32
Like any other night in my bar-home the lamplight comes down moodily in all the right angles, blanketing us in nostalgia. The velvet on the pool table rests patient, full of potential, reminiscent of freshly cut grass. A man and woman dance together as Rush comes out of the jukebox, and they fill me with hope. It doesn’t matter to them if they’re being watched. They’re in the world they’ve chosen for themselves, and that’s something I admire. Imagine being so settled into one another that everything else ceased to exist. Their cowboy boots clap the floor as they spin and move from elegant to sloppy, and back again, always free, always adoring, so much larger than life. They dance on the edge. Do they know how immortal they seem, dancing in bar light?
Deangelo and I are on our second hour, buzzing and rolling along at great speed. With enthusiasm we trek back through memory lane, relishing good tales of old.
He keeps saying, “I can do one more, Cash. One more, alright?”
So, I’d buy and we’d dive further into the heart of it all. It was never one more, and we all knew that. He’s talking about Lyla saying, “I know she’s ready, and she ain’t say nothin man, never ’bout it or nothin, but she’s waitin, right, I just know it. I can see it, you know what I mean? You start to see it.”
“Yeah.”
“Yeah and I ain’t tryin to rush nothin. I wanna take care of it all, be a man, you know what I’m sayin? I gotta be able to take care. Look, you know how our fathers were man.”
“I know.”
“Yeah and shit, what do we gotta do? We’re talkin about family.”
“Right.”
“Family. We’ve got to be responsible.”
“I agree.”
“We’re responsible for all that.”
And this is the whole point, right? When we got down to it. We begin to talk about the sacrifice of self in this ultimate way, but what do we know? We’re all just trying like hell to figure it out. Trying to do just a little bit better than our fathers did, though we still want to believe they did the best they could. I’ve seen hundreds of families in Johnston, all working this out just the same. As my own family deteriorated around me, I couldn’t help but view the whole concept through a painful lens of longing and wonder. Fatherhood, motherhood, sons and daughters, and on. Deangelo’s right. Responsibility . A higher calling. The desire for it all has become buried deep in my bones, and I only now feel it leak into the bloodstream. I’d almost feared it was dormant, forgotten and abandoned.
When I was younger, I remember believing that I’d find a woman early on in life and run off with her somewhere. I dreamed we’d explore our way across the nation and go from small town to small town renting out dusty old shadowed rooms above bars and staying there until we grew restless, only to find another the next day. I had romantic fantasies of buying only the bare necessities and booze, cigarettes, wrapping this love of mine in bedsheets and playing with her sleep-ridden hair and sun smile. We’d be vagabonds, adventurers, spirits of America. And on occasion we’d show our mysterious faces while walking community sidewalks but be left alone. We’d buy beers from the hefty barbacks and stumble up to our room, lamp lit and laughing, young, drunk and in love. We’d chase each other silly through the apartment canvases and discover all the secrets we were always so curious about. We’d talk endlessly for hours, exploring every hidden corner of our souls. And that would be that. I’d have the money from some long-forgotten book I’d written, or painting I’d sold. Hell, maybe I’d have robbed a bank by then, and maybe she’d have done more of the same. But money would be nothing. We would be everything. The center of the universe, migrating whenever we pleased, anonymous and growing deeper by the day. Shedding seeds and having roots all throughout this American land. God. I used to really dream about that.
But the path to fatherhood feels foreign and impossible now. I see no father in myself. Why is that? I feel no desire to sacrifice my dreams, and I can’t exactly lug the kid around and keep the gig running strong now can I? No, I’d have to settle like everyone else. I’d have to sit the kid down and teach them the lessons over and over again until one day they’d finally stick. It’d take immeasurable work. I’d have to feed and clothe and bathe them as babies and forget all about myself. I’d have to abandon my freedom. I’d have to set fire to my innermost workings and reroute the machine. God. I don’t know. For some people it doesn’t seem so bad. There are plenty of happy families in Johnston. I see them walking around all the time, arm in arm, smiling and soaring, enjoying something I can’t seem to fully grasp. A few of them have really found the good stuff, there’s no denying it, and it’s these few that I sincerely adore, though always in silence and from afar. And yet, the envy for what they have does not disturb me. It hasn’t lingered long enough to change my ways, I suppose. Those ideas get no further into my system than the mouth. I take a drink and I wash them back out.
“But I want to be a father,” Deangelo says, and I return, snapped from myself and intrigued.
“You will be, man, of course you will be,” as if I have any clue what that means.
I see Deangelo’s eyes move to the right a bit, surveying the scene. I sense that he’s spent countless hours debating this essential leap of life. Fatherhood. He didn’t have to explain all the questions and conflicts that roared inside him because I’d debated the same for myself. Seeing him now, I know Deangelo is a bit beat down. Feeling far too old while being so damn young. He’s a grinder, and always will be. I saw that today, and had heard all the stories. All at once I feel proud of him, truly proud. We’d gone years and years without a night like this, never returning to the source of so much in our lives, and yet, from a distance, perhaps we did. And though he had gotten himself into runs of trouble here and there, and beaten some men nearly to death for their transgressions, I am proud. I am proud because I believe him to be a good man.
His tough, dark hands are holding the glass, and his fingers shift and move black shadows across the tabletop, blending in with the wood. His veins extend through his wrist and curl around the bones as he moves the drink. He’s spinning it around and around while he thinks, and I start watching all the people that are left in the bar, writing their stories in my mind, best I can. Isn’t it fascinating? Each person with a novel, a whole infinite story.
I had this girl one time, outside the River Inn, ask me a question as she watched a truck blow a stop sign in the town square.
“Do you ever think of that, Cash? Like that person has a life. A huge life of their own. And we’ll never know nothin about it. And there’s billions. Billions just like that Cash, billions ”
Billions, she said, and there was nothing we could do about it. She was right. I thought about that all the time. So many people and not enough time. All of us wandering like ants through the cracks of the sidewalks and completing our business. Not stopping, not waving, not caring all that much from one insect to the next. Just on our path and the path of the few that happened to walk our same way.
I watch all these people that wander through Jimmy’s, and I dream about their lives. I wonder where on Earth their souls were leading them and why, and mostly, I just pray that they’ll get there. Not all of us did, in the end. We had proof. The lucky few of us were still here. Still singing and dancing around the stage before our lights got flipped off for good. But what a feeling while we have it! What a sensation it is to be alive.
And in Jimmy’s Place with Deangelo, drinking and careening through time, I feel the weight of the billions of bones coming up through the Earth, knocking loudly on the door. All those that came before. They’re coming for us both, and calling us home. It’s me and them—them and me—we’re all the same. One family. To be a father or to not be a father, to them that doesn’t matter. We are called only to make the most of what we have while we have it. They must agree, the little ants and the bones and the billions of souls I feel I know but simply don’t.
“You remember those days, man?” Deangelo asks.
“Which ones?”
“You know, back in those days. The ranch and shit.”
“Of course.”
“Fuckin crazy.”
“Yeah man.”
“You know you probably think I don’t remember none of that, but I do.”
“Nah. I figured you did.”
“Yeah. This shit is crazy but, you remember that chicken?”
“Yeah man. How could I forget?”
“All the things as a kid, I remember that most.”
“Like it was yesterday.”
“So fucked up.”
“Yeah.”
“That shit wasn’t right.”
“No it was not.”
“I still think about that all the time.”
“Yeah. Me too. Honestly.”
“Man, that fucker got us, huh?”
“Well, I don’t know.”
“Nah man, he pulled it over. Cash, if I ain’t have you there, I think that guy woulda killed me.”
“Really?”
“It’s a feeling man, but I could tell. I just knew it, man. I’m tellin ya. I could see that look. I would dream about it, and shit, and I ain’t ever told nobody ’bout those things he did. But he woulda done more if you weren’t there too, I know it. Think I ought to thank you for that, Cash. I wish I’da killed that fucker myself. I always thought I’d get a chance.”
“Yeah, man.”
“You ever think about that? Ain’t that fuckin crazy, man? After all that, he hangs himself from a tree in his backyard? Don’t he think about the consequence? Whole city gon’ see you hangin there dead. Purple. Birds on your head. You know I wish I woulda seen it man. I wish I woulda been there to see him hangin there all blue and shit and gone. I’da liked to see that with my own eyes.”
“Yeah.”
“Evil motherfucker.”
“Yeah. You shoulda seen the twins at the funeral.”
“What about ’em?”
“Man they were cryin.”
“Were they?”
“Cryin man like sobbin like crazy. Snotting all over their faces. Ya know I never thought they could process something like that. But they were cryin, man. It was horrible.”
“They were fuckin crazy, too.”
“Yeah man, they were. They really were.”
And I knew that we were unfortunate to have spent those afternoons on that farm, but Deangelo was right, it would have been much worse if we didn’t have each other. Now here we were, all these years later, talking about our lives from the way back. As kids. And it’s crazy, sometimes I forget that I am one body, one story, one self. When I look back at my life, I can forget that it was me all along. I try not to think about it too much since I get so damn sad and all. I start feeling kind of sorry for myself, ya know? It’d be nice to go back to those days, to my younger self, all kind and pure and open, just to have a conversation and share a real long hug. I think I coulda really used it back then. What a thought. I knew what Deangelo meant. We hang onto these things for so long. All our life, we refuse to let our nightmares die. The worst parts that just eat at our souls, we preserve. And I wonder now, do I wish I could have killed the creep too? Yeah. Honestly, I think that I do. Well, God got there first and stole all our vengeance. So it goes. At least we have Jimmy’s tonight. Deangelo and I crossed back this whole steep divide and set things straight at last. He downs the rest of his beer, and I know I won’t see him again for some time.