Selling My Books on the Streets of Brooklyn 1/9

I set up shop with my back to the Chase bank at Bay Parkway and 85th Street. It negated the strong wind, and the brilliant sunshine negated the sub-freezing temperature - but the public didn't cooperate, so it was all for naught.
Browsing through my Facebook page yesterday, I found word that Joe D,  first-baseman on a softball team for which I was a player/manager, had passed away. He must have been in his early fifties. I'd seen him last March at a reunion of those who had hung out at the P.S. 101 schoolyard, minus those who hadn't been taken by drugs. He looked fine. That group, guys ten or so years younger than me, was wild. They jumped into the free-wheeling post 60's culture with both feet. Appropriately, our team was named the Rebels.  Joe's lumbering gait earned him the moniker of "Turtle." I don't know if he'd suffered an accident in his youth, but his legs just could not generate any speed. He was the slowest runner I ever knew, but he was a good hitter - not as good as he'd been a decade earlier, however. He'd lost a lot of weight. I was shocked to hear he was a cocaine dealer. Even more dispiriting was the fact that his mother was his partner. After all, she wasn't a jobless ghetto mom with few choices. She was solidly middle class. Of course, I knew there were mothers who did such things, but I'd never known one personally. It was very hard for me to accept, but I said nothing. I looked the other way, which made me feel like a hypocrite and a coward. I did not respect or like Joe, which seemed odd, as I liked everyone else on the team, and almost all of them were doing drugs. Several would eventually go into rehab. And now I wonder if cocaine use had weakened Joe's heart or caused some other type of affliction. And I try not to think of it as poetic justice. I'm still looking the other way. Now God, if He exists, will be Joe's judge. And if there is no God, Joe will have gotten away with his behavior - other than in having a life cut woefully short. RIP
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