Tommy Marchetti. I read the cursive stitched over the pocket three times, and then I heard Darlene say my name from very far away. I told her I was fine. I was not. I folded the shirt over my knees and found a small slip of paper tucked under the brass buckle of the bag, written in the careful block letters Benny always used. It said, Tommy, the lane is ready if you ever come home. I carried the bag out to the Gutter Ball, sat at the sticky bar, and called my mother, and for the first time in my life she did not change the subject.
“Gina, that night in 1984, Tommy threw the last frame on purpose,” she said. “The Kingpins were tied, and first prize was six hundred dollars, and the bank was about to take Sunset Lanes. Tommy had a perfect game going in the tenth, and he left the seven pin standing so Benny could win. Tommy had an offer to bowl professionally in Phoenix, and he put it off one more season just to help your uncle. Benny saw what he did. In the parking lot he was so proud and so ashamed that he hit the locker door with his bare fist. He came home with blood on his hands.”
“And what did he say to Tommy?” I asked. “He told him to go to Phoenix and never come back,” my mother whispered. “He regretted it before the sun came up. Your grandmother cried every time she heard that name because she loved Tommy like a son, and she could not make either of them pick up a telephone.” I went back to the hallway and lifted the old leather bag onto the bench. Under the ball was a thick stack of Christmas cards with a rubber band around them. Forty of them. Every flap was soft and worn from being opened. Benny had read every single one.
The shirt in Locker 12 belonged to the best friend my uncle had sent away, and it brought him home to lane twelve at last.
The newest card was from last December. “Benny, the Kingpins still owe me a rematch. Tell me when the lane is free. Your friend, Tommy.” The return address said Quail Wells, Arizona, with a telephone number underneath. My hands shook so hard Darlene had to dial for me. A gravelly old voice answered, and I said who I was. The line went quiet for a long time. Then he said, “Is it Benny? Please tell me I am not too late to say sorry.” I had to tell him the truth, and I heard a chair scrape, and a man seventy nine years old began to cry.
Tommy flew in on Thursday with his daughter holding his arm and a cane in his other hand. He stood at the front doors of Sunset Lanes for a full minute before he would walk through them. In the back hallway he laid his palm flat on Locker 12, then on the dent in the metal, still there after forty years. “I did that,” he said softly. “No,” I told him, “Benny did that. But he kept it for you.” Darlene had sent everyone home at ten. She turned off every light in the building, except one, and the pins glowed at the end of lane twelve.
Tommy took a house ball off the rack and bowled one game alone in the dark, just like Benny used to. I sat in the empty seat behind the lane, the very seat my uncle kept turning around to look at, and finally understood. Every Thursday, Benny had been waiting for Tommy to sit there. In the tenth frame Tommy threw and left the seven pin standing again. He laughed until tears ran down his face. “Some habits,” he said. Then he picked up the spare and knocked it down. “Forty years late, Benny,” he said to the ceiling, and the whole building seemed to breathe out.
Word travels fast in Decatur. By the next Tuesday the whole senior league was in the Gutter Ball, and my cousin Vinnie came too, still touchy about his two stitches. Tommy shook his hand and said, “Your uncle had a mean arm and a soft heart.” Vinnie laughed, apologized for pushing the Dollar General offer, and admitted he had only wanted Benny to rest. Tommy told us he never went pro. He carried mail in Quail Wells for thirty five years, bowled in a church league, and kept a ball named Benny in his garage. Nobody in that room had a dry eye.
I could have taken the six hundred thousand dollars. A retired nurse can always use a roof. But I thought about the sixty lockers, the Tuesday league, and the man in the Hawaiian shirt who spent every dollar he owned to keep one dark lane lit. I called the Dollar General people myself and said no, politely, and Vinnie held the phone steady. Tommy offered his savings toward new carpet. I said Benny would haunt us both if we let him pay. So we split it. The league held a fish fry, the lanes were sanded, and the Gutter Ball got a new sign.
Tommy decided to stay. His daughter helped him rent a small apartment three blocks from Sunset Lanes, and he comes in every day to coach the Tuesday bowlers, who treat him like royalty. He calls me kiddo. Last week he asked if he could hang the powder blue shirt where people could see it, and I said that was exactly what Benny would have wanted. It hangs in a glass case by the front door now, with a brass plate that says Decatur Kingpins, 1984. Under the name over the pocket, Darlene taped a note in Benny block letters.
Every Thursday at ten, we still turn off every light but one. Tommy bowls his game, and I take the empty seat behind lane twelve, with a slice of pizza from the Gutter Ball, just like when I was a girl. Sometimes I swear I can hear Benny laughing from the pro shop, the way he laughed when we were small and he was the richest man in Illinois. He was, I think. He had a friend who loved him enough to throw a game, and a family who finally learned to say that name out loud at Thanksgiving. I say it every year now.