Redemption

I had a friend was a big baseball player back in high school
He could throw that speedball by you
Make you look like a fool boy
Saw him the other night at this roadside bar
I was walking in, he was walking out
We went back inside sat down, had a few drinks
but all he kept talking about was
Glory days well they'll pass you by
Glory days in the wink of a young girl's eye
Glory days, glory days
(Bruce Springsteen)

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Jim awoke from his dream. It was the same one as always, he was seventeen again and playing in the State Championship football final. The best quarterback in the state and colleges falling over themselves to offer him scholarships. The American Dream, so close he could taste it. He was a living god in his High School, the guys all wanted to be him and the girls, well, the girls would do just about anything for him.

He took the snap, fell back into position and picked out his wide receiver. He never saw the pass completed as he was buried by 200 pounds of sheer aggression called Leroy Smith. He felt the pain in his knee though and knew immediately the transience of fame and adulation.

Jim never threw a ball again after that night. The doctors told him he was lucky to be able to limp around. The gold bauble of his winner's medal? He dropped that in the river the day he got home again, out of hospital after eight weeks of intensive rehab. The colleges that had promised him fame, women, money - they all vanished like the cheap whores they were. Hell, he didn't even have an education to show for his days in High School - why would he bother to study when the teachers were willing to turn a blind eye to non-attendance, undone homework, even failed tests? They marked up his pathetic test scores as honours grades, as much starstruck fans as the lowest first grader.

No, all that Jim had when he came home from the hospital was his memories of football and a sense that the world owed him. That, and a bun in the oven. Stacey, the cutest of the cheerleaders, came to see him that evening and announced she was pregnant with his child. In Jim's family, you stood up to your responsibilities and the two children were duly married two months later, barely knowing each other and certainly knowing nothing of the big, bad world that was out there waiting for them.

Now it was ten years on. Stacey was no longer the cutest cheerleader in school and, come to think of it, Jim wasn't too cute himself these days, weighing in thirty pounds overweight with rapidly receding temples. The bun in the oven had become four kids and Jim drove a truck for a living, a job given to him by an ex-teammate. Jim was never sure whether to be thankful or resentful for this act of charity but, with money tight and hungry kids to feed, he usually erred on the side of thankful.

He bumped into old friends from school all the time around town but they mostly just exchanged inane pleasantries, being too embarrassed to mention gridiron in front of Jim. After a while he started avoiding anyone who knew him from his High School days, the pity in their eyes being more than he could handle. He put on a good act of being a dutiful father and husband, even going to church every Sunday with the kids while Stacey, numbed with valium, caught up on her sleep. Life wasn't quite as he had imagined it turning out to be.

Jim's father had died when Jim was twelve, broken from a life toiling in the coal mines but something he had said to Jim one day still resonated with him: "son, there's nothing more unmanly than a man who cries. Promise me son, you'll be a man always." Jim couldn't get this piece of advice out of his head and diligently kept all his frustrations tightly bottled up inside, just like a man his dimly-remembered Daddy would have been proud of. While continuing with the charade of his daily life though, he continuously allowed himself to dream of recapturing the ecstatic glory of his football days when the world itself seemed to be his, there for the taking.

Once a month however, Jim was able to get close to that euphoric feeling again. Payday was poker day for Jim and he headed 60 miles down the road to play in an underground game, his own home town not being the kind of place that tolerated such ungodly activity. He had negotiated with Stacey that this was his one source of fun each month and he was allocated one hundred bucks a month out of the household budget to gamble at the tables. Jim was not a good poker player but he generally got what he was looking for out of the game - which was to make a big play, drag in a big pot, tip the dealer and have the other players make 'well played sir' noises at him. The emotions that Jim felt at that moment were akin to those school days under the football helmet. He looked forward to those poker nights with an almost painful intensity and, although he invariably lost, he once (in an unguarded moment) described these losses to Stacey as "an investment in happiness".

The feelings of euphoria were never quite enough for Jim though, just a small taste of his former glory, and he often looked up from the action at his $1 table to the Big Game, where all manner of spivs, hustlers and rich fish played for stacks of thousands apiece. He secretly fancied himself at the Big Game, raking in massive pots of thousands of dollars with the railbirds gazing lovingly at him in the same manner as the football fans once did.

Last Friday, Jim made his way to the underground game (for poker was illegal in his god-fearing state) in his usual pre-game state of nervy excitement. He stopped at his usual ATM to withdraw his usual $100 and that's when the flash of enlightenment hit him. This was His Day. His chance for redemption, the day when he would make his mark and make up for all the shit he had been handed over the last ten years. His chance to once again be the godlike quarterback of his gilded youth. He put the card in the machine and punched in the numbers.

Two. Thousand. Dollars.

His entire paycheck for the month. The machine whirred and buzzed and eventually spat out the stack of $100 bills. His path to Glory.

Jim buzzed at the door of the game and the grill panel of the steel door slid back. His face was recognised and the door was opened. He strolled down the murky corridor and into the converted warehouse that housed the game. He wandered over to the brush, a beatific smile playing about his lips. The brush gave him a cursory nod and reached for his chalk. "The usual Jim?" he queried, just about to scrawl Jim's name on the wait list for the $1 game. "Naw", replied Jim, "The Big Game please". The brush looked at him in astonishment, "you know that's a two grand minimum buy-in?" Jim simply pulled out his wad of hundered-dollar bills and handed them over. "The Big Game" he repeated.

The brush exchanged the bills for a rack full of chips and Jim, still shining with the premonition of his glory, took his seat at the Big Game. As luck would have it, he came in on the big blind and, without waiting to see what the other players were up to (he was still a genuinely bad player), peeked down at his hole cards. An ace - glory. And another ace - proof irreversible that this was His Day. He came out of his trance to find the dealer politely repeating "action's on you sir".

There had been a raise and a re-raise from the initial 25/50 blinds and it was a thousand dollars just to call. Jim closed his eyes in supplication, pushed his all of his chips forward and didn't open his eyes again until the dealer said "show 'em please gentlemen". Pocket Aces for Jim and Kings for both of the other unfortunate participants. A treble-up on the first hand and Jim was flying.

From that point on, Jim could do no wrong. He even began to play poker as though born to it, picking up uncontested pots with ease, manoeuvring players off marginal holdings with aggression, slow playing monster hands to perfection and always, always playing with the naturalistic grace of one destined to play this game. Time flew by and soon Jim and Fat Freddy Chavez , a mobster reputed to run half of the rackets in the State, owned all of the chips on the table and the other players had retired to lick their wounds. With a hundred thousand dollars in front apiece and the sun rising, Jim and Fat Freddy played on.

An hour into their heads-up duel and Jim was dealt pocket sevens on the button. He made a standard raise and Fat Freddy, his corpulent body stinking of unwashed sweat, made the call. The flop came down Eight-Seven-Three and Fat Freddy led out for ten thousand dollars. Jim, still playing with the unnatural aura that had surrounded him all night, raised another twenty thousand. Fat Freddy covered his face with his jewellry-encrusted hands and mumbled through stubby fingers, "All-in". Jim called instantly and turned over his cards. Fat Freddy smiled a horribly satisfied smirk and revealed his own holding. Pocket Eights.

The remaining gamblers crowded around the Big Game table for the dénouement of by far the biggest pot ever to be played in the history of that miserable warehouse on the outskirts of town. Amid a hushed silence, the dealer burned and revealed the turn card - an irrelevant Ace. Jim looked to the heavens and then into the eyes of Fat Freddy as the river card was slowly turned. He didn't need to look down to the felt to know that the case seven had hit, he knew even before the card had been flipped.

Redemption. He heard once more the cheering of the crowd and knew again the limitless boundaries of life's possibilitites. He was once more the golden god, standing alone and victorious in his perfection on the field of play.

After all of the back-slapping and hollering had died down and Jim had politely refused 'loans' to several degenerates who had previously been his compatriots at the bottom table, he went to the cash desk and received his two hundred thousand dollars in large denomination bills. He then headed outside into the chill air of dawn. As he reached his car, he looked into the orange-lit horizon, smiled and felt himself reborn, a man anew.

He never felt the shot that killed him. Never felt the rough hands frantically searching his jacket pocket and extracting the winnings. Never heard the screech of tires as the killer sped away.

Those that attended his funeral and saw him in his casket remarked universally on one thing - he no longer looked like the beaten-down Jim of his latter years but once again resembled perfectly the teenage deity of his High School days, perfect once more. Redeemed.

el S