"Yeah, I finally remembered what I was running from," Barney confided in Bartholomew. "There's nothing like a couple of months with no alcohol to let those memories start comin' back."
"It's tough at first," Bartholomew observed. "You run from those things for a reason."
"That's so," Barney agreed, "but once you get over the urge to hide and start meeting them head on, those demons aren't as bad as you think they might be."
Barney went on to tell Bartholomew the story of the Jacksonville Publix, his wife and emerging family and how he deserted all of them.
"It all went back to one bad decision, just like you said," Barney explained. "If I hadn't run that one time, I wouldn't have had to keep on running." He fidgeted with the stump of his missing ring finger and glanced at the 'Hazel' tattoo. He still did not remember loosing the finger and still had no idea who Hazel was.
"Well, its behind you," Bartholomew said in a comforting tone. "Now you need to look to future."
"I agree," Barney continued. "But if I ever see that little weasel again - that kid who pulled that stunt in the grocery store - I think I might have to kill him with my bare hands. That's really where it all started!"
"How do you know it was a stunt?" Bartholomew inquired. "Maybe he really did hurt himself."
"Bullshit!" Barney explained with excessive emphasis. "I thought through every second of that stunt a thousand times. There's no way he was really hurt. It was just a con that he was pulling on the grocery store."
"How can you be so sure?" Bartholomew pressed.
"You meet a lot of lowlifes when you're on the drift," Barney explained. "I met this one guy down in Tuscaloosa who did these cons for a living. They call them the slip 'n fall. He told me everything about them. Said he used to make a good living that way until he got out of shape and couldn't fall correctly any more. He had to stop before he hurt himself. Anyway, I told him about what had happened to me and he started laughin' so hard, I thought he might bust something. He said, that kid would limp all the way to the bank and never been seen again. But if I ever see him again, I'm gonna kill him."
Bartholomew nodded and let the intensity of the moment subside. "He ain't a kid no more," he observed quietly. "He's a full grown man by now. You should just let it go."
"I'll let everything else go," Barney argued, "but not the kid. If he lives to be a hundred years old, I'll still recognize him. And when I do, I'm gonna kill him with my bare hands."
"O.K., O.K.," Bartholomew conceded. "We'll let you have the kid. But you gotta get on with the rest of your life."
Barney smiled, sipped his coffee, and paused thoughtfully. He looked around the Last Chance Mission at all the derelicts and said, "What's in this for you Bartholomew? Why is a guy like you so interested in all these drifters and losers?"
"Well," Bartholomew began, "you even heard that expression - 'There but for the grace of God, go I'?"
Barney wasn't entirely sure that he had heard that expression, but it seemed appropriate to let the big man continue.
"I was born into a very wealth family," Bartholomew explained. "But I didn't appreciate what I had. In fact I rebelled against it. I was a wild rebellious kid and I refused to acknowledge any authority. My parents were patient with me hoping that I would grow out of it. But by the time I was eighteen I was wilder than ever. My father told me that I had to straighten up or he would disown me. I took it as a challenge and went off on my own. It didn't take to long for me to realize that I couldn't make on my own. I was used to getting a regular allowance and having people cover for my mistakes. So I began to sink. I lived on the street sinking lower and lower, but refused to admit that I had done anything wrong. I lost touch with my family and became one of these anonymous street people living from day to day. I still believed that some day my father would show up with his chauffeur, apologize for treating me so harshly and then take me home. But it never happened. One night I was passed out in an alley after drinking too much cheap wine and I was beaten up by two other homeless men who wanted my shoes. I spent three weeks in the hospital recovering from a fractured skull, cracked ribs and a broken arm. While I lay there in the hospital I realized two things. First, I realized that if these two men would almost kill somebody over a pair of shoes, then I should have a little more respect for the family fortune that I had rebelled against. Second, I realized that my mistake in life was rebelling against my father who really cared for me and everything since then had simply compounded the problem."
Barney nodded as he began to comprehend the life story of this big man.
"You see," Bartholomew continued, "everybody has good things and bad things in their life. They run from the bad things and in doing so lose the good. The trick is to make men see that the good things outweigh the bad and that their errant course in life is usually the result of a single bad decision. When you stack that decision up against the grief that they are now facing, it usually makes the decision seem small and almost silly by comparison."
Barney nodded again and thought about how right this huge man was. A single bad decision made a decade ago led to the mess he was in right now. A single moment of false pride had propelled him on a course of self-destruction. But a single decision got him on this path and a single decision could get him off of this path.
"I haven't seen things so clearly in years," Barney mused as much to himself as to the man sitting with him. "I should go back to Jacksonville right now and straighten out that mess I made a decade ago."
"Whoa, hold on there," said Bartholomew as he put his great hand over Barney's. "Think this thing through. It was a decade ago. Your wife and family have moved on with their lives. She probably remarried years ago and your leaving is just a distant memory. Your son doesn't remember you at all. If you go back now, you'll just complicate things. You've got to move forward and leave the past alone."
Barney felt a twinge of pain when he heard 'your son probably doesn't remember you at all'. He knew the man was right, but Barney had thought about his son in every one of his sober moments over the last ten years. He still thought of him as a baby and now had to think of him as an adolescent who had no memory of the night he had run away.
"It's been so long since I did anything right, that I don't even know how to get back on track again," Barney admitted with a tremor in his voice.
"Well, that's what the Last Chance Mission is for," Bartholomew beamed. "We'll help you get back on track. Do you know how to do anything? Do you have any skills?"
"I used to manage a grocery store," Barney said with uncertainty. He wasn't sure if he even remembered that correctly.
"Terrific," the big man beamed again. "You can run the kitchen here at The Mission. I get lots of guys who know how to cook and wash dishes. That's a standard skill for drifters. But I got nobody who knows how to run the kitchen. We have a year's supply of soda crackers that will be stale before we can use them, and we've been out of ketchup for a month. We need somebody who knows how to order food and keep the supplies in stock."
"I can do that," Barney lit up. "I'm sure I can do that!"
"For the first month, you work for room and board. You share the room on the second floor with the cook. After that we we'll give you minimum wage for a few months that you can use to get yourself some decent cloths. After that we'll bump you up a little if the kitchen in running smoothly, but eventually we'll have to find you a real job." Bartholomew paused for a second and then continued thoughtfully. "It's important that you earn things slowly. You have relearn that you get rewarded for your efforts."
"Who, knows," Barney said excitedly, "maybe some day I'll be managing a grocery store again."
"Who knows?" Bartholomew agreed, "maybe some day you'll do even better than that."
With that Bartholomew winked at him and Barney began to feel the pride in himself that he had lost so many years ago.
Neither man spoke. In the silence both considered all the positive possibilities that the future might hold. It was dizzying to consider all these things and it made both men feel warm in their friendship and commitments to each other. But as Barney consider all the good things that might come of his new resolve, the one thing that he did not consider was the one thing that would shape his future more than anything else. He had forgotten about that kid that he was going to kill and in doing so, left himself vulnerable to the possibility.