Mom woke me at dawn. I washed up, put on my new school clothes, and grabbed my Roy Rogers lunch box. She walked me down our dirt dri­ve­way and held my hand while we stood on the shoul­der of Route 60, wait­ing for the school bus.

It was the first day of the first grade, and I was scared. There were no pre-schools or kinder­gartens where I lived, so I didn’t know what to expect.

Mom was scared, too. Her hand tight­ened around mine when the bus came over the hill, and she had tears in her eyes when she helped me up the steps and sat me in the front seat.

The bus pulled away and rolled along towards Williams­burg, stop­ping to pick up kids at falling-down shacks, trail­er courts, and truck farms. At a run-down gas sta­tion, Georgie Thomp­son, anoth­er first grad­er, climbed aboard and sat next to me. Too scared to talk, nei­ther of us breathed a word until the bus pulled up in front of a dark hulk­ing brick build­ing that looked like a jail­house, where­upon Georgie said in a small voice, “Oh, God.”

Two sixth-grade girls were wait­ing for us on the curb. They pulled us by the hand into Matthew Wha­ley Ele­men­tary School and down a long hall through a swarm­ing fren­zy of shout­ing, laugh­ing kids. Georgie’s guide shoved him through a door on the left; mine pushed me into a class­room on the right.

Mrs. Pear­son, a short frail gray-haired teacher, met me at the door and sat me down at a table with oth­er dazed first graders. After a few more stunned kids trick­led into the room, she launched into a wel­come-to-school speech.

In the mid­dle of it, a tall stout woman dressed in Sun­day-go-to-church clothes appeared at the door.

“It’s the prin­ci­pal,” a girl at my table hissed. “Somebody’s in big trouble.”

“Is there a Ken­ny Oder here?” the prin­ci­pal asked.

My stom­ach did a backflip.

Mrs. Pear­son pounced on me and hand­ed me off to the prin­ci­pal. With a grip as tight as a pair of pli­ers, she pulled me across the hall into anoth­er class­room and plopped me down in a chair next to a boy slumped over a desk bawl­ing hys­ter­i­cal­ly at the top of his lungs.

“Calm down now,” the prin­ci­pal said to the boy. “Here’s the friend you asked for.”

The boy raised his head and looked at me. I sucked in my breath at the sight of my dread­ed child­hood neme­sis, Robert West. Once a week Robert vis­it­ed his ten-year-old cousin, who lived next door to me, and they teamed up to tor­ment me mer­ci­less­ly. Robert tried to make me cry every time he came around, and with his cousin’s help, he usu­al­ly suc­ceed­ed. I hat­ed him.

Robert stopped cry­ing when he saw me and clamped his sweaty hand onto mine. I tried to jerk free, but he held on like his life depend­ed on it. He scoot­ed his chair clos­er to mine and grabbed my arm with his oth­er hand. I couldn’t make him let go, so we sat like that until the prin­ci­pal final­ly returned, dis­en­tan­gled me from Robert, and took me back to my class.

“Thank you, Ken­ny,” she said. “You’ve been a big help to your friend.”

Inside my head I screamed, “He’s not my friend! He’s a big dog turd!” But out loud all I could man­age was a meek “Okay.”

I don’t remem­ber the rest of the day except that Mom hugged me for a long time when I got off the bus, and lat­er when I told her about Robert, she laughed so hard she cried.

The first grade turned out to be fun for the most part – sto­ry­time, craft time, nap time. Recess was the best. They turned us loose on a play­ground that would qual­i­fy as a killing field under today’s safe­ty stan­dards. No plas­tic slides, rub­ber mats, or guardrails, and a fall from the giant iron jun­gle gym’s mon­key bars held the promise of per­ma­nent paral­y­sis, if not out­right death.

Mirac­u­lous­ly, I didn’t get hurt on the play­ground. As it turned out, a much greater men­ace lurked on the school bus. Our bus car­ried kids in grades one through twelve, and the big kids bul­lied the lit­tle ones. I was espe­cial­ly afraid of a teenag­er I’d heard talk­ing to oth­er boys about wash­ing his hands in the blood of a deer he’d killed and stran­gling chick­ens just to hear their pan­icked death-squawks. I was care­ful to stay away from him, but one day when I got on the bus the only open seat was behind him.

He turned around and smiled at me with a wound­ed look in his eyes, sad and hurt, but mean at the same time. He reached over the seat, wrapped his hands around my throat, and began to choke me. I don’t know if the oth­er kids didn’t notice or just didn’t care, but none of them did anything.

I clawed at the boy’s wrists, but his grip only tight­ened and his sick smile grew wider. I couldn’t breathe and I couldn’t scream.

Pol­ly Craw­ford was a fat ugly eighth-grad­er with dirty hair who smelled bad. No one liked her. That’s why the seat next to her was emp­ty when I got on the bus.

“Let him go,” Pol­ly said.

The boy squeezed hard­er. My vision began to fade.

“I said let him go!”

“Shut up,” the boy said.

Pol­ly slapped him as hard as she could. He let go of me and lunged at Polly.

I must have faint­ed because the next thing I recall is lying on the floor, cough­ing and gagging.

There was a big fight. The dri­ver, a William and Mary stu­dent, stopped the bus, threw the boy off, picked me up, sat me beside Pol­ly, and drove on as though noth­ing had happened.

Where I lived you had to be tough, even as a lit­tle boy. For the rest of the year I sat beside Pol­ly every chance I got and avoid­ed the boy as best I could, but I didn’t report him to the prin­ci­pal or any­one else. I didn’t even tell Mom and Dad about him.

As a coun­ter­bal­ance to that god-awful trau­ma, the first grade pro­duced one of the most impor­tant learn­ing expe­ri­ences of my life. One after­noon Mrs. Pear­son arranged our chairs in a cir­cle and asked us to share sto­ries about our fathers’ jobs. The first kid said her dad was an engi­neer at VEPCO. A boy’s dad worked for Chesa­peake Bank. And so on. No one’s dad did any­thing inter­est­ing, and the sto­ries about them were dead­ly boring.

When Mrs. Pear­son called on me, I start­ed to say my dad sold cars, but a strange feel­ing came over me and I fell silent.

“Ken­ny?” Mrs. Pear­son said.

I looked at her blankly.

“What does your father do for a liv­ing?” she said, try­ing to get me back on track.

The strange feel­ing swelled up inside me. “My dad dri­ves air­planes in big races every Sat­ur­day in Rich­mond,” I said.

The kids perked up.

“Your dad races air­planes?” the boy next to me said, awe-struck.

“Yeah. He almost crashed in the last race.”

Every­one stared at me, wide-eyed.

Ideas bub­bled up so fast my mouth could bare­ly keep pace with my brain. I put Dad in a blue plane shaped like a cig­ar with wings, small­er than the oth­ers, but sneaky fast, dip­ping, ris­ing, zig-zag­ging, and soar­ing. The kids were on the edge of their chairs when Dad lost pow­er and had to use the gaso­line choke to restart the engine and pull the plane up off the ground just before it crashed, and they were hang­ing on my every word when Dad opened the throt­tle, steadi­ly gained on the oth­er planes, caught the leader at the end, and won by a nosecone.

After the kids stopped cheer­ing, I looked at Mrs. Pear­son. Her mouth was hang­ing open. A chill went up my spine. She knows it’s a big lie, I thought. She’s going to yell at me.

But she didn’t yell. Instead, she said, “That was a won­der­ful sto­ry, Ken­ny, and you told it well.”

Then she called on the girl to my left, whose father was an accoun­tant. While the girl droned on about keep­ing track of bills, Mrs. Pear­son smiled at me. I smiled back, and a bond formed between us that inspired me long after I left her class.

That was my first sto­ry; it was real­ly fun to tell; and it set me on a long wind­ing path that even­tu­al­ly led to Whip­poor­will Hollow.

Sev­er­al months ago, almost sev­en decades after Dad won that air­plane race, my deep well of sto­ries final­ly seemed to have run dry. I tried hard, but noth­ing good came forth. With more than a lit­tle sad­ness, I stopped writ­ing and told Bob­bye to let my blog go qui­et­ly into that goodnight.

A few weeks passed. Then Against All Odds cried out to me. Turn­ing Points came along soon after­wards. The Down­fall fol­lowed. Now this one. As I close it out, I hear more ghost-voic­es whis­per­ing from the bot­tom of that deep well.

The time to quit may come some­day, but it seems I’m not there yet.

Post Script: “There is no greater agony than bear­ing an untold sto­ry inside you.” Maya Angelou

On a cold clear day in Jan­u­ary 1987, Wen­dell Blake was pick­ing up trash in Siev­er Manufacturing’s Los Ange­les plant park­ing lot at 9:30 a.m. when he heard the grat­ing sound of met­al scrap­ing against met­al and looked up to see a tall man he rec­og­nized from com­pa­ny town-hall meet­ings, walk­ing between cars four rows away, lean­ing toward the car on his right with his arm down at his side. The scrap­ing sound stopped when the man came to the rear of the car. He walked on through the lot to a gray Mer­cedes, climbed in, and drove away.

Although Blake hadn’t actu­al­ly seen the man’s hand come in con­tact with the car, he was cer­tain he had keyed it. A clos­er look at the car con­firmed his con­clu­sion. A deep scar ran along its side from head­light to taillight.

It took Blake an hour to muster the courage to report what he’d seen to security.

The fol­low­ing week, Siev­er fired James Lock­hart, its Chief Oper­at­ing Offi­cer, for van­dal­iz­ing an employee’s car. Lock­hart denied scratch­ing the car and sued Siev­er. My law firm rep­re­sent­ed the com­pa­ny, and I was assigned to defend the case.

Lockhart’s per­son­nel file glowed in the dark. He received uni­form­ly excel­lent per­for­mance reviews through­out his 36 years with the com­pa­ny, climb­ing the cor­po­rate lad­der steadi­ly to become its sec­ond high­est-rank­ing exec­u­tive with a half-mil­lion-dol­lar annu­al salary.

Joyce Aguilar owned the scratched car, a blue 1984 Chevro­let Caprice. It was unmarked when she parked it in the lot the morn­ing Lock­hart walked by. Five employ­ees had report­ed van­dal­ism of their cars in Siever’s lot since the fall of 1986, all scratched in the same man­ner as Aguilar’s Caprice. All the employ­ees, includ­ing Aguilar, worked in low-lev­el jobs. None of them had ever dealt direct­ly with Lockhart.

Lockhart’s work cal­en­dar con­firmed he left the build­ing the day in ques­tion at 9:30 a.m. to attend an off-site meet­ing and he was present at the plant when the oth­er five cars were keyed.

Blake had worked for Siev­er for six years as a Cus­to­di­an in the Main­te­nance Depart­ment. His per­son­nel file was unre­mark­able: aver­age rat­ings, no com­men­da­tions, no dis­ci­pline. He had nev­er inter­act­ed with Lockhart.

I could find no motive for Lock­hart to van­dal­ize Aguilar’s car or for Blake to lie about him.

Ward Dun­ham, the CEO, made the deci­sion to dis­charge Lock­hart. “Blake was afraid he’d be fired for going against Jim,” he told me. “I admired him for com­ing for­ward, and I believed him. When I met with Jim, his angry denials didn’t ring true. Under­neath his defen­sive­ness, I sensed some sort of prob­lem. I tried to get him to open up, but that only made him angri­er. If he’d admit­ted the van­dal­ism, we might have been able to work some­thing out, but he wouldn’t give an inch. I felt I had no choice but to let him go.”

I ques­tioned Blake in Siever’s con­fer­ence room. A short stocky African Amer­i­can man, push­ing forty, dressed in grease-smudged kha­ki work clothes, he answered my ques­tions in a halt­ing voice for an hour. I couldn’t shake his story.

His answer to my last ques­tion was telling. “Why did you come for­ward, Mr. Blake?” I asked. “Why didn’t you lay low to stay out of trouble?”

He gave me a tired look. “The next car he scratched would be my fault much as him.”

I believed Blake.

I took Lockhart’s depo­si­tion. Six­ty-two years old, six-feet-four with a mane of gray hair, dressed in a blue suit, white shirt, and yel­low tie, he was a por­trait of integri­ty. He said he’d worked long and hard to build a suc­cess­ful career at Siev­er. “The idea that I’d throw it all away to van­dal­ize someone’s auto­mo­bile is ludicrous.”

I believed Lockhart.

Some­thing had to give. Either Blake was mis­tak­en or Lock­hart was men­tal­ly ill. It wor­ried me that Blake hadn’t actu­al­ly seen Lockhart’s hand press­ing a key against the car. I had Blake take me to the park­ing lot and walk me through the inci­dent. The facts and cir­cum­stances seemed con­clu­sive. Based on what Blake saw and heard, Lock­hart keyed the car.

I hired a pri­vate inves­ti­ga­tor to comb through Lockhart’s back­ground. The first from his fam­i­ly to go to col­lege, he joined Siev­er as an entry-lev­el man­ag­er and excelled in every job he held as he rose to the top. He’d been hap­pi­ly mar­ried for 34 years and was active in church, com­mu­ni­ty, and char­i­ta­ble orga­ni­za­tions. If he was men­tal­ly ill, he hid it well.

Since I couldn’t con­vince myself Lock­hart was lying even though Siev­er was pay­ing me, I fig­ured unbi­ased jurors might give him the ben­e­fit of the doubt. To avoid that risk, I decid­ed to try to take the case away from the jury.

The law of wrong­ful dis­charge was evolv­ing in Cal­i­for­nia. Some courts implied a com­pa­ny could fire an employ­ee only for “just cause,” an objec­tive stan­dard. Oth­ers held that a dis­charge deci­sion was law­ful if it was made in good faith. Under that stan­dard, Lockhart’s ter­mi­na­tion might be law­ful if Siev­er sin­cere­ly believed he keyed Aguilar’s car, whether or not he real­ly did it.

Cit­ing that case law, I filed a motion ask­ing the judge to enter a judg­ment in Siever’s favor as a mat­ter of law with­out a jury tri­al because there was no evi­dence Siev­er fired Lock­hart for any rea­son oth­er than its good faith belief he van­dal­ized Aguilar’s car.

As I wrote the brief in sup­port of the motion, I couldn’t answer the ques­tion that had nagged me since I took the case: Why would a pow­er­ful exec­u­tive risk his career and good name to scratch the car of an employ­ee he didn’t know?

At the hear­ing, while the judge grilled me about the lim­its of the good faith stan­dard, I noticed him star­ing at Lock­hart, sit­ting in the gallery. My nag­ging ques­tion trou­bles the judge, too, I thought. Con­vinced through­out oral argu­ment that I was going down in flames, I was shocked when the judge grant­ed my motion.

Lockhart’s lawyer was shocked, too. His Notice of Appeal hit my desk with light­ning speed.

While the appeal was pend­ing, the pri­vate inves­ti­ga­tor found an obscure mis­de­meanor con­vic­tion against Lock­hart. In July, 1986, a Nordstrom’s store clerk caught him try­ing to shoplift a shirt and pair of slacks tucked under his jacket.

The sim­i­lar­i­ty to the car van­dal­ism was strik­ing, a pet­ty crime Lock­hart had no rea­son to com­mit. That clinched it for me. As Ward Dun­ham had sensed, some sort of emo­tion­al prob­lem lurked beneath Lockhart’s image of right­eous probity.

It was too late to add the con­vic­tion to the record on appeal, so I put it in my pock­et. If we were reversed and the case went to tri­al, I hoped to pull a Per­ry Mason and hit Lock­hart with it on the wit­ness stand.

I didn’t get the chance. The appel­late court three-judge-pan­el ruled in Siever’s favor and Lock­hart didn’t appeal the deci­sion to the Cal­i­for­nia Supreme Court. His years of ser­vice and age qual­i­fied him for a sub­stan­tial pen­sion despite his dis­charge, so he aban­doned the case, took his retire­ment ben­e­fit, and moved to north­ern California’s wine country.

The case was closed. I’d secured the desired result, and Siev­er was pleased with my work. All was right with the world.

Then came the sur­prise that haunts me still. Over a six-week peri­od in the spring of 1991, three months after Lock­hart left Los Ange­les, some­one van­dal­ized four cars in Siever’s park­ing lot. All were keyed in the same man­ner as the 1986–87 inci­dents with a deep scar run­ning from head­light to tail­light. One of the four cars scratched was Joyce Aguilar’s Chevy Caprice.

“I’m cer­tain Jim van­dal­ized the first set of cars,” Ward Dun­ham told me. “As far as I’m con­cerned, that shoplift­ing con­vic­tion removes all doubt. This new wave has to be the work of a copycat.”

I wasn’t so sure. Two things wor­ried me: our case against Lock­hart turned on a sin­gle eye wit­ness; and the odds against dif­fer­ent unre­lat­ed van­dals ran­dom­ly tar­get­ing Aguilar’s Chevy Caprice four years apart seemed astro­nom­i­cal. “It might be a good idea,” I told Dun­ham, “to watch Wen­dell Blake and Joyce Aguilar for a while.”

Siev­er put Aguilar and Blake under covert sur­veil­lance at work. They did noth­ing sus­pi­cious. Time passed. No new inci­dents occurred. Siev­er dropped its inves­ti­ga­tion, and the 1991 van­dal was nev­er identified.

Thir­ty-five years after I first opened the case file, I still wor­ry that I helped destroy an inno­cent man’s career. Search­ing for reas­sur­ance as I wrote this, I found a sur­pris­ing num­ber of con­vic­tions of high­ly suc­cess­ful peo­ple for com­mit­ting sense­less small crimes. Most noto­ri­ous­ly, the actress, Winona Ryder, shoplift­ed clothes and jew­el­ry from Saks Fifth Avenue. Most of these peo­ple suf­fered from depres­sion and repressed anger. Maybe Lock­hart was such a per­son. If so, he betrayed no hint of it when I took his depo­si­tion in 1987, and in pho­tos of his eighty-eighth birth­day par­ty post­ed on an old Face­book page, he still looked like a paragon of virtue, con­tent and at peace with himself.

Who com­mit­ted these crimes? Lock­hart and a copy­cat? Blake? Aguilar? Or some­one else? Mad­den­ing­ly, I’ll nev­er know for sure. Lock­hart died peace­ful­ly at home in 2016 at the age of 91, tak­ing the truth with him to his grave.

Post Script: To pro­tect the priv­i­lege, I changed a few of the less impor­tant facts and the names of Lock­hart, the com­pa­ny, and its employees.

My sev­en­ty-fourth birth­day rolled by this month. I’ve been look­ing back since then and think­ing about turn­ing points. There are so many and they go way back. 

I almost failed the sec­ond grade. I was in love with Mrs. Halper, but her week­ly spelling tests broke my heart. She called out eight words. We scrawled the let­ters in cur­sive. She col­lect­ed the papers, cir­cled in red the ones we got wrong, and hand­ed them back to us. My paper was always the bot­tom score in the class. Almost all my words were cir­cled, test after test.

Half-way through the school year, Mrs. Halper told Mom she couldn’t pass me to the third grade unless I learned to spell. They set­tled on a plan. Mrs. Halper drew up a big list of words each week. She worked with me on it after school, then Mom sat with me at the kitchen table each night. She called out the words. I wrote them down. She cor­rect­ed them, and we did them again. And again.

I can’t pin­point the moment or explain how it hap­pened, but some­where along the line, I began to devel­op a feel for the art of orthog­ra­phy and its mad­den­ing incon­sis­ten­cies. I got four right on a test in Feb­ru­ary. Five the next week. Six a month lat­er. Mom cheered when I brought that one home.

The big moment came the week before East­er. Mrs. Halper called out the eight words. I wrote them down. Dur­ing nap time, I peeked through my fin­gers at Mrs. Halper as she grad­ed our tests. A few min­utes into it, she laid down her red pen, dabbed at her pret­ty blue eyes with a tis­sue, then smiled at me through tears. Lat­er that day, she thumb­tacked my paper to the bul­letin board, and when we went out to recess, she kissed me on the cheek. I almost fainted.

On my eleventh birth­day, my aunt and uncle from Rhode Island sent me a pack­age. I thought they were rich because their gifts nev­er came out of the Sears cat­a­log and they were always the best presents I got. I was crest­fall­en when I tore off the wrap­ping paper to find a book. I didn’t like to read. See Spot Run had turned me off ear­ly on. I’d nev­er even read a short sto­ry, much less a whole book. I noticed that this one at least had an inter­est­ing cov­er, an artist’s ren­der­ing of old coins, a map, glass of rum, and com­pass strewn across an oak­en table-top under the title: TREASURE ISLAND. Curi­ous, I turned to the first page. 

“I remem­ber him as if it were yes­ter­day, as he came plod­ding to the inn door, his sea-chest fol­low­ing behind him in a hand-bar­row — a tall, strong, heavy, nut-brown man, his tar­ry pig­tail falling over the shoul­der of his soiled blue coat, his hands ragged and scarred, with black, bro­ken nails, and the sabre cut across one cheek, a dirty, livid white. I remem­ber him look­ing round the cov­er and whistling to him­self as he did so, and then break­ing out in that old sea-song that he sang so often after­wards: Fif­teen men on the dead man’s chest —/Yo-ho-ho, and a bot­tle of rum!”

I could see Bil­ly Bones and hear him singing as clear­ly as if he’d walked into my bed­room. Mes­mer­ized, I read on for hours. Jim, Long John, and the pirates took me across the seas in search of buried trea­sure, and I nev­er returned. Trea­sure Island became the first leg of a life-long jour­ney borne on the wings of art­ful­ly told sto­ries, wend­ing my way through a thou­sand worlds to a B.A. in Eng­lish Lit­er­a­ture, through careers in teach­ing, law, and busi­ness, to come to rest in my sev­enth decade in Whip­poor­will Hollow. 

One of the worlds I vis­it­ed along the way was Denmark’s Elsi­nore Cas­tle in the Mid­dle Ages. When I was sev­en­teen, I walked on unsteady legs to the front of the room and stood before my class­mates, high school seniors, sit­ting in rows of desks, all look­ing at me, waiting.

Each of us had to recite from mem­o­ry the solil­o­quy from Act I, scene ii of Ham­let, 31 lines, 259 words. Pre­sent­ing it with­out fal­ter­ing would be enough to secure a good grade, but I want­ed to do more than that. Ham­let was a sad, con­flict­ed prince, plagued with self-doubt and self-loathing. Strug­gling with world-class ado­les­cent inse­cu­ri­ties, I felt Hamlet’s anguish and thought I could give his trou­bled heart a voice if I could find the courage to bare my soul in front of my friends, but courage wasn’t my strong suit. Up to that point, I’d nev­er tak­en cen­ter stage or done any­thing to set myself apart. I pre­ferred to hide in the shad­ows where it was safe, but that day, inspired by Shake­speare and a gift­ed teacher, Mr. Turn­er, I des­per­ate­ly want­ed to step for­ward into the light.

Feel­ing vul­ner­a­ble in front of my class­mates, I fixed my gaze on red­dish-gold spears of autumn sun­light com­ing through the back win­dows, then took a deep breath, and held my trem­bling hands up before me. “Oh that this too, too sol­id flesh would melt,/Thaw, and resolve itself into a dew.” My voice broke, then stead­ied as Hamlet’s sor­row swelled up inside me and took con­trol. “How weary, stale, flat, and unprofitable/Seem to me all the uses of this world,” I said, mean­ing it.

The next 26 lines took me deep down inside myself to a place I’d nev­er been, where my inhi­bi­tions, doubts, and fears fell away. For one minute and fifty-five sec­onds, I melt­ed into poet­ry that seemed to have been writ­ten for me cen­turies before I was born. “But break my heart,” I said at the end, fight­ing back tears, “for I must hold my tongue.”

Dazed, I walked to my desk and sat down. Emerg­ing slow­ly from the mys­ti­cal spell of Shakespeare’s lyri­cal iambic pen­tame­ter, I real­ized every­one had turned toward me, some with big smiles, oth­ers with tears in their eyes. They were clap­ping, and the applause went on and on.

Over the fol­low­ing weeks, I pre­sent­ed oth­er scenes from Ham­let to good effect. For a daz­zling few months I had visions of becom­ing the next Richard Bur­ton, but I soon proved to be a one-trick pony, a rea­son­ably good Ham­let, but mediocre to painful­ly awful in every oth­er role, and my thes­pi­an aspi­ra­tions met a swift, mer­ci­ful death.

That per­for­mance stayed with me in a more impor­tant way, though. It became a small cor­ner­stone of con­fi­dence, the first stone set in the con­struc­tion of a long life.

I’d like to pre­tend here that I’m self-made, that hard work, sac­ri­fice, and tal­ent brought me to the good place where I find myself today, but look­ing back with a clear eye, I see a thou­sand turn­ing points where flat-out pure luck played the deci­sive role and a thou­sand more where I couldn’t have gone for­ward with­out the help of some­one who extend­ed a hand to me gra­tu­itous­ly and unbidden.

A few years ago, a guy I hadn’t seen in fifty years tracked me down to thank me for talk­ing him out of quit­ting our col­lege fra­ter­ni­ty when he was a pledge. He said I saved him from mak­ing a life-alter­ing mis­take. I appre­ci­at­ed his thanks, but won­dered why he went to so much trou­ble. It was such a small thing that hap­pened so long ago.

He died the fol­low­ing year, and I learned he’d been fight­ing can­cer for a long time. I under­stood then. I was one of many on a long list. 

Mrs. Halper, Mom, my aunt and uncle, Mr. Turn­er, and so many of those who helped me are gone now. I thanked some of them before they left. I wish I had a sec­ond chance with the others.

Many are still here. My list is long, too, but I’m for­tu­nate. I have time. 

Post Script: Suzie Glass and I were the last two kids stand­ing in the sev­enth-grade spelling bee when the proc­tor called out the word “medieval.” It sat me down and Suzie won. To this day, that word aggra­vates me. Say it out loud, then explain to me why in hell it’s spelled like that.