About the Author David Schwartz is the former president of Seedhouse, the online interfaith committee. Schwartz is the author of A Jewish Appraisal of Dialogue, and coauthor, with Jacqueline Winston, of Parables In Black and White. Currently a volunteer at Drake Hospital in Cincinnati, Schwartz continues to write essays, and fiction.

It was a damn crazy way to die, but not everyone was able to choose his or her death. Bob Cornelius was! This was the way he chose to die.

The idea began from the way Lou Guffy use to announce his privileged hand to any other player who smiled at the first deal, or made any other motion that he thought he could win. If no one grinned, or panted at their cards, or looked sneakily from one side to the other, it was Guffy's way of attempting to get them to stop betting, or calling their bluff. "Are you willing to bet your life on it?" he would say. A man could be holding four aces and Guffy would say, "Are you willing to bet your life on it?"

The first time you heard Guffy's question, you might tremble with indecision. Could he have four kings? What were the odds of that happening? You would eventually hear the question so often, though, that it just became annoying. During a good game, you could block his stupid, lusted up voice out of your head.

The last few game left Cornelius fantasizing a particular bet. Yeah, he wanted to tell Guffy, I'll bet my life on this hand. But one thing. If I lose, you've got to shoot me point blank with that derringer you carry in your side pocket.

Guffy frequently showed the boys -- those tired old men with sagging gray checks -- this prize possession. He had won it from a bearded Englishman in a game of draw poker. He kept it polished, occasionally did so during the games when he was sitting out, and seemed to pride himself on owning the piece. He treated it the way someone would treat a cherry red Cord, allowing only the finest mechanics to look under the hood, and never taking the car onto the street. The previous owner -- legend did not preserve his name -- was smiling and laughing and puffing on the big cigar he had bummed, and generally acted like he knew he was going to win the hand they were in.

"Do you bet your life on it?"

"Certainly not my life!" the Englishman exclaimed, "But I have a family heirloom which I am willing to put on the line to win your money belt. Oh, I surely would hate to lose the dear thing, but ... I don't think I will."

"Then we're set," Guffy told him.

Minutes later the tale was told. "Nine. Ten. Jack. Queen. King. All spades," and Guffy licked his thumb and pressed on the table each time he told this story.

"Certainly not my life!" became the inside joke among the boys. "Are you willing to bet your life?" Guffy would ask each and every time he had, or wanted to blood, a decent hand. Then he would draw on his fat cigar, close his lips and puff his cheeks, and allow the bluish smoke to spiral out the side of his mouth and become stale with air. The boys would each wait for his private ritual to end before giving the English answer.

But why the hell not, Cornelius began thinking a few weeks ago. Why not bet the most expendable historical commodity on a lousy, disjointed hand. Wouldn't there be something fitting in such a stupid act? It would be a true historical event. A metaphor. Draw garbage and stake your beating heart, your thinking mind, hell, perhaps even your breathing soul.

The heart had not beat so well since Margaret died two years ago. This was both an emotional and a physical truth. Her heart gave way one night, her body turned cold and hard in the soft, warm moon of August. She went to bed early, and it turned out that when she did not awaken Cornelius at seven, he knew instantly something was wrong. He kept his eyes closed for the longest time, until tears came of themselves. Her cold hips rubbed against his thigh when he turned to check on her after confirming the lateness of the hour on the digital clock. Those were the last tears, true to a vow he made to himself, he would every cry. His own heart was congested by years of breathing second hand smoke, and he blamed whatever tears came from his eyes on smoke.

Nor did the thinking mind seem to work quite right. The most difficult decisions Cornelius had to make occurred each Thursday night. It seemed he was constantly faced with the same choice, arising in various guises. Should he save the two deuces and how the clubs? Or should he hold the clubs and pitch the deuces? Whichever way he decided, the other situation lay on top of the pile of cards being dealt.

His social security check was not very large, and his savings were nothing. Nevertheless, he bet with abandon. Now he preferred to abandon the most annoying thing of the last two years: his loneliness.

The pain was excruciating. It was not physical, so medicine could not compensate. It was not mental, for he was still alert, too alert, and obscenely alert. He noticed Margaret's absence in everything. She was not there to hold the sense of words on the page of the morning paper. She was not there to give taste to his meals. She was not there to give his conversations scope, meaning or direction. The boys disliked conversation.

"If I wanted to discuss that crap," they would say about any topic of conversation, "I'd go home to my wife."

"Keep your damn opinions to yourself."

"Quit yakking."

And the most popular: "Shut the hell up and play."

One need never hide anything from the boys. They did not care for anything you had to share for keep secret.

Everything had been going down hill since Margaret's 'demise.' The term sounded so clinical. 'Demise.' People who have absolutely no connection with the 'deceased' only use it. Same kind of term. The deceased is reposed in demise. She's a dead!

Cornelius was dead as well. He ate, progressively less nutritious foods without Margaret there to sustain him. He drank, Jack Daniels replacing her iced tea. He watched television, sit coms which required no concentration being easier than P.B.S. which demanded her, 'I didn't know that. Did you, Bob?' And he slept, long spotty hours during the day, saving his wakeful evenings to have worries which were not released in dialogue. So he was dead after a manner.

"You look like…," the boys had taken turns saying to him when he arrived on Thursday evenings,

His eyes, which were always 'swimming pool blue' according to Margaret, were covered with a film like the crud, which floats on the Mississippi. His forehead and cheeks, which use to resemble those of a forty year old who had no cares or concerns, now looked the seventy-two years, which were theirs. His ears sprouted gray weeds since Margaret had ... died. His jaw took on an ashen quiver, suggesting nerves, but nerves denote feelings, and Cornelius no longer felt anything.

The closest thing he had to feelings these days was mental, not emotional. He felt in increasingly analytic patterns. All the contours and dots and arrangements of every idea, impression or thought had been confiding themselves into a single, dominant shape. Furthermore, the Pattern of Patterns was learning to live without words. It began to present itself with the graphics of a gray slab of marble rising from the ground and curving into an arc over his name and dates.
The convincing moment arrive the day Cornelius went to First National to withdraw a few dollars. He had wildly gambled away most of the social security check, and had not been reminded by the sweet voice to plan ahead, stock up, don't get caught with your pants down. The white shock of disbelief, which grazed through his body when he was told there was only three dollars and change in the account, may have been his final authentic feelings. The white waves stayed with him for two whole days, made him dizzy, and confirmed the fact that, indeed, he was going to die soon, and must.

So Cornelius was willing to bet his life. He was willing to know the precise moment the poverty of miserable loneliness and the loneliness of unbearable poverty would end. He was willing to face the muzzle of the highly polished silver derringer. He was willing to feel the bullet explode in the back of his head.

He could never try suicide. Not as long as there was a better way. He was afraid his hand would shake too much, would dart to the left or right at precisely the wrong mome, and he would have to spend the remainder of his days without one ear or the other. Besides, he was confident he could convince Guffy to do the job. If he could stir Guffy to anger, the possibility of changing his mind would not enter into his equation.

So, at the exact moment of decision, Cornelius refused to give the English reply.
"I not only am willing to bet my life," he said in a cold, calculating manner, "But I will demand you take that little pistol of yours and blow my brains our if I lose."

Guffy just glared at him. No one had spoken to him in this manner. He did not quite know what to make of it. People had bandied about the Englishman's reply so often over the ten or so years they had been playing that missing it was like missing Ed Sullivan use to be.

"Months and months of losing made you delirious, Cornelius?"

Cornelius half turned to Stanley Pearson on his left, squinted and wryly said, "I'll take the big one this time."

"Will you, now?" Guffy asked.

Cornelius straightened his head, glared at Guffy, saying, "I'll take the big one, or you can blow my brains out."

"By God, "Willy Kelly said, "I think he's serious."

"He's bluffing," Martin Lacey grunted.

"Bet my life on it," he said to everyone as he continued staring into Guffy's face.

"Better watch your mouth, old friend," Guffy told him, "Don't write checks with your mouth that your body ain't willing to cash in on. A fella might just take you up on that bet."

"I mean it," Cornelius barked.

Guffy eyed him suspiciously. "Alright," he said, "I'm a betting man. I'll take the bet."
There was a murmur around the table. "What the hell is wrong with you guys," Lacey asked in snotty short syllables.

"The bet's on. If you lose, I'll shoot you with the derringer. Don't think I won't, either. Then I'll take that fat wallet you've been sitting on.

And if you win?"

"Ahhh, this is crazy," Lacey growled.

Guffy expected Cornelius to say he would take his life, his money, and so on. Cornelius was silent for a long time. He knew he would lose and, like the good book might have said, in losing win. Yet he knew he had to ask for something, had to pretend to expect to win, else they would think him insane and have him hauled away.

"Just your pistol," he said at last.

"Then we're set," Guffy said. "You want any cards?"

Cornelius had stacked his card in a pile in front of him. He peeled off the first three and announced how many he wanted. Laughter went around the table.

"And I thought you were serious," Guffy said as he held out a single card.

"I am serious, you son of a bitch, you fat assed, boring mother XXX."

Guffy clamped down on the cigar sticking between his teeth. His eyes grew large and filled with blood. Although his cheeks were quite rotund, his jaw poked through at his ears, and the veins in his neck looked like a white on white three dimensional map of a river in tribulataries.
"You old fart. You better be the luckiest bastard alive with those three cards. I'll blow your brains out." He grabbed the card being offered in trade from the dealer, and shoved it between the others in his hand.

Cornelius kept hard features on his face. He had obviously irritated Guffy, but had heard the words he wanted to hear. He scooped and lifted his cards from the table, cupped them in his hands, and slowly fanned them in front of his face.

Guffy could tell by Cornelius' face that he knew he had made a grievous mistake and realized as much. Guffy smiled, reached into his jacket hanging on the chair, and removed the derringer. Cocking the trigger, he told Cornelius, "You thought I was kidding around, didn't you. I never much liked you, Cornelius. You XXX XXX. You won't be missed. By anyone."
Cornelius was not paying attention. He dumbly allowed his cards to fall from his hand.
Pearson and Kelley reached in from his left and right to turn the cards, which had fallen on their faces. Five diamonds.

"I'll be damned," Guffy said, and the wind seemed to leave him.

"Sure as hell beats my three ladies."

The boys bally-hooed and chortled while Cornelius and Guffy shook their heads, rubbed their eyes, and tried to make sense of what had just happened. Guffy finally comforted himself with the through that he now had the opportunity to act magnanimously, to show himself a graceful loser. Cornelius reclaimed some satisfaction by thinking he would at least get the derringer and finish the job himself this evening.

"Time to pay off, Guffy," one of the boys said. His voice brought the players out of their reverie.
"You won fair and square," Guffy said, "Luckiest damn stunt I've seen in a long time. No hard feelings, Bob. I didn't mean any of that what I was talking."

"Sure. Sure was," Cornelius responded to the insight about luck.

"But I'll be a man about it. I lost, I'll admit it. So this makes us square."

Guffy handed the gun across the table. Cornelius took the weapon in his clammy hands. An hour later, when he pulled the trigger, he discovered it was a cigarette lighter.