A Choice to Make Again

Here follows a draft of a short story I finished. Remember, its only a draft. Most definately it is infinetly wearisome and quite boring. So a draft most likely it will stay. If any soul who reads this thinks otherwise, let me know. I believe it highly unlikely, though.


A Choice to Make Again
Memoirs from a lost hero

Was it me or could it be fate? Of course, it had to be, it couldn’t have been me. No, why would I do something like this? Yet, here I am, covered in linen. Oh, but why, come tell me? Gracious Lord, what have I done? For certain it is certainly done. There is no question about this, none. Yet it did once have to come to pass. It had to happen to me, it happened. I know, that is just it, it happened. But how, oh how?
So lets go back to the beginning, lets. Yet will this make things any clearer? Oh well, what else have I to do. My only clue is my past. Now I am here, but I must think back, yes, think back. Then we shall see. What I thought, what I saw, what I did. Certainly we shall see this, for there is no other way. Now to get the dirt out of an infection do you not have to peal back the scab? You must experience blood all over again to finally get free of that cursed blood. So shall we. Memory hurts, but it must. So now let us go and peal, pain and all, and maybe we can see.
Yet can I be off to a bad start already? If it must hurt, so I say, haven’t I already drawn conclusions? So there must already be a judicial ruling, in the depths of my mind. This courthouse is burning with fever and fervor. What may I make of it? Must I start over? No, what is now is no consequence. I must work from my broken and bleeding feelings to what must be.
So from the beginning: It must all have started when Chuasy loaded all the gear in the bus. It was only ten blocks to the stadium and the crisp, clear air was nipping at my coat collar. The weather was dreadfully perfect. So can I blame the weather down here for seducing me onto the street? Was it my fate that Mother Nature drew me? No, maybe, but I had reasons the other way too. It was I alone who elected to walk all the way to the stadium. Chausy warned me, he asked me. I refused. It was me. But did I simply react to my fate? Was it all blind determinism? I do not have facts to deny this, and I must play the middle ground, but I sense deep inside it was really me. Was it fate that drove me to not read the morning paper as I always do, and to read of the girl who got drove down on third last night? Can it be fate that Jase, who did read the paper, did not mention this to me? Maybe, maybe not.
I stared down Albert lane, covered with color-strewn trees. Why not walk. I thought only the last night how horribly I hated the bus. Go for a walk you fool, seize life. Was this the idea the gripped me and drove me mad? It was in my little dark bedroom, lying on my bed, married to a book that I thought this thought. I made a pact to myself and to Him that I should live to revel in the Creator and his mercy as much as I could. I let this thought flood into my life and permeate many of my ideas. It guided me on many a premeditated occasion. This same thought, this alteration of a portion of my mind could have drenched my thought life deeper than I thought. We all know man’s free will is terribly limited. Though it plays an important role in thought life we all do know something deeper works in us. Could it be more than plain fate and higher than determinism? Could it be that my spontaneity is the working of a much deeper reaction that drives the whole of the depths of the mind? We must certainly consider everything, for we are skeptics.
There are two ways to get to the Flathstone Stadium from Goodrich Street. The first is by Heart St. and the second is by Ninth Ave. It was a spur of the moment decision to take Ninth. Why, I do not know. Let us think harder though, lets try. At the corner, the fork in my path, looking down Heart there was a vast, brick building stark white that cast an oppressive shadow down the way. Down nine there was vast groups of people bustling, running hither and thither. Now to the facts, I know there was something going on in my head, but we must get down to the facts. I chose ninth. Now that is a fact, no matter what the complete vision of truth is, this is a morsel of it. I went two or three, no; I know it was two blocks. I came up to the intersection and on the right there was a building with people going in and out. This created a wind as you passed, blowing your clothes a bit. Now when I was crossing the street I saw a woman going the other way with an exceptionally short skirt.
I do not know why this thought entered my head. It did though, and I was ashamed. Not ashamed enough, however. For when I walked about ten paces past the intersection I turned to see her walk past the breezy building. I saw her for a brief second and I was gratified for about one fraction of the time I glimpsed her. Then it came.
It kind of happened on the fringes of my mind. That is what makes the whole thing so much more complicated. Premeditation or animal reflexes are easy to document. The workings of the edge of the mind is, however, as removed as the edge of eternity. So it happens that this most decisive event had to occur away from my rationality.
It happened, as I was about to turn my head back. I already gave my brain the order to turn, but before it actually, did I saw it. It was a blue sedan flying up to the red light. It had no intention of stopping. I saw it turn, and later heard it screech around the corner. I do not know if my eyes followed it, or if it followed my eyes. Yet my eyes got ahead of it and that is when I saw him.
He was about five years old, dressed simply but not too shabby. He saw the ice cream truck and started out into the street. It was in complete innocence. Any five year-old, no matter how well trained could have done the same thing. Before he got close to the ice cream truck, however, he saw the blue car. He did what was the most natural thing for him to do; he froze. That is when I saw him; torn and convulsed with rabid fear, so great it paralyzed him. He eyes were riveted on his destruction, not even able to cry. His whole face pleaded for help, but he could do nothing for himself.
Oh, all of humanities force was captured in that face. The stuff that would motivate a leader to war, motivate mothers to tears, push the proud down to their knees, make a thief confess, or drive a fool to be wise was all there. There was a pool of innocence in that face, a pool that knew it would too soon be pushed forever out. So was it the face that threw me from my sanity? I believe-yes I do – that it was more. There was no mystique force at work on that face. It was a deep mysterious force operating farther down than my consciousness can reach. That face was only the only the single to move on a decision I made long before.
Now I am not being a skeptic, but is it all that bad?
Well whatever made me move I did move. I got to the boy before the car and managed to push him out of the picture. The only thing that puzzles me is how I did it so fast. You heard I was ten paces (which must be twenty-five to thirty feet) from the corner. Yet I beat a speeding car out into the street. How fast does the mind work. This is where the edges of premeditation and spontaneity blur, and the tracks of the mind become invisible to the man. Blast, if this was only clear, is what I keep thinking, but with no effect. What seems even stranger is that I have this feeling that I had a feeling to move toward the street even before I saw the boy. It was as if there was an urge, or a great need, that wanted to motivate me into the street. How can I explain away this? I simply cannot. I am so utterly lost if I must bring the gods into play. Yet, I got there somehow or another. I got to the street using my own legs and lungs and senses, acting, yet acting faster than the speed of light.
So there is the story the best I can tell it. The boy’s mother is probably dragging him off to another shop somewhere. Maybe he’ll remember that blue car and that stranger for a few weeks. Yet for him there will always be more ice cream trucks, and they will be where I am not. And me. I watched the Stanley Cup from my bed, barbed with tubes. Asa Hutchenson scored the only point of the game with two minutes left. I was the only one who could hold his own against Asa, and if I were there we would have won. So for me there will be no more Stanley Cups, no more hockey games, and perhaps no more sunny strolls.
That is it; we are at the crossroads of my thought life, and we still have not reached the verdict. Did fate, some form of immortality, or my own reason force me onto that street? Maybe it was a mixture, a mural of cosmic forces, all working together. No, that is rubbish, and I do not buy it. It could have been different forces working on separate pieces of the picture. No, I won’t allow more than one force to work and exist. If it is fate, let fate be supreme. If it was God, let Him be supreme. If it was me-but I know I am not supreme. If I were supreme I would have made the boy stay on the sidewalk, and walked safely past him.
Did you catch my last thought? I implied it was bad for me to do what I did. Was it? Throw fate and providence and free will out the door right now. Think, was this good or not. It really does not matter now how it happened. What must matter is its effect. The effects that will send or not send that boy down some of life’s paths. The effects that will change my life forever. Now does the one hand out way the other or vice-versa? Was it a morally, ethically, and virtuously good thing? Yet here we stumble back on the same principal that I could not decide upon earlier. If I take in effect that I am most important to me, which either the fate or free will position would fulfill, this occurrence was by all means most dreadfully bad.
If I am living for me, I have just ruined my. Now I know I am confused, but could not I argue that one might still live his life for himself in disobedience under the umbrella of providence. Then why bother living any more of my life? My only shot at fame, self-glorification, importance, and worth were all weighted on my hockey stick. Now that stick was forever broken and my hopes were smashed in. On top of that I had an abundance of miseries to wade through. I am already sick to death of this horrid bed I consistently lay upon. I hate this dreadful confinement, and long for freedom of any kind. Nothing waits for me outside the glass front doors. Just an empty sidewalk will welcome me back. My recourses will be stained to pay the bill. What I have left will not last one year. So what will I do? It will take up to several years to learn how to walk again, so they say. Then I can roam the streets. For what can I do? Most high school kids now more than me. I cheated and flunked my way out of high school to play hockey, and now I can’t. I did become one of the worlds best, but that does not help me now. The friends I made are even gone. When you buy friends with skill or service instead of natural affection you lose them when you lose the skill or are unable to perform the service. I had done just this. I left them to go alone into the biggest event of our lives, and now they would leave me. The picture of an old cripple hobbling around McDonalds and picking garbage off the floor came back to haunt me. I could be that man in a few years. A few years was all that I now possessed, years filled with emptiness and hopelessness. I would maybe get lucky and go to a public funded nursing home and sit around playing cards with a bunch of old idiots. Or maybe I will sit for years at a time staring out a single window. Going to bed, watching soap operas, going to the bathroom, and staring out that window. What a life, and do not forget the awful food. Is this what I had done? Maybe it was.
Maybe it is not the whole picture though. Maybe there is more. Maybe the all-encompassing providence that rules over the world meant if for better. Think of what that kid could do with his life. No, I could not think that I did not change his life, but rather I gave him life. He had a chance, a glorious chance. Was not that all anyone could do? Was not that the best thing to do? Giving away your life for another could be the quintessential meaning of life. Did I have anything to look to if I had won the game? I would still die in a nursing home. Surrender could be more important and fulfilling than fame.
Wait, what am I saying? What is all this nonsense? I do not gain a thing from sacrifice. I cannot preach it as a virtue well I lay shipwrecked on a bed. Where’s my hope? I cannot rejoice in giving some wretch a worthless chance. This is absurd and I am getting a headache.
Yet I…


(Editors Note)
The story does not stop here, but winds on and on. He argues different sides, one first and then the other. He never comes to a conclusion, but fills volumes and volumes with his questions. If I were to put them all down here I would probably bore you to death. As it is you probably are already bored near to death. There remains yet one entry, the last of his, which must be read. This is what follows.


I am sitting at my window reading the paper this morning. I have come across the most extraordinary news page I ever read. It got me thinking. Now I never read the obituaries, they are depressing and I am already depressed as it is. This morning, however I opened up the obituary page for a reason I do not know. The first entry I glanced at read like this:

Asa Hutchenson: Died this past Tuesday after driving his car off the road in the early morning. He was a hometown boy, born and raised here, and he played professional hockey. He went to H_ High school and B_ University. He is survived by his wife Mary and his two children Jane and Bill.

That was it. He played professional hockey- that was it. This in itself was profound, but what made it more profound was the entry I saw on the next page under weddings. It read like this:

G. H. L and L. N. S. were wedding this Saturday at the chapel of N. L.

It was not the words and names that caught my attention. It was the face, the same face I see every day. It was that horror struck eyes turned loving, and that frown of despair turned into the smile of delight. It was my boy, my dear boy. Then it struck me hard. Why had I thrown the question around so many years? Bother with fate; I’ll take what I get. I praise Him for sovereignty, if He is true. Let all know, I loved, and this is more than any other accomplishment I achieved, or could have. I gave from an abundance of joy, because that was really why I was walking that morning. Now the seed I planted blossomed. Of course he was happy, he must have smiled like that thousands of times these past years.
Oh, if only one could find joy in giving his life away, then this would be true love. True loves comes not from self denial, but rather from the overflow of life inside, bubbling out into other empty pitchers. Why does it bubble? Oh, do you have to know. Just be content to know that is the way it is. If only I could have thought like this many years before. If I had only discovered love, and abandoned the self. For what would the self have given me? He played professional hockey, maybe they’d even put that on my gravestone. There it would be on the gravestone where it would rot and be gone forever. The secret of life inside the heart is timeless- it is real. If only there was still time for me. Yet maybe it is not too late. Maybe I can still love, still find joy in giving.

(And here is where the long volumes of questions finally end. The last question begged an action and not an answer, so the writer has ceased to write)