8
We drink our beer from our corner table and from here, we can see the whole bar and all its movements. I can’t keep my eyes from the entrance. Each time it opens, I keep hope alive for a perfect world, where she comes walking in and I think of something to say. The Budweiser helps my nerves as Prince talks about the idea of buying the bar from Saul, Jimmy’s son. Prince first had this idea years ago, but like his newfound dreams of going out west, his breakup seems to be spurring his plans ahead more urgently.
Emphatic, he goes, “Saul don’t love the place man, not like us, not like us. We’re the lifeblood of this bar, let’s be straight. We’re the caretakers, really. Sure, he runs it and gets his money but he’s tired, Cash, don’t you think?”
He has a point. It’s true Saul is tired and lifeless.
Saul is a bald, big-bellied Italian we grew up with. He can often be a bummer of a man in his thirties going on seventies. Saul’s a decent enough guy if you get to know him, but the problem is nobody really gets to know him. He keeps everyone at a grand distance, and though he’s a loyal worker, he can be, as Prince suggests, a bit listless, beaten, and exhausted.
“Cash I might just make him a proposal once and for all.”
I know Prince is serious, and that he has the money to be so, but this is the first time that his plan doesn’t seem so out of reach to me. We’re getting older. I take a sip and eye Saul over there, black Bon Jovi shirt tucked in and moving behind the bar. I can see it, the exhaustion. I look back at Prince as he sits smirking. I raise my eyebrows and shrug as we begin to legitimately consider a future that finds Jimmy’s Place as ours and I gotta say, it feels kind of sweet.
We keep drinking. There’s a few regulars around, but it’s Wednesday and midnight. On the floor there’s scattered and crushed peanut shells.
“First thing I’d do is get rid of the fuckin peanut pails.”
Prince nods. “Yeah, man.”
I laugh. I’m starting to feel drunk now. My body is a bit numb and relaxed, and I’m not thinking particularly profoundly about anything but feel inspired nonetheless. It’s in this near floating feeling where I do some of my best dreaming. Prince leans his head back against the top of the booth pushing out his Adam’s apple and closes his eyes. I stare at that front door, begging for it to open. I imagine all the thousands of people walking in and walking out of this place over the years. This is the heart of our town and there are a million stories to be told. God, I get romantic about this bar.
I remember all the times Ma would send me into this place from the car to get my father as a kid. My old man would be sitting at the bar, curved and broken, with a pint, trading barbs with old Jimmy himself. Pops had a workman’s body, sort of caved in but strong from long continuous labor and too much roofing. He came to Jimmy’s for a pint or two—or three—or more—every day after work. On some of those days he’d be late for dinner, and that’s when Ma would drive me over and make me skip on over the gravel outside and into the establishment, my father’s bit of heaven, little hands pushing forward through the rusted metal doors.
I’d make my way in, and take a big breath of second-hand smoke which always got my heart pounding. I’d peek my head around the entrance and spot my father. He was always sitting in the same seat, jacketed and low. I’d sneak on over, real shy like, and press my skinny finger into the low of his back where I could reach. I’d feel the tar on my skin, the smell of it still fresh enough on his coat to make my nose scrunch. That scent of tar and smoke and dirt was something I longed for, it made me feel close to him. His neck was a darkened red tan from the burning sun and growing more wrinkled and leathered by the day. His form was giant and tough and unshakable. I’d hear his low voice rumble over his beer and see a small chuckle shake his jacket. That shape of his spine, bent but not broken like the wood of the bar where he rested his stained black hands, made me wonder. I wondered if he was in pain. I wondered what it was really like out there, working on the roofs of strangers’ homes all day. What did it feel like under that harsh and unforgiving sun, working your life away forever? When the day was done, he was here, smoking and drinking his heart and brain to decay, looking for an answer. I just never knew what it was. God, how blindly I loved him back then. My hero. He’d stoically feel my soft nervous touch on his back, and I’d wonder if he was hoping for something or someone other than his six-year-old son. He’d turn around slowly and look at me red-eyed and exhausted and he wouldn’t say a thing. He’d just as slowly turn himself back around to Jimmy and say,
“Go on home to your mom, boy.”
I didn’t know anything about being drunk, but I knew there were different versions of my father and that there were some that loved me a little, and some that didn’t seem to love me at all. Embarrassed and defeated, I’d tell Ma that Dad wasn’t coming home yet, and I always felt like a failure when I said it.
Those were the worst days and nights. I never really knew when my dad would get back on those late evenings because Ma wouldn’t let me stay up and find out. I would cry sometimes and bury my face in my blanket and pray. I’d pray to God that my dad would make it home safely. Somehow, he always did.
I think Prince might be asleep against the booth top. I don’t know what comes over me but for the first time in years I entertain a nearly forgotten longing. I almost whisper out to the universe, asking it to deliver my father before me, but I don’t. Instead, I watch Saul clean a few pint glasses and find myself wondering if he really would decide to give the whole thing over. He sure did look like his father drying those glasses.
Prince is right. Saul is strung out. Even from across the bar I can notice the purple half-moons under his eyes. I pick up my pint and walk over to him. I take a seat where my father once did.
“Another?” Saul asks.
“Yeah, man.” And he gets to pouring.
When he sets the pint back down, I say, “Saul, you know, my dad used to come in here every day.”
“Mhm.”
“Every fuckin day Saul.”
“Like father, like son.”
“Come on. I’m not in here that much.”
“Pretty damn close.”
“No, not like that man, my pops would come in here like it was his religion, Saul And your pops was the pastor. And man, here’s the thing, I’ve been thinking. I’m really wondering right about now what in the fuck it was they’d even talk about? Your pops would be standing right there, kinda like you are now, as a matter of fact, towel slung over his shoulder and smoking up a storm, and he’d be listening to my pops go on about whatever the hell it was, and I’m wondering now, if you have any idea what they were talking about?”
“I don’t know, Cash. Life.”
“Life? Yeah. But what about it?”
“’Bout whatever it was.”
“Yeah. But what was it?”