All Is Grace_ A Ragamuffin Memoir - Brennan Manning [13]
In a way, she was right. I was a dreamer, and still am. Some people have recurring nightmares, ones that chase them for seasons or possibly for life. As a boy, I had a recurring daydream, not one of horror but of hope. In the dream, a boy my age approached me and said, “I like you. Can we play together?”
Playing—whether with my sister or with the boys in my neighborhood—was a great escape for me. I mentioned that the neighborhood boys and I used to play Clock. It was a fun game, but as we grew older, as you can imagine, the thrill seemed to fade. Stickball was for the older boys; you had to be at least twelve to play. Ringolevio, however, was a game for every kid. It’s basically a combination of tag and hide-and-seek. There are two teams, the pursued and the pursuers. One team goes off to hide and the other team goes looking for them. If a pursuer finds and catches you, then you have to go sit on the stoop in front of someone’s house; we called it “jail.” One day’s game was particularly memorable.
I thought I’d found a great hiding spot, one nobody could find. But then all of a sudden Joey was there. As I just typed that name—Joey—I felt an ache behind my breastbone. His arrival proved to be life changing.
Joey Keegan lived down the street and had brown-blond hair and Irish blue eyes. I had seen him before, but I don’t think we had ever talked. But that day Joey found me and instead of sending me to jail, he said, “I like you. Can we play together?” Yes, that’s right, the very words from my dream.
It’s hard for me to express how thrilling it was to hear those words. They were a compliment, and in our family, direct compliments were rare; they presumably contributed to the sin of pride, the kind that usually comes before a great fall.
After our game that day, I found myself rehearsing those words from Joey, trying to convince myself I hadn’t made them up. But sure enough, in the days and weeks that followed, Joey would repeat them, out loud, as we’d play together—“I like playing with you.” Joey Keegan had become my first best friend, and I have good cause to believe I was his.
Joey and I were typical boys. One afternoon, for example, I asked him if he could change his name to any name in the world, what would it be. He said, “Ludwig Niemanschnifter.” I thought that was so funny; we both died laughing. When I asked where that name came from, Joey just said, “I like the sound of it.” As you could probably guess, Joey turned the question on me. To this day I don’t know where this came from, but I blurted out, “Otsio Motsio Zine Ferein.” We both died laughing again. My friendship with Joey—or “Ludwig” as I called him after that—was a dream come true, but unfortunately the dream didn’t last long.
I never remember thinking that Joey might have been sick. I don’t recall his parents or mine ever saying anything about it. Maybe I was so taken with the dream that I missed what would have been obvious to someone else. I don’t know. What I do know is that one day an ambulance showed up in front of his house and took him to the hospital. The next day I got ready to rush to his house to play tag or throw the Spalding ball against the bricks. My father was home that day. He stopped me and said, “You can’t go to Joey Keegan’s anymore, Richard.” The three-letter question of childhood then dropped from my lips—“Why?” My father took a deep breath and then told me, “Because he died last night.”
I was later told that Joey had a brain tumor, although I really didn’t know what that meant.
That experience was my introduction to death. I’d seen dead birds before and even a dead cat, but never a person, never someone close to me. Everyone I knew was healthy; certainly no one had brain tumors. My parents didn’t know Joey’s family that well, but they came with me to the funeral out of respect. As we filed by the casket, I remember feeling terribly lost again. Without Joey, there wouldn’t be anyone to come find me.
My brother, Rob, always