Hearts Left Behind (10 page)

Looking for such hints one evening in the days after
losing Ethan, I found an anagram generator on the internet one night and so I
typed in
Ethan Merrill
.  I filtered through dozens of nonsensical
returns.

Neither all
mr

Hearten ill
mr

Lean
mr
Hitler

Lather Merlin

Thrill near me

Then I came across one that brought the burn of bile
to the back of my throat.  It was the message I was seeking and it read
like the voice of God in my head, though my heart told me it was Satan.  I
stared at my burning bush and read it again. 
And again.
 
It did not change.  I scratched it out on a piece of paper in front of me
and crossed off each letter in my son’s name until I was sure it matched. 
Then I did the opposite and wrote my son’s name on the piece of paper and moved
his letters until they formed the words in my anagram omen.

He’ll err in Tam

It’s almost enough to make a man believe in something.

In my back pocket was the poem I had written for Katie
the night before.  The thought of giving it to her made my knees wobble,
so I promised myself I would do it right before I had to go home so I didn’t have
to talk to her afterward.  We bounced my basketball up to the playground
where we first played Around
The
World and then a
couple games of HORSE.  Interrupting our third game of HORSE
came
a call from the street corner.

“Hey there, Sassafras.”
 

The voice belonged to Edie Dales and without even
turning around I knew that Son Settles was with him.  Son Settles was
always with him.  Edie and Son were best friends, though by appearance
alone you’d never match the two of them together.  Where
as Son came with all the accoutrements of a small town
redneck – John Deere hats, t-shirts that are only sold at rock concerts and
flea markets, and blue jeans with circular faded spots on the back pockets from
cans of chewing tobacco - Edie always had a country club polish to him,
although to my knowledge neither he nor his family belonged to the one country
club in the area.  He only wore shirts with collars, many of them with a
small alligator or horse or something embroidered on the front.  What’s
more, he never wore blue jeans – always dressy-looking slacks.  Somehow,
those pants never sullied or stained, even when playing tackle football. 

The only thing more perfect than his
clothing was his hair, which I never once saw mussed or
tussled.
  That fleshy white crease down
the center of his head parted his hair perfectly even, like a Bible opened to
Psalms, giving him a veneer of innocence that he didn’t deserve.

It was beyond disturbing how out of place
Edie Dales looked in this town.  Like seeing a
clown anywhere outside of a circus or a children’s party, it was equally bone
chilling to see Edie Dales anywhere inside of Willow Grove.

Edie’s real name was Andrew and that’s how you were to
address him. 
Never Andy, never Dales.
 
Behind his back, though, everyone called him Edie.  That started one day
after Edie had said in a not-so-joking manner that after resting on that first
Sunday, God went back to work the next day and made him.  And thus was
born the nickname Eighth Day Dales.  Eighth Day begot E.D. and E.D. begot Edie. 
Andrew Dales had a grand and fragile ego and did not like being called Edie,
which, of course, is precisely why the nickname stuck.

Edie had a ticking time bomb personality.  Once,
when playing catch with Johnny Swanson, the baseball skipped over the top of
Edie’s glove and it hit him smack in the mouth, knocking out a front
tooth.  He calmly dropped his glove and put a hand to his lips which were
bleeding and swollen.  Edie looked up at Johnny, casually walked over to
him, and punched him in the mouth, knocking out a front tooth of Johnny’s.
Pronouncing them “even”, Edie walked back to his spot and picked up the ball
and glove.

“Now, don’t throw it so damn hard,” he told
Johnny.  “And don’t throw it at my face.”

Then he threw the ball back over to Johnny who - not
knowing what else to do – caught it and threw it back. 

Polished but severe, that’s how I’d describe Andrew
Dales.

Another time, Tim Carmichael accidentally referred to
Andrew as “Edie” when the two were at the playground one afternoon.  After
assuring Tim that he wasn’t going to hurt him, Edie finally persuaded Tim to
explain the nickname.  By his reaction, I thought for a minute that Edie
was going to let Tim off the hook.  Not the case, although Edie did keep
his promise not to hurt Tim.  Instead, Edie instructed Tim to undress down
to his underwear and climb the ladder to the top of the slide.  Once up
there, he told Tim to jump off the side.  Staring down at a small crowd of
schoolmates, Tim refused.  In silence, Edie walked over to the bottom of
the ladder.  Tim’s suppressed rage escaped in a flood of tears. 
Unaffected, Edie started walking up the ladder.  When Edie hit the third
step, Tim jumped to the ground and he broke his arm.  Writhing in pain, he
managed to get dressed before walking home to explain to his parents how he had
slipped and fallen off the slide.  Andrew Dales never heard anyone call
him Edie again.

Compared to what he’d done to Johnny Swanson and Tim
Carmichael, Edie was downright cordial to me.  It was bullying, to be
sure, but bullying of a less brutal nature.  He had taken to calling me
“Sassafras” for some reason.  Not for anything I had ever said to him, to
be sure.  These episodes with Edie were always impromptu.  Usually
they occurred whenever I failed to not be in the same place as he and Son were
when they were bored and there was nobody else around more deserving of their
attention.  He treated me like his sparring partner or something. 
A no-threat opponent to jab and slap so he stayed sharp until the
next big fight.
  He’d put me in a headlock and toss me to the
ground,
throwing “Sassafras” at me in hopes (but no
expectation) of getting me angered enough to challenge him.  But I was so
grateful to him that he didn’t actually beat me that I never really questioned
him or his motives.  That kind of gratitude can be confusing.  It can
easily be confused with actually liking someone.

So here we were again, the two of them bored and me
lacking the foresight to not be present.  I reached behind me and stuffed
my poem to Katie deep down into my back pocket.

“I said hey, Sassafras,” Edie repeated.

“Do you want to go,” Katie whispered

“Won’t do any good,” I whispered back.

Then, turning around to face them, I said, “Hey,
Andrew. 
Hey, Son.”

“What say we play a little two-on-two there,
Sassafras.
”

“Actually, we were just leaving, Andrew.”

“Oh, come on now, Sassafras.  You weren’t going
anywhere.”

The two of them had been walking toward me as we
talked and now stopped just in front of me.  Edie put his hands up,
wanting me to pass him the ball.

“You guys will kill us,” I said.  “You’re older
and bigger.  Plus she’s a girl.”

“Tell you what, Sassafras,” Edie said.  “You can
have Son on your team and I’ll take your little girlfriend. 
Me and her against you and Son.
  That’s fair.  You
can even have the ball first.”

Darkness beamed from the hole that Johnny Swanson’s
fastball had left in Edie’s smile.  Like Johnny, I wasn’t sure what else
to do.  There wasn’t a way out of this.  Edie wanted to play so we
were going to play.

“Okay, Andrew,” I said.  “One game to seven, then
Katie’s
gotta
go home.”

“We’ll see,” he said.  Then he put his arm around
Katie and walked her away from me and Son, saying “Over here, pretty
girl.  We’ve
gotta
figure out our game plan, you
and I.”

Katie scrunched her shoulders together, avoiding his
touch, but Edie just held her tighter.  As I watched them, I felt
something rise up inside of me and then sink right back down again.  There
was nothing I could do.  Nothing will make a man hate himself more than
helplessness. 
Except maybe cowardice.

Edie passed the ball to Son and told Katie to guard
him.  “I’ve got Sassafras.”

I wanted the game over quickly.  As soon as Son
passed me the ball to start the game, I shot and made a jumper from the
free-throw line.

“Nice shot, Sassafras.  First one’s free.”

“Make it, take it – right?” I asked with as little
Sassafras as possible.

Again Son passed the ball to me.  This time I
faked the jumper and drove to the basket.  Edie jumped at the fake,
bellowed something unintelligible from the air, and looked down helplessly as I
dribbled past him for a lay-up.

“Two-zip,” said Son.

Edie shot him a look.  Son shrugged his shoulders
and quietly mouthed, “What?”

After Son passed the ball to me for the third
consecutive time, Edie got right up on me, guarding me tight from a squat
position, one arm on my waist the other out wide to keep me from passing. 
Eyes on my eyes like a dare.  I couldn’t dribble where I wanted to with
Edie’s hand on my waist, but I didn’t dare smack it away.  I passed the
ball to Son who dribbled right by Katie and toward the basket.  Edie went
over to stop him, leaving me wide open under the basket.  Son made a good
bounce pass that wasn’t quite sharp enough.  As I caught it and went up
for the lay-up, Edie came back to block the shot and knocked me hard to the
ground.

“All ball!” he yelled.

Katie came running over.  “Are you okay,” she
asked?

“Yeah, just fine,” I said, standing up slowly, pain
shooting up my tailbone.

“That was all
ball
,
Sassafras.  You’re not crying foul on that, are
ya
? 
I barely touched you - it
ain’t
my fault you’re so
damn skinny.”

“Your ball,” I said.

Wiping the gravel from my forearms and elbows, I
walked up to the top of the key to guard Edie.

“Ballgame,” he said.  Then he faked left and came
back right, lowering his shoulder into my chest and knocking me back on my butt
again and dribbling right to the basket for an easy shot.

Back at the top of the key with the ball under his
arm, Edie gave me and Son an ‘all is right with the world’ sort of look and
said, “One-two.
Ballgame.”

Edie and Katie scored the next seven points
straight.  Well, Edie did anyway.  Katie just did her best to stay
out of his way and to ask me if I was okay after every basket, which began to
annoy me.  I ended the game with two baskets, zero rebounds, zero assists,
two bloody knees, one gravel-scraped elbow, and one deeply bruised
tailbone.  I was glad it was over.

After scoring the last basket, Edie reached down and
pulled me up from the ground.  “Nice game, Sassafras.  You’re
actually not too bad.  Not too good, but not too bad.”

Then he held up his hand for a high-five, which I gave
him.  Turning to Katie, he said, “Nice game, pretty girl.”

But when Katie went for the high-five, he grabbed her
hand and held on to it tightly. 
“Nope.
  You
got it wrong, pretty girl.  High-fives
is
what
two boys do,” he said with his grotesquely gapped smile.  “This is what a boy
and a girl do.”

He jerked her in close and kissed her on the mouth,
his lips pressed hard against hers, smearing his face across hers. 
Quickly, I stepped toward them, but Son grabbed on to the back of my shirt,
holding me back.  I turned around and looked up at him in anger, expecting
to see his dirty devilish face.  What I saw instead was
helplessness. 
Cowardice.
  He shook his head
and shrugged his shoulders.

Katie’s squeal brought my attention back to her and
Edie.  Her arms were pinned down to her sides by unworthy hands. 
Unworthy lips kissed her.  When he finally let go, Edie shoved her back
and then wiped his smiling face with a sleeve.

“
Mmm
, I like those wet ones
like that.”

Katie spit and scrubbed at her face like it was on
fire.  Son let go of me and I lunged toward Edie with fist cocked. 
Edie did not flinch.  Didn’t
so
much as
blink.  His complete lack of fear scared the hell out of me and stopped me
in my tracks.  There I stood, fist clenched, locked and loaded. 
My face not six inches from that filthy mouth of his.
 
His lips slowly parted wider and the black hole in his smile widened broadly in
front of me.  I stared deep into the blackness, saw nothing there. 
Smelled the stench of his laughter, wanted to vomit.

“Who are you kidding, Sassafras?” Edie
whispered.  “We both know you
ain’t
gonna
hit me.”

I felt the muscles in my face twitch and my
fingernails dug deep into the palm of tightly fisted fingers.  Edie leaned
in close and spoke very quietly into my left ear.

“Maybe I shouldn’t have done that,” he said with
mocking sincerity, “but let me tell you something, Sassafras.  She kissed
back. Don’t let her tell you otherwise.  She definitely kissed back.”

Then he pulled back and once again we stood face to
face.  Still whispering, he said, “And she knew what she was doing, pretty
girl did.”

He looked up at my fist, smiled broad again, and
backed away.  “Come on, Son.  Let’s get the hell out of here.”

From behind me, Katie put her hand on my raised right
arm and lowered it to my side, though my fist remained clenched.  “Come
on, Tuck,
let’s
go.”

I was too embarrassed to look at her, which made me
inexplicably angry at her.

Walking away, Edie turned around and yelled back at
us. “That was nice, pretty girl. 
Real nice.
 
We’re
gonna
have to do that again sometime
soon.”  Then he blew her a kiss and headed down 4th Street.

I took off running, leaving Katie by herself at the
park.  A forgotten poem in my back pocket, I streaked right past Slim Jim
who was walking toward the playground.