A Time To...

  “Now you’re pissing me off. You don’t trust me. You don’t think I’ll protect you from those losers.”

  “Hey, man! You can’t guarantee it. You’re not Superman. You’re not God.”

  “You’re right. I’m not. But you better know that I’d put it all on the line for you. They mess with you, they’re messin’ with me. You go down, they’re gonna have to take me down, too.”

  “OK. OK. Man, I hear you and you’re the best. I wish I were like you. I’m just not ready to die,” Al said as he closed his eyes.

  “Neither am I. Neither am I.”

  CHAPTER 40

  Losing Faith

  “We must die first before we truly live!” shouted Phil at Tommy and Al as they walked away.

  “What the hell is that nut talking about? What a fruitcake!” Tommy told Al.

  “Believe it or not, he’s died a few times already. That’s what he told me. Something inside him died and then he became a new person, like the preacher he is right now,” Al told Tommy.

  “Oh man, give him a one-way ticket to Bellevue.”

  “Yeah, but you know, when I talked with him that day, he didn’t sound all that crazy; I mean, he wasn’t clueless. He knows he’s a little off the wall.”

  “A little?”

  “He even joked about it, about how expensive it was to keep changing because he had to buy new clothes all the time to go along with his new personalities.”

  “Is that right? Well, nobody was holding a gun to his head. He could have just stayed the same guy like every other sane person and he wouldn’t have had to keep buying new clothes.”

  “Yeah, but he says if he hadn’t changed, he would have really gone nuts.”

  “What? He couldn’t get any nuttier. Aaawoo! I can’t take this headache anymore. I gotta find a drug store. I need aspirin or somethin’,” Tommy said as he looked around.

  “There, over there,” Al said, pointing across the street at a pharmacy. I’ll wait here. I want an ice cream,” Al told Tommy as he walked over to the Good Humor ice cream cart parked in front of the five and dime store.

  “OK,” Tommy said. “I’ll be right back.”

  “Toasted Almond,” Al told the ice cream man while reaching into his pocket and pulling out a dollar bill. A gust of wind blew it out of his hand and into the alley between the five and dime and Wong’s Chinese restaurant. Al chased it down past a garbage dumpster.

  “Damn it!” Al screamed at the bill as if it could hear and respond to him. When the bill finally came to rest, Al stepped on it.

  “Hey, it’s only money … and not much money at that!” a familiar voice quipped as Al crouched down to pick up the dollar. “Now, if it were a couple grand, like the money my brothers and me lost on that basketball game, that would piss me off,” Billy Bensen told Al as he pulled a pistol out of a paper bag and pointed it at Al.

  Al turned around and looked up in horror at the gun Billy was pointing directly at him.

  “You know what I mean?” Billy said with a smirk while looking down at Al. “How do you like the new toy I just bought?”

  “What are you doing, Billy?” Al asked as he looked up in horror at the barrel of a .357 magnum.

  “I’m evening up the score. You saved my life that day on the street when I had a seizure, and now I’m returning the favor.”

  “By shooting me?” Al gulped.

  “No. By letting you know that I could shoot you; and, by saving your butt from my Apostle brothers. I told them I was wrong about you, that it wasn’t you who fixed the game … that it was Bookie. I told them that I had lied to them about you because I wanted to stick it to you for old time’s sake but then I had second thoughts after hearing what they were going to do to you.”

  “Why? Why are you protecting me now?” said a very relieved Al.

  “You didn’t run away when the cops came, like my two brothers did. I haven’t been the same ever since. I’ve tried to get back my old feelings about you, and thought I did when I told the Apostles about how you fixed the basketball game. But something inside wouldn’t let me be responsible for getting you killed.”

  The half-minute of silence that followed was deafening. Al finally broke it by saying, “So what’s with the gun?”

  “Like I said, I owe you one. It’s payback time. It’s my way of letting you know that I’m making things right.”

  “Nooooohh! Don’t!” Al shouted as Tommy rushed up from behind the dumpster with an empty wine bottle in his hand that came crashing down with a loud thud on Billy’s head. Billy slumped to the ground on his knees and then on his face.

  “No! No! He wasn’t going to shoot me.” Al screamed at a dumbfounded Tommy.

  “Then why was he pointing his gun at you and saying, ‘It’s payback time’?” Tommy shouted back as they both looked at an unconscious Billy, who lay sprawled on the ground with blood flowing from his head and mouth, his gun still held tight in his hand.

  At that point, the scene from Al’s life froze for an instant, just long enough for the present-day Al to cry out, “Why? Why?”

  The scene then resumed, but not as it actually happened. Now it had a dreamlike quality, with the images looking softer and the voices sounding distant. Billy Bensen began moving, as if he were waking from a good night’s sleep. Al and Tommy watched in amazement as Billy sat up. He looked at each quizzically, as if he were trying to understand what he was doing on the ground. They looked at him in stunned silence.

  “Why? Why did you kill me? I wasn’t ready to die. I saved your life,” he reminded Al. “And you ... you killed me ... for saving his life?”

  “I’m sorry. It was an accident,” Tommy told Billy with great remorse.

  “Accident? No. There are no accidents in this life,” said the fisherman Tommy and Al had bumped into earlier. He appeared from nowhere, on cue.

  “I thought he was about to kill my friend. It was a mistake, an accident,” Tommy shouted at the fisherman.

  “Maybe it’s not what you intended. And it’s a shame that he had to die, but you’d better believe that there’s more going on here than you and I know. Believe it, or go crazy trying to make sense of it,” he said wistfully as he walked away. “You’ve got to look at the big picture.”

  “Crazy? Did somebody say crazy?” asked Phil, the Chameleon, as he walked up to Al.

  “He’s dead,” Al said, pointing to Billy Bensen. “Tommy killed him.

  He didn’t mean to. Tommy thought Billy was going to shoot me, but he was really just telling me about how he was saving my life because I had saved his.”

  “Pssstt and you call me crazy? That’s crazy,” Phil said. “I hate to say, ‘I told you so,’ but didn’t I just warn you guys, ‘our days are numbered,’ and, ‘our last day will come when we least expect it’? Just ask him. Better yet, I’ve got a question for him,” Phil said as he turned to Billy. “How does it feel to be dead?” he asked Billy, who was listening quietly while sitting on the sidewalk. “By the way, you look pretty good for being dead and all.”

  “It’s weird. I don’t feel anything ... at least not like before. The only senses I have now are sight and sound. I can’t feel anything that I touch. I can’t taste the blood in my mouth, and I can’t smell the garbage dumpster. And I feel strange inside. It’s hard to describe. It’s like I’ve just eaten my favorite meal after being really hungry. So I’m feeling pretty good. But I still think I’d rather be alive. At least I know what being alive was all about. I’m just getting to know what being dead is like. It’ll take time getting used to it.”

  “That won’t be a problem for you now. I mean, you’ve got nothing but time, an eternity to get comfortable with it,” Phil advised. “I’ll bet you’ll like it.”

  “I’ll take that bet ...” declared Bookie as he walked up to Phil. “Three to one says he won’t.”

  “What? Who are you?” Phil asked.

  “It doesn’t matter who I am. I don’
t care who you are. Put your money where your mouth is.”

  “I was just saying that he’d probably like being dead, now that he is dead,” Phil reiterated.

  “Talk is cheap,” replied Bookie. “I guess you don’t really believe what you said.”

  “Wrong. I’m speaking from my heart, my soul. You’re speaking from something else,” Phil corrected.

  “Soul schmole. If you’re not putting your money on the line, you don’t really believe it. No money, no risk ... and no risk, it’s just bullshit,” Bookie said.

  “OK. If you say so,” Phil said.

  “OK. I get it. No bet! Next time just say, ‘No bet.’ Don’t waste my time with all that crap,” Bookie spit out.

  “Crap! Crap! This guy is dead because of you,” Al shouted at Bookie. “That’s crap!”

  “Get real man! Like you had nothing to do with it, Mr. Disciple. I helped you get what you wanted, and you helped me get mine. You think you’re a man, but you whine like a baby when things go wrong. Poor little Al,” mocked Bookie.

  “Poor, poor little Al,” mocked Ms. Lemur, who walked up to Al and patted him on his head as she walked past. She looked just as she did the last time he had seen her in his second grade class. “Always the victim,” she added as she turned back to look Al in the eye before walking away.

  “No! No! You don’t understand,” Al protested as the real scene picked up from where it had paused. The images in the scene now appeared in sharp detail again.

  “I know what I saw. He was about to shoot you and I stopped him,” Tommy told Al.

  “Things aren’t always what they seem,” Al said half to himself and half to Tommy as Al knelt next to Billy’s motionless body. “We’ve got to get help. Go! Get an ambulance. I’ll stay here with him,” Al said as he motioned with his arm to Tommy and then turned to look at Billy’s face.

  “You know what happened. Remember! I saved your life!” Tommy cried out before he ran away.

  “Did you?” Al said to himself. “If only ...”

  “Hurts ... head hurts,” mumbled Billy with his eyes still closed.

  “If only Tommy knew what you were really doing. Billy, please hang on. Help is coming. I don’t know why ... why nothing good happens whenever we’re together. Even when one of us is trying to be friends, something always gets in the way,” Al said as he stared at Billy’s face.

  Billy’s eyes opened. They were glazed and searched to find Al’s face. When Billy’s eyes finally met Al’s, Billy struggled to say, “Friends,” in a whisper. A few seconds later, life left Billy’s face, and Al cried softly, “No.

  No. Why? Why?”

  As Al now reflected on that moment, he thought, A part of me died that day, too, the part of me that believed there was a God who made sure that good was rewarded, that good won in the end. It didn’t work that way for Billy. No justice for Billy and no justice for Tommy. He was convicted of manslaughter and went to prison. The jury didn’t believe his version of what had happened that day. They didn’t believe the truth. They thought it was a gang-related killing and wanted to use his case to send a message that gang violence wouldn’t be tolerated.

  Al had also thought that the fragility of life was something other people had to deal with, the people I had heard about in the news—not anyone who touched my life in some way. But if Billy could be healthy and very alive one minute and dead the next, so could I. And that changed how I viewed myself, the world around me, and other people. To say I was confused would be an understatement. However, one thing became very clear. The road to manhood didn’t travel through the Disciples. They didn’t have answers to all the questions and issues that flooded my head following Billy’s death and Tommy’s imprisonment.

  Al’s dad had told him, “Life isn’t always fair. That’s a lesson that will take a long time to learn ... a lifetime ... because it’s hard to accept, and because things will come up throughout your life that will force you to face that fact over and over again. You’ll know you’re a man when, in spite of it all, you don’t become bitter. You make lemonade from life’s lemons.”

  Al shook his head now as he reflected on his dad’s wisdom. He was right. I had known that I was far from being a man. I was bitter, and the bitterness brought on by what happened to Billy and Tommy lingered in me for a long time. At first it was all about the fates of Billy and Tommy, how circumstances conspired against them that bothered me. But then I reminded myself again and again that if it weren’t for me, for what I had done, Billy would still be alive and Tommy wouldn’t be in prison. I needed to get away, to put those bad memories behind me. So that’s what I did the first chance I got.

  CHAPTER 41

  A Concerned Son

  While Al’s spirit was somewhere far from Ground Zero, his son John walked its ash-covered streets searching for his father. In his hand, he carried copies of an 8 x 10 color photo of his dad that he passed out to the rescue workers he met. He came across others, concerned family members of the missing, who were doing the same. As he walked, John covered his nose and mouth with a handkerchief to keep from breathing the ashes that filled the air like a plague.

  “My father, have you seen him?” John asked as he passed them out.

  “Sorry. No,” all replied as they scurried off.

  When John was a block away from where Tower One had stood just hours before, he stared at it in silence and horror. All that was left was a heap of burning, twisted steel and the strong odor of putrid smoke - a strange mixture of mostly burnt jet fuel, molten steel, pulverized concrete and cremated flesh.

  “Dad, where are you? Please be alive,” he begged. Al didn’t hear him because he was far, far away.

  CHAPTER 42

  Another Place ... Another Time

  Ethiopia, Ethiopia ... everywhere Al turned, Ethiopia was there. The lush green landscape of rolling hills, dotted with umbrella like trees, swept by below as if Al were viewing this picturesque scene from a fast-moving, low-flying plane, but without the plane. The images zoomed past, providing a panoramic view of the area. Focusing on a single, static, or slow-moving object at close range was a challenge.

  In the distance, he could decipher a sprinkling of grass-covered huts. He also saw several cappuccino-colored women with glistening, black, braided hair walking barefoot along a winding, narrow dirt path, hunched over carrying large bundles of twigs on their backs. He flew directly over them without any acknowledgement from them. It was as if he wasn’t there. His flight path then followed an unpaved road that was clear, except for a cloud of dust up ahead that was moving in the same direction, but slower.

  In a few seconds, Al caught up to the leading edge of the dust cloud. A large bus, its roof loaded high with luggage, cardboard boxes, and burlap sacks of charcoal, motored as fast as it could along the rocky, winding dirt road, leaving a plume of red clay dust in its wake. After passing the bus and the loud, pulsating foreign music coming from inside it, the scene shifted to a different location, the first of a series of shifts.

  It was as if time and space, the laws of nature, no longer applied. One minute he was gliding over one place, and the next minute another place. From the fertile green teff fields of Ethiopia’s western provinces, he was somehow transported four hundred miles northeast to Hadar, the site where in 1974 the partial remains of the oldest known human ancestor had been discovered. Nineteen seventy-four had been a momentous year too for Al, who was serving the second year of his two-year Peace Corps commitment as a tenth grade English teacher in Ethiopia.

  At the time, he was barely aware of the great anthropological find. It was only later, after he had returned to the States, that he learned about the 3.2-million-year-old Hominid that was discovered in Ethiopia while he had been there. A Chicago University professor had unearthed the twenty-year-old female, naming her Lucy, after the popular Beatles song “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds.” The name later made sense to Al since Lucy was a universal discovery and a gem of an anthropolog
ical find. But at the time, Al had been too involved in his own personal discoveries to care that he was living in the place where humans first walked the earth.

  The same was true about other Ethiopian places and events that cascaded below him now. Not far from Lucy’s resting place were the eleven amazing stone-carved churches of Lalibela, which had been hewn from solid rock underground and connected by tunnels and pathways in the thirteenth century. As Al glided over them, one stood out, the one in the shape of a cross, which clearly marked it as a sacred Christian place.

  Nearby, a procession of men and women, dressed in dazzling white, carried bright, multi-colored umbrellas, embroidered with jewels and gold, to shield them from the bright sun and to honor a deceased member of their community. Leading the procession was a simple wooden coffin that looked more like a shipping crate draped with a red velvet cloth decorated in gold and silver Christian symbols.

  Al hadn’t been to Lalibela while he lived in Ethiopia because the opportunity had never presented itself. But now, on this whirlwind aerial tour of Ethiopia, he marveled at this site and the driving force that compelled those who designed and built these houses of worship, the same force now guiding the funeral procession below him. What was he doing here now? Why? How? He had no answers, just another abrupt departure from one location and arrival at another.

  Al now found himself 150 miles west of Lalibela, gliding over Lake Tana, Ethiopia’s largest lake and the source of the Blue Nile River, that flowed north through Egypt and into the Mediterranean Sea. It was the route Ethiopia’s Queen of Sheba took about 980 BC to become the mother of Ethiopia’s first emperor, Menelik I, after King Solomon had tricked her into having relations with him.

  It was a story everyone in Ethiopia knew well, passed down from generation to generation. The story was retold for foreigners on painted canvases with a series of storyboard-type scenes that traced the queen’s journey to King Solomon and back. Every emperor since then, including the reigning Haile Selassie, traced their lineage back to that fateful union.