None of us have spoken about that night for many years. And as far as I know, no one has written an account of what happened. It’s been about three decades, so a lot of the events are somewhat hazy. But even after thirty years one fact from that night remains quite clear to me; Harry - is still dead.
As I recall there was nothing peculiar about that day. It was your typical Ohio summer day, warm with a chance of rain.
Somehow I remember the morning. Maybe it was because my Dad had slept in and went into work late for some unknown reason. Not knowing why was understandable. My Dad was an engineer for NASA and worked on many projects he was not allowed to discuss, even with his family. Hush jobs he used to call them. Still he usually was out of the house well before any of us woke up. Yet, on this morning my brother, my sisters, my mom and my dad all ate breakfast together. Not the usual cold cereal and Pop Tarts breakfast. This was an eggs, French toast and pancakes jamboree kind of breakfast. Although this was out of the ordinary, it did not prepare me for the evening events.
Most of the rest of the day is a blur. All I know is my friends and I planned our routine card game to be at my house that evening. We probably started playing around 8:00 or 8:30 p.m., after shooting baskets or doing something outside for an hour. Then ransacked my kitchen and stampeded down to my basement. I’m sure we had to plead and beg my younger brother and sisters to go upstairs and leave us alone before getting started.
The card game resembled every other card game that summer except Dave had brought a friend, John, none of us had ever met.
“OK, let’s go, I’m ready, c’mon you guys let’s get going!” Stu would be nagging in his high, squeaky voice. It was the only way the game got started. Stu was always pushing, he never could stand to wait. He once paid a kid three dollars for his line number at Baskin and Robbins, just to buy a seventy-five cent ice cream cone a minute faster.
“Harry and Dave are you guys going to play or not?” This was also part of Stu’s routine to get the game going. Harry and Dave would undoubtedly be wrestling, Dave outweighing Harry by 50 pounds but whining about Harry not fighting fair. After a few last shoves and grunts they would give in to Stu’s incessant badgering and the gambling would begin.
There never was any particular seating arrangement for our card games but that night I remember the order for reasons you will learn as my story unfolds. On my left sat Stu, next to him Dave, next to him his friend John, next to John was Matt, and next to him sat Harry. It was always good to sit to the right of Stu. Stu had to remain in almost every hand, it was too boring for him to sit one out, and thus he often started the betting. Since all decisions whether to stay in the hand or drop out went in a clockwise rotation, sitting to the right of Stu meant I would know who was in or out of the hand prior to making my decision. I learned this trick from my grandfather.
I am not sure how many hands we had played when time unzipped itself and turned inside out, but I do know I was dealing. I had finished dealing the initial five cards for a draw poker hand, when John, David’s unknown friend, erupted.
“What are you doin? Where did that other card come from? This guy’s a cheater!” John was staring at Matt. Matt, whom I would not be surprised to find a hidden ace in his pocket, said nothing. Matt spread his cards out and counted each one. When he reached five he opened his hands to show no more cards, and then spread his arms out to his side, as if to say, “are you happy?” This did not satisfy John. With the quickness of a cat that just noticed a dog, John lurched towards Matt. Unfortunately, John did not have the grace of a cat so as he pounced, his shoulder hammered into the table. The sudden whirlwind of chips, cards and half-filled glasses flying caused all of us to flail. The flailing led to one of us smashing the flowered light fixture above the table. This in turn left us covered with small pieces of glass, empty of light and somewhat in shock.
I immediately began searching in the dark for the light. I found the switch for the lights to the stairs and surveyed the scene. John and Matt were on the floor in a stalemate-wrestling match. Dave was yelling at both of them to stop. Stu was busily attempting to pick up scattered chips and cards. Harry lay motionless across the card table covered in glass. Above Harry the light fixture dangled, hanging by what seemed to be exposed wires.
“Harry! Harry are you all right?” I screamed.
Matt and John stopped fighting, Stu stood up and stared at Harry, Dave’s face drained from red to pale.
In one synchronized movement we reached towards Harry to clean him off and pick him up. We must have all touched him at the same time because later that night we would all recount the strange electric shock we all experienced. Harry remained still for a long moment and then as if our focused concern worked magic he sprang up, looked at us and asked what had happened. I am quite certain, if any of us knew we would have told him, instead we all looked at each other and just laughed. It was the kind of laugh that could have easily been a cry, but it felt much better as a laugh.
Relieved that Harry was all right we began to clean up the mess. Matt swore to John, and all of us, that he had not cheated. John, for the sake of the moment, decided to believe him. I went upstairs to get some electrical tape for the sagging light fixture and any exposed wires. I also brought down some floor lamps, plugged them in and once again we were playing cards.
We decided it was still my deal. Stu pushed me to deal faster and it was as if nothing had happened.
Yet, something had happened, it just felt different. I felt like I was there but somewhere else at the same time. Maybe I should say it felt like I needed to be somewhere else, like I had responsibilities and obligations I had forgotten. I looked at Harry; he seemed to be fine. I scanned the table and everyone else looked normal as well. Yet…yet… then I distinctly remember watching as each of my friends looked up from their cards. Every one of them grew an eerie expression on their face as they stared at me.
“What?!” I exclaimed.
But none of them spoke. They seemed to be in a hypnotic trance.
“What are you guys staring at?” I chuckled nervously as I spoke.
Then Dave whispered, “Who are you?”
To this day it is not clear to me if I ever answered that question. Time seemed to cease as I pondered “who am I”? I wasn’t sure. Part of me knew I was a sixteen-year-old playing cards with my closest friends, yet memories I had never experienced rushed through my head. Memories of me at college, memories of me applying for my first job as a chemical engineer, memories of my wedding, and memories of my three young children. The anxiety of feeling like I needed to be somewhere else became more intense. Then memories of a project at work that was near its completion flooded my head. I become acutely aware that I was the leader of this project and that it was a “hush” job. I wanted to leap up and drive straight to work. I wanted to call my wife and tell her I would be late for dinner. I wanted to call Dave, a much older Dave, and tell him I would have to cancel our golf match for the upcoming weekend. I wanted to do all of these things but something was stopping me. There was a voice, or many voices compelling me to listen, compelling me to come back.
Everything went black. Opening my eyes, without ever remembering closing them, I found myself staring at Harry, Dave, Stu, Matt and John. Each still had a strange look on their face but they seemed to be out of their trance.
All of us started speaking at once. It was all the same, “what just happened?”
I told them my entire version, about my glimpse into the future (which now felt like a dream), how real it was and how vivid.
“ I have three children, two boys and a girl. My wife is old but beautiful. I am in charge of hundreds of people and I make a lot of money. Dave and I belong to a fancy country club….”
On and on I went. They listened without saying a word. They took at face value my whole tale. Then it hit me, why did they believe all this. Not one of them made any wise cracks, something was wrong.
“You guys believe me?” I questioned.
Stu said, “Of course we believe you, you just changed from a sixteen-year-old jerk to a forty-something year old jerk and back right in front of our eyes.”
“I did? I mean you could see me as an old man?” I said.
“You weren’t that old, you looked a lot like your dad”, stated Stu.
“If I hadn’t seen it, there’s no way I’d have believed it”, exclaimed Harry. “I’m giving 10-1 odds Matt just crapped his pants!”
We all laughed and we knew what had just happened could not have happened. But it did.
“Maybe it was a mass hallucination. Last year we talked about that stuff in Mr. Thompson’s class. You know people seeing Jesus on a building, junk like that”, Dave theorized.
“Did someone spike the drinks?” asked Matt.
The possible explanations continued, but eventually we began playing cards again.
We finished the hand I had dealt and then it was Stu’s deal. As soon as Stu had dealt the last card the strange feeling returned, except this time when I looked up from my cards I noticed Stu was no longer Stu. Actually he was Stu, just Stu about 30 years older.
Time again moved chaotically and in what could have been a moment or an eternity Stu transformed back to Stu, the sixteen-year-old.
Just like me, Stu had experienced glimpses of his future self. He related his visions.
“Holy shit, I am such an asshole. I have been divorced three times, my kids hate me, and I am a loser stockbroker. I have been to rehab so many times I quit counting and I am stone cold broke most of my life. Whoever is doing this hypnosis shit better stop. This sucks!”
Harry laughed and said, “I guess once an asshole, always an asshole!”
Dave cut in with, “I can believe the three divorces, but who would have ever married you in the first place.”
Stu said, “Go ahead and laugh now, you won’t be so giddy when I sleep with your wife!”
“No way”, yelled Dave, like he really had a wife.
“I guess you’ll just have to wait and see, my friend” Stu retorted. “This is all bullshit anyway, someone is playing a practical joke – forget it and let’s play more cards.”
A classic Stu response. And as crazy as it may seem, we just went back to playing cards. We finished the hand Stu had dealt and then watched nervously as Dave shuffled the cards and prepared to deal.
“I’m ready this time”, said Stu.
“Ready for what?” asked Matt.
“What do you mean for what? For the trick someone is playing on us” answered Stu.
“I don’t think it’s a trick, just because your still an asshole in old age doesn’t make this crazy stuff a trick” said Dave.
“It’s just a natural occurrence” stated Harry “I just read about the quantum aspects of time, and time does not necessarily follow a direct path. So the fact that we can jump around in time is only natural.”
Stu spewed, “What the hell are you talking about Harry? You’re not about to go into your billions and billions of stars speech, are you?”
“Since you asked Stu…”
But Stu cut him off quickly and said “C’mon Dave deal the cards already”.
Dave flicked the cards around the table. No one spoke as Dave lay down the last card to himself. Just then the phone rang. All of us looked towards the phone shocked by the timing. It rang three times when I heard the voice like a parent say, “Well, isn’t anyone going to answer it?”
I turned towards the voice to see a much heftier, much older, half-shaved Dave staring back at me with the look of “is something wrong – why don’t you answer it?” In the background I could hear the phone ring again and again. I turned away from Dave to look at the phone, but the phone had quit ringing. When I spun back to see what Dave was doing, he was many meals younger again.
Dave rambled excitedly, “You guys are the greatest. Well, at least Matt and Sam are. When I’m about thirty I get fired from my job of six years. I am a salesman for Maxabees, an industrial chemical manufacture in Northern Kentucky. They accuse me of over billing customers and pocketing the difference. But it is not true. It is actually the CFO, but no one believes me. Matt, who is an attorney, represents me for free and gets my name clear. Sam hooks me up with a business acquaintance and gets me the director of sales position with a small growing computer company. By the time I am 40, I am wealthy.”
“An attorney? I get through law school? I get through high school?!”, Matt said excitedly.
Reaching over and hugging Matt, Dave says, “How can I ever thank you Matt?”
“How about paying for my college education?” Matt replied, peeling Dave off him.
Dave went on, “The only bummer is I never married, or at least not by the time I was 45 or so. I can’t remember anything much past that.”
“Hey guys, if we play cards any slower we really will be middle aged before we end this game. Enough of this future hocus pocus, let’s play” Stu said sternly.
I remember thinking, “how can Stu ignore all of what was happening around us”, but I also wanted to keep playing like some unknown force was making us finish the game.
And so the game continued. Harry won the hand with an ace high flush and was counting his chips when Dave said with an “I dare you” attitude, “You’re deal John, if you’re ready”.
John did not hesitate. “Of course I am ready, I can’t wait to see exactly when I become the MVP of the NBA”. And with those cocky words took the cards from Dave who was shuffling them and began to deal.
John aged gracefully, and certainly had the look of an athlete. He had grown many inches and was well over six feet tall. His biceps ballooned and stretched his short sleeve shirt. He glanced around the table with an air of royalty. But like the others and me, in that measureless period of time, he changed back to a teenager.
Matt said excitedly, “Well John, are you going to be a star?”
John looked at Matt for a moment. Then turned his head slowly from side to side gazing awkwardly at each of us sitting around the table. For about a minute no one spoke. We all waited for John to say something. Then John covered his face with his hands and put his head on the table. Still no one said a word. Even Stu remained silent, not pressing us to keep playing cards.
Dave broke the silence whispering, “John are you OK?”
John did not answer, but we could see his shoulders heaving and hear him sniffling and whimpering.
Dave reached over and touched him on the back. John looked up, tears rolling down his cheeks. He had the same faraway look he had before. Then without saying a word John pushed back his chair, stood up, turned and walked up the steps.
Dave, with a look of concern and fear, spoke softly to the rest of us and asked, “What do you think he saw?”
Stu angrily replied, “he probably broke his ankle in college and never played pro. Who cares God damn it – now there’s only five of us to play cards”.
Harry looked at Stu and said, “Jesus Stu, what is wrong with you? Can’t you see the guy was really shaken up?”
Dave chimed in, “Yeah Stu, give the guy a break, not everyone can handle a lousy life as well as you can”.
Stu grunted, “Screw you guys, let’s play cards.”
And the invisible force pushed us forward, urging us to continue the game.
“I guess it’s my deal”, Matt said slowly.
Everyone handed the cards to Matt and let him shuffle his own deck.
Matt shuffled like an eighty-year-old man seemingly never going to actually deal any cards.
Matt was never the adventurous sort and I am sure at that moment he would have rather been doing anything else besides dealing those cards. Yet as had been the case during this whole bizarre twist in time, the driving need to continue the game was stronger for Matt than his fear of the unknown.
One by one Matt dealt the cards. When he finally set down the last one for himself it did not take long for time to rip itself open and throw us into the weird universe of the moment-less present.
Matt seemed to age more than the rest of us had, although I am not certain if he was chronologically older or just aged faster. Once he returned to his usual gawky, fidgety form things seemed to be more calm and serene than they had been anytime that evening. Matt carried himself differently as well.
An erect, chest out, Matt said, “I am an attorney, and a damn good one. Not only do I save my big pal Dave’s butt, I also take on the major corporations that are ripping off consumers. Although I must tell you guys, it is not an easy journey. I make a lot of mistakes along the way and cheat a lot of people myself before some life-changing event occurs and I turn around. I don’t have a memory of the climatic episode but whatever it is, it effects me for the rest of my life.”
Harry looked at Matt and asked, “Did you have to bail me out of anything?”
“Not that I can remember”, said Matt.
“Well now we know this is bullshit for sure. Unless Harry did something so crazy not even the great lawyer Matt Stein could have bailed him out”, bellowed Stu. “I don’t know what is going on but I know none of this is for real. Somehow there must be… hey wait a minute. Sam what is your Dad working on at work?”
Surprised I looked in wonder at Stu and replied, “I don’t know for sure, remember he’s always doing “hush” jobs.”
“That’s it, that is it! It must be some crazy experiment your Dad is doing at NASA”, exclaimed Stu, who usually never got too excited. “Probably some far-out drug for astronauts. Pretty powerful stuff, although not much of a buzz, I must admit.”
“No way”, I said, “my Dad would never bring his experiments into our house and definitely not drugs. He is Mr. Anti-drug King of the World.”
“Think whatever you want to think. Let’s just finish playing cards, I need to win some more money,”
Stu said matter-of-factly.
And like lemmings on the move, we all passed our cards to Harry for his deal.
Harry shuffled the blue deck with a big smile on his face. Harry loved stuff like this. He probably did not care if it was drugs or a Star Trek mind warp; it was a new experience so he loved it. Harry dealt quickly in anticipation of having the memories of his future self. He slapped the last card on the table, looked up with a big grin and stared at the four of us, waiting for the transformation.
I remember how strange I felt, not because of the weird feeling of the time warp, but because there was no weird feeling at all. I did not take my eyes off of Harry, making sure I didn’t miss his metamorphosis. But Harry did not change. Harry remained sixteen-year-old happy Harry.
Harry glanced around the table as the smile slowly faded from his face and said, “Did I get old looking?”
Everyone shook their head.
“Well, I didn’t experience any future stuff. I guess the drugs have worn off,” Harry said with some disappointment in his voice.
“I knew it was drugs”, expounded Stu.
“It was not drugs, at least not from my Dad,” I retorted.
“Whatever it was how come it happened to all of you and not me? Even it was drugs; they couldn’t have worn off that fast. Matt just saw his future self less than five minutes ago.”
Dave said to Harry, “Maybe you’re always in an altered state so you can’t be effected.”
“Yeah, how else would you explain your obsession with Lisa Simons?” put in Matt.
“What the hell are you talking about Matt?”, said Harry.
“I mean, Lisa Simons, you must be in some whacko state to…”
“Hey what’s wrong with Lisa?”, Dave yelled at Matt.
“Yeah, I like Lisa,” I chimed in.
“I was just joking,” Matt squirmed.
And then the strange feeling came over me and another voice inside my head dully stated to me that Harry must have died young and therefore has no future memories. As the thought formed in my mind, my mouth opened like I was a dummy for some ventriloquist and I blurted out, “Maybe Harry has no future memories because he dies soon.”
Silence.
“Jesus Christ Sam, why would you say something like that?” said Dave with the same parenting voice I had heard during his deal.
“I don’t know”, I said in a low voice, “it just popped out”.
Dave, Matt and Stu glared at me like I had just stabbed Harry in the heart, but Harry had a big smile and his eyes danced as he spoke. “What if Sam is right. Actually, I am not hoping he is right, but we could pretend he is correct and have my funeral nonetheless. I mean how many people get to attend their own funeral? Do you guys remember my uncle died last year? There were so many things I wished I had told him when he was alive. Let’s end this card game and have my funeral instead.”
“You are one sick puppy,” said Stu.
“Where do you want to be buried?”, I asked with a serious tone.
“Under home plate in your backyard,” Harry answered with no hesitation, “where else?”
Everyone laughed, even Stu.
“Let’s sneak some beer from Sam’s Dad and go out back and bury Harry,” suggested Dave.
“Bury Harry.” I’ll never forget that. We all started singing “bury Harry” songs. We were singing and laughing so loud I thought for sure we would wake up my brother and sisters, but somehow we made it up the stairs and out to the backyard without, as far as we knew, anyone else noticing.
Harry disappeared as soon as we went out the door but was back in a minute carrying a shovel from my garage.
“OK, who wants to dig my grave?” asked Harry.
Dave pleaded, “Can we drink some beers first?”
We sat around a patch of dirt that had served as home plate for 12 years in my backyard, drinking beer and telling our favorite Harry stories.
“Do you guys remember the day Harry had to sit with the bus driver on a public bus on our way home from Hunter Street Mall for singing nursery rhymes as loud as he could?” Stu recalled.
“I still say the old ladies in front of us enjoyed my singing!” said Harry.
“What about the time Harry….
We sat around home plate for what seemed like hours, until we had accounted for every fun and wonderful thing Harry had done throughout his entire life. At times we were all crying we were laughing so hard.
Then Harry said, “OK let’s dig.”
So all of us took turns digging a big hole on the spot that had served as a finish line for most of our short years. When we finished digging, we stood exhausted looking down into our homemade grave. It was quiet except for the labored breathing of the five of us. Harry broke the silence exclaiming, “Something is missing.”
“What?” asked Matt.
“I’m not sure,” said Harry, “what else goes with the grave?”
“A coffin,” said Stu “but isn’t that taking this a bit too far?”
“That’s not it, it’s, um, it’s … it’s the marker, you know a grave stone or something like that. Something I can write my last words on, that’s what is missing.”
So for the next ten minutes we searched my garage and finally found a large envelope sized piece of scrap wood and an old screwdriver. Harry decided he could use the screwdriver to scratch his words into the wood. As Harry scribed in the light of the garage, the rest of us sauntered out to the backyard again. No one spoke as we sat around our hole waiting for Harry to return.
When Harry glided around the corner of our garage into the backyard it looked, as though he were the star of a Broadway show. The light from our back porch shone on him in such a manner that for a moment it seemed as though nothing else existed, except Harry, his great big smile, and the self-written grave marker he held in his arm.
Still none of us made a noise as Harry approached. It felt as if Harry was really walking towards his actual grave. Tears began to well in my eyes when Harry placed his marker by the grave and turned to us and said, “if I only had lived one night and got to spend it exactly like this with you guys, then I would have had a full life. Please remember me like this, alive and happy and enjoying life. I love you guys.”
I looked around through wet, blurry eyes to see Dave, Stu and Matt openly crying as well. And when I looked back to Harry he was staring into the hole with an angelic look on his face. Then he fell into the hole and I blacked out.
As consciousness returned I could hear unfamiliar voices, many of them, echoing in my head. They sounded serious and direct, like people giving orders. At first I couldn’t open my eyes so I just listened.
“Try again, everyone clear!” a deep voice boomed.
Then from somewhere in the room I felt and heard a strong vibration shutter through my body. Again I tried to open my eyes.
“Nothing,” came from another unfamiliar voice sounding desperate and sad. Then I heard crying and a familiar voice, it was my Dad, “Shhhh, I know, I know, shhh”.
I struggled to lift my heavy eyelids and through half-opened eyes I could make out furniture in my basement. I could also see Dave, Stu, and Matt sitting in chairs next to me. John was on the floor next to the other three. I tried to focus beyond them to where the poker table should be. There I saw paramedics working on a motionless body. My Dad was still holding my Mom helping to keep her calm. Finally I could focus on the injured person. It was Harry.
I forced my eyes the rest of the way open and attempted to sit up. I was very dizzy, lightheaded and weak.
My friends saw that I had awakened and they came over and helped me get up.
“What happened?” I moaned, “What is going on?”
“It’s Harry,” said Dave in a dry voice, “he’s dead.”
I thought, dead, he couldn’t really be dead. We were just pretending. Then I wondered how I had got back to the basement, how had Harry got back to the basement. I looked into each of their eyes for some explanation.
Dave continued, “When we all jumped Harry must have hit the light fixture, and through a freak accident, broke it and electrocuted himself.”
The thought that Harry was actually dead still did not register inside of me. I felt as if the whole scene in front of me was unreal. The memories of the evening bounced in my head and then with a moment of revelation I mumbled, “then it was all just a dream?”
Matt asked slowly, “the grave? You saw it too?”
Once again I stared at all three and could see by their expression that they comprehended what I meant by the “dream”. What had actually happened that evening? Had Harry spent his last moments with one foot in and out of eternity? Was Harry able to somehow show us our futures so he could live them with us, if only for a moment? Were we granted a moment outside of time to be given the chance to say good-bye to our best friend? I was still groggy from what was later explained to be a mild form of electrical shock, but after a few minutes I was mindful enough to comprehend no matter what the explanation - Harry was still dead.
Grief poured through me and so much was a blur from that point on that I do not recall much more of the details. Except for one thing. After Harry’s body had been carried away on a stretcher out to the waiting ambulance, Stu, Dave, Matt and I sat silently in the basement. After many very long awkward minutes we walked up the steps not sure what to do. For no reason I can recall, I opened the backdoor and stepped out into the backyard; the other three following like baby chicks marching behind their mother. My first instinct was to look at home plate but home plate had changed. Home plate was now a hole and next to the hole there was a piece of wood. I reached down by the freshly dug ground and picked up the thin board. The rough plywood had the following words engraved into it:
“I will miss being alive, but most of all I will miss my friends”.