weighed less than a hundred pounds. His once dark hair had turned snow white. He still had his hair because Star told me he had stopped chemotherapy after only one round of treatment. I dragged a chair up next to him and sat down. He didn’t seem at all surprised to see me. Because of the morphine his eyes had a slightly dull and lazy focus, but he was there. Behind those eyes, Jack was very much alive. He looked at me and smiled. “I saw Bob Forsch pitch a no-hitter last April, Z. First one in this city in fifty-four years.”
“Jesse Haines, July 17, 1924, right? We went together, remember?”
He laughed. “I do remember. I was just testing you. You know, Z, you have a pretty good memory for a kid.”
I looked him in the eye and said, “Thanks, Jack, but I don’t feel much like a kid anymore.”
“Neither do I, Z.” He paused and adjusted the tube in his nose. “What do you say, let’s talk some baseball for a while and maybe we will? I have nothing against Star or Antoinette, but they can’t talk baseball. It’s a shame, really.”
I smiled and said, “I agree. I pity them.”
“So do I,” Jack said, “so do I.”
It was a privilege and a pleasure just to sit with Jack. Every second was filled with humor and wisdom, the kind that is earned, not bestowed. During the next five days and nights, when he was conscious, I sat with Jack and we talked about a lot of things, but mainly we talked baseball. And when we talked, Jack seemed to rally, physically and spiritually. We talked about the great players we’d seen. We talked about pitching, hitting, fielding, strategy, and we talked about the great moments. Only in baseball can you witness a situation, a crazy play, or a wonderful and unique event that you have never seen before and will never see again. In baseball, there is no certain destiny, only circumstance. The ball is hit, or not. The play is made, or not. The run is scored, or not. The player determines the outcome. Jack likened baseball to his own life and regrets. He told me, “I don’t have regrets, Z. I’ve had my share of luck, good and bad, but I don’t have regrets. Right or wrong, all my decisions were mine alone. Nobody made them for me. If there is one thing I regret in this world, it is not finding what you and Opari have together. That’s one play I never got to make.”
On Saturday, February 24, Jack had a bad day. He was in and out of consciousness throughout the day, and his breathing was often shallow and uneven. The morphine helped, but when he was conscious, he looked to be in agony. By sunset, the pain had finally relented and allowed his mind and body to relax into a deep sleep. He was worn-out, helpless, and beaten down. But he had not yet given up or given in.
Later that night Opari and I were lying in bed. We were on our sides and she was facing away from me. I had my arm around her waist. I whispered, “We have a decision to make.”
“To stay with Jack or leave for the Remembering,” she whispered back.
“Yes.”
“I do not think it is a decision. I think staying with Jack is what we must do. You and I are Meq, my love, but he is your family.”
“I love you, Opari.”
“I know. I love you, too.”
I started to say something else, then realized it wasn’t necessary. Opari took hold of my hand and raised it to her lips, silently kissing the palm of my hand.
Sometime just before dawn I awoke from a strange and compelling dream. My first impression was that it was not a dream at all. It began at night. Opari and I were following the steps of a stone path along the cliff’s edge at Morgan Manor. The path was unknown to both of us. Each of the stone steps was carved in the shape of a hand, and the path was only visible because of the full moon overhead. We seemed to be in a rush, although no one was chasing us. The path was dangerous, with a sheer drop of two hundred feet on the left side. The steps began leading down a hidden niche in the cliff face. At the bottom of the steps there was an entrance to a cave, which would have been covered by the sea at high tide. A faint, flickering light was coming from somewhere inside, and we heard voices chanting or singing. We followed the peculiar hand-steps into the cave and toward the light, finally coming to a larger space where a boy was bending over a table and writing something on a strip of papyrus. Along with the papyrus, the five Stones were lined up on the table. The flickering light emanated from two lit candles on stands next to the table.
In the dream, I knew the boy was Meq. He was darker than Opari and me but lighter than Susheela the Ninth. His oily black hair curled over his collar, and he wore two jade loops for earrings. The jade was the same color as his eyes. I instinctively knew what he was writing and I knew his name. He was called “the Thracian,” and he was writing the text of the
“The Thracian” turned to me and pointed at the papyrus. His gold bracelets jangled on his wrist. He spoke in his ancient language, which I understood. “Read it again,” he said. He then picked up the five Stones, one by one, and began juggling them in the air, creating a perfect moving circle of Stones, and repeating, “Read it again.” I leaned over the table. The writing was in red ochre. It said:
Jack rallied again on Sunday morning. When he woke, he did something he hadn’t done in weeks. He asked Antoinette for a hot cup of coffee and a piece of toast with butter and blackberry jam. Caine arrived home from Chicago around noon, having flown himself in the Beechcraft King Air he had inherited from Willie Croft. Jack was glad to see him, and all of us gathered in his room while he and Caine talked and laughed about the difficulty of being a Cardinals fan stuck in Chicago. But the excitement was short-lived. By three o’clock Jack had taken a downturn and went through an hour of relentless pain, then slipped away into a sleep that seemed more like a coma. As day turned to night, Jack’s pulse became weaker, and he didn’t respond to Star’s touch or her constant whispering in his ear. Opari and I held hands and sat next to Jack. Antoinette and Caine sat in chairs on the other side of the bed. We spoke little and time passed slow and thick as fog. Then, just after eight o’clock Jack’s eyes fluttered and he squeezed Star’s hand. It took him a minute to do it, but he willed himself awake and looked up at Star. “Where’s Z?” he asked.
“I’m right here,” I said, taking hold of his other hand.
Jack turned his head and stared into my eyes. “Tell me about Mama as a girl, Z. Tell me what she was like.”
“That’s easy. Where do you want me to start?”
“At the beginning.”
“All right.” I pulled my chair in a few inches closer. “The first time I ever saw Carolina was at old Sportsman’s Park. It was a Saturday in late summer.” I kept talking and I told him about her stringy blond hair and her face full of freckles, and I told him about how we played every game we could think of while we explored Forest Park and all of St. Louis in the early 1880s. I talked and I continued talking and when I finally stopped, Jack’s eyes were still staring at me, but Jack was gone. I let go of his hand and closed his eyes. “Farewell, Jack,” I said. “Travel far.”
While Caine called for an ambulance to take Jack’s body away, Opari and I went for a short walk outside. We walked slowly into the “Honeycircle” and stopped next to Baju’s sundial. It was bitter cold and the ground was frozen solid. My arm was around her shoulders and her arm was around my waist. I looked up at the sky and broken clouds obscured the stars. We had not yet discussed the decision we’d made to stay with Jack, if it had been necessary. The Stone of Dreams and the Stone of Blood simply do not make decisions like that. I turned to look at Opari. I reached up and held her face in my hands and we stared deep into each other’s eyes. I said, “Everything is different now, isn’t it?”
There was a long moment of silence, then Opari kissed me on the lips and said, “Yes.”
Half an hour later, after the ambulance had come and gone, we all sat in the kitchen talking about Jack. Star
