade perished in the gruesome event. That realization came in the form of an attorney’s letter informing him that he had been named in Todd’s will. Upon arriving at the firm a few days later to hear his late friend’s final wishes, he learned even more about what had transpired over the past several years.

Todd’s father was arrested in 1974 on charges of insider trading. The next year, the elder Farley was convicted and sentenced to a decade behind bars. Todd’s mother passed away just a few months before the motorcycle crash, and the 28-year-old had been living in near destitution. The stunning reversal of fortune impacted his old friend more acutely than even the news of his death, and Scott began to quietly weep as an attorney brought him up to speed.

Finally, the time came for Scott to receive what his deceased friend had left behind for him: a black notebook. He’d seen this book before and had witnessed Todd enter details of the various one-night stands and fleeting romances he’d enjoyed during their previous outings.

The small memento became an infinitely valuable keepsake merely for the connection it provided to his fallen friend. It maintained a place of reverence in the attic -- the only area of their home that Scott could take solace after a hard day or sneak a cigar when his wife was away.

While he never opened its cover, he sat at the desk that housed it every year on Todd’s birthday, drinking a beer in solitude and recalling the days of his youth. This continued for three decades until Fallon died of ovarian cancer at the age of sixty. Scott mourned the loss but also saw her death as an opportunity to spend the rest of his years recapturing the independence he traded away so long ago.

When Todd’s next birthday rolled around, Scott cracked open the now-brittle black book and began flipping through its yellowed pages. The sheer number of entries took him by surprise, and he took his time scouring the names on each page until he reached his own entry approximately midway through the book.

Instead of the usual address and phone number, it included a brief note.

“My oldest friend, visit the spot where we spent your eighteenth birthday and walk twenty paces east -- then dig three feet deep. Happy belated birthday… T.F.”

Decades later, Scott still remembered that night. They sat at a table outside of the local drive-in restaurant, arriving about an hour after it closed and remaining there well into the next morning. He couldn’t remember its name or even precisely where it had been located, but was able to find the pertinent information after a few quick searches online. The next day, he made a beeline to the spot, which by that point was a hardware store.

He decided to return that evening to dig around without interference. Following a few failed attempts, he figured he’d hit the right spot when his shovel hit an object buried the specified three feet below the surface.

It was a metal lunch pail. Scott immediately recognized it as the same dome-topped box his friend brought with him every day to Hannibal Hamlin. Upon opening it, he found it stuffed with hundred-dollar bills -- an amount he would later realize totaled exactly $20,000.

The box also contained a lengthier note. Scott read with horror about the tragic life that Todd led during the final years of his short life. Upon his father’s conviction, his friends abandoned him and all of his prospects for a charmed life began to evaporate one by one.

Todd wrote of his confidence that Scott would have been just as loyal a friend at rock bottom as he always had been in their youth. Through welling tears, Scott arrived at the point in Todd’s letter describing his intention to end his own life in spectacular fashion with a final ride on his lone remaining source of joy.

“My father left me this money when he knew the walls were closing in on him,” the letter concluded. “But what I’m searching for, money cannot buy. I hope it brings you more fortune than it ever provided me.”

The letter was dated just three days before the crash. At the bottom of the page was a sketch of a four-leaf clover alongside a paraphrased Irish proverb: “True friends are hard to find and lucky to have.”