Hearts Left Behind (12 page)

Rather than sit around and tally up all the unanswered
questions I had been collecting, I decided to write a letter back to Mr.
Innocent, which was how I had come to think of the man who had authored that
letter by Slim Jim’s grave.  There were a million things I wanted to ask
him.  Which questions would I uncork and pour onto the paper
?  Who are you?  Why did you write
this?  Why did you wait so long?  If Slim Jim didn’t kill Katie
Cooper, who did?  Can we meet in person?

In the end
,
though, I ended up replying to his one-word letter with a one-word letter of my
own – a command and a plea:

Explain

After signing my name to the letter, I folded it
slowly and perfectly, giving myself a few extra seconds to think about what I
was doing.  I slid it into a yellow envelope and put it under the rock by
Slim Jim’s headstone.  I considered waiting in hiding to see who picked it
up, but in the end decided to wait and see if Mr. Innocent would come forward
on his own
.

Over time, people change and then again they
don’t.  Just like with Charlie, I saw and recognized Edie Dales the
instant I walked through the doors at Mustang’s.  A striped Polo and
khakis, his dress was the same as it had been back then.  Literally the
same it seemed.  Both the pants and the shirt were faded and speckled with
small holes. When he recognized me, he smiled that missing-tooth smile that
over the years had become a missing-teeth smile.  I probably should have
just turned around and went home right then and there.  I didn’t, of
course, which is unfortunate because it would have saved me a little bit of
trouble and a whole lot of hurt.

“Hey there,
thathafrath
,” he
said and I couldn’t help but laugh at the ridiculous lisp.

“Hey, Andrew,” I said.  And then, remembering how
much I hated him, “Maybe you should consider a new pet name for me.  Try
pecker, it’s easier to pronounce and it’s stood the test of time – right, Son?”

“Sure has, pecker,” Son said, sliding a beer in front
of me.

“Now, thee…”Edie said, “thee, I
alwayth
knew you
wath
a
thmart
mouth. 
Alwayth
knew you badmouthed me behind my
back. 
I
wath
right,
wathn’t
I,
thathafrath
?”

“Yeah, I
thuppothe
I
wath
,” I said.

“
That’th
funny,
thathafrath
.
 
Yeth
,
thir
.
 
Very funny.”

When I didn’t respond, Edie went on.  “Never would
have talked to me like that back in the day, though – eh,
thathafrath
?”

I ignored the question and sipped my beer. 
“Bigger and braver now, though.  Eh,
thathafrath
? 
All grown up, are
ya
?  Not afraid of getting
your
ath
kicked, huh?”

I attempted to redirect the conversation.  “So
what are you doing these days, Andrew?”

He slammed a full glass of beer, burped loudly and
said, “
Dentitht
.  ” slapping his knee. 
“No, no, wait, no, I’m a
Thpeech
Therapist,” he said
and again howled at his own joke.

It was the kind of laugh that you weren’t supposed to
laugh along with.

“Hey,
what’th
the matter,
thathafrath
?
  You don’t think
I’m funny?  Hey, you
gotta
laugh, right?”

I thought about that day on the basketball court, me
fisted up and wanting to punch Edie in the nose and him not the least bit
afraid.  Seeing the fear in me and just knowing that I wasn’t going to hit
him.  Of everything that happened on the basketball court that day – the
elbows, the shoves, the taunting, his filthy mouth on Katie – the thing that
upset me the most was his utter confidence that I wouldn’t dare hit him. 
Even after all that he had said and done.  How he had hissed,
“Who are you kidding, Sassafras?  We both know
you
ain’t
gonna
hit me.”

“Yeah, that’s right. 
Gotta
laugh,” I said.  And then after a second, “Hey, you know what I always
thought was funny?  That nickname we had for you back in the day -
Edie.  You remember that? 
Edie?
  Like
the girls name.”

Edie nodded furiously as he gulped down a fresh
beer. 
“Yeah, that
wath
funny,
alright.
  Only did hear it the
one time
mythelf
, though.  Remember that,
thathafrath
? 
That day with Timmy Carmichael on the
thlide
at the playground.
  Remember what I did to him for calling me
that?  Man, I could be a real hard
ath
back
then, couldn’t
I.
 
Mak’th
me feel a little guilty when I thee Timmy
thee’th
days, walking around town with
hith
kids. 
He’th
got two little
girlth
, you
know that?  Yeah, probably better off with
girlth
,
guy like that.  Know what I mean?  Got two
boyth
my own
thelf
, but
thome
men
aren’t meant to have thons, now are they?  You
gotta
boy,
thathafrath
?”

For the first time since we’d started talking, Son
interjected.  “Hey Andrew, didn’t you tell me to cut you off at 11,” Son
said, pointing at the clock on the wall behind him.  “Maybe you’d better
get going.”

Ignoring Son, Edie said, “Well?  You
gotta
boy,
thathafrath
?”

Edie slapped his knee and shouted, “You don’t, do
you? 
Thee?
  I knew it!  No
offenth
,
thathafrath
, but you’re
like Timmy in that way.  Better off with
girlth
?”

“Andrew,” said Son from behind the bar.

“
It’th
kinda
like…what do they call that? 
Thurvival
of the
fittetht
–
thomethin
’ like
that?  You know what I’m
talkin
’ about? 
That thing where the
thtrong
live and the weak die.”

A fury bubbled in my chest and I said, “Careful, Edie.”

“What?” he said, raising innocent arms in
question.
  “What did
I
thay
?  I’m just
thaying
that
the weak die.  Hell, that
ain’t
nothin
’ new. 
That’th
Darwin.
  The weak die,
thathafrath
. 
The weak die.”

I jumped from my bar stool and threw my glass of beer
against the wall.  “Edie, if you don’t shut the hell up I’m going to knock
out that last jagged tooth you got hanging from that shithole mouth of yours.”

Edie slowly rose from his bar stool and smiled that
missing-teeth smile.

“You
gotta
blow off
thome
thteam
,
thathafrath
? 
Bring it
on,
I’d be happy to help.”

“That’s enough,” said Son.  “Sit down, both of
ya
.”

But it was too late.  I stepped towards Edie and
held my fist up by my ear in the same way I had that day on the basketball
court.  And just like that day on the court, Edie stood unflinching and
fearless.

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

Except that this time I did hit him.
 
And just like I promised, I knocked out the last tooth in his smile. 
Well, I knocked it loose anyway.  Edie ended up pulling it out
himself.  In the million or so times I had fantasized about hitting Edie,
he always fell to the floor hard, shook his head a couple times, and then slid
his jaw back and forth with one hand.  In that vision, Edie stood up
slowly and walked away with a newfound respect for me.  Perhaps even fear.

In reality, when I punched Edie’s mouth I knocked his
head hard to the right and messed up his hair a little, but that was about
it.  He didn’t fall and he didn’t check for a broken jaw.  Instead,
he turned his head back toward me slowly, smiled a bloody smile and then yanked
out the tooth I had managed to loosen.  He examined it, shrugged, stuffed
it in the front pocket of my s
hirt and
said “
Thouvenir
.”  Then he hit me with a quick
one-two that dropped me to the floor. 

As Son walked him out the door, I could hear Edie
laughing and spewing out a string of
lispy
insults.

Later that night as I lie in bed drunk and defeated, I
whispered “
Mithter
Innothent
,”
and laughed at the unfunny thought, the very real possibility.  Edie was
the filthiest soul I had ever known.  And though I couldn’t be sure he was
the killer, I was more than sure of one thing.  He had it in him.

Then I saw someone fall in love.  It happened in
a bookstore in Glidden where I went for
a mocha
, not
amore.  Nevertheless, I saw the moon hit his eye like a big pizza
pie. 

Our three tables formed a perfect triangle, he and she
and I. 
Her reading, unaware of any world outside of her
book.
 
Him watching, unaware of any world outside
of her.
 
Me
watching them both like two
panda bears in captivity.  I could see how she was making him love
her.  It was the way she sat with one foot on the floor and one crossed
over her lap.  The way she was
slinkily
slouched
over the table with her head propped on hand and elbow.  And it was the
way her long sun-touched, brown hair hung carelessly down the right side of her
tilted head, her left hand periodically sweeping it back over and then
adjusting horn-rimmed glasses.  She was captivating, this young
woman. 

He practiced the conversation in his head and his lips
moved involuntarily with each thought.  He kept repeating the same phrase
under his breath, changing his tone and the height and angle of his eyebrows
with every new effort.  Like a tourist lost in a foreign land and needing
to use the bathroom, he repeatedly practiced the only question he knew how to
ask in an unfamiliar and tongue-twisting language. 

I loved him a little bit just then, this
little boy. 
This silly
tourist.
  In the way an alarm clock reminds you not to sleep, he
was reminding me of my own slumbering love.

After a while, his brow furrowed and his lips stopped
moving.  He opened a spiral notebook and began to write.  Initially I
guessed that he was writing a note that he would shyly pass to the young
beauty.  But the writing became the furious scribble of a man angry with
himself and I could only guess that he was cursing himself
for his lack of courage.  His head wiggled as he
wrote - side to side, front to back – the way I imagined Mozart must have
looked whenever possessed by the succubus of new music, only the ink and quill
missing.  He did not see her approach.

“Excuse me,” she said.

Startled, he literally jumped out of his chair.

“Oh, I’m so sorry,” she said with a giggle and a
slight touch of his arm.  “I didn’t mean to
scare you.  I just wanted to see if you had a pen I could borrow.”

“A what?
 
A pen?”
  Then looking at his hand like it had something
stuck to it that he did not quite recognize
,
he said, “A pen.  Sure, take this.  This is a pen.”

“But aren’t you using that one,” she asked, indicating
the notebook.

“No, that’s nothing.  I’m done.  That’s
nothing,” he said and then - in the scramble to close the notebook - knocked
his coffee over.

She took the pen and thanked him. He stood
open-mouthed, gazing down stupidly at the
spilt
coffee spreading across his table and on to the floor.  She smiled and
gave him a look that was full of questions and answers.  I thought of
Katie Cooper looking at me over the top of an armful of boxes the day she had
first come to Willow Grove.  And I thought of the first night Tammy and I
met. 

They were
sweet
and it seemed to me that something big was happening that neither of them fully
understood.  They did not know what lay ahead of them, these two panda
bears.  They were about to find love in each other and eventually
marry.  They would dream their dreams and plan their plans.  They would
argue over silly little things and then one day
realize
that most of life is silly little things.  They would drive their mini-van
to PTA meetings and drop their kids off at soccer practices and piano
lessons.  They would lose a child.

I went home and called my wife.