Prologue: A Miracle at the Races
Shane O’Malley clutched his ticket between thick fingers and willed his horse to the lead position. He stood at the edge of the grandstand, his sweat desperation, his appearance telegraphing his addiction; long unkempt hair, spotty beard around a nasty scar, ten or fifteen year old shorts and polo complete with coffee stains and splotches of what might have been cocktail or marinara sauce, he wore sandals oblivious to his uncut toenails-except for the big toe on his right foot which had no nail. His only vanity was a pair of large, gold, aviator sunglasses.
But his will was weak, he knew it, knew he had no power to drive Ace of Spades into the winners circle. The ticket represented more than a mere bet but rather the end of a long and much used rope. So, Shane saw no other option but the following prayer; and not a prayer so much as a deal with God.
“God, God, I promise, I swear on my life if you let me win, just this once, one more time, I’ll never make another bet so long as I breath. I’ll even light a candle on it at Saint Cecilia’s afterwards. Just please, just please God, let me win.”
His eyes were closed and though a race track is a noisy place, his friend Ernie Lowenstein heard every word. So when Ace of Spades, from the middle of the pack, past up Morning Glory, Spirit of the Mist, and the favorite for that race Absolute Zero, and won by a full length in a fabulous upset, Shane opened his eyes and found himself staring into the wide eyed and eager face of his somewhat dimwitted friend. The exultation of the victory drained from Shane’s body as he realized he must have been praying aloud and that Ernie must have heard it. And if Ernie had heard it then he’d take the role of the cricket, Jiminy, and pester him to fulfill his oath to God.
Which he would, but not before watching poor Ernie bleed out from a couple of nasty bullet wounds to his neck and stomach. Bullets meant for Shane of course.
But that’s jumping ahead.
Before any of that Shane and Ernie left the track. They stopped to collect their winnings. The teller thanked the dour faced Shane. He did not speculate long as to why O’Malley wasn’t happier. It is a common scene at places where bets are made, a blue man collecting a pile of green. The words bet and debt having more in common than simply rhyming.
Walking to Ernie’s cab, Ernie calculated the quickest route to Saint Cecilia’s Catholic Church, and Shane wondered what he could say to his friend to avoid that. Ernie had parked his cab at The Winner’s Circle-one of those ubiquitous pubs near race tracks-so they had a long walk. They didn’t say anything.
Near the entrance to the track there was parked a black caddy. Inside, sat two rather rotund gentlemen in black suits. The driver starred dead-eyed out the window. The passenger was hunched over his cell phone playing a game that only required him to push the five button, which caused a digital helicopter to fly over digital obstacles.
“Would you put that up!” The driver swore.
“No! I’m about to break 1000 seconds here.”
“200 seconds, 500 seconds, 1000 seconds,” The driver mimicked. “I’m going to break that phone on your face.” He swore some more. “The boss said to watch for O’Malley and call it in as soon as he leaves the track.”
“So watch.”
“You watch!”
“I’m taking a break.”
So, in their argument neither noticed as Shane and Ernie shuffled past. Had they been paying attention, and called it in as instructed the events that followed, but this isn’t going to be about what might have happened, only about what did happen. Besides none of the events that followed Shane’s miracle would have occurred had Ernie not fallen thirty feet from a tree house, twenty five years previous.
Here’s what happened.
Shane O’Malley and Frankie Tedesco were best friends. Had been for seven long years, which in relative kid time was so close to eternity as to make the marking of time academic, and of course they measured their friendship in kid time, from summer to summer. That was seven summers and six full school years. Shane and Frankie did everything together, at least everything important. And to a couple of boys born circa 1964 in a burgeoning suburbia important was fishing in the creek behind the new subdivision, playing stick ball in the street, riding their bikes to Tillman’s to buy soda pop’s and the new Spiderman, and suffering through long hours of school until recess and summer. Ernie had joined the crew in 1970.
Ernest Lowenstein, only son to Joe and Ethel Lowenstein, born late in their lives, and perhaps too late as Ethel’s body had betrayed her son. Perhaps being so close to the change of life had made Ethel’s womb a treacherous place for a divine knitting room. God got the job done of course but Ernie had not been left unaffected. Besides a slight heart murmur he was slow. The PC term is developmentally challenged, a fact that both caused and insulated Ernie from childhood cruelty. Both classroom and playground derision were lost on Ernie. He did not get it, any of it, subtle or direct. When Stephanie Meyer said, “You’re such a genius Ernie.” Ernie wondered if he were a genius why he didn’t make better grades, and he never realized he was the moron, or Idiot Ernest the other kids were laughing at. Ernie was happy. Shane and Frankie played with him and had someone tried to explain pity to him he would not have understood how it applied to him.
That summer, the summer they were all ten; the summer Shane had a perpetual black eye, and Frankie insisted they call themselves a crew because he wanted to be like his older brother, Michael, the summer they took more notice of the girls in bikinis at the neighborhood swimming pool, Frankie and Shane decided they should all become blood brothers.
“We’ll do it tonight at the tree house. My folks won’t even know I’m gone.” Shane had said.
“And I already asked mine about staying over.” Frankie had said.
They’d told Ernie to check with his to make sure it was cool. “Sure.” Ernie had said but continued to roll back and forth on his bike.
“Now!”
“Oh.”
Frankie and Shane had smiled and rolled their eyes as Ernie had ridden off towards the west end of Herman Street. He’d stopped at the intersection, paused a beat, and looked around confused. He’d looked back at Shane and Frankie who were pointing towards his house on the other end of the street. Ernie had wheeled around and shouted out “I got lost!”, as he rode past his friends.
“Of course they can stay over.” Ethel had smiled down at her son. This was the very reason Joe had built the tree house. Ernie’s uniqueness did cause his mother some anxiety. But boys must have buddies, and buddies often want to stay over the night. The tree house pretty much guaranteed the O’Malley boy and the Tedesco boy would always want to stay at their house. Ethel did not believe she could bear a night away from her boy, even if it were only two or three blocks.
Sitting in a circle in the tree house that night, pocket knife open and wielded like a pointer, Frankie explained the seriousness of blood brotherhood. “This means we go to the mat for each other, that both our friends and enemies are shared, and that if we break this oath by betraying it we should have all our blood spilled like this little bit is going to be spilt now.”
Shane had nodded. Ernie had screwed up his face wondering if he’d ever heard the words betraying or oath before.
“Agreed?” Frankie said.
Ernie nodded only because Shane had.
“Good. So you cut your palm here, and pass the knife to the next man. Then we let our blood mix, and then we’re blood brothers. Who’s first?”
Not wanting to be left out or thought chicken Ernie grabbed the knife before Shane and Frankie could say anything. They were about to sigh relief as neither of them really wanted to slice their palms, but then Ernie stabbed the knife an inch, an inch and a half into his fleshy palm and sliced down a good two inches. He’d moved faster than the pain. Once it did reach his brain he screamed, panic set in as a natural reaction to all that sudden neurochemical communication and he bolted for his mother, out the door of the tree house and thirty feet down, without wasting time on the ladder. He thudded and was surrounded by black. He didn’t come to for three days. When he did he had a fat scar on his palm and had broken his neck. For the rest of his life his head and neck angled away from his body like a crooked fence post. He looked like a man who was always about to say “I don’t know.”
Shane and Frankie had never finished the ritual. They might have grown distant from each other but for Ernie’s accident. While they never really played or talked as they had before they were perpetually drawn together by an unconscious understanding, an unvoiced and profound feeling that although they had never mixed blood their pact did apply to Ernie because he had cut himself so deeply. And Shane and Frankie both would receive scars as a sign of their oath, each earned while trying to protect the slow and sweet son of Joe and Ethel Lowenstein.
Shane got his the winter of 1979. He was fifteen and had been invited to his first real high school party by Monica Dickerson. He’d felt compelled to bring Ernie along.
At the party Ernie had spoken with Stephanie Meyer. Stephanie, now a cheerleader, was still sharp-witted; however she had grown in her understanding of Ernie and tended to treat him with grace. Stephanie’s boyfriend, Ron McAllister did not understand, and if he thought of grace at all it would only have been of the lady who cut his mother’s hair.
“What are you doing retard?” He’d thumped Ernie on the back of the head.
“Oww,” Ernie had said.
They’d been sitting on a couch, Stephanie listening to Ernie’s stories in much the same way Ethel did. And much as his mother would have defended him Stephanie stood up for Ernie. “Stop it Ron.” She said.
“Why should I? This dill hole’s got no right to talk to you.” And he whacked Ernie on the back of the head.
“Stop it.” Ernie whined.
“You don’t like that retard.” Whack.
“Don’t call me that.”
“What you like Idiot Ernest better?” Whack.
“Ron!” Stephanie had yelled.
But he’d just kept on whacking and thumping Ernie in the back of the head. Ernie, who had been quite enjoying his conversation with Stephanie-her of the dark hair, rose red lips, lovely smell, and who talked to him in a way that made him feel all sugary inside-could not consider just leaving. But the whacking was getting more frequent and fierce, and it made his neck hurt.
Whack, whack, whack.
And then Shane had tackled Burt from behind and was on top of him, pounding, and pounding, and screaming, and spitting.
And then Ron’s friends were pulling Shane off and shoving him out of the house.
“Go Ernie, run!” Stephanie had yelled.
His eyes had gone blank for a moment.
“Go! Help Shane!” She’d yelled, helping him up and hustling him out the door.
Ron had forgotten about making fun of Ernie. He’d been pretty blitzed anyway. But he had remembered Shane, and when Stephanie broke up with him he set his mind to inflicting pain on O’Malley. Which he did, catching Shane on a date with Monica he had three of his friends drag him into an alley behind Tillman’s. It would have been a standard high school beating but Ron found a broken beer bottle. He’d been planning on just scaring O’Malley with it, but by that point Shane was beyond fear-he was already intimate with beatings anyway.
“You won’t cut me.” He’d said, “You’re too much of a,” And it was the expression his father always used. Especially when whiskey drunk and Shane started to look more like a punching bag than a son. Shane hated the way it sounded, hated the way it tasted in his mouth, but in that moment he found it’s dark power. He’d wanted Ron to cut him. The black eyes his father gave him no longer seemed sufficient penance for his many sins. “Go on.” He screamed the expression again.
Ron had been drinking that night so perhaps that had lowered his inhibitions. Perhaps he’d been trying to pay his own sick penance. Whatever the case, he’d slashed out with the broken bottle. The jagged glass bit into flesh on the right cheek of Shane’s face, leaving him bleeding.
“What the hell Ron!” One of his friends yelled as the other two bolted. “Are you nuts?”
Shane felt nothing and fell into fits of mad laughter. “Don’t forget the other side,” and again his father’s words on his tongue.
This time the words slapped Ron McAllister into reality. He dropped the bottle and was gone.
Ron’s friend, Burt Covington, remained. “Man, I’m sorry, I didn’t know he’d go off the reservation like that.”
Shane just kept laughing. “You want some too?” Again the hateful words.
“No man, but you need to go to the ER at St. Joe’s. That’s a bad cut.”
And so Burt had taken him.
“And how did this one happen.” The emergency room staff at St. Joe’s knew Shane well.
Burt had been somewhat frightened about what to say, but a lie came to Shane quicker than the truth, and so they stitched him up, one for each year of his life.
Two week later, they had to do it all again. His father had come home with a bellyful of Wild Turkey and the vile words on his lips. He’d found the hospital bill on the kitchen counter. He expressed his complaint at the expense by opening the stitches with two or three quick backhands to Shane’s cheek.
Shane would never speak it, but he knew the scar on his face matched the scar on Ernie’s palm.
Frankie Tedesco would receive his wound three years later, in a hotel room used for poker games, from his brother Michael.
By that time Shane had learned that he loved to gamble.
September 28, 2012
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