Fifty-Nine Days After Wabash: The Seventh Name Was One I Counted Among the Living

Fifty-nine days. I've started six of these the same way, and if you've read me you know how: nobody died, up front, flat, so you can breathe before I tell you the rest. Maria taught me that. You hand a person the good news first so their legs don't go.

I can't start that way this week. So I'll do the other thing she taught me, which is say the hard part plain and don't dress it up. Ray Delgado died. He died Tuesday, in the burn unit at the county hospital, fifty-seven days after the Tuesday they fought over Wabash, and I had him on the wrong list this whole time.

You have to understand what I mean by the wrong list. I keep a count. Long-time readers know it — the dead from that day, written on the backs of guest checks, folded in my apron, and it has always been higher than the number the man in the clean jacket read off his card. Two higher, for a long time. Daniel Okafor from the cleaners, found a day late. Marcus, the rider, twenty-three. I climbed to six and I held there. Six was the number I carried across the summer.

Ray was never on that count. Because I watched them carry Ray out alive.

I did. I want to be careful, the way I always try to be, because careful is the only thing I've got that the clean jackets don't. That Tuesday Ray had come in at lunch — two Sicilian, well done, extra oregano, burn the corner for me, Johnny, same as every Thursday except it was a Tuesday because his shift got moved. He was out on the sidewalk with the slice still in his hand when the sky came down on the block. And when the trucks came I saw them bring him out on a board with a mask on his face and one hand moving, and a fella held that hand, and they put him in the ambulance and it went. Moving hand. I counted him living. I was glad. For fifty-seven days I was glad.

Here is the thing nobody tells you about that gladness. The register the city keeps — the one the official number comes off of — that register closed months ago. They counted the dead, they printed it, and the number set like concrete. But a burn unit doesn't run on the city's schedule. Ray was still deciding for fifty-seven days. Surgeries. Then an infection. Then he wasn't deciding anymore. And the register never opened back up to hear about it, because as far as the number's concerned Ray walked away from Wabash. He's a save. He's in the good column.

I've been telling you all summer the count is two higher than the news because they undercount the dead. I had it a little wrong. They also overcount the living. Turns out survived is a word they hand out early and don't take back.

One of Ray's people came in to tell me. Another garage guy, works the same shift, eats here sometimes. He ordered like a normal day — I think a man needs the normal day to say the thing — and he ate about half of it, and then he told me flat, the good way, no card, no jacket, just a man saying his friend was gone. I put his money away. I told him put your money away. He tried again and I told him again and that was the end of that.

Then I did the only thing I know how to do, which is I made two Sicilian, well done, extra oregano, and I burned the corner. I didn't sell it. I set it on the counter and the two of us stood there, and I said the small version — that's the rule I gave you back with the letter: you hand a person the one true thing they can carry and you keep the rest of the weight yourself. I said, tell his people he ate here Thursdays for nine years and the last thing I ever did for him was make it the way he liked and not take his money. That's the size a man can carry out a door. The rest of it — the moving hand, the fifty-seven days I spent glad about a hand — that stays back of my counter with me.

Maria took a fresh check off the pad and set it by the register with the marker. She didn't say anything. I wrote RAY on it. The apron holds seven now.

The kid came in later, same as ever, and asked me when the ones who fly are coming back. I gave him his slice. I still didn't answer him. Some days I think I'm holding that answer for a day I understand it, and this was not that day. Petrakis's month-to-month is holding, the oven's still lit, the green bike's still parked on the safe side of the tape where Renata left it. All of that is true and I'm grateful for every bit of it, and none of it moved the count back down.

The ones who fly only come back to fight. The clipboards only come back to count their thing, not ours. Nobody came back for Ray. So I did. Seven.

Eat your slice.