Chapter 1

No one was ever going to accuse Mike Mulligan of being a genius—not by a long shot. Nor was he likely to be described as insightful, let alone psychic or clairvoyant. If he was anything, Mike was barely average. So in the faint light of his own mediocrity, how was this hopeless ne’er-do-well whose crowning accomplishment in life included stumbling through high school as a dumb jock who had to go to summer school twice and flunking out of the local community college after just one semester supposed to know that his high school sweetheart, the charming and lovable little Nancy Hogan, the girl he eventually married, would one day turn into a booze-swilling bimbo who would one day drive him to the brink of suicide by sneaking off with another man? Maybe, if he had been able to see into the future, Mike would have avoided going out with her in the first place—or at least avoided falling in love with her.

Or, if he knew that the simple act of the throwing a crooked stick that he had imagined to be a boomerang out over the frozen river would result in the drowning of his all-time favorite pet, a black Lab named Bear, obviously he wouldn’t have done it. So many ifs—if Mike could have somehow stopped his little brother from going to the air show, or warned him to hold on to his limp soggy hotdog with two hands, maybe he’d still be alive, and if Mike had been able to somehow prevent his father from betting everything he had on the New York Yankees to win the 1963 World Series, then maybe his mother wouldn’t have had a wardrobe that consisted entirely of black.

If I only knew then, what I know now. Mike’s no longer a betting man, but if he were, he’d be laying odds that just about everybody on the planet has uttered that rhetorical statement a time or two, or at the very least the thought has crossed their mind when faced with a situation that one could have easily avoided—if they had only known. After all, who hasn’t wondered what their life would be like if they had only known then, what they know now? Imagine the possibilities and the opportunities that would come with knowing everything you know now, when you were say, nine-years-old, or twenty-nine for that matter. Consider what that seemingly uncomplicated and often uttered expression actually means. When you were young, perhaps a teenager, and probably like Mike, considerably immature and most likely routinely guilty of poor judgment. If you could have immediately recognized the fruitful from the folly, or a good decision from a bad one, you may have done a few things differently. Maybe when you were in high school you would have studied more, stayed away from all variety of smoking or found something better to do than drinking beer with your buddies. You might not have talked your girlfriend, or perhaps allowed your boyfriend to talk you into having unprotected sex in the back seat of a ’65 Fairlane, or done a number of other foolish things that may have ruined your life forever. One must assume that if anyone were to put their mind to it, they would come up with a list uniquely their own.

If you only knew then what you know now, you may have understood the lasting affects brought on by decisions made by a mind that had yet to experience real physical, financial or emotional despair. For instance, would you still ask for, or accept that first date with your spouse if you had the ability to know how it would turn out twenty years later? How about that first cigarette, would you still light it up? Take that first drink? Would you have worked harder in school, taken different courses, chosen a different career path? We can imagine there are a few rare individuals who wouldn’t change a thing if they knew then what they know now, but Mike wasn’t one of them. It would be hard to believe there are very many souls who haven’t made some mistakes along the way that had they only known how those mistakes, however simple they may have seemed at the time, would affect their lives forever, and would have caused them to do a few things differently.

They say you only go around once. That’s another one of those brilliant observations made by they. Like, they say you can’t tell a book by its cover, and they say it’s better to be pissed off, than to be pissed on. Well, it may be true that you can’t tell a book by its cover, and again one can assume that it’s better to be pissed off than pissed on—in most cases anyway. Finding oneself engulfed in flames may be the exception to the rule. So, while they may be right most of the time, they’re not always right. You see, in spite of what they say, there are some people that do get to go around more than once—like Mike for instance. He was given two chances to get things right in the tragic comedy that had been his first and former life. He was given a do-over; a mulligan if you will and it may not be a coincidence that Mulligan also happens to be his last name. Yet as implausible as it may seem, Mike was given the unbelievable opportunity to go back and live his life… well, most of his life anyway, all over again—in a manner of speaking. In other words, Mike really did know then, what he knows now.

It seems that by some quirk in God’s judicial system, Mike was wrongly sentenced to a life of living hell. A tormented existence that he had endured for forty-two years before the wrong was finally made right. The strange thing is; Mike’s life was so horribly messed up, even the devil felt sorry for him—that’s right, Satan himself. It wasn’t God that gave him the do-over; it was the devil—or at least one of his minions. Funnier still, for all those years that Mike Mulligan had stumbled through life, beleaguered by one disaster after another, he didn’t even realize that he was in hell. He just thought he had incredibly bad luck or at the very least a horrible sense of timing. Whenever anything would happen to him, anything at all, it was almost always bad—very few exceptions. So from now on, whenever you see somebody that seems to be experiencing an amazing amount of misfortune, or is walking around with a black cloud hovering above their head, you’ll understand that it has nothing to do with luck at all. There is a reason for it—they are most likely living in Hell. If that somebody happens to be you, we can only hope it was a mistake and that you get a second chance like Mike did.

Chronologically speaking, the first case in point that demonstrates Mike’s cruel and unjust punishment and maybe the worst thing that ever happened to him is when his father was brutally murdered. It was in the fall of 1963, Mike was eight-years-old at the time, but remembers it with the clarity of a digitally enhanced DVD like it was yesterday. A heavy ominous pounding awakened him one night at his childhood home on Erie Street in Steubenville. Erie street is located in the older, flat part of town that is susceptible to floods whenever the Ohio River spills over its banks. For anyone who doesn’t know, Steubenville is in the eastern part of Ohio, and its biggest claim to fame is that it’s the hometown of crooner-slash-comedian Dean Martin. It’s also the hometown of teenage porn star Traci Lords—most people aren’t aware of that.

Nonetheless, after hearing the commotion taking place at the front door, Mike drug himself out of bed, tiptoed down the hall and then crawled on his belly like an army commando to the stop of the stairs. There he was able to catch a glimpse of his mother standing in the doorway talking to Father McGee, the pastor from St. Patrick’s and two large policemen dressed in their winter patrolman uniforms; dark blue pants with matching wool coats and furry hats with a badge fastened to the upturned bill. Father McGee was doing most of the talking and judging by the way the stout, black-clad priest was holding his hat in front of him with two hands, Mike thought he may have been there looking for a handout.

The little guy, Mike of course, was probably too young to have yet figured out that when the police show up to your house with a priest in tow it usually isn’t to ask for a donation for the Biafra Children’s Relief Fund. When his mother started sobbing, Mike had a pretty good idea what was going on—or thought he did, anyway. At the time, Mike thought they were there to tell his mom that his dad had gotten arrested for something. After all, that’s what policemen do, right? They arrest people. As for the priest, he probably just came along for moral support. Mike had already formed a picture in his mind of his father sitting behind bars wearing a striped prison outfit, the kind they wore in old prison movies. His old man was running a tin cup up and down the bars trying to get someone’s attention so that he could get a drink of water.

If only Father McGee and the police were there to inform Mike’s mom that his dear old Dad had been busted for something as minor as gambling—or stealing for that matter. Hell, it would have even been better if he had gotten rounded up in a raid on one of the local whore houses; as if that were ever going to happen—a raid, that is. Actually, the unholy alliance of clergy and cops were there to inform Ann Mulligan that her husband had been killed, or more precisely, murdered. At the time, his father lying dead with his head split open wasn’t something Mike could conjure up a picture of.

What had happened was; Jim Mulligan was so sure that the New York Yankees were going to beat the Los Angeles Dodgers in the 1963 World Series that he bet everything he had on it, and we are talking everything here; paycheck, savings account, house—the works. For Christ’s sake, the Yankees had Mickey Mantle, Roger Maris and Whitey Ford—hell, that should have been worth three wins alone. Well, in case there is anyone who doesn’t already know, the Dodgers somehow managed to beat the Yankees that year, and they didn’t just beat them either, they swept the series in four straight games and Jim Mulligan, the blue collar working stiff who lived paycheck to paycheck as it was, was having a little difficulty coming up with the money to pay off his gambling debt. It may not be the case now, but back in 1963, one didn’t stiff a Steubenville bookie unless they had some off-the-wall desire to sleep with the fishes.

That’s what Mike’s dad would have been doing if the police hadn’t stumbled upon his killers as they were trying to stuff him into the trunk of a 1957 Cadillac behind Rocco’s Bar over on Fifth Street. Rocco’s was the place his dad went for beer, fellowship and to place his bets. Rocco Caprianno was the local mobster who controlled most of the book making business in the area, a big man around Steubenville but probably nothing more than a toady for the Pittsburgh crime boss who himself probably made water in his pants whenever he received a telephone call from the New York godfather. Still, in spite of his low position on the Mafioso totem pole it was never a good idea to cross Rocco, and it was an especially bad idea to owe him money without having the ability to pay it back, as Mike’s dad found out that night behind Rocco’s dingy little beer joint, when two of Rocco’s goons beat the living daylights out of him, just before finishing him off by bashing Jim Mulligan’s head in with a fifteen inch tire rim. They were no doubt planning to transport him to the boat launch on the Ohio River when the cops just happened to turn into the alley as the knuckle-dragging knee-busters were trying to fold him up into their cavernous trunk.

The next disaster occurred just a few months later when Bear drowned. This particular day Mike remembers with possibly even more clarity than he remembers finding out about his dad being murdered. Most likely because Mike was more involved in the actual event—hell, who are we kidding—Mike caused the actual event. It was a relatively mild day in what was one of the coldest winters Steubenville had ever seen. People around those parts still talk about the winter of ’64 with fond regard for their rugged past. You kids have never seen snow like we used to get when we were kids. That year the entire area had been transformed into Antarctica. Snow that had fallen in November had become glaciated under two feet of subsequent snowfalls, leaving everything covered in a sea of white. The Ohio River was frozen all the way across with the exception of a narrow band of slush that snaked its way down the middle of the river like a dark gray ribbon of flowing sludge on a sea of frosty white ice crystals, the result of the countless number of coal barges that made their way up and down the river supplying coal to all the steel mills, factories and power plants that lined both sides of the river.

Finally, after eight straight weeks of temperatures below freezing, the weather broke; warming to near sixty, and one could actually hear the cracking and dripping of ice melting outside. Mike’s little brother Johnny, who was two years younger than him, and Mike had been cooped up in the house for about a month and decided it was time to go see for themselves if it were true—if the river really had frozen all the way across—it hadn’t. They were walking along the riverbank with Bear, their big black Lab, when Mike found this little piece of driftwood roughly the same size and shape as a boomerang, sticking out of the ice along the shore. So, he did what any eight-year-old boy would do—he pried it loose from the ice and frozen sand and then threw it out towards the middle of the river to see if it would come back to him. As soon as the stick left his hand Bear went chasing after it just like the greyhounds at Wheeling Downs take off after the little mechanical lure disguised as a bunny rabbit.

“Woof, woof, a stick, oh boy, yup, yup,” said Bear.

That may not have been the exact verbiage used by the excited pup but judging by the look on the dog’s face and by the enthusiasm he displayed as he ran out onto the wet ice, one wouldn’t have to be Cesar Millan to tell that’s what Bear was thinking. The end result was that Bear chased after the stick, and when he caught up to it, the ice was so slippery that his momentum carried him and the stick, which was firmly being held in his teeth, off of the solid ice and into the churning gray slush. All Mike could do was stare on in horror as his dog struggled and fought to get out of the water. Every time it looked like Bear was going to be able to pull his water-soaked body onto solid ice, a thin triangular chunk would break off and Bear would slip back into the half-frozen water. Eventually Mike unfroze himself from the shore and crawled out onto the ice in an attempt to save his dog but between his brother Johnny’s screams and the creaking of the ice, he wasn’t able to pull Bear to safety before his all-time favorite pet disappeared from sight for the last time.

Mike’s dad being murdered and his dog drowning is just a couple of examples of the many awful things that have happened to him in his life—not to mention theirs. Mind you, Mike never sought pity on himself for his life of woe. The point here is to illustrate the fact that how almost everything that happened to him in his old life was bad. After his dad was murdered they—they being Mike’s mom, his brother and him got by okay; that is if one might consider being poor and minus a husband and father, okay. His mother was a little overprotective of the two boys, but one can’t blame her too much for that considering how their luck had been running. However, protective as she was, she couldn’t wrap Mike and Johnny up in foam padding and lock them in the closet for the rest of their lives. So naturally whenever Mike left the house, he was in constant fear of getting beat up by one of the Munchak boys, or being teased unmercifully by the girls at the playground just because he happened to be a little on the chubby side. The fact that he would turn a bright shade of cherry red anytime a member of the opposite sex even looked at him didn’t help much either.

So to re-cap, there was death, followed by death, followed by getting beat up by the bullies, then teased by the girls—pretty good life so far wouldn’t you say? But it didn’t end there; there was more misery and heartache in store for Michael Mulligan, and more death—his brother Johnny’s. Johnny was killed in 1972 when an airplane fell out of the sky and landed on him. That’s right, in 1972 in the United States there were four deaths caused by airplanes falling out of the sky and landing on people and Mike’s brother was one of them. You see, Johnny always had this fascination for airplanes; it wouldn’t be a reach to suggest that Johnny was obsessed with airplanes the way a fat man is obsessed with pie. His bedroom was covered with posters of every kind of airplane he could get his hands on, mainly WW II fighter planes like the P-51 Mustang, the Corsair, a B-52 Bomber and even a Japanese Zero.

Anytime Johnny and Mike would be outside, either at the playground, playing in the Jungle, a swampy wooded area down by the river, or just being chased around the block by the Munchak brothers, if an airplane flew over, Johnny would stop what he was doing and watch the plane until it was out of sight. This was only a problem when the Munchak boys were hot on their heels looking to give their arms a good twist or rub one of their faces in a pile of hot steamy dog shit. What was really strange was that the only time Johnny had ever taken his eyes off of an airplane that was flying around above him; it fell out of the sky and landed on him.

Johnny was fifteen at the time and one of his friends had invited him to attend the annual air show at the county airport and of course that was an offer that Johnny wouldn’t have turned down for anything in the world. Well, from what anyone was able to figure out, Johnny had left his friend to go to the concession stand and while on his way back to where they had been sitting the accident occurred. According to witnesses an old bi-wing stunt plane had just buzzed the runway and was making a steep climb above the airport when its engine stalled. The plane had been trailing behind it a stream of billowy white smoke that formed a column about five hundred feet into the air when the pilot lost power. Johnny, for that brief instant must have found something more interesting to look at for the first time in his life. As previously stated, he was fifteen so one might assume he could have been checking out a pretty girl or he may have dropped a hot dog on the ground and was studying it to determine if their was an acceptable amount of dirt on it to render it still eatable. Anyway, by the time people in the audience realized the falling plane wasn’t part of the stunt it was too late, Johnny and three others, besides the pilot were dead.

Now, even though it was only the people close to Mike who were getting killed, we’ll consider Bear as a person even though he was a dog, Mike always figured that he was being punished for something. He’d often wonder what he could have possibly done to deserve such pain and misery. He had no idea that he was serving out a sentence of living hell, but later reasoned that the severity of his punishment must have been payback for the one happy day in his entire life that he had been allowed to have.

That day occurred about two months before his father was murdered. It was August 1963 and Mike’s Peewee league team, the Pirates was playing for the title, 7-8 year-old Champions in the Steubenville Parks and Recreation League. Mike played right field and in spite of the fact that his dad had told him that they put him in right field because his play so closely resembled that of the great Roberto Clemente, Mike knew it was because the coach figured he could cause less damage out there. As it turned out, on that day Mike was lucky, the opposing team, the Indians, only hit one ball in his direction all day. It was a slow grounder that had stopped rolling before he managed to pick it up with his bare hand then at the urging of his coach and half the parents in the stands threw the ball to second base to prevent the runner from getting a double on a slow roller through the right side of the infield. It was a picture perfect, by the book play—Clemente-like, Mike thought.

He even managed to get on base that day; something Mike hadn’t been able to do for the entire season. After striking out the first two times up, he went to the plate determined to hit a home run. His parents were in the stands as well as his brother Johnny who at six was already a better ballplayer than Mike was; all Mike wanted to do was something that would make them proud of him. He took the first pitch, a strike—Mike was willing to wait for the perfect pitch. The second pitch was better, close enough to perfect, a nice slow blooper, coming in at eye level it looked like a big, fat, ripe, juicy cantaloupe. The eight-year-old slugger was going to take it over the fence, or go yard, as they say nowadays. Mike shifted his weight to his back leg, pulled the bat back to gain torque, then released three months worth of frustration out in one mighty swing—and missed the ball by a good six inches, nearly screwing himself into the ground in the process. That was okay, he had one more chance, and he knew what was coming. Mike was ready for a fastball right down the middle of the plate, the same pitch that he went down looking at his first two times at bat.

“Come on, give me the fastball,” Mike said under his breath as he stared the pitcher dead in the eye.

Well, the seven-year-old pitcher gave Mike the fastball alright, only it wasn’t right down the middle of the plate, it was right at him. Panic struck, he couldn’t tell if he should move up or back to get out of the way so Mike did the next best thing, he turned to let the ball hit him right smack dab on his chubby little buttocks. Even at the tender age of eight, Mike knew that taking one in the butt would be preferable to having his young nuts busted open like a piñata. Anyway, the ball left a nice big purple bruise on his left cheek, but it turned out to be well worth it—Mike was awarded first base. He could tell his parents and Johnny were all real proud of him standing out there on first base like a real ballplayer—Mike doubted they could see the tears that had filled his eyes before he wiped them away with his shirt-tail.

Mike was left stranded on first that day, but his team still won the big game by a score of 4-3. Not that he had much to do with it, but Mike can recall to this day standing there with his teammates all gathered around home plate, trophies in hand and each one of them grinning from ear to ear like a boat full of sailors who had just been told there was a free whore house in the next port. When that team picture was taken, it captured in living black and white, the happiest day of Mike’s life. He still has that picture, which leads us to the real story—for you see, in a way, it was rediscovering that picture that turned things around for Mike Mulligan.

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