Limping Toward the Styx

Harvey Pool

Description

A local basketball hero comes to a sad end. An aging movie legend’s power ebbs. A once promising artist reaches out to an old friend with astonishing results. A long-divorced couple meet for the last time. When his brother dies, his only sibling considers their life-long relationship. The author wonders who will remember his long-dead beloved grandfather and muses about his own mortality.  

These short stories and poems explore the human heart with empathy and insight. Writing that is personal and universal.

Sujets

• Poetry

Informations

• Publié par: Outskirts Press
• Date de parution: 29 mars 2023
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781977263209
• Langue: English

Extrait

-->

Limping Toward the Styx New Stories and Poems 2023 All Rights Reserved. Copyright © 2023 Harvey Pool v2.0
This is a work of fiction. The events and characters described herein are imaginary and are not intended to refer to specific places or living persons. The opinions expressed in this manuscript are solely the opinions of the author and do not represent the opinions or thoughts of the publisher. The author has represented and warranted full ownership and/or legal right to publish all the materials in this book.
This book may not be reproduced, transmitted, or stored in whole or in part by any means, including graphic, electronic, or mechanical without the express written consent of the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
Outskirts Press, Inc. http://www.outskirtspress.com
ISBN: 978-1-9772-6320-9
Cover Photo © 2023 www.gettyimages.com . All rights reserved - used with permission.
Outskirts Press and the "OP" logo are trademarks belonging to Outskirts Press, Inc.
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
To Robertson C. Scott (1922 – 2015)
Table of Contents
Introduction
Stories
Big Ben
A Short Paris Holiday
The Devil’s Cauldron
Undiscovered Genius
Unexpected Meeting
Handsome Howie
A Fresh Start
Standing Ovation
Maryanne and the Prince
Last Lunch with Zoey
Poems
Trees
Passing Shot
Haircut
Winter
4 A.M. Reflections
Richard
Brothers
Praise for Umpires
For Jacob Rosenbloom
Nighthawks
Local News
Offending My Muse
Endings
Introduction
These new short stories and poems comprise my creative production since the publication of Along the Way (2020), my first collection of short stories; followed by Looking Back (2021), a gathering of my poems from 1962-2020.
Three of the short stories are indeed quite short and clearly autobiographical, something of an experiment for me. I call them life vignettes.
As I stumble toward my eighty-seventh year, that history has provided me with much raw material for my short fiction and poetry. As always, my objective is to write imaginatively about intimate experiences that provide the reader with universal insight.
As might be expected at this late stage of my long life, the writing here often displays a preoccupation with mortality. As noted in one of the poems -


"All stories are about mortality/It’s the end of every drama."
S TORIES
Big Ben
Certain things you don’t forget. It’s been twenty-five years, but I remember every detail of that phone call from Ben’s sister, Letty. It was raining that early morning in Los Angeles, unusual for July. I knew right away that this had to be bad. Letty and I hadn’t spoken in years. And now she was calling me from Chicago at 6:30 a.m. my time in Los Angeles.
Of course, the call had to be about Ben and, given the hour and Ben’s recent history, I suspected the worst. Letty’s voice sounded more than weary – every word a struggle to express. She told me, in a little more than a whisper, that Ben was dead. He had died last night of a drug overdose. She offered no specifics and I asked for none. Letty said that funeral information would be forthcoming. I told her I was terribly sorry. I wanted to say more, but I couldn’t. The call took only a few minutes.
Ben, Big Ben Marcus, was dead. I let it sink in as I watched the rain, heavier now, puddle and stream down Coldwater Canyon, spilling around the houses below. Inexplicably, for a second or two, I considered the possibility of landslides. My god, Ben is dead. I’ll be fifty-nine next month – so Ben will never see sixty.
I had known Ben Marcus since we were both students in the third grade at Leander Stone Elementary School on Chicago’s north side. If it’s possible to be a superstar at eight years old, Ben was it. For starters, he was a head taller than anyone in our class and by far the best athlete. Even way back then, Ben was the leader, the guy all of us boys looked to for direction.
I’m Ira Ross, Ben’s life-long buddy. If you grew up in Chicago between the years right after World War II to the early sixties, there’s a good chance that you know Ben’s name. In our small world, I think it would be fair to say that Big Ben was a basketball legend. I, Ira I-Man Ross, played a supporting role.
By the time he started Nicholas Senn High School, everyone in our neighborhood, most adults included, had heard about Big Ben. And he was big – over six feet tall by the time he and I got to Senn. Ben was already playing with established high school players before he was even a teenager. Not just participating, but also starring in those games. Every high school coach in the city and suburbs tried to recruit Ben. In those days, kids in our Rogers Park neighborhood automatically enrolled at Senn, but despite all the aggressive offers, that’s where Ben and I ended up. The year was 1954. Dwight Eisenhower was president, From Here to Eternity won best picture at the Academy Awards. We all now had to say "under God" when we recited the Pledge of Allegiance. Much to our parents’ relief every kid was being vaccinated against polio. The perpetually disappointing Cubs went 64 and 90. The city did not have a NBA team. And my dad was worried that the Dow Jones was dangerously overpriced at 382.
The gods had been generous to Ben Marcus. He was not only an extraordinary athlete; he was also intelligent and was, to the highest praise among our contemporaries, a good guy. Superstar that he was, Ben Marcus was modest and polite. It was clear that he would have preferred not to be the center of attention. When we played pick up basketball games in the alley behind my apartment building on Oakley Avenue, Ben would always choose the worst athletes, the klutzes, for his team. Ben was easily the most popular boy in the neighborhood.
The Senn basketball team compiled a mediocre record of nine wins and twelve losses the year before Ben and I arrived there. In our first season, as freshmen, Senn went sixteen and five and won our league championship. Ben averaged twenty-two points a game along with seven rebounds and four assists. My contribution as the team’s point guard was to distribute the ball to my teammates. Mostly under Ben’s tutoring, I became a skilled ball handler and a dogged defender. I wasn’t a great shooter, but I averaged seven assists and two steals a game.
The next three years were perhaps the happiest of my life. I won’t bore you with a mass of statistics. I’ll simply report that as seniors Big Ben and the I-Man led Senn High School to the city championship where we defeated a multi-talented DuSable team, the first of Chicago’s great black basketball dynasties. Big Ben Marcus, now a solid six foot five inches, was selected first team All-City and second team All-State. And I, then a wiry five foot nine inches, (I never got any taller) made first team All Conference. This was my highest athletic achievement; although, winning my tennis club doubles championship at age forty-seven with my pal Jack Tabbush comes close.
Big Ben went on to star at the University of Kansas where as a senior he was named to several all-American teams. I played freshman basketball at the University of Illinois, Urbana/Champaign, but that was as far as I got as a basketball player. For me, those triumphant high school years were special and remain with me to this day.
All those memories flooded my mind like rain overflowing the canyon outside my window. Time and memories. Time and memories. Big Ben. I guess if you didn’t know the history, you’d figure that his nickname was given to him because he was a big guy. Well, partly. But mostly that sobriquet was based on the famous clock tower in London. You know – Big Ben. In those golden high school days, every time Ben scored a basket, all the Senn fans in the stands would strike the hand bells they carried. The resultant sound produced, meant to be a rough replication of the famous clock’s bells, made quite a clatter and became a cherished Senn ritual. I still have one of those bells on my desk. I use it as a paperweight and a conversation starter.

During that terrible day, I received at least a dozen phone calls from old friends who had heard the news about Ben’s death. After awhile, I stopped answering the calls and let them go into my voicemail. What could I tell anyone?
I had no answers myself. In a way, it was a relief to fill this workday with mundane activities. I drove my kids to school, attended a script meeting with the other writers (I write for films and television), took another meeting in the late afternoon with my agent. Maybe, if I was busy, I would forget that Ben Marcus was no longer among us.
Before I left with the kids, I talked to my wife, Barbara. She asked me, "Ira, do they know if this was a suicide?"
"I don’t know. I suppose it doesn’t matter. He’s dead."
"Yes, he is. And I know how much you loved him – how much all of us loved him."
Then Barbara started to weep softly. She repeated, "We all loved him."
She suppressed the tears momentarily and asked me, "Are you going to be okay?"
"I’ll be fine, honey. I’m just having a hard time getting my head wrapped around this."
During the following days, I tried to make some sense of the senseless. Why did this happen? How did my Ben come to this sad end? Could I have done more?
No answers.

After high school, I had seen less of Ben. He was tearing up the courts at the University of Kansas while I was getting on with my life at the University of Illinois. But we talked regularly on the phone and we spent time together during summer vacations. After both of us graduated, I decided to move to Los Angeles. I’d worked on the U of I newspaper and had one of my short stories published in a small literary magazine. My goal was to land a writing job in the movie business.
Ben received several offers from NBA teams but Ben, always an excellent student, opted to attend medical school in Chicago at th