The Artful Trade

A Small Jolt Some dried out drunks are like raisins. After enduring so much bitter they develop an unexpected sweetness. His features carried the accumulated weight of penance and its Siamese twin humility. The high life almost always demands the low.The blackout nights and broken promises, the lost friends and lies to others and himself had been cured from him. He wore rags, the remains of weather on his features and the unmistakable air of great suffering. He slept on park benches in the summer and apartment stairwells in the winter, paralyzed by the cruelest kind of unforgiveness. The kind you can never grant yourself. He adopted a small park in front of the local church, like he was sure God might stop someday on the way past and hear his confession. The local discount liquor store was on Damascus Street. And eventually, it took years of stumbling in the dark, this blind drunk was granted vision on that road. Years before he had been a captain on the Staten Island ferry...

Sawdust and Blood The first time was a man lying on 8th in front of the bus station. I was just a kid. A small clot of passersby, gawkers, stood silent sure that they should do something but uncertain what. An old woman blessed herself and whispered a prayer. Someone finally called EMS but life had already limped away by the time they arrived. The cops came with yellow tape. It’s meant to mark where life ends and death begins. But it had already trespassed into the eyes of living. The medical examiner came and made a few notes and the EMS lifted him into a bag. A cop began to argue over who was going to write it up. Another began to spread sawdust on the spot. Then straw. Sawdust soaks up blood. So does shoe leather and time. The straw is meant to cover it all. Eventually the wind takes hold and sweeps it away like there was never anything there like a heart that finally quit beating against worry or a dream that gave up it's ghost. I went by that spot a thousand times ...

I love long shots. I love broken down 47-1 thoroughbreds that you could time with a speed dial, penny stocks that might cure cancer and ancient off off off broadway actors that catch that one lightning in the bottle role they were born for. I love red faced fat guys struggling against the years of a sweet tooth at the back of the marathon pack and the limpers that continue into the dark long after the lights and finish line have returned to anonymous cracked pavement. There has never really been anything to love about smart money though. Nothing but the margin is ever risked. Those favorites have already won favor. They are the short odds and sure things. The safe play. Nothing miraculous there ever. But the long shots are the ones that should fail. The ones that carry some essential flaw at their core. They are the Army of Too. They’re the too slow, too short, the too foolish believers. They listen their whole lives to the critics, then let the catcalls find their way into back...