They keep me in the hospital overnight. I keep saying I need to see Mama, but it’s the next morning before they take me down to her room, which isn’t a real room at all but a glassed-in place like a big fish tank full of monitors and machines. This is worse, ten times worse than the oncology waiting room. A doctor’s there, not the intern we know, Dr. Patel, nor the gray-haired oncologist, but another doctor, a short African with an accent. He says I can talk to her for a minute. Only a minute.
“Mama,” I says, taking her hand, “Mama, I’m so sorry.”
She opens her eyes and though she squeezes my hand, I can see she’s already gone a long way off. I want to tell her about the accident, about the settlement, about the biggest mistake I ever made, but she shakes her head slightly. She has something important to tell me; she opens her mouth, struggles, and finally whispers, “Hall closet, your birthday.” Then she presses my hand again and closes her eyes.
The doctor puts his hand on my shoulder. Only a minute.
I see Mama several times after that, but she doesn’t speak again, and I don’t feel right telling her anything that would upset her. The day she died, the doctor sat me down and said she could not have survived anyway. Her cancer had metastasized. I knew what that meant from reading the little pamphlets in the oncology waiting room. All the radiation and all the chemo in the world would not have saved her.
A week later, I’m packing to go south when I remember the hall closet and what was so important that Mama told me that last, instead of anything else. I open the door. There’s a rolled-up quilt on the floor and underneath it, a shoe box. I know what’s inside before I lift the lid, and it makes me feel sick and glad and sad all at once: a pair of Nike Zoom LeBron IIs. My size.
I keep them under my bed now, and the only time I’ve ever hit Aunt Rita’s boy Brian was when I found him with his feet in them. I feel funny about those shoes. I can’t bear the thought of putting them on and playing in them, and at the same time, I can’t bear the thought of her saving up for them and giving them to me, and me not using them. So they’re in the box and ‘bout every night, I lift the lid and push aside the tissue paper and take a look at them. Sometimes that’s all I do; sometimes I put them on and even lace them up. Whenever I do, my old life with Mama and Kev and Mitch and Billy J and settlements comes back to me, along with my short life in crime.
Pandora’s Journey
by Gilbert M. Stack
“Anyone interested in a friendly game of cards?”
Corey sighed. He’d heard that offer far too many times to have any doubts as to its disastrous implications for his finances. As he’d feared, Patrick’s head perked right up beside him from its light snoring and looked around the railcar. “I could always sit for a friendly game,” he announced, before digging his elbow lightly into Corey’s ribs. “How much money do I have left, Corey, me lad?”
Corey winced. His chest, face, and arms were covered with bruises where he’d been beaten by a lynch mob four nights before, and the flesh covering those ribs was ugly and tender. But that didn’t stop him from reaching for his wallet and their diminishing cache of prize money. “You ran out of cash a week ago,” he reminded Patrick. “How much will you need?”
“That’s the spirit,” the original voice repeated. “Now who else wants to play?”
Looking around, Corey spotted the speaker sitting about midway down the length of the railcar. They were both passengers on the train leaving Cheyenne for points farther west. There were fifteen or twenty other passengers sharing the car, all of them looking at either Patrick or the speaker.
A military officer half stood from his seat to get the gentleman’s attention. “Just how friendly a game do you have in mind, sir?”
In the seat beside Corey on the other side from Patrick, Miss Pandora Parson shifted her attention to examine the officer. She was a well-dressed young woman with brilliant red hair and a sprinkle of freckles on her nose. She’d been traveling with the boxer and Patrick, his trainer, since they had left Denver together a few weeks before.
The original gambler, a tall broad mountain of a man with a string tie, responded to the officer. “A very friendly game, Captain. Just a few hands of cards to help while away the miles and enough money at stake to keep the game interesting.”
“Lieutenant,” the officer corrected him. “I haven’t been a captain since the War Between the States. Lieutenant Thomas Ridgewood is my name.”
“Gambling is the scourge of the God-fearing man,” an elderly woman observed in a loud voice. “Mark my words, gentlemen. It’s Satan’s work you’re contemplating.”
“That’s three,” the initial speaker announced, ignoring the old woman’s warning. “Is anyone else interested?”
Corey looked to Miss Parson to see if she wanted to join the game. Unlike Patrick, she was a skilled enough player to have a realistic chance of leaving richer than she started. Noticing his attention, Miss Parson gave a small, almost imperceptible shake of her head. Corey accepted her refusal without further comment. He had no interest in card games himself. If Miss Parson wanted to give this one a pass, then that was fine with him.
“Satan’s work!” the old woman repeated. She stood at her seat, clutching her Bible tightly in her right hand. A young man sitting next to her tried to get her to sit down again, but she would not listen to him. The force of her righteous anger smothered any small levity that had hitherto survived the Wyoming August heat, and it appeared that Patrick’s card game would suffer a stillborn death. Corey began to breathe easier. Perhaps his old friend would not have the opportunity to lose the rest of their small savings until after they left the train. The old man never saw the cards as anything but an opportunity to add to their meager wealth, but in Corey’s recollection, the final result usually increased the urgency of scheduling Corey’s next fight. After the beating Corey had taken in Cheyenne protecting Patrick from a misdirected hanging, the bare-knuckle fighter knew it could be weeks before he was fit to fight again. So anything that delayed the card game would ultimately help Corey and Patrick keep eating.
Satisfied that she had made her point, the old woman nodded once and sat down. Private conversations began to resume only to be interrupted again. “I suppose I could be your fourth man, lads, but the Lord alone knows where we’ll find our fifth.”
The old woman shot back up in her seat. “Who said that?” she demanded.
In response, a grayhaired figure in black cassock and white collar rose to his feet.
The woman gasped in horror. “A minister?”
“Priest, madam,” the old man corrected her. “I really don’t feel like playing,” he continued, “but I hate to see a Protestant squelching the only bit of fun there is likely to be on this train today.”
“You heathen!” the woman screamed. Her jaw kept working after the words stopped, as if she were struggling to find stronger things to say.
“Catholic, madam,” the priest said apologetically. “It’s you poor Protestants who are the heathens.” He turned to the rest of the railcar and rubbed his hands with glee. “So what are we waiting for, I ask you? Let’s get the conductors to set up a table for us. While you,” he indicated the man with the string tie, “dash into the next car and see if you can find us another player.”