Ken paused in front of Jimmy Dick barely long enough to say, "Incoming," before moving down the bar and taking shelter in the back room. Jimmy glanced in the mirror to see his ex-wife, Bina Rae, framed by the early afternoon sun, walking toward him from the slowly closing door of the otherwise empty bar.
"James, I sent you a letter. You didn't answer it."
Jimmy didn't say anything.
"I went down to Genucci's and made the arrangements.Everything will be out of the way when the time comes. You need to stop in and pay for it."
Their only child, Merle, had brittle bones. Jimmy had been exposed to Agent Orange in Vietnam. When the baby was diagnosed, the pediatrician told her Jimmy's exposure might be the reason why. He came home from working overtime to find his wife had taken his daughter and moved out. She blamed him for the baby's condition.
The court gave him visitation rights along with the child support payments but it never worked out.There was always some conflicting schedule or a big fight, or both. Merle eventually ended up in assisted living and Veteran's Affairs paid the bills. Jimmy had tried to visit her in the home after she moved in, but Merle made it clear she didn't want to see him. This was, pretty much, his entire contact with his ex-wife and child.
Now, the home was telling Bina that Merle wouldn't last much longer. So Bina made arrangements with the funeral home.
"Aren't you going to say anything, James?"
"Have a beer."
Her voice was scornful, "You drink too much. It's bad for you. You never did take care of yourself."
"Back up time, before we left, in a number of carefully controlled studies, it was determined that if a person drank a half gallon of water each day, at the end of the year they would have absorbed more than half a pound of E. coli. In other words, when you drink water you're drinking shit.
"However, if you drink whiskey or beer or any other liquor, you're safe because alcohol has to go through a purification process of fermentation.
"So you've got a choice.You can drink beer and talk stupid or you can drink water and be full of shit."
Her voice dripped with disgust. "What did I ever see in you?"
"A good living?"
"Stop down to the funeral home and pay the bill, Jimmy." With that, she walked out of his life, again.
"Ken," Jimmy Dick said softly, "whiskey, and leave the bottle."
* * *
A few weeks later Genucci's Funeral Home opened up the overflow area and then put out extra chairs for Merle's funeral. They had been told to expect a small turnout. After all, Merle had spent half of her life in assisted living, her father's family never visited, she had no friends outside of the home and her friends from the home would not be attending. Her mother's family, her mother and three adopted children were all the guests they were told to expect.
"Merle's father will pay for things. He will not be attending," Bina Rae told Freddy when she made the arrangements.
When Jimmy stopped in Freddy asked, "Bina Rae says you won't be attending?"
"Bina . . ." Jimmy was trying to be polite so did not pronounce it Bi'tch'na as he normally did. "Does not know what she is talking about. Again, as usual."
Freddy concluded that separate seating would be in order. The family area in many funeral homes is often at right angles to the general seating. This provides privacy to the bereaved. Providentially, the converted dwelling he ran the funeral business out of just worked out that way. When the time came, he would seat Jimmy in the general seating area, out of sight of the family.
While not many people were familiar with Merle, a lot of people knew Jimmy Dick. Many of them knew him as 'Dick Head,' a name even Jimmy would admit to being fully deserved on the rare occasions he was fully sober. Yet, somehow they managed to respect him. And while he never talked about it, Grantville was a small town where your business was everybody's. They knew the story. They felt he got a raw deal and were inclined to be supportive.
"You goin' to Merle's funeral?" was a question frequently asked at Club 250.
"Yeah. I didn't know her but this is going to be hard on Jimmy. He's bought me a beer anytime I was broke, figure I owe him." This was a common point of view. Normally people figured they'd paid for any beer Jimmy bought by putting up with his usually rude and shrewdly critical wit while they drank with him. Still, a funeral is different.
Then there were the down-time Anabaptists, who met in Club 250 on Sunday mornings until the cops started asking questions about them causing trouble. This was all the excuse Ken needed to throw them out. Complaints had been filed about a church they were starting just outside of Grantville's jurisdiction. Jimmy organized an armed escort to stand guard over the new church when the local Lutherans started getting nasty in spite of the Anabaptists having the local count's permission. They thought well of him for it for it.
The biggest surprise was the number of people who showed up because James Richard Shaver had defended Grantville's honor on the fields of Philosophy in the face of a nasty stuffed-shirt German who still continued to bad mouth up-timers and up-time values. He asked Jimmy if war was mankind's greatest glory or greatest shame. "Neither," Jimmy replied, "our greatest glory is to love our wives and raise our children well, our greatest shame is an un-cherished child." The philosopher from Berlin didn't like the answer.
Bina Rae had a staff member from the home to say a few words and then there was a walk to the cemetery followed by a quiet, catered meal planned for the immediate family at Bina's house.
Jimmy found himself in the middle of the street between Club 250 and the Gardens with half of the people who walked back from the graveyard with him going one way, and half going the other.Both halves were ready to buy him a drink. To everyone's shock, he went home to do his drinking alone.
Bina was dumbfounded at the turn out. Jimmy was a drunk. No one respects a drunk.
A life-sized angel with Merle's face carved in fine white marble stood at the head of the open grave. She had specified a simple grave stone to Alberto Ugolini down at the monument company. Jimmy had changed her order when he paid for it.
"Jimmy, that ain't what Bina ordered."
"I'm payin' for it. It's what I want. If you won't arrange it, I'll find someone who will."
"No, I'll get 'er done," Alberto answered.
Three days after the funeral, at about two-thirty in the afternoon, the door to Club 250 opened on a nearly empty bar. Bina came through the door, walked to the middle of the bar, hopped up onto a bar stool and said to her ex-husband, "Buy me a beer."
Without a word he waved two fingers at Ken and two bottles and a glass arrived in short order. Bina poured her own when it was apparent Jimmy wouldn't play the gentleman and do it for her. She downed half of it in one long gulp and let out a sound halfway between a gasp and a sigh. "You loved her."
Jimmy didn't say a word.
"Jimmy, I didn't understand."
He sipped his beer out of the bottle. You can't talk while drinking. He took a breath and then he took another long sip.
"I was hurt, Jimmy."
He looked at the mirror behind the bar.
"I thought it was your fault."
He took another drink.
"I'm sorry, Jimmy."
He waved for two more beers.
"You're not the only one hurting you know?"
Silence still replied.
"Damn it, Jimmy. I'm sorry!"
He said nothing.
"Aren't you going to say anything?"
He gazed into the mirror, not seeing what was there.
Bina slid off the stool and left.
Before the door was closed behind her, Ken plopped a bottle of whiskey and a shot glass on the bar in front of Jimmy without saying a word. To Ken's surprise, Jimmy finished his beer and left without touching the whiskey.
Old Joe Jenkins sat on the screened-in back porch watching the garden as the sun went down. An ancient single-shot twenty-two leaned against the door jamb in case he saw a rabbit. Good things come to those with. There's no better bait for a rabbit than a vegetable patch. A raccoon or an opossum was almost as good though they took a little more fixin'.
There was movement off to the right where the trace led through the back of the neighbor's place and down to the hard road. "Company comin," Joe said. His old driveway was off to the left of the house and ran straight off the highest cliff left by the ring of fire. "Good thing I get on with the neighbors or I'd have no way into town."
"Hello the house," a familiar voice called out.
"That you, Jimmy Dick?" Joe called back.
"Yeah."
"Well, come on up."
Joe watched the man he knew to be in his fifties—and who looked ten years older than his age—make his way through the twilight. Tonight Jimmy looked even more haggard and worn than usual.
"Hey, Jimmy, come on in and sit a spell. I've got a jug my pa put down." Joe indicated an old brown jug of corn liquor."Aged to perfection in a charred oak barrel and then put up in jugs. Let me get you a glass."
"Don't bother, I ain't thirsty."
"Thirty-year-old whiskey? Smooth as silk?"
Jimmy shook his head. "I'd take one of those if you got one to spare," Jimmy indicated a cigarette glowing in the ashtray next to Joe's rocking chair.
Joe pointed to a wooden box on the table next to the ash tray. "Help yourself."
Jimmy lit up and took a deep drag. "Damn, Joe have you been sittin' on a stash of up-time cigarettes all this time?"
"Nope. They'd be stale by now, even if you froze 'em. I rolled these. Years ago the wife got tired of me hand rolling the things. Said they looked nasty. So she bought me a roller and a crate of papers for Christmas."
"Yeah, but this is good, mellow up-time tobacco, not like that harsh cow shit stuff they sell in town."
"I got a plant growin' in the greenhouse out behind the barn."
"You're sittin' on a fortune."
"Can't grow it except in the greenhouse. Season's too short. The papers will see me out, but if I took to sellin' the things then when they're gone there ain't no more and I can't smoke the money."
"You could sell the seed and they could take it down to Spain and ship it back."
"Could. Then more people might take it up. Did you see the little book in German that was goin' 'round? Someone tryin' real hard to stop the trade before it starts." The truth was that lung cancer caused Joe's wife's death and the print run of the up-time study on tobacco and cancer was his doing.
"Joe, I know who paid for that book to be published," Jimmy said.
"Caught me, did ya'?"
Jimmy nodded.
"Well, I'm about done for and I figure a man oughta give somethin' back. Once it's out there then any damn fool who takes up with it deserves what they get.
"What brings you to my mountaintop this late in the day, Jimmy?"
"Needed to talk to you. I was wondering if you would teach me Latin?"
"Why in tarnation would you want to do that?"
"It's what you and Onofrio used with that Kraut. I've got the reputation of being a philosopher. It's embarrassing to have the name and not be able to talk the game. Did you know I'm getting mail from all over Europe? It's mostly all in Latin. If I'm going to be a serious philosopher these days, then I need to know Latin."
"Sorry to hear about Merle," Joe said.
"Thanks," Jimmy replied in what Joe thought of as an empty voice.
"Jimmy if you want to learn Latin, talk to Onofrio. He's better at it than I am."
"I heard you with the Kraut that night in Grantville's Fine Foods. You're better at slingin' that yack than he is."
"He stops and thinks before he talks. No, Jimmy, his Latin is better than mine 'cause his English is. I think in ain'ts and oughtas and 'causes. He learned to think in book English. So he has book Latin. It's pure and mine is tainted. Besides, he's a teacher and I ain't. Then, too, he just retired again. So he has the time. I'm still workin' a farm up here."
"Yeah, I hear about Onofrio. Rev. Wiley's kid got the old man canned after he argued the kid into the ground over religion versus science." William Wiley's aggressive atheism ran up against Emanuel Onofrio who pointed out to Will that ultimately he accepted science on faith. Having his world view challenged did not set well with Will and he raised a stink accusing Onofrio of teaching religion along with math. "Wiley should have taken a horse whip to that boy of his when it would have done some good."
"I hear tell he did, and I hear tell that's the problem. I also hear Onofrio could have stayed on if he'd wanted but he was ready to give it up anyway.
"Still, he's the one you want to get to teach you Latin. You're welcome to come up any time and give me a hand with the chores and practice your Latin when you've got some, but if you want book learnin', go see Onofrio.
"Shhh. Now sit easy and be quiet. There's a rabbit takin' a nibble of the head of lettuce I was going to make a salad out of tomorrow." Joe quietly stood up and eased the rifle out the screen door. The rifle popped and Joe smiled.
"Well, from the size of it, it's an old one. It looks like we'll be havin' rabbit stew for supper tonight. Why don't you go fetch it in and I'll start supper."
Jimmy left the next afternoon with a dozen 'real' cigarettes having not had a drink of liquor all the while he was there.
Jimmy pushed up to his usual place at the bar. Club 250 was at its lunch crowd peak. Ken set a cold one in front of Jimmy without a word. Eye contact was made.
"Burger and fries," Jimmy said.
At the sound of Jimmy's voice, Julio looked up from his lunch, a cold beer in a glass with an absolutely fascinating bottom. "You're late."
"Didn't know I was on the clock." For years Jimmy was one of the first of the lunch crowd to show up. He was often still in the same spot at last call.
"Where ya' been?"
"The library."
"The library? What in hell are you doing in a library?"
"Working."
Julio snorted in disbelief. "Now that's funny.
"You never worked in your life until we landed here." This was not completely true, but it was close enough. Jimmy hadn't worked a day up-time since he came home to find his wife and daughter gone. Eventually he got by on a disability check.Now he got by on the rent from inherited real estate. "Then, as soon as we had a rail line from the coal mine to the power plant and we were over the hump, you quit workin' for the railroad. What's up, Jimmy? Where have you really been?"
"Told ya'. I've been down at the library working."
"Nobody works at the library. All you do there is read. What're ya' up to?"
"Julio, you know how the cops saw to it I've got the name for bein' a philosopher. Shit, you and Ken helped make it happen. Well, if I've got the name as a player, I figure I oughta at least be able to talk about the rules of the game. So I've been spending some time down at the library trying to find out just what the rules are."
Julio snorted. "It was a joke! Nobody but the visiting Kraut was serious. You ain't no more of a philosopher than I am."
"Tell me something, Julio. Have you got three letters from Italy and another one from Morocco sittin' at home asking questions or invitin' you to come visit?"
"Of course not," Julio said.
"Well, I do. That Kraut I had dinner with has been bad-mouthin' Grantville, up-timers in general, and me in particular all over the place. As far as the world is concerned, I am Grantville's foremost philosopher. Oddly enough, he is reporting what we told him accurately, and in spite of his ridicule it seems it's being well received. Under the circumstances I think I oughta have some idea what I am talkin' about. Don't you?"
An amazed Julio replied, "Three letters from Italy?"
"Yeah, I've got two invitations to visit Rome from two different cardinals. The other invite is from Venice."
Julio was impressed. "You goin' to go?"
"Hell, no.Least wise, not until I know what I am talkin' about. Joe and Emanuel got me through the dinner. If I went off without them, I'd embarrass myself and all of us. So I've been spendin'—spending—time down at the library reading philosophy and learning Latin.
"Emanuel is all over me about dropping letters and using contractions. He says if I'm sloppy with English I'll be sloppy with Latin, so he is after me to clean up my language. I tell you, Julio, being a philosopher is turnin'—turning—into a lot of work. But one of these days I am going to get cornered and Grantville's reputation will be at stake, so I need to know what I am talking about."
"Wow, Jimmy, I'm sorry. I didn't mean to land you in a situation like that. I mean, Ken and I just saw that Grantville was goin' ta be laughin' about the Kraut and we just figured we should help you laugh with 'em instead of bein' laughed at. I figured it would just blow over."
"I figured the same thing. It worked too, at least for a while. But I don't want to get caught short again. If you know what I mean."
Jimmy ate lunch, and left. He stopped in for a burger and fries for dinner and went home early. For the second, or at most the third, time in his adult life he had found something worth doing.
A bit over a month after Jimmy had spent the night, Joe opened the back door to his house shortly before sundown and was hit with the unexpected aroma of dinner on the stove.
Jimmy knew Joe's habit of eating a big breakfast, a solid lunch and a light dinner after the sun went down. When he stopped in town to pick up a bucket of Hungarian dumplings, he couldn't resist a pan of ready-to-bake biscuits. He also toted a six pack of a new root beer which had the teetotalers in town standing in line. At the sound of the door opening, without looking up from the book he was pouring over, Jimmy said, "Dinner in about half an hour. I figured it was my turn to cook."
"Thanks. A fella' can get tired of eatin' his own cookin'." It was a polite lie. Joe was a good cook and enjoyed cooking the dishes of his childhood. He glanced over at the book Jimmy was reading. Joe had left his German bible on the table. When he'd read through it, he'd put it away and read the French. Now that he spoke Latin, he read it in turn, also. He was thinking of taking another stab at Greek and maybe Hebrew, just because he had the time to do it. "Your German is good enough to read it?" he asked Jimmy.
"I've been over John, Chapter Six in Latin so many times I've got it memorized. So if I don't know the words I still know the meaning."
"Emanuel is teaching you Latin out of the bible then?"
"Yeah.He says philosophy is just secular theology and most philosophers are either arguing for or against scripture, so I need to know scripture to know what they're talking about. I think its all bull. I think the Latin in the Bible is what he is most at ease with so it's what he wants to teach."
Joe had a different opinion. He figured it was just a way for Emanuel to slip bible study into a language-tutoring program. He also figured he might as well help it along. "Mathew Chapter Six? What do you think of what you're reading?"
"The Lord's Prayer is nothing new. But I think Judaism makes a whole lot more sense. You've got, what, six hundred and thirteen laws. Three hundred and sixty-five of them are things you can't do and the others are things you must do. So, you got a list. Do it and you're all right. Don't do it and God will get you. That I understand.
"But take the verse right after the Lord's Prayer. If you don't forgive others then God won't forgive you. Joe it ain't—it isn't—right. People do bad things in this world. I'm just supposed to forgive them and forget about it? I should just let them get off scot-free?"
"Who says they do? 'Vengeance is mine,' sayeth the Lord, 'I will repay. Be sure your sins will find you out. It is appointed unto man once to die and after this the judgment. Let no man deceive you with vain words: for because of these things cometh the wrath of God upon the children of disobedience.'
"The point of forgiveness is not for the benefit of the forgiven. It's for the benefit of the forgiver."
"What do you mean by that?" Jimmy asked.
"Someone does somethin' to you. So you get even. How? By doing something bad back. You've just hurt yourself by taking on an evil deed. Then of course they're gonna get even and then you need to do something else. Vengeance does not go long un-revenged.
"Now let's say someone does somethin' and you don't get even. You just stay mad about it. So you carry the anger and bitterness around with you and it contaminates your whole life. You not only let them hurt you, you helped them to go on hurting you.
"If you've got a pack full of old hurts and grievance you're carrying around, then at the end of the day you're tired and worn out. If you dump 'em and let 'em go, your life goes easier. Chances are it doesn't make any difference to the other party if you forgave them or not. In most cases they don't even know it, unless you are actively tryin' to hurt 'em. Then instead of you havin' fun and enjoyin' life you're lettin' them dominate your life 'cause they're in your thoughts and you are just letting them drag you down. In most cases even if they do know they don't care.
"Jimmy, the point of forgiveness is not for the benefit of the forgiven. It's to make life easier and more pleasant for the forgiver." Joe could tell from the look on Jimmy's face the idea was new to him. He figured he should let Jimmy think on it. "I've got a critter that's been eatin' up my garden. I'm gonna sit out on the porch and watch for him. You give me a holler when the vittles are ready."
Jimmy sat there staring at the text but not seeing it for the longest time. What the old man said made sense. For all these years what Bina did had dominated his life. She moved out and took his baby girl with her. Then she made life miserable and wouldn't let him have his visitation rights. What she took from him—his reason for living, his baby daughter and his loving wife, crushed him. It not only ended his life at the time, it rode him like an old hag, like a burden that was almost . . . no . . . was too much to bear. For all the years of Merle's life, his life was pain and emptiness filled with hate for Bina and pity for himself.
It was time to just let it go. He wasn't a young man but he still had a life to live. Why in the world should what Bina did all those years ago ruin what life he had left?
"God, I don't know if I believe in you or not. But if you do exist, help me to forgive Bina and let go. And God . . . if you don't exist, I guess I'll just have to let go of it on my own."
Jimmy sniffed the air. Something was burning. "The biscuits!" he yelped. He stood up to get to the oven. What should have been just enough energy to lift his tired bones sent the chair flying and caused the table to move, he felt physically lighter, almost like he was floating.
"Everything alright in there? "Joe called.
"Yeah, Joe, I'm fine."
The biscuits weren't burned too badly. They could still be eaten. Jimmy smiled. Life was good.
* * *