24
Two a.m. Everyone has long since stumbled home. I’m at the bar now, closing the place down with Saul. He pours us both another beer and sits down to my left. He scratches the top of his head and lets out a pent-up breath. He wears his favorite tucked in black shirt with Zeppelin’s famous Hindenburg disaster album art on the chest, stained blue jeans, and rugged dirtied cowboy boots with metal snakes wrapping ’round to the point. Poor Saul.
His spine naturally bends to the bar top, and he hangs there like that without moving, staring at his beer. Lost in the madness of life. He clearly hasn’t shaved in days, and it’s patchy on his face but looks fine. He’s a rugged hard sort who’s been worn down by many seasons, in so many ways, but this didn’t make him unique. Many of us had been given a rough roll around here. What makes Saul unique, to me, is his softness. You have to look closely to see it, but it’s there, I promise you. It’s hidden back, way back in the depth of his eyes and in the layers of his gruff vocalities. Yes, it’s in his voice. I swear, if you listen close enough, the voice will expose everything about a person. It travels up and out of the soul, from the pits of the stomach, and accidentally reveals the most intimate, buried of secrets. But you really have to listen .
Saul takes a drink, lets out another exaggerated breath.
“Grew up in this place, Cash.”
“We did.”
“Damn near thirty years.”
“Yeah.”
“Can’t seem to shake it.”
“Me either.”
“You know I even sleep here some nights—”
“I know.”
And he takes another extended pause where he attempts to sort through his vulnerability. I find him at the end of one very long rope, maybe the longest I’ve ever seen, all ratted and frayed and exhausted.
“When’d you have your first drink you think?” he asks.
“Think I was, like, nine.”
“I reckon that’s around the same.”
“Yeah. Early.”
“Early, and ever since.”
“Yeah.”
“Think you’ll ever stop?”
“No.”
“No. Don’t reckon I will either.”
“We never had a chance pal.”
“No. Cash, let me tell you something.”
“Alright.”
“I hated my father.”
“Yeah.”
“I mean it. I have no love for him.”
“Mhm.”
“Nowhere in my heart.”
“Yeah.”
“I just don’t want you thinkin I’m holdin out on this thing on his account or nothin. This ain’t no gesture of love or nothin like that. I got nothin but hate where the love should be.”
“Yeah. I get that.”
“I know you do.”
“Yeah.”
“You were there.”
“I was.”
“Maybe I shouldn’t. But I hate him.”
“Well.”
“I mean it.”
“I believe you man.”
“Jimmy’s Place ain’t nothin, Cash. It’s the people.”
“Yeah.”
“It’s the people. It’s always been the people.”
“You’ve got that part right, pal.”
“Maybe I don’t seem it, but I’d hate to leave ’em behind.”
“Yeah. Me too.”
“I know you feel the same.”
“I do.”
“I know it. I only heard you guys out today ’cause of you.”
“Thanks man.”
“Don’t want you to think it was a waste of time.”
“Wasn’t it?”
“I don’t know.”
“It’s okay, pal. It’s all okay.”
“Yeah. Thanks Cash.”
I lift my glass and we cheers in the silence.
“You know”—Saul lets out a rare chuckle—“if my dad hadn’t dragged me here all those years ago and forced me to work nights, I never woulda been a drunk by thirteen.”
“Me either.”
“Thirteen. And workin late shifts and smokin and takin trash out for him. Every day.”
“All the time.”
“He ain’t never said more than two words to me, never.”
“Yeah.”
“And you know I’d see him ’round here, belly out and drunk himself, servin. And he’d be havin these long conversations, with your pops and some others. And I always thought, ain’t that somethin. Seein him talkin like that. Really talkin. He never spoke none to me.”
“Mine never had much to say to me either.”
“I never got that.”
“Neither did I.”
“He was a big, stupid drunk, with big stupid hands and he had no business fatherin nobody. God, I got hate in my heart for him Cash, I still do—”
And just like that, tough, rugged ole Saul’s poor eyes begin to water. As stoically as I’d seen a man cry, he cries. “I just say it ’cause I don’t want nobody assumin nothin ’bout that when I think twice on sellin this place.”
“I know, man.”
“It’s the people.”
“I know.”
“It’s just that. That’s all.”
“Right—”
“But I don’t know why you want it so bad.” He wipes at his eyes.
“God, I don’t know man—”
“Don’t know why you’re always comin in here all these damn nights and just watchin around and drinkin and playin pool.”
“Yeah. I don’t know either.”
“Yeah, well—”
“Man, what I said earlier. You do remember playin those games in the back lot all those nights while we waited to go home right?”
“Games?”
“Man, you know like kick the can and that shit. We’d play ’em back there…”
“Yeah, I guess.”
“Because there was one time, I won’t ever forget it. We were sittin, you and me, back behind one of the barrels, and you looked at me all big eyed and happy and said, this was the best part of your life.”
“I said that?”
“The best part of your life.”
“Doesn’t sound like me.”
“You said it man, just like that.”
“Yeah. Well. It’s kinda sad I don’t remember that, ain’t it?”
“You do man, you do. Just a long time ago is all.”
I watch as the story sinks in. It wasn’t nothin crazy as far as storytellin goes, it’s just one of the stories I remember most about Saul when we were younger. Out of hundreds of memories, that’s one of them that stands out. He was so sweet and honest back then, so pure. His heart was still full, hanging on and hopeful.
“Was a damn long time ago,” he says.
“Yeah man. It was. And it was yesterday.”
“You ever gonna head out, you think?”
“Of Johnston?”
“You were talkin all about how great leavin would be.”
“Meant for you.”
“Didn’t sound like it.”
“God. I don’t know, man.”
“You thinkin ‘bout it?”
“Nah I can’t leave, man.”
“Why not?”
“Place would go to shit.”
“What’s keepin you here?”
“You already said it, pal.”
“The people.”
“Mhm. It’s home, yeah?”
“Yeah.”
And we drink. We philosophize back and forth about a little of this and a little of that. I have half the desperate mind to ask him every question in the world about his sister, but I don’t. Something tells me the time will come. I’m honestly just thankful to be in the bar with Saul while the beers poured themselves and we drank them. Alone and reminiscing and being brothers, which I always knew us to be. It’s rare for Saul to feel so free, so willing for conversation. I wouldn’t ruin it for the world. Let it roll, good Saul, let it roll.
About an hour later, he guzzles down the last of his Budweiser, and shakes his head. I don’t know what time it is but we’re only a few from the sun.
“You know she told me she loved me.”
“Who?”
“Rose. She said that. After all these years. Even though she don’t even know me.”
“You’re her brother, Saul.”
“I know but. Still.”
“Of course she loves you.”
“Not of course. Not of course.”
“Right.”
“I should have went out to look for her, you know. I should have seen how she was in the world.”
“Well. She’s here now. Don’t beat yourself up too bad.”
“Yeah. Suppose she is, huh?”
“Yeah. And I think she did alright.”
“She did. She did. And now we’ve got time.”
“All the time in the world.”
And with that, Saul puts his hand on my shoulder and gives me a nod of thanks. It’s the first genuinely loving gesture I’ve seen him offer in years. He walks around the bar and picks up his empty glass. All nights eventually end, and it’s too bad. Crazy, this life. I really believed Saul might jump at the chance to be freed from it all, Johnston and his roots, all of the circles and places and truth. I can see now that I read it all wrong. Saul would live and die at Jimmy’s Place, here in Johnston. Just like myself and everyone else I knew. And the tired beat nature of it had nothing and everything to do with the place. Sometimes, the place holds it all, the smells and the songs and the lights and the past and the pain and the people. Everything. Truth is, Saul thinks Jimmy’s Place is the most special spot in America. And I gotta tell ya, he’s right, I believe he’s dead right about that. I take one last pull of my beer, and I laugh because I know the bar will never be ours but it already is. It just isn’t for sale, and Saul isn’t so poor after all.