Eddie
Eddie died of cancer about four years ago. He was forty-eight. The ghastly verdict came from the Mayo clinic, and when Eddie came back to Spencer, he was completely changed. He was the type of man that people were attracted to, and he would shoot snooker in the bowling alley in the afternoons when the girls were having their league bowling. The men would order their caps of coffee and pull their chairs close to the snooker table and listen to Eddie and try to clown him into missing a shot. Nobody could beat Eddie but that wasn't the point. They considered it an honor to play and felt that they were closer to Eddie and somehow the magic might wear off on them. Eddie was top dog in a pecking order, and he would hold these afternoon courts, and all the men were delighted to be around him.
When he found out that he had cancer, he became very depressed and spoke often of playing with one foot in the grave. Eddie lost his magic and the men wouldn’t gather around him anymore and he would sit at the coffee counter alone and stare at the pool table. I would try to talk to him, but I think that he resented my youth and good health, and I think he thought that I was mocking him. When he died and no longer haunted the bowling alley, the men would gather again, and Marv became the head of the pecking order, and the men were delighted to buy him coffee and shoot pool and talk about girls' basketball. No one ever spoke of Eddie--like he never existed in the first place, and I guess that he didn't.