by Dan Alatorre
It was a stupid name for a stupid game. Irreverent, really. I’m not sure we even called it by that name. Killing Hitler. I’m not sure I remember what the actual name of that game was.
Oh, I knew all right. I remember playing that game like we’d played it only yesterday.
We didn’t have wives or children or girlfriends back then to civilize us, so we played dumb games to trick each other into saying something stupid. It was a harmless game to pass the time for a couple of kids who weren’t old enough to pass it in other ways.
“Would you ever steal a corvette?”
“What? Heck, no!” I gripped the handle bars and winced as my bike shuddered with each vehicle that passed.
“What if bank robbers put a gun to your mom’s head, and you had to steal the car or they would kill her. You have to steal the car to help them escape, or they will kill you mom.”
“Then, yes, I’d steal the car. Now shut up, you’re going to get us killed.”
Jimmy howled in laughter at my distress.
At times, our game was uncomplicated and pointless. Back when we were young enough to walk into the trap of questions set by the other, the opposing player wasn’t usually strategic enough to ask methodical questions. We’d try to win in three moves. We had no plan. When we grew old enough to be patient, we couldn’t lure the other one in. Tic Tac Toe.
The game was premised on knowing what the other person considered important, or knowing what they valued, or having a secret. But it also depended on them having similar judgment as you. And best friends spend too much time together to really keep secrets from each other, don’t they?
Or do they?
I had a secret. A big one. Maybe Jimmy did, too. Maybe that’s why he was always wanting to play the game, to learn mine—or to try to get me to know his. Who knows why kids do things?
What if you stole a car and didn’t get caught? That changes things. When people don’t get punished the first time they try something bad, they may become emboldened to try it again. Maybe shoplifting had lost its thrill so you try jacking a car—anything to see where the limits were. We knew kids who had done it. Older kids we’d see at the park. They smoked pot or went joyriding, things like that. They were tough kids who got in fights at school but didn’t get beat up.
In the real world, would I ever steal a car? No, never. Hoo, boy, would I get in trouble for that! Because of course, I’d for sure get caught. My dad would kill me. I’d be grounded forever.
The other kids, the tough kids, they were learning that rules were for suckers. When you don’t get caught, the rules don’t apply.
Now I was starting to understand. I didn’t get it back then. And if the tough kids had any clue, they ignored it. At their school, they didn’t have nuns lecturing them about being good and parents lecturing them about how they represented the family in the community.
So we never tried anything. We played our game.
“So you wouldn't steal a car?” After we’d safely made it to the sidewalk, I could hear Jimmy better. “Okay, your mom has to go to the grocery store. She wants you to go with her, so you go.” Then he thought for a moment. “You want to stay home and play. You want to ride your bike.”
“Okay.”
Patches of shade from Elm trees passed over us as we glided down the far side of the boulevard. It was a little too fast to ride with no hands, but I knew Jimmy was back there trying it.
“She wants you to help her buy things. You wanna play with your friends. It's summertime, but you go you have to go. She needs your help.”
He seemed to be attempting a stealthy angle this time. Rolling along the sidewalk, we dodged the occasional low hanging tree branch.
I listened as he went on.
“After the store she wants to stop by the bank.”
I rolled my eyes. “Come on, where is this going?”
“Hang on. You read your new comic book and you’re miserable. You should be home. You should be down at the park, jumping ramps on the bike trails with your friends.”
Jimmy liked the jerry-rigged bike ramps we made at the park. We would push our bikes to the top of one of the big hills, the same ones we would ride our sleds down in winter when they were covered with snow. At the bottom of the hill, we rigged up some plywood and old boards that we fished out of the creek. The idea was to be like Evel Knievel, racing down the hill on your bike and hitting the ramp at top speed, and then seeing how far you could fly.
The problem was, it was pretty scary coming down the hill. You picked up a lot of speed. If you hit the brakes, you might go over the handle bars and land face first in the dirt. Or your tire might skid and send you into the trees. If you made it to the bottom, you would almost certainly miss the ramp—an eight inch wide board at best—and if managed to hit it, you’d probably wreck after you got airborne. Landings were such a small part of the equation, we never planned on them. We had no place to slow down, no safety gear, and no way of getting medical attention if we got hurt.
We were typical ten year old boys.
Jimmy was still laying out his elaborate scenario while I had drifted off.
“She parks the car and goes into the bank . . .”
I shook my head. “I guess I do this before the grocery store, or the ice cream is gonna melt and the milk will spoil.”
“You are in the bank, standing there,” he continued, ignoring me. “All of a sudden, there’s a bank robbery. They take your mom hostage. You’re sitting there, so they give you the car keys and tell you that they need you to steal that car out front or they will shoot your mom. The robbers need this to make their escape.”
The scene set, he asked the capper: “Would you steal it?”
“Of course,” I said. “No hesitation.”
“You’d get caught.”
“So?”
“So you’d go to jail.”
“I don’t think they’d send a kid to jail in a situation like that.”
“But what if they did?”
This round of the game seemed a little tortured. What was he getting at? Either he had forgotten that he had asked me nearly the same question before, or he was looking for a different answer.
I considered it, too, as I pedaled along Lummings Road. This one had a sidewalk, so we were safe.
But I was tired of the game, and frustrated from all the speeding cars conspiring to scare us. I jumped to where I thought his questions were headed. “We would all kill Hitler if we could kill Hitler, okay? But it isn’t that easy.”
I glanced over my shoulder, seeing a shocked expression on his face. “Even if you could really kill him, not just theoretically?”
“Of course. No hesitation,” I said, still theorizing. “To sacrifice your life for the lives of millions would buy you a seat in heaven. It's an easy choice.”
“What would make it harder choice?”
I rode in silence for a moment. It was a good question.
My family had been to my uncle’s house for a birthday party for their two year old son. They fawned over that cute little kid, walking around in his overalls and t-shirt. He was their world, and it showed. To trade him away? Inconceivable. Probably for any parents, with a kid of any age, but a little kid? A helpless child? No way.
“Say you have the parents of a little kid,” I started. “Their only child, on the kid’s second birthday.” I paused for effect, like I was making it up. “In front of all their friends and family, everybody at the kid’s birthday party, you ask if they would trade their child's life to kill Hitler—you know, before he came to power. But you show them what he’s going to become, and they understand it like you showed them a page from the future. They could even get away with it, Scott free. Now it’s a whole different deal.”
I was proud of myself. I had created a scene where there would be a real challenge to do the right thing. Young parents are hard wired not to put their child at risk. Even as a kid, I knew that. Certainly none would volunteer to lose their child for
a stranger who had done nothing wrong yet, even with the promise that he would eventually come to power and be responsible for the deaths of millions of people—including millions of children. It was a beautiful dilemma.
Would you kill Hitler? Yes. What if it would cost you the life of your child in exchange? Then, no.
It changes that quickly.
No mother could ever make that choice. And she wouldn’t let her husband choose it, either.
I could see the smiling look of satisfaction on Jimmy’s face. In fact, I think that was his point, to get me to come up with some really challenging situations. I wondered why.
As a game, two stupid pre-teens might very well banter about this. You can still say yes. It’s only math at that point. Lose this one, keep millions of others. Easy. As a math problem, it’s a figurative child you don’t know. A kid on paper.
But in reality, it’s crazy. Nobody would do it. So it's not an automatic choice. The math still works, but somehow you can't do it.
I figured that was Jimmy’s point. To get me to open myself to that.
Why?
I looked back at him again. He was still smiling. “Those poor parents.”
He didn’t mean it. He was mocking me, letting his sympathetic brain disengage from his theoretical one.
Whatever. It’s just a game. Why not? It doesn’t matter.
We had reached Woolco. I rolled my green Schwinn into the bike rack. “You have a dark streak, man,” I said, shaking my head.
Jimmy brushed past me. “Hey, you came up with all that baby killing stuff, not me.”
I was about to say something back to him when I stopped. He was right.
I was even a little embarrassed for having done so, thinking about the look on my uncle’s face when I told him we traded his child to kill a really bad guy. Mom always said I had a vivid imagination, but to be honest, it made me a little sick to my stomach to know that I could think stuff like that up.
I locked up my bike, went into the store, forcing those thoughts out of my head.
Chapter 16
By the time I got home from my visit to the church, dinner had been waiting. That’s never good. Things were already tense enough at home, but I had to drive around a while to stop shaking. I didn’t want to appear upset in front of my wife and daughter.
I’d had a roller coaster ride of emotions with Father Frank, followed by some nightmare-style daydreams, if you can call them that. The floodgates were open, and Father Frank had opened them.
There were only one or two problems.
First, he didn’t really answer my question. Maybe I didn’t ask it right, but I wanted to know what we should be doing about all the things that were going on. I got caught up in Father Frank’s conversation allowing for the fact that I wasn’t going crazy, and that was good, but we didn’t take the next step. What was I supposed to do about what was happening?
Second, what do I tell my wife?
Strangely, she didn’t ask. I think she knew that I’d get around to telling her eventually, but she may have also been happy not to hear if it was bad news. Or she may not have wanted her nice day spoiled. Either way, she didn’t bring it up. And since we were having a good time with Sophie, who was always within ear shot, that was probably best.
Maybe the plan was to let our daughter fall asleep first, and then talk after we put her to bed. Good plan.
The only flaw in it was, since we were both full the churrasco steak she made for dinner, we all fell asleep on the couch after dinner. Somewhere around midnight, Mallory woke up and carried Sophie off to bed, covering me with a blanket as I snored on the couch.
Then around 3 A. M., I woke up with my throat and belly on fire and my forehead coated in sweat. I’d like to blame the churrasco, or the howling gusts of wind from the start of the tropical storm . . .
But the nightmare about the lions in the woods was what did it.
Chapter 17
Dear Carl,
I had prepared for the death of my mother for years.
I was an adult when mom died, and afterward there were many things that reminded me of her that I could have never predicted. They came out of nowhere. My wife and I went to the Florida state fair and they had a taffy pulling machine. Mom loved salt water taffy, and whenever we were at a fair in Indiana when I was a kid, she would always get some. My first, immediate thought when I saw the taffy machine was, I should get a box and send it to mom. My second thought was, I can't because she's gone. I can never send her any gift, ever again.
Be strong for your daughter. Losing her mother at the young age of twelve will be something that may cause unexpected sadness at strange times.
Your daughter will be surprised by things like that and how they affect her, so let her know that she will have these thoughts because she really cared for her mom. I believe the amount of pain we feel at a loved one's passing is a testament to how much we loved them.
I can tell you this: when my mother died, she had been sick for quite a while—years, in fact—and we all knew she didn't have a lot of time left. Mallory and I visited, I got to see Mom one last time, and a few weeks later she was gone.
I knew it was coming and I expected it. I didn't cry when I visited her in the hospital, not when I got the news in the middle of the night, nor at the visitation.
But when I was at her funeral mass, in the church I grew up in, where I sat, Sunday after Sunday, next to her when I was a child . . . Now, in front of the altar was her coffin, cold and alone. When they started playing her favorite church song, the one she loved to sing at Mass, I cried like a baby.
I sobbed uncontrollably and unashamedly.
I wept in front of my family, my friends, and my God.
My young wife, sitting next to me, was unsure of what to do except hand me tissue after tissue and hold my hand.
I was overwhelmed. My mother was gone.
I could not stop the tears, and I didn't want to.
I loved my mother and the world is not a better place without her in it, and on that day at that moment is when it hit me, even though I thought I was prepared and I knew it was coming and I thought I was handling it well.
I believe I honored my mother that day, and I will tell you, I doubt anybody who saw me crying thought any less of me for it.
Even though I had moved away from home many years before, and I rarely visited or even called to chat, there was something nice about knowing I could. Now, even that was gone.
I would never again be able to buy Mom her salt water taffy at the fair. I couldn’t spontaneously call her up at Christmas just to playfully ask the names of the Three Kings. I couldn’t pop in for a quick weekend visit on my way to some fun, other place.
I couldn’t do any of those things, ever again.
So when I say to expect the unexpected from your emotions, that is what I mean. Ultimately, you will all be fine because you have a strong family and a great loving network. The emotions you or your daughter feel during this time are valid, so don't feel bad about having them—any of them.
At the first Christmas after my mom had died, we had our traditional family gathering. Before we all opened our presents, my brother offered a toast to those who we loved but who are no longer with us. It let everybody address the elephant in the room, have that emotion, and then move on to enjoy the rest of the day. It was a smart move, and it helped a lot.
Just like people feel guilty about the joy of having a new baby when another close relative's parent is dying of cancer, grief and joy are both allowed in the same room.
So do what you have to do. Expect the unexpected from your emotions, and if I can help in any way, let me know.
Our hearts are with all of you in this difficult time.
Try to enjoy Thanksgiving, my friend!
Doug
With trembling hands, I folded the faded, yellowed photocopy of the letter and placed it back in my desk drawer. I turned off the light and sat in the darkness, leaning back in my chair a
s the growing winds from the tropical storm howled outside.
Few people would make a copy of a handwritten letter they were sending to a friend, but when I finished this one I realized I’d written it to Carl as much as I’d written it to myself. The letter was like a solemn vow of some sort. Reading it was a kind of prayer.
My mind needed comfort from too much craziness as much as my stomach needed it from too much churrasco. More sleep didn’t seem likely tonight.
It seemed a waste that my mother’s influence would never pass to her granddaughter. Someone who had put so much effort into shaping me as a person, who went to every swim meet and soccer game, who taught me about so many things . . . Mom drilled me incessantly with multiplication flash cards so I would learn my “times tables,” volunteered at our school and at the YMCA, taught me—through her actions—about our role in the real world and not book stuff like the nuns at school. What a huge benefit to my daughter, to have had that resource, but they would never meet.
And yet, they had a commonality.
I saw it in the delivery room when Sophie was born. The first time I gazed upon my newborn daughter, I remember thinking that she had the combination of a wrinkly old man’s face and my mother’s, a round face with dimples and bright eyes. It only lasted for a moment. When I looked again, it was gone, but it was there.
My wife didn’t care much for that description—wrinkly old man—but all babies are kind of wrinkly and odd-looking when they’re first born. Babies look a lot more presentable after the nurses clean them up, weigh them and wrap them in the soft white hospital blankets, and put the little hat on them.
Newborn baby gets a routine doctor’s exam and get discharged, but that’s not how it went for us. On the day of our planned release, to go home with our addition to the family, our examining doctor felt there was something not quite right as he pressed the stethoscope to my daughter’s chest. He said he heard something that bothered him. That bothered me.
Tests confirmed his uncanny suspicion. They found a rare and potentially fatal heart condition, one that no doctor could ever have heard through a stethoscope—and yet this doctor did just that. And off to the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit we all went.
