Ol' Jim

(Content Warning: Death)

Ol’ Jim

I still remember the very first time I met Ol’ Jim Keeley. Remember it like it was yesterday. That’s cliché, I know. But being cliché doesn’t make it any less true.

           Ol’ Jim Keeley.

           Ol’ Jim.

           That’s what I called him. It’s what everybody called him. Hell, it’s how we were introduced.

           Ol’ Jim.

           No mister this or any of the formal prefix kind of stuff you learn in school or from your mom and pop. None of it.

           Just Ol’ Jim.

           Jesus, was he something. A character, my grandad would say. And I’d have to agree, based on the past forty years or so.

           Ol’ Jim.

           Can’t believe he’s gone. Can’t believe it at all.

           One minute, I’m sitting in my quarters at the old courthouse, reviewing a motion some rookie lawyer fashioned on his brand-new laptop using his brand-new license and equally new degree, safe in the knowledge that Ol’ Jim Keeley was out there somewhere in my little town of Burdock, just as alive as could be. Next thing I know, I’m hurrying on out of the building.

           Because I got a phone call.

           Because I got the phone call.

           Ol’ Jim had passed.

           He’d passed and we’d had the viewing and the funeral (arranged by his sister, I believe) and we’d all stood graveside, weeping and sobbing and sniffling because there wasn’t anything left of the man but a pile of meat and bones in a casket.

           I can’t believe it.

           Can’t believe it at all.

           I keep thinking he’ll pop up, you know, if I stay here long enough. That I’ll be sitting here and he’ll just up and hop right out of that hole they just dropped the casket into. It seems like something he’d do. One last prank.

           Ol’ Jim loved pranks.

           But this isn’t a prank. And he ain’t gonna pop up like one of those plastic Whack-a-Mole characters.

           Cause Ol’ Jim is gone.

           Cancer got him. Whittled him right on down. Just the same way he used to whittle those sticks he always carried around in the front pocket of his bibs.

           And that’ll be my lasting memory of him, I think. Those sticks.

           Not Ol’ Jim, the ball coach.

           Not Ol’ Jim, the handyman.

           Not even Ol’ Jim, the fella who’d once been sheriff.

           But Ol’ Jim, the whittler.

           I’d never seen him without those sticks. Never. Didn’t seem to matter what else he’d been doing; those sticks were always there.

           Eating breakfast?

           Whittle a stick.

           Settin’ (Ol’ Jim would tell you that he did not sit and he’d never sat) on his porch?

           Whittle a stick.

           Drinkin’ coffee with the boys at Mabel’s Diner? Fixin’ the roof on Bob Weaver’s old barn? Coachin’ some young kid in the fine art of tossin’ a baseball?

           Whittle a stick.

           Whittle a stick.

           Whittle a stick.

           Hell, he was whittlin’ away when I first met him, back when Coach Brooks brought him in to help the Burdock High Baseball Team.

           “Bill,” Coach had said, “This is Ol’ Jim. Jim, this is Bill Moores. Billy here needs some help finding the strike zone.”

           There’d been no handshake. Not even a nod or a grunt. Ol’ Jim Keeley had just pulled out his pocketknife and one of his sticks and had gone to shavin’ it on down.

           Matter of fact, he didn’t say a word for maybe fifteen or twenty minutes. Not one single, solitary word.

           He’d just set (I told you; he would never sit and he never sat, he was always ‘a settin’) there, peeling away at that stick, watching me throw.

           High and right.

           Whittle. Whittle. Whittle.

           Low and outside.

           Whittle. Whittle. Whittle.

           Into the next county.

           Whittle. Whittle. Whittle.

           Missed so high that I beaned God himself.

           Whittle. Whittle. Whittle.

           Wasn’t until I put six straight fastballs in the dirt (and two more into the catcher’s nether regions) that Ol’ Jim finally spoke.

           Never looked up.

           Never even stopped whittling.

           Just a low even drawl.

           “Too handsy, son,” he’d said. “Too handsy. Trying to steer.”

           Whittle. Whittle. Whittle.

           Then, “Don’t steer. No good. Reach back and let her rip.”

           Whittle. Whittle. Whittle.

           As I said before, I still remember that day. Just as clear as can be. I can still recall how the dirt of the mound smelled and how the sweat trickled, down my brow and down my spine. I can still hear the scritch-scritch-scritching of Ol’ Jim’s knife cutting away thin, looping curls of what smelled like cedar. I can even remember the stains on Ol’ Jim’s bibs, dirt here, sweat there, and something that might have been mustard right next to the pocket with the spare sticks.

           And why wouldn’t I remember?

           That day changed my life.

           That’s cliché, too, but I don’t really care.

           You see, before Ol’ Jim came into my life, I was just your run of the mill high school kid. Not that smart and no great shakes on the mound. In two years of school, I’d built a reputation as a solid B-minus, C-plus student. In baseball, well, let’s just say that Helen Keller could take me yard.

           But Ol’ Jim changed that.

           His advice worked.

           I don’t know how. I’m not even sure why it clicked with me. He said reach back and let her rip and that’s what I did.

           I won twenty games that year and twenty-two the next, not exactly a threat to go play in the Bigs, but good enough to get college paid for. And things kind of snowballed from there.

           After college, law school.

           At law school, met my wife.

           Job, kids, dogs, a home, it all followed in due course, right up to my appointment as a judge.

           All because of Ol’ Jim Keeley.

           He was there at each of my graduations. He was there, right next to mom and pop and grandad at my wedding. Was there after work, for a quick beer and a chat. Was there, laughing when I explained how disastrously wrong my first diaper change had been.

           And now?

           Damn.

           I wish he wasn’t gone.

           I wish I could go set (see, now I’m doing it) with him one more time. To talk about, well, anything, even if that means repeating a conversation we’d had twenty or thirty times before.

           But I can’t.

           Because I’m standing here, above ground, staring into the hole where my friend lies.

           So, what to do? How to say goodbye?

           That’s easy.

           Real easy.

           Ol’ Jim left me his pocketknife, see?

           And I’ve got this bundle of sticks.