How would God respond to making a mistake? Would planets collide or mountains slide into the sea? Or would the ledger of all life simply remain out kilter until a series of small events forced that ledger back into balance again? It's probably the l...
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August 1, 10:24AM
(2 hour and 36 minutes before the game)
the S. G. Wilson Stadium Garage
Kansas City, Missouri
When I was 2, I solved the mystery of chocolate cake.
When I was 3, I learned to count past my age. (Up to 100, if the rumors are right.)
When I was 7, I caught my first pop fly.
By most accounts, I haven't done much since then.
Oh, there were the usual good moments and bad, but my life has been a sort of shopping list of eggs and milk and sugar. Nothing new and nothing odd.
Since it's been over thirty years since those things happened, I'll try to catch you up as quickly as I can. I was 15 when my family moved away from Baltimore. My brother, Crow, died that year. When I was 18, I moved back to Baltimore to go to school. Years later, I married a woman named Ril. All through this time, I took in lots of cats. The marriage didn't last. Neither did the cats.
In lots of ways, those details are pretty typical. Everyone seems to have stories that sound similar. But then a few weeks ago, I found out about this cancer in my brain. From what I'm told, the cancer will catch up with me in a few months.
So here I am writing to you of all people, Buddy Quisling. Someone I haven't seen in 30 years. And I'm connecting all my stories like they're one of those old Tinker Toy models – the kind that always look too wobbly to hold together with connections too far apart to make sense. As I write this down, I'll do my best to make sure things don't fall apart before the end. I could say more, of course, but that (basically) brings you up to date about my life, Buddy. Or maybe I should be calling you Mary Ulysses Quisling. After all, you might not remember me.
⌂⌂⌂
Thirty years?!
Some people talk about time flying by in their lives, but I never understood that. Thirty years is a really long time and it's felt really long, too. So long that it kind of begs the question of why I am writing all of this to you and not to someone else. It's just that way back when we were kids in Baltimore you said that you'd listen to me on my saddest day. I can't say that this is the absolute saddest day, but it's pretty close. The saddest days were when Ril left – both the first time and the last. They were horrible mostly because she also left "gifts" for me – one of which was her diary. It was months before I could read what she wrote in there and even now it doesn't make a lot of sense. If I have time, I'll explain as much as I understand. I just hope I have time. I really do. But more than all the hopes I have for myself, I hope you are doing well, Buddy. I hope you've had a happy life. I hope you traveled the world and found people to love you everywhere you went. You're the last truly kind person I met in my life. After reading this, I also hope that makes sense.
