by James Siegel
I will wait until they’re right there.
I grip the gun in my left pocket. Mano a mano. Duel in the desert. Every gunfight I’d ever seen on my living room TV back in Queens.
Maybe I’ll make it. You never know.
Either way, Tom Valle will be dead. Gone. Forgotten.
If not in a blaze of glory, in the pale hue of redemption. I have taken the liar out to the woodshed and I have finally set him right.
I grip the gun. I turn.
The words of something flit through my mind. Something they read at Jimmy’s funeral-I’d never forgotten it; years later I looked it up and memorized each word. An appropriate sendoff for Jimmy, and Benjy, and Eddie Bronson, for all the doomed children in this world, those who grow up and those who don’t. For everyone we can’t help mourning for.
Even me.
I am standing upon that shore. A ship at my side spreads its white sails to the morning breeze and starts for the blue ocean. Soon she hangs like a speck of a white cloud just where the sea and sky mingle. And just at the moment when someone at my side says “There! She’s gone!” I know there are other eyes watching the ship coming, and other voices ready to take up the glad shout, “Here she comes!”
And that is dying.
I hope it’s true.
I hope it’s true.
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