Sally is sleeping it off in the corner under a dead-eyed Smirnoff neon sign. An oxygen tank waits patiently for her to stir. No one will touch her wallet. Johnny Cash’s baritone, a gift from God in this punch-drunk tavern, growls, and rumbles, heavy thunder, and gospel from the blocky Wurlitzer—you can run on for a long time, run on for a long time, run on for a long time, sooner or later, God’ll cut you down…
Tommy reads out loud to Carmine, who stands, stoically, both in the moment and somewhere else entirely.
Obsolete before I ever had a gleaming purpose.
The map in my head, the stabbing, the dread, knowing the journey is a means to an inevitable end. When I wake I only hear the empty mouths pontificate, verbally exfoliate, me, and I seethe, grinding teeth, hate, deep, beneath, and I grin like a fool, nod, plod and drag this hardening anchor, rancor, a punishing reminder that I have a piece missing, likely more than one, dead in the center, and I stab the air and stoke the bare fire with bizarre shapes that don’t quite fit, like a hand that doesn’t quite grip or the collars of all my shirts, too blue, too tight, hanging starched straight, never a button or a seam (seemingly) out of place.
“Why can I only write shit like that? Bleak.” Tommy flips the small notebook closed, shoves it in his shirt pocket, and gives it a pat for safekeeping. Some things can be shit and treasure at the same time. A box fan circulates brown and yellow light and the echoes of a million cigarettes.
“I don’t know,” Carmine answers, giving the pockmarked wood a quick wipe. “I saw a willow tree the other day, stripped naked of its leaves. It looked like my wife’s hair after chemo.”
The college kids at the end of the bar break Carmine’s train of thought. Urban archeologists, they’ve cut class to mix with the locals, to get some grime on their small shoes. The dollar Molson’s are a nice bonus. Everyone can puff up their chest and buy a round.
“I also had a horrible dream last night,” Carmine continues. “I read if you take potassium supplements you can dream more vividly, in crazy color. I was talking to my boy, and he was saying that despite all my efforts I am still black and white. Does it get any worse than that?”
Tommy mulls the question through the bottom of his heavy-bottomed glass. Carmine fetches a case of Molson from the cooler. And Howlin’ Wolf lacquers the duskiness with a wide brush…Oh, I asked her for water, she brought me gasoline. Oh, I asked her for water, she brought me gasoline. That’s the troublingest woman that I ever seen…
Some great lines in here. You can't smoke in bars in Michigan, so it created a weird time warp in my head.