My interof­fice phone line rang. “Hey, Ken. It’s Paul. Can you come up to my office?”

“Sure.”

I climbed the inside fire stair­well from floor 43 to 46 and walked around the tow­er to Paul’s office. Tall and lean with dark brown hair, he sat at his desk, smok­ing a cig­a­rette. “Close the door,” he said.

I closed it and sat in a chair across from him, my back to the bank of win­dows that looked out over LA.

He stubbed out his Marl­boro and looked me direct­ly in the eye. “I have cancer.”

I couldn’t process most of what Paul said after that. About all I remem­ber are the words “aggres­sive” and “late stage.”

I cried.

In 1990, Paul and I were in our ear­ly 40’s, and we were attor­neys with the law firm, Lath­am and Watkins. If I had ranked my friends back then, he would have placed in the top ten.

I pulled myself togeth­er. “Is there any­thing I can do?”

“Don’t give up on me.” He told me about surgery to remove tumors and scrape the lin­ing of his lungs to stim­u­late his immune sys­tem. It sound­ed hor­rif­ic. He did his best to appear hope­ful, but I could tell he knew the score.

We talked for a long while about fun times we’d shared. Then he said he had to call the next friend on his list. We hugged. I went back to my office, closed the door, and cried some more.

He was gone in three months. An emo­tion­al wreck at the funer­al, I got it togeth­er long enough to give my con­do­lences to his wife. She told me Paul had trea­sured our friend­ship, and the way she said it, I knew it was true. I’ve car­ried that with me ever since.

Thir­ty-three years lat­er, I noticed a small mole on my shoul­der near my neck.

Because Cindy is fair-skinned and sus­cep­ti­ble to melanoma, we fol­low a reg­i­men of six-month check­ups with a der­ma­tol­o­gist. At the next exam, I asked him to look at the mole. “It’s noth­ing to wor­ry about,” he said. His ver­dict remained the same for two years.

Last spring the mole grew larg­er and dark­er. One after­noon in June, my daugh­ter and I were in the pool watch­ing my grand­kids. “What’s that on your shoul­der?” Chelsea said.

“Just a mole. The doc­tor says it’s nothing.”

“I don’t know, Dad. It looks bad.”

That night I awoke from a sound sleep at 3 am. My first con­scious thought came to me in a clear qui­et voice: “Get that mole off your shoul­der, or it will kill you.”

It scared me bad. I went to the der­ma­tol­o­gist. He again said the mole was harmless.

“I want to take it off,” I said.

He agreed to remove it, gave me a shot, and sliced it off. “There’s dark tis­sue under the mole,” he said, sound­ing con­cerned. He cut into it.

“I only gave you a local. Are you in pain?”

It was killing me. “No pain,” I said.

He cut deep­er. “You must be in pain.”

My shoul­der was on fire. “I’m fine. Make sure you get all of it.”

A few days lat­er, he called with the biopsy’s results. The mole was benign; the dark tis­sue beneath it was can­cer­ous. “I excised what I could see,” he said, “but this is an aggres­sive type of melanoma. You’ll need surgery to remove all the can­cer cells.” He’d already called the City of Hope (COH), the top can­cer treat­ment cen­ter in the region, and jammed me into the crowd­ed cal­en­dar of its lead melanoma surgeon.

The dermatologist’s sense of urgency alarmed me. “How bad is this?” I asked.

“Hope­ful­ly, we caught it ear­ly. If it hasn’t metas­ta­sized, you should be all right.”

I hung up the phone and stared at it. The mole had appeared two years ago, but the can­cer­ous tis­sue under it may not have been there as long. The sur­geon will remove it, and I’ll be okay, I thought. I decid­ed not to tell any­one until I knew more.

A few days lat­er I met with the sur­geon. In his fifties with a full head of gray hair, he told me my form of can­cer, melanoma beneath the skin, was rare. It could have tak­en root in anoth­er part of my body and spread to that spot, or if it orig­i­nat­ed in my shoul­der and had been there awhile, it could have spread to oth­er loca­tions. “I need to know if the can­cer has metas­ta­sized before I oper­ate on your shoul­der,” he said. He sched­uled a bat­tery of tests over the next six weeks, fol­lowed imme­di­ate­ly by the shoul­der operation.

The surgeon’s diag­no­sis fright­ened me. “Could this be fatal?” I asked him.

“Try not to wor­ry,” he said. “We’re very good at what we do.”

Stunned, I walked from the hos­pi­tal to my truck. Mem­o­ries of Paul, Papaw, Thom, Stephanie, and oth­er friends, who lost bat­tles with can­cer, flood­ed my mind.

I got lost dri­ving home. I pulled to the curb, cut the igni­tion, and took deep breaths.

A cou­ple years ear­li­er, a nice gray-haired lady dri­ving a black Escalade hit me and my gro­cery cart as I walked from a Ralph’s store through a cross­walk. I wasn’t hurt, but she fell apart, sob­bing hys­ter­i­cal­ly. It took her a long time to calm down enough to tell me she’d just been diag­nosed with pan­cre­at­ic can­cer. I helped her park her Escalade and called her husband.

The Grim Reaper blind­ed the nice lady that day. Now he squat­ted on the hood of my truck. I punched my home address into Google Maps and fol­lowed the voice com­mands, crawl­ing along at a tur­tle-pace in the slow lane.

When I got home, I told Cindy. Pos­i­tive and sup­port­ive as always, she didn’t flinch. “You’re strong! If they find some­thing, you’ll beat it!” My son and daugh­ters said the same. So did my good friend and horse­back-rid­ing instruc­tor, Janet. And my rid­ing bud­dy, Alecia.

Every­one was con­fi­dent except me. That night in bed in the dark trapped inside my head with the boogey­man, I was cer­tain the can­cer had metas­ta­sized. I cat­a­logued all the recent symp­toms I’d ignored that might be can­cer relat­ed. Those hard cramps last week, stom­ach can­cer; my aching joints, bone can­cer; occa­sion­al headaches, brain can­cer; severe chest con­ges­tion, lung can­cer. I imag­ined var­i­ous scenes with the sur­geon deliv­er­ing dif­fer­ent dead­ly diagnoses.

Show some courage, I told myself. You’re 77. You’ve lived a long full life. Can­cer cut Paul down in his prime, but he faced death brave­ly. Go out proud and brave, like he did.

I don’t want to go out! I love my life. I want to stay with Cindy, my kids and grand­kids, the hors­es, P.D., my friends. I don’t want to die!

Get a grip. You’re not going to die. You don’t know any­thing yet. You don’t even know if the can­cer has spread.

Yeah, well, I know some­thing is grow­ing inside me right now that could kill me.

And so it went. On and on. All night long.

At dawn, I drove to the barn and went to Lily’s stall. An Azteca gray mare, she has equine melanoma. There is no cure, but it isn’t always fatal. She may live out her life with the can­cer or it may kill her, and there’s noth­ing I can do to influ­ence the out­come. (See Lily’s Song for more about her.)

I groomed her, then stood beside her, look­ing into her soul­ful eyes. I placed my fore­head against her neck and put my arm over her back. Even if they love you, most hors­es pull away when you hold them close for too long. That morn­ing, Lily stood still for me. I don’t know if she knew, but it felt like she did.

Lat­er, back at home, I reached out to my phys­i­cal fit­ness train­er, a can­cer sur­vivor. She gave me under­stand­ing and encour­age­ment and told me about an “affir­ma­tions” web­site. It seemed hokey to me at first, but over time, I found reas­sur­ance in its sooth­ing mantras: I am strong; I will let go of neg­a­tiv­i­ty; I choose well­ness and peace; I choose faith over fear.

In the 1970’s, I taught Eng­lish Lit­er­a­ture to high school seniors. One of them lat­er became the top intel­lec­tu­al prop­er­ty attor­ney in the nation. Now in retire­ment, he’d been diag­nosed with can­cer and was under­go­ing treat­ment. “I’m scared crazy,” I wrote to him.

“This ‘not know­ing’ stage that you are in might well be the hard­est part of the process,” he wrote back. “I hope and pray the can­cer has not spread. That is the hope and prayer of all in our club. But if it has spread, to a small or large degree, you are smart and capa­ble and sur­round­ed by a great med­ical team and fam­i­ly, and you will deal with it as best as you can. That’s all we can do.” His steady guid­ance through the com­ing weeks calmed me down and gave me hope.

Mean­while, my can­cer tests went for­ward. Most of them were famil­iar to me from pre­vi­ous ail­ments and some seemed designed only to deter­mine if I was healthy enough to sur­vive surgery, but I ago­nized over each one, con­vinced it would dis­cov­er more can­cer. Thank­ful­ly, my anx­i­eties went unre­al­ized. One by one, the results came in negative.

The last test, the big moth­er of them all, the one I feared most, the PET CT Whole Body scan, came at the end of the six weeks. My daugh­ter, Devon, drove me to COH’s radi­ol­o­gy depart­ment. They inject­ed me with radioac­tive flu­id, placed me on a gur­ney, and slow­ly slid me through a giant donut, cap­tur­ing inter­nal images of my entire body, start­ing at my feet and mov­ing up to the top of my head. If there were can­cer­ous tumors inside me, the donut would find them. The tech­ni­cian said the results would come back in three days, just before the shoul­der operation.

That night I dreamed I rode Lily on a moon­lit trail. We entered a dark for­est with branch­es arch­ing over us. Deep into the tree tun­nel, Lily stopped sud­den­ly; her body tensed; and her ears pricked for­ward. Peer­ing into the night-shad­ows ahead, I could bare­ly make out the form of a big roan and a black-robed rid­er. Lily screamed, whipped around, and sprint­ed back the way we had come. Grab­bing her mane to hold on, I heard the thun­der­ing hoof­beats of the roan behind us, gain­ing ground. I awoke just as we broke out of the trees into the moonlight.

I was still fright­ened by my dream when I got to the barn at dawn. Lily was skit­tish and flighty, but she calmed down when I stroked her neck and rubbed her ears. I did, too. I stayed with her a long time that morning.

On the day of my oper­a­tion, they stretched me out on a bed in the nuclear med­i­cine room and inject­ed radioac­tive flu­id into my shoul­der to track blood flow to the near­est lymph nodes. For the can­cer to spread from my shoul­der it would first infect “sen­tinel” nodes that would car­ry the can­cer else­where. The pro­ce­dure would iden­ti­fy any bad ones the sur­geon would need to remove. The tech­ni­cians worked on me for two hours, then wheeled me down to pre-op.

The sur­geon came in. “The Whole Body scan was good,” he said. “It found no can­cer any­where oth­er than in your shoulder.”

Sit­ting by my bed, my son, Josh, pumped his fist. “Yes!”

If I hadn’t been exhaust­ed, I would have jumped up and cheered.

Now, it all came down to the shoul­der surgery and the poten­tial­ly infect­ed lymph nodes. They rolled me into the oper­at­ing room, and the anes­the­si­ol­o­gist knocked me out.

I awoke in the recov­ery room with a ban­dage on my shoul­der cov­er­ing an inci­sion three inch­es long. I was telling the nurse about Lily when the sur­geon came in, smil­ing. “I got all the can­cer. We didn’t take any lymph nodes. They all looked good.”

That was the night of Sep­tem­ber 9. I’d got­ten the best pos­si­ble results on all the tests; the surgery was suc­cess­ful; and my lymph nodes appeared to be clear. I was elated.

I thought can­cer was done with me, but in the post-op meet­ing, I learned that mem­ber­ship in the can­cer club is like the Eagles’ Hotel Cal­i­for­nia. You can check out, but you can nev­er leave.

Can­cer is resilient. It might be hid­ing in clus­ters of cells too small for the tests to detect, wait­ing to blos­som into new tumors, or it might sprout inex­plic­a­bly again in a new loca­tion, like it did in my shoul­der. “We will observe you,” the sur­geon said. He ordered a round of tests for next Feb­ru­ary, includ­ing anoth­er PET CT Whole Body scan. After that, he plans to slide me through the big donut every six months. If the can­cer comes back, the sur­geon will find it ear­ly to give us the best chance of beat­ing it.

Cancer’s Hotel Cal­i­for­nia is a big place with many rooms. Can­cer vic­tims pay a dear price for most of them: chemother­a­py, radi­a­tion, abla­tion, immunother­a­py, stem cell trans­plants, hor­mone ther­a­py, bone mar­row trans­plants. Not me. I got off easy, at least for now. I got the best room in the build­ing, and it cost me almost noth­ing. No real pain. No sig­nif­i­cant sac­ri­fice. Just six weeks of wor­ry and the prospect of peri­od­ic tests going forward.

Although my lit­tle skir­mish didn’t require the colos­sal strength, bound­less sta­mi­na, and lion-heart­ed courage so many can­cer patients bring to their gru­el­ing bat­tles against the dis­ease, it scared me enough to change me for­ev­er. It gave me a price­less gift: The real­iza­tion that each day of my life is pre­cious. Of course, I knew that all along. We all know it. But I know it in a dif­fer­ent way now. I know it deep down inside, and I nev­er for­get, even for a moment.

So, it looks like Lily and I will out­run that big roan and the angel of death for a while longer. Each day, I’ll feed the hors­es at dawn, walk P.D., ride Lily and my hors­es over the trails of Hid­den Hills, love Cindy, hug my chil­dren and grand­chil­dren, keep my friends close, and give thanks from that new place deep down inside for that day and every day yet to come.

On a stormy night in June, 1975, I steered our mus­tard-col­ored Pin­to sta­tion wag­on down the interstate’s off-ramp and head­ed toward an oval-shaped sign atop two tele­phone poles. Neon let­ters shin­ing through streaks of rain. “Dudley’s Motel,” the sec­ond “d” flickering.

I turned off the road, parked in front of a door marked “Office,” and wait­ed for the cats caged in the back of the Pin­to to stop scream­ing. Took them a full minute to go quiet.

The silence of the cats awoke Cindy. She sat up straight, rubbed her eyes, and looked back at the cage. “They okay?”

“They went still because we stopped moving.”

“Where are we?”

“Kansas.”

“What town?”

“No town.”

I got out of the car and went inside. An old woman with thin­ning gray hair sat behind a desk watch­ing The Tonight Show on a lit­tle black-and-white Zenith.

She pushed a guest reg­is­ter across her desk. “Howdy-do.”

I auto­graphed the book and gave her my cred­it card. “Room 3,” she said. “First door to the right.”

I glanced at a No Pets Allowed sign on the wall behind her. “Could we have a room in the back, away from everyone?”

She squint­ed at me, sus­pi­cious­ly. “Why in the back?”

“We’re new­ly­weds,” I lied.

She flashed a wrin­kled smile. “I getcha.” She hand­ed me a key. “Room 20. Back row. Far end. No one will hear you back there.”

I drove the Pin­to around to the back. Cindy went inside and cased the room. We learned a hard les­son the night Lazy Bones slipped into a hole around the plumb­ing under a motel room’s bath­room sink and climbed up inside the wall to the floor above. Took us an hour and a can of tuna to lure him back down.

Cindy gave me the all-clear. I got out of the car and looked around. No one in sight. I opened the Pinto’s rear door and wres­tled two cats out of the cage. Fight­ing off their crazed efforts to rip all the flesh off my arms, I threw them inside the room, returned to the Pin­to, grabbed two more, tossed them inside, then fetched the last cat, Geral­dine, the most vicious of the lot. Despite a head-fake, she raked my jaw. Yet again.

So end­ed Day 4 of our cross-coun­try trip.

We plant­ed the seeds of this ordeal in the sum­mer of 1969 when we rent­ed upstairs rooms in a farm­house in White Hall, Vir­ginia. A barn cat adopt­ed us as her par­ents. We named her Mousey. She had a kit­ten. They both had kit­tens. Then the whole brood had kittens.

When the cat count reached 18, we real­ized we had to cap the geyser or drown in a sea of black and white fur­balls. I gave away as many as Albe­mar­le Coun­ty could absorb, then emp­tied our sav­ings account to spay the five cats no one would take off our hands, leav­ing us with Mousey, Geral­dine, Lazy Bones, Vig­oro, and Marigold-Eater.

We all would have lived hap­pi­ly ever after in the coun­try if I hadn’t done bet­ter than we expect­ed in law school. Nation­al law firms opened their doors to us. At the end of a dizzy­ing recruit­ing process, I accept­ed an offer to join Lath­am and Watkins in Los Angeles.

I was excit­ed about our prospects, except for the cats. Crammed into a small apart­ment in a big city with five cats didn’t seem like an attrac­tive lifestyle to me. It also didn’t fit the typ­i­cal pro­file of a big-shot cor­po­rate attor­ney, which had become my goal.

My reser­va­tions about the cats didn’t mat­ter, though, because I knew where I stood in our fam­i­ly dynam­ic. If I dumped the cats, Cindy would dump me.

I called the Lath­am attor­ney assigned to help me with our tran­si­tion. Blither­ing away ner­vous­ly, I tried to explain how we got stuck with five cats and asked if he could find a place to stash them while we searched for an apart­ment in LA. A real­ly good guy with a sense of humor, he put me in touch with Ida’s Cat Ken­nel, and I made reser­va­tions for our herd.

Then came the daunt­ing chal­lenge of dri­ving the cats to LA. On a trip to Cindy’s home in South Car­oli­na, we learned that cats don’t trav­el well in cars. The scenery out­side fly­ing by in psy­che­del­ic panora­ma freaked them out. Their eyes bulging, they plas­tered them­selves to the plate glass and screamed the whole way, except for occa­sion­al­ly peel­ing them­selves away from the win­dows to pounce on my neck and sink their teeth into my shoulder.

Tran­quil­iz­ers didn’t help, so I opt­ed for com­pul­so­ry con­fine­ment. I built a cage out of two-by-fours and chick­en wire big enough to hold all five of them but small enough to fit in the Pinto.

The day of my law school grad­u­a­tion, we jammed the cats in the cage and head­ed west over Afton Moun­tain. In 1975, motels weren’t pet friend­ly, and the con­cept of “emo­tion­al sup­port ani­mals” hadn’t come along. Our choic­es were to sleep in the car, camp out, or defraud the motel clerks. I defraud­ed the clerks.

By the third morn­ing in a motel room, the cats knew what was com­ing. From there on, just before dawn, they dis­ap­peared behind cur­tains, under fur­ni­ture, and beneath the bed. Every morn­ing, I pried their claws loose from their hid­ing places and wres­tled them into the cage. Every day they screamed all the way through anoth­er twelve-hour bad LSD trip. And every night I dragged them out of the cage and smug­gled them into anoth­er No Pets motel room.

Sev­en con­sec­u­tive days and nights in Hell. For them. And for us.

On Day 8, we drove through down­town LA and on west over a nar­row twist­ing road through the bel­ly of Topan­ga Canyon to pull up in front of Ida’s Cat Kennel.

I would lat­er come to regard Topan­ga Canyon as a trendy, attrac­tive neigh­bor­hood, but in 1975 on his first day in the Land of the Lotus Eaters, the Vir­ginia farm boy per­ceived it as a cross between a nature pre­serve and a full-blown nut­house. Halfway between LA and Mal­ibu, jagged foothills lush with coastal sage and chap­ar­ral rise up steeply from a rip­pling creek. Mul­ti-col­ored hous­es of every shape and size are propped up on stilts, jammed into cliff-sides, crow-barred into rocky crevices, and strand­ed on islands in the creek. In those days, the canyon attract­ed a dis­pro­por­tion­ate share of nature lovers, free spir­its, and out­right loons, like Bob Hite, the vocal­ist of Canned Heat, The Fly­ing Bur­ri­tos, Charles Man­son, and the joy­ous res­i­dents of Ely­si­um Fields, a famous nud­ist colony.

Ida Bolin fit in nice­ly with that crowd. A plump eighty-year-old with a sweet smile and an iron-col­ored pony­tail, she led us into the bed­lam of her back­yard. A hun­dred cats ran amok inside a half-acre ful­ly enclosed in a wire-mesh bub­ble ris­ing twen­ty feet into the sky. Cats flit­ted through trees, climbed giant car­pet­ed posts, dart­ed through sew­er-pipe tun­nels, jumped in and out of card­board box­es, and pawed count­less cat toys of every kind.
No crates to sep­a­rate them. No col­lars. No name tags.

“How do you know which cats belong to the dif­fer­ent board­ers,” Cindy asked.

“Oh, I know them all by sight,” Ida said.

We turned the cats loose in Ida’s back­yard and drove to Bev­er­ly Hills to meet Tanya, the real­tor Lath­am hired to show us rental prop­er­ties. In her late for­ties, tall and slim with shoul­der-length brown hair, she was pro­fes­sion­al and cheer­ful. Over the next sev­er­al days she showed us a series of attrac­tive apart­ments. None of the land­lords allowed pets. I told them all the truth. They all turned us down.

After three days and 30 apart­ments, Tanya stopped being cheer­ful. On the fourth day’s sec­ond turn-down, she hit the wall. “Lis­ten to me,” she said angri­ly. “We’re get­ting nowhere. Don’t tell them about the cats. Just move in and take your chances.”

“They’ll throw us out when they find out.”

“I don’t care! It’s your only shot. Besides, evic­tion pro­ceed­ings take for­ev­er in LA. You’re a lawyer. Fight them off.”

I signed my name to a one-year lease with a No-Pets clause in bold-faced print, and that night we smug­gled the cats into an apart­ment on Gret­na Green Way in Brentwood.

Two weeks lat­er, I ran into the man­ag­er out­side our apart­ment door as I came home from work. I froze. Vig­oro sat in our liv­ing room win­dow fac­ing the court­yard, star­ing at him with her big yel­low eyes.

“You have cats,” he said.

“Yeah, we do,” I said sheepishly.

“More than one?”

I paused. What the hell, I thought. “Five.”

He shook his head and walked away.

For weeks, I lived in fear of being served with evic­tion papers, but mys­te­ri­ous­ly they nev­er came. We lived there to the end of the lease term, moved to Han­cock Park, and defraud­ed anoth­er land­lord, who didn’t throw us out either. After that, we bought a house and nev­er rent­ed again.

The cats lived with us for twen­ty years, mov­ing cross-coun­try three times, once in the Pinto’s cage and twice in the bel­ly of air­planes. See Cats! for more about them.

They were a lot of trou­ble. And a lot of fun. One by one, they passed away in the 80’s and 90’s. Each time, we cried and griev­ed for months. We miss them still.

Ida Bolin died on Cindy’s birth­day in 1983 while rid­ing in a truck that crashed into a tree. She was 87. She fell in love with kit­tens as a lit­tle girl in 1900 grow­ing up in Dead­wood, S.D. She opened Ida’s Cat Ken­nel in 1923 and kept it going for 60 years. By the time of her death, more than 50 cats lived there. All but three of them had been aban­doned by dead­beat board­ers. Liv­ing on noth­ing but her Social Secu­ri­ty check, she often went hun­gry to feed them.

They say Ida was cat crazy.

I’m not so sure. A lot of peo­ple, who claim to be sane, love cats more than they want to admit. I know a few of them. One of them thought he was a big-shot lawyer.

Don­ald and I walked through Maupin’s apple orchard at noon on a hot sun­ny day in 1963.

“I can catch fish with my hands,” I said.

“No one can catch fish with his hands.”

“I can.”

“Bull­crap.”

We were first cousins. Don­ald was 14, short with a spare tire of baby fat he would car­ry through­out his life. Skin­ny and a head taller than Don­ald, I was 16.

We climbed over the orchard fence, walked into the woods, and worked our way down a steep slope to Moorman’s Riv­er. At the Skunk Hole, a fish­ing spot named for an unfor­tu­nate inci­dent involv­ing our fam­i­ly dog, I took off my shirt, shoes, and socks and climbed up on a big rock.

“This is ridicu­lous,” Don­ald scoffed. “Quit fool­ing around.”

From five feet above the water, I can­non-balled into the deep­est part of the Skunk Hole. The cold water braced me. I dove to the river’s floor, grabbed a big bot­tom-feed­er, pushed upward, broke through the sur­face, and waved the wrig­gling fish above my head.

Donald’s eyes bugged out. “Holy Crap!!!”

Show­ing off, I let that fish go, caught anoth­er, released it, and caught a third.

My fam­i­ly had moved to White Hall, Vir­ginia, a cou­ple years ear­li­er. Coun­try boys had taught me a few tricks. One of them was hand-fishing.

Hand-fish­ing requires no skill. Moun­tain streams are bot­tomed with riv­er rocks. The cur­rent wash­es away sand and silt, cre­at­ing lit­tle open spaces between some of them. When you dive in, fish scur­ry to the lit­tle caves to hide from preda­tors. If you place one hand over any exit hole and reach inside with the oth­er, the fish has nowhere to go. You get a good grip and pull it out.

Don­ald was a city boy. My coun­try-boy trick fooled him good. He stared at me wor­ship­ful­ly as we climbed the hill back to the par­son­age. “I wouldn’t believe it if I hadn’t seen it with my own eyes.”

I strung him along for about an hour before I clued him in. He was a good sport, and we laughed about it.

When we were lit­tle boys, Donald’s dad, my mom’s big broth­er, Kei­th, drove his fam­i­ly the 600 miles from Prov­i­dence, Rhode Island, to Virginia’s tide­wa­ter area every sum­mer to vis­it my fam­i­ly for a few days.

Our way of life must have shocked Don­ald at first. His fam­i­ly lived in a sub­ur­ban neigh­bor­hood with city water, sewage sys­tems, and paved streets. Their neigh­bors were office work­ers and shop­keep­ers. All the ani­mals in his com­mu­ni­ty were domes­ti­cat­ed pets.

We lived on a sandy road in a clear­ing cut out of a pine for­est. We drew our water from a hand-dug well and did our busi­ness in a wood­en out­house. Our neigh­bor was a guy who lived in a rust­ed-out school bus, its wheel hubs propped up on blocks in a soy­bean field. Deer raid­ed our veg­etable gar­den, and black snakes slith­ered through the grass in our backyard.

Despite our cul­tur­al dif­fer­ences and the short amount of time we spent togeth­er, Don­ald and I became great friends. We climbed trees, swam in the York and James Rivers, caught crabs in tide­pools with hand nets, and, thanks to me, went nuts over baseball.

I was 8 years old when I got hooked on the Boston Red Sox. The Wash­ing­ton Sen­a­tors were the clos­est team to my area, but they stank. Uncle Kei­th lived near Boston and was crazy about the Red Sox, so I adopt­ed them as my team and Ted Williams as my favorite player.

Mom bought me a cou­ple packs of base­ball cards short­ly after that. This turned out to be a cost­ly mis­take on her part. Obsessed with try­ing to score a Ted Williams card, I forced her to spend $30,000 on 600,000 Topps 5‑cent-bub­blegum packs over the next cou­ple years. It was a hope­less quest. Topps print­ed almost no cards of good play­ers so that kids would blow all their par­ents’ mon­ey chas­ing the superstars.

I’d rip open each pack excit­ed­ly only to be dis­ap­point­ed by yet anoth­er pile of .200 hit­ters and 10.00 ERA pitch­ers, nev­er the good play­ers, and nev­er ever Ted Williams.

Then one hot sum­mer day, Mom bought me five packs at a gas sta­tion in Lee Hall. Rid­ing shot­gun in our Hud­son on the way home, I stuffed all the gum in my kiss­er and flipped through a stack of the usu­al worth­less bums, but when I broke the seal on the last wrap­per, I almost faint­ed. Mick­ey Man­tle, Willy Mays, Hank Aaron, and TWO of TED WILLIAMS! The sadists at the Topps fac­to­ry dumped all the future Hall-of-Famers into one blessed pack, and I hit the lottery!

I swal­lowed my bub­blegum. The fist-sized wad got hung up behind my Adam’s apple. Stran­gling to death, I coughed and gagged while caress­ing the two Ted Williams cards to make sure they were real.

“You all right?” Mom asked.

Clutch­ing my throat and heav­ing for air, I held my twin dream cards up to her and flashed a pur­ple-faced smile. “Teh …Wims,” I croaked.

She fran­ti­cal­ly pulled off the road and pound­ed me on the back until I pro­jec­tile-puked the dead­ly pink gob of gum onto the floor­board. When we got home, she went to the kitchen cab­i­net and downed a half-bot­tle of Dad’s nerve med­i­cine. Obliv­i­ous to my near-death expe­ri­ence, I bliss­ful­ly retreat­ed to my bed­room to pore over Ted Williams’ career stats on the back of my thank-you-Jesus Ted­dy-Ball­game doubles.

Donald’s fam­i­ly came to vis­it the fol­low­ing week. When I laid out my Topps cards on the bed­room floor, it became clear Don­ald didn’t know any­thing about base­ball. I spent all day teach­ing him about the game, the Red Sox, and the Splen­did Splin­ter. I sank the hook deep. By the end of the day, he was a crazed addict.

The next morn­ing, Uncle Kei­th took me aside. “You’ve accom­plished a mir­a­cle,” he said, his voice quiv­er­ing. “I’ve tried every­thing to get Don­ald inter­est­ed in base­ball. Noth­ing worked, but you’ve turned him into a Red Sox fan overnight. I don’t know how I can ever repay you.”

I knew exact­ly how he could repay me. “Take me to a Red Sox game,” I said.

The fol­low­ing sum­mer Uncle Kei­th insist­ed my fam­i­ly dri­ve to Prov­i­dence for the annu­al vis­it instead of their com­ing to us. He sent me the Red Sox sched­ule and told me to pick a date. Fig­ur­ing I’d nev­er see anoth­er big-league base­ball game dur­ing my child­hood, I chose a dou­ble­head­er against the Wash­ing­ton Sen­a­tors. “I under­stand the dou­ble­head­er,” Uncle Kei­th said, “but why the Sen­a­tors? Don’t you want to see the Red Sox play a good team?”

“No! I want to see the Red Sox win.”

On a hot as hell day in July, Uncle Kei­th, my dad, Don­ald, and I took our seats on the ground lev­el way down the third base line across from deep left field. In the first inning, when Ted Williams trot­ted out to stand in the shad­ow of the Green Mon­ster, Fenway’s tow­er­ing left-field wall, I was struck dumb. Don­ald could still talk, but bare­ly. “Jesus,” he said softly.

If you weren’t a lit­tle kid whacked out of his mind about see­ing your favorite team and play­er, that dou­ble­head­er was a mis­er­able expe­ri­ence. There was no shade over our seats, and it was a mug­gy 95 degrees. At the end of the first game, which the Red Sox won, Dad want­ed to go home. “We’ll get sun­stroke,” he said.

“I don’t care,” I said. Don­ald backed me up. We stayed.

Halfway through the sec­ond game, the Red Sox pulled Ted Williams and subbed in Gene Stephens. Uncle Kei­th begged me and Don­ald to give it up. With my face broiled beet-red and my shirt drenched in sweat, I was on the verge of cav­ing, but Don­ald said no. Uncle Kei­th got angry. He grabbed Donald’s arm and stood. “Come on. Let’s go.”

Eight-year-old Don­ald pulled his arm free and shook his fin­ger at his dad. “This is Kenny’s big day!” he shout­ed. “We’re stay­ing till it’s over!”

Uncle Kei­th looked at me for a long moment, then sat down. Dad almost cried.

In the top of the ninth inning, Jim­my Pier­sall climbed the cen­ter field wall to make the most spec­tac­u­lar catch I would ever wit­ness, rob­bing Roy Siev­ers of a game-win­ning home run and secur­ing my dream of the Red Sox win­ning both ends of the doubleheader.

When we got back to Donald’s house, I gave him one of my two Ted Williams cards. Over­whelmed with emo­tion, he hugged me.

My hand-fish­ing trick went down six years lat­er in 1963. That trip to White Hall was the last time Donald’s fam­i­ly came to vis­it us, and it was the last time Don­ald and I got together.

We grew up, mar­ried, set­tled on oppo­site coasts, and raised our own fam­i­lies. We didn’t keep in touch.

When Uncle Kei­th died in 2004, I called Don­ald. A forty-year estrange­ment, a big­ger wall than Fenway’s Green Mon­ster, stood between us. We had changed too much, and the new guys didn’t know each oth­er. Our con­ver­sa­tion was short and awk­ward. We nev­er spoke again.

Don­ald passed away in 2017.

Cindy and I have three chil­dren, two sons-in-law, a daugh­ter-in-law, and eight grand­chil­dren. Of that crew, about ten of us, includ­ing Cindy and me, have birth­days in June and July. This year we had one big birth­day cel­e­bra­tion last month for the Gemini/Cancer bunch, a cook-out and pool-par­ty at our house.

That Sun­day after­noon, I stood in the shal­low end of our pool, watch­ing four of our grand­chil­dren tak­ing turns can­non-balling off the jacuzzi wall into the deep end, about a five-foot jump. That long-ago day at the Skunk Hole came back to me. I thought about the Red Sox game and all the good times with Don­ald when we were kids.

Char­lotte, Riv­er, Logan, and Wyatt are first cousins. They live close to each oth­er and get togeth­er a lot. They have a spe­cial bond. It’s a great gift, I thought as I watched them. I hope they can keep it. I hope they don’t grow apart.

I got out of the pool and stood at the jacuzzi behind Wyatt. When he fin­ished his dive, I stepped up on the wall.

A 77-year-old loon leap­ing off a high wall into a pool is a shock­ing spec­ta­cle, I guess.

Char­lotte grabbed Riv­er. “Look! Papaw’s gonna jump!”

All eyes were on me.

I can­non-balled into the deep end. When I sur­faced, Char­lotte and the boys were laugh­ing and cheering.

I climbed out, got in line behind them, and wait­ed my turn.

I can­non-balled into the deep end three times. One for my grand­kids. One for me. And one for Donald.