Brought into this world

With no say in the matter

many years ago

A child scrapes his knees

Treats the wound in a puddle

Friends laugh, so do I

No more jobs in town

Faithless are the once faithful

The lifeblood drained

I’m falling in love

Thirty hours of pain, and my

Wife births my whole world

An old man, am I

In the mirror, he looks tired

A flash, and it’s gone

FADE IN:

INT. CONDO - NIGHT

Two men sit on an old leather sofa. On the table in front of them are issues of rock magazines (i.e Hit Parader, Circus, Metal Edge) There's a half-filled ashtray with smoking roaches rising through the condo. The two men clink beer glasses and laugh. They’re talking about women and swearing. One has a Fender acoustic guitar in his lap. He strums some chords as the other plays harmonica. The two are rehearsing for a bar gig that they have landed downtown.

MAN WITH HARMONICA

I saw Cindy Lawler at the mall the other day. Jesus, she looks good. Should be a capital crime to look that good.

MAN WITH GUITAR

Yeah, she's a beauty. And not one of those beauties that fucked everything that walked just because she could, ya know? She made you work for it.

MAN WITH HARMONICA

Didn't make me work too hard.

The man with the harmonica winks, lets out a small laugh and takes a swig of from his bottle of Alexander Keith's

MAN WITH GUITAR

Oh yeah? The story she told me is that she was in bed waiting for you and you couldn't get your prick up. Ironic that she didn't make you work hard, and you couldn't even get hard.

MAN WITH HARMONICA

Oh, fuck you. As if that's never happened to you before Mr. Knocked-up-a-girl-before-you-were-18-year-old

MAN WITH GUITAR

Well yeah it's happened to me before, but not with a bombshell like Cindy Lawler.

MAN WITH HARMONICA

Wait a second, you slept with Cindy?

The man with the guitar lights a cigarette, holding a KISS Army lighter.

MAN WITH GUITAR

The same night.

The man with the harmonica looks on the verge of losing his shit for a moment, and then the man with the guitar breaks out in laughter, and they both begin to laugh harder than they have in years. At the stairwell there's a heavy Lion King blanket tacked to the wall acting as a makeshift door to keep out the cigarette smoke and drown out some of the sound of the boys Friday night vulgarities. Tommy, a four year old boy sits at the bottom step listening to his father and his father's friend discuss things that no four year old should be listening to.

MAN WITH HARMONICA

You know I uh, I got Jules pregnant.

MAN WITH GUITAR

Get the fuck outta here. You serious?

MAN WITH HARMONICA

Yeah. I'm a goner. My life is going to be blown to shit. No more getting laid for me.

MAN WITH GUITAR

Were you getting laid anyway?

MAN WITH HARMONICA

No, not really. But still probably more than I'm going to be. The little bastards, they ruin everything.

Tommy puts his ear up to the blanket.

MAN WITH GUITAR

You're looking at it all wrong

MAN WITH HARMONICA

I am?

MAN WITH GUITAR

Well, yeah. Listen, life is only over if you're a selfish prick. I mean, let's be honest, you're working part-time at Puralator, you're on your second marriage. The only thing you look forward to are our Friday jam sessions, which we rarely actually jam. I mean, come on, man. This could be right for you. This could finally turn you into a man.

The man with the guitar pats his friend on the back and takes a drink of his beer, placing it back on an old issue of Cream with David Lee Roth front and center.

MAN WITH HARMONICA

Oh, and I suppose you're way more a man than I am?

MAN WITH GUITAR

No doubt about it

MAN WITH HARMONICA

Fuck you

MAN WITH GUITAR

Well, I take care of what's mine. I'm on my first and only fucking marriage, you better believe that. We're making it work, and I love the little bastard. Most days he's the only thing keeping me from losing my shit. They give you a reason to not be stuck inside your head all the time. Me, me, me, me, fucking me. We're selfish beyond belief before kids. Time to start thinking about someone else for change. It's time to change the fabric of our being or some shit. You know what I mean? It wasn't like your old man or mine ever cared. Take the chance to break the cycle man. Be a good, strong father. It's hard but there's more good than bad, let me tell you that.

MAN WITH HARMONICA (thinks about the words, then shakes his head, not yet ready to hear them)

Let's just play some music

MAN WITH GUITAR

Now you're speaking my language

The man with the guitar starts strumming a G, C, and D chord with a chugging rock-a-billy pattern. The man with the harmonica belts out a blues solo and begins to sing. The two harmonize on a song called "Your True Colours" Upstairs Tommy's parents bedroom door opens with a slam, nearly scaring Tommy's skin right off his body. He can hear his mother throwing up in the bathroom, sick with the flu. And by the sounds of vomit on linoleum, he figures that she didn't make it to the toilet. The music stops, and in an instant the man with the guitar, is opening the blanket door, and spotting his four year old son dressed in long Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle pyjamas, and sporting a bed-head cowlick. Tommy is scared, because his father's temper can go nuclear.

DAD

Tommy, what are you doing down here?

TOMMY - shrugs his shoulders timidly

DAD

How long have you been down here?

TOMMY

Not long

DAD

Can you hear everything from here?

Tommy shrugs his shoulders again. As the sounds of his mother crying, and the smell from the vomit comes wafting down the stairs.

DAD

Jesus, that smell is awful. Go to bed, Tommy. Alright? Go to bed and I won't tell your mother that you've been sneaking out of bed.

Dad goes up the stairs first, and gives him the sign that the coast is clear, as Tommy runs and jumps into his bed. He can see his father holding back his mother's hair in the bathroom, as shes leaned over the toilet bowl on her hands and knees.

DAD

Ouff, that's a rough one. Are you okay?

MOM

Does it look like I'm okay? I feel like my insides are on fire. Christ, I think I'm dying.

DAD

Oh, stop. It's just a bug. It's no big deal

MOM

No big deal? Okay, let me give it to you and we'll see if it's no big deal.

DAD

That's not what I meant, and you know it.

Mom turns around and sits with her back against the bathroom vanity. Dad has a towel and he's cleaning up the vomit that missed the toilet.

MOM

This must be attractive? Just like when we we first got together eh?

DAD

Sure, something like that. (he winks)

MOM

You promised to love me in sickness and in health

DAD

And I do. Doesn't mean I think this is you at your most attractive.

Mom lets out a small laugh. Tommy smiles. He's thinking about how he made his friend laugh downstairs when he was feeling bad, and how he's making his mom laugh too. Dad has a bottle of water and he hands it to her, she drinks slowly, while wiping the sweat from her forehead.

MOM

Thanks, Hun. Sorry about yelling at you. But this bug is killing me.

DAD

No problem. I'll sure I'll get it soon enough and we can reverse roles

He smiles at her.

MOM

How's the jamming going?

DAD

What jamming? We've barely played a note.

MOM

Well, you better start playing. You have a show next week.

DAD

True. Gary knocked up Jules

MOM (looking visibly shocked, mouth agape)

What? Get the hell out of here. I thought they were on the outs. Jesus, I even heard that Jules was fooling around

DAD

Ah, who knows. None of our business. I just told him it'll make him a man, like me.

MOM spits out her water and laughs.

MOM

Oh, you're just a prime example of a man aren't you? (she flexes her arms, mockingly kissing her biceps. Tommy laughs from the bedroom)

DAD

I take care of my own. Now come on let's get you to bed.

MOM

My knight in shining Armour

DAD

My damsel in a puke soaked dress

He puts her to bed, closes the door and comes into Tommy's room. He sits on the edge of his bed.

DAD

How long have you been sneaking downstairs to listen in on our conversations?

TOMMY

Not long

DAD

Uh-huh. You know that the conversations adults have after you're in bed aren't always things you should be listening to right?

TOMMY

I know. I just like the music

DAD

You do, eh?

TOMMY

Yeah, I like the Colours one.

DAD (smiling, begins to sing)

Want to go back to the place where the smiles were on our face, just hanging round, till the sun went down. That one?

Tommy (smiling bigger than his father)

Yeah, that one. That could be on the radio

DAD

Maybe someday, kiddo.

Dad gets up, toussles Tommy's hair and begins to walk out, and then he turns around puts his finger to his lips, and reveals a bottle of beer, unopened. He opens it as mist rises from the opening.

DAD

Don't tell your mother

Tommy slides up out of bed with excitement. His father let him have one sip of beer before. The first sip from an open bottle. Tommy takes the bottle in both hands, as his father forms a shield in front of him, spreading his arms out wide. Tommy takes a sip, and grimaces like its a shot of 100 proof hard liquor. His dad takes the bottle back, kisses him on the head and exits.

DAD

Don't tell mom my secret, and I won't tell her yours.

TOMMY

I won't dad

DAD

Love you, kid.

TOMMY

Love you too, dad. Can you leave the door open a crack, I'd like to fall asleep to the music.

DAD

Sure thing, kid.

Dad walks downstairs. Tommy can hear muffled sounds from his father and his friend, but can no longer make out what they're saying. And just as he's about to fall asleep, he hears the guitar and harmonica of Your True Colours playing, and the two friends harmonizing.

A Paris hotel bathtub with Jim Morrison. A seedy Hollywood hotel with Janis Joplin. Jimi Hendrix, Brian Jones, Pigpen McKernan, and countless others who sat on man-made thrones, looked into my darkness before departing towards the great ether.

So, as I made my way through the famous Graceland gate, greeted by the large black notes of a musical score, and a silhouette of the King strapped with an acoustic guitar, I was no stranger to arranging these ethereal meetings between Gods and those who believed themselves to be.

Memphis mobsters surrounded the large home of the King. Faces as serious as death, as they gripped their weapons with viper like strangleholds.

But when I passed, they all looked around, perplexed by a sudden deep chill in their bones as my presence was made. Everyone of them felt it, yet none so much as made a glance towards another. Because they knew the chill didn’t emanate like some kind of cosmic anomaly during a humid mid-Autumn day in Memphis. The chill came from within. As a reminder that as mortals they were born, and as mortals they shall remain.

Before I reached the door, a tall, heavyset mobster with thinning grey hair looked towards me. A face of unadulterated fear washed over him like a Tsunami of dread. He looked across at the other men, hoping, praying that they noticed something too. But none of them had. His time wasn’t yet, but it would surely come sooner than he hoped. As I faded, I could feel that he knew that, too.

Through the house, across the black marble floor of the dining room, the famous jungle room, the fabric lined walls of the poolroom, and up the stairs to the Master Suite, I floated weightlessly.

On the stairs, to my left, I was greeted by a faded framed picture of the King from a bygone era. Flush cheeks, a melting-heart smile, eyes of mystery and intrigue, and of course, the hair. Slicked back without so much as a single strand out of place. A true King. A conqueror of worlds.

Inside the suite, a man spoke to a beautiful woman. Ginger Alden was her name. It was who I came for, but it certainly wasn’t the one from the framed portrait. A shell of that man. A version that had been eaten up and swallowed in the belly of a great whale.

With infinite possibilities being created every second, one truth remained absolute. That no matter how high you soared on this great earthly plain, the universe was certain to clip your wings. Where, when, or even how, remained a mystery, but that it was a certainty, was no enigma. Men weren’t meant to be gods. For I was looking at the price of those who were worshiped like such.

Elvis had a book tucked underneath his right arm. He was wearing pyjamas, and mumbling to Ginger that he had to go to the washroom. I watched like an observer. Like I had so many times before. Partaking in the intimate final moments of one’s life. Like a curse, I watched, unable to be seen, and unable to change the course of events that were to cause cataclysms of pain.

His doctor recently provided him several cocktails of prescription drugs, containing amounts of Tuinal, Demerol, Seconal, Placidyl, and Valmid. And the sweat dripping down his swollen cheeks was proof enough that the deadly concoctions were poisoning his bloodstream.

Ginger wasn’t worried as Elvis walked to the bathroom and closed the door behind him. Her soft, delicate voice simply urged him to not fall asleep, to which he replied, “Okay, I won’t.” The three last words she’d ever hear him say.

After he closed the door and she went to their lavish beyond King-sized bed, draping herself in silk, I made my way to the bathroom, where I would wait for the moment my presence was felt.

The former King mumbled to himself as he looked at the pages of “The Scientific Search For The Face Of Jesus.” His eyes directed at the text, but I held reserve that he was taking any of the information in.

He was searching for a face. One that he would not find in this room. Not the face of the messiah, as he knows it. Not even a face at all. But a messenger. A giver. An appointment setter between soul and maker. And where he went after was still a mystery, even to me.

At first, the sight would likely scare him. Because even those that know life is slipping away, never want to admit it. They want to run from it. They want to apologize, or blame, or demonize those who put them in their position. They often beg, barter, cry, scream, laugh. People don’t want to die. Even if they feel they deserve to. The finality is too immense.

And the dying always believe me to be more than I am. But I can’t change their fate. For their fate has already been written. I can’t control, or rearrange, destiny, for I only arrive when the damage has been done. Like a gravitational pull, I am directed to where I need to be. They’re already dead when I show up. I’m simply the delay.

Eventually, the King’s bloodshot, drooping, distant eyes peer in my direction as though freewill played no part in the decision. He takes a moment to allow the gears in his brain to come up with an answer for what he's seeing. Is it an illusion or the real thing? Is there even a difference?

Then a small grin rises on the left side of his face, giving me a glimpse into the man he was before the pills. Before the strain of empty promises and unfulfilled vows.

“So, it’s uh, it’s really you, isn’t it?” He says in his southern drawl. Not a trace of fear. “It’s really my time, I suppose.”

“It is”

“The King dies on his throne,” He laughed. “Right where he’s supposed to be.”

We were silent for a moment. He was thinking. I could tell that my sight was like a splash of ice cold water, sobering him up. Enough to be present. To be in his final moments.

Then he said somberly.

“I’m sorry for you know, uh, what I became.”

“You don’t need to apologize to me. I’m no judge and jury, simply a deliverer.”

“So, you don’t know where I’m going?”

“No.”

“Under that cloak, it isn’t this face, is it?” He held up the book.

“There’s nothing under here.”

He nodded like he already knew the answer. But he looked sad. Inside his drug-addled brain was the fight. The fight between acceptance and defiance.

“Do I have any time?”

“A little bit. I’m forced to come early. My curse, I suppose.”

He put the book on the sink and grabbed some toilet paper to dab at his sweaty face. I could see that he pushed the thoughts of a second chance away. The acceptance returned, and his face loosened up. I could sense relief.

“When I was a boy, ya know, my momma and me, we were bone broke. Couldn’t afford to scratch two pennies together. But music, man. Music set your soul free. Dancing set your soul free. And it didn’t cost a red cent. You just walked outside, and you heard it. I remember I’d walk down these dirty old roads, the wind blowing the dirt in my face. Blinding me like a bat. But I could hear the music beyond it. You couldn’t see who was playing it. But you heard it, you know? You heard it, you felt it, and you knew it was important. It went beyond skin colour. Beyond politics. It went beyond everything you thought was important. I heard the Godmother, Sister Rosetta, like an entire choir of angels were sucked down from the heavens and made a home inside her lungs. And when she sang, they were set free. I heard Jimmie Rodgers, Fats Domino, Little Richard, Chuck Berry, ya know? And it was freedom. It was freedom of body, spirit, and mind. It was sex, religion, it was a holy union. It was the Father, The Son, And The Holy Spirit. It was life.”

He paused for a moment, thinking of that young boy. The young poor country boy, with aspirations as big as the Garden of Eden. A landscape of purity and beauty, but where there’s Eden, there’s always a snake. An offer. And forbidden fruit.

“I lost sight of it. One day nobody gives a damn, and the next every girl on every street corner is lined up just to kiss your cheek, or touch your hand. They see you and they start to cry. Like my face was the face of Jesus. It’s hard not to believe in it all, you know? You try to run away and tell yourself that it ain’t real. That it’s just vanity. But eventually you can’t outrun it. Eventually, it eats you alive. You look around your home and you don’t recognize a face. These people. These weeds that sprouted up into my life. They don’t care if I live or die, as long as their names are written in my Last Will and Testament. ”

He looked at me again. And a single tear escaped. Time was nearly up.

“Eventually you ain’t got no one to trust. Not even yourself. So what do you do? You lose everything you thought you were. Then you end up here. Dying on the throne.”

He shrugged his shoulders, and showed me a smile wrought with regret, but also acceptance.

“I ain’t gonna beg.”

“Are you ready?” I asked.

“Yes, sir. I hope the king ascends to a great castle in the sky.”

“I hope so too”

As I left Graceland, being pulled by the wind to my next destination, I thought about my deal. A hundred years for a soul. But now I wondered .

After all these years. All this pain. Will there even be a soul to go back to?

Then I tried to remember. How many years left? How many years have I done this?

Who told me I had a 100 years? Who told me that I would be free?

The wind guided me.

There was no time.

Only death.

An eternity of punishment made worse by a single thread.

A single thread of hope.

The rain falls hard but the blood remains. A nomad. A man without a face or a name. I wander through these familiar streets like a stranger in my own skin. Reliving moments from a bygone era where the sun wasn’t afraid to push its way through the dark clouds. The sun. Laughter. Friends. Feeling alive. Wanting to be alive. Then the voice of my mother echoes through the heavy fall wind. “This is your last chance, James. If you use again, you’re not welcome here.” I should have heeded that warning. But instead I dug inside her purse for loose change, a couple of bills, and a handful of red pills. I took them all down to the alley on St James, where the medicine man awaited the arrival of his great disciple with a mouth full of discolored razor sharp teeth. Like the mouth of a great white shark. A laugh as evil as a Kamikaze killer crashing into a building filled with love, life, and innocence. As evil as the devil himself. From his tattered army jacket he hauls out the needle. My kryptonite. The tiny instrument capable of breaking down my entire defense system. But what I have isn’t enough. There's a favour I’ll need to do first. The medicine man holds that smile and needle like a statue. The rain falls hard. The only way to get through it is to pretend that I’m watching a scene in a horrific PSA. That I’m someone else.

The blackjack table giveth and the blackjack table taketh away. For a moment as small as a single breath, I had it. The problems in my life were fixed. My phoenix had risen from the ashes, and I was free. All I had to do was send a signal from my brain down to my legs, telling them to push my ass off the chair, turn my body around, cash my winnings, and walk towards the glowing red neon exit sign.

But every moment is fleeting. And inside each one of those minuscule bubbles is a decision that needs to be made. Many of them are small. Too small to really matter. Should I put my right arm through my T-shirt first? Or my left? Well, who really cares? Your day is likely to go on in similar fashion either way. Other decisions are bigger, like whether shoveling behind the car after a snowstorm is the right choice, or opting for the floor-it-and-hope-for-the-best method. Getting stuck is a son of a bitch, and you might be late for work. Depending on your temperament, the fire may last an hour or a day, but you’ll get over it. Unless you run down a kid or an old lady on Main street on your way to work in a fit of rage, it will be forgotten. And life will go on.

This decision, though. The decision to push my luck right off the edge of a cliff was a bad one. A calamitous moment that wouldn’t be forgotten.

When my brain finally sent the alert to get out of the casino, I walked to the red sign slumped like Quasimoto. Charlene always told me to straighten my posture, letting me know that how you present yourself on the outside plays a big part in how you feel on the inside. But walking out of that sinful place, my posture could have been as straight as the most perfect stalactite ever formulated, and it wouldn’t have made a difference. There was no recovering from this one.

As I pressed my drunken body against the heavyset doors of the Featherweight Casino, I’d never felt so despondent in all my life. There were moments as a kid when I’d wake up in the middle of the night to the graveyard silence of my house. I’d walk down the hall to see if mom was passed out drunk on the couch, or entertaining a friend in the bedroom. But when the realization that the house was vacant set in, I’d become disoriented and panicked. I’d believe that she was the damsel in distress that populated so many of my comic books that were piled in a Leaning Tower of Pisa next to my bed. I’d run outside, grab my bike and I’d take off down Tannery Road. 2, sometimes 3 o’clock in the morning, shouting my mother’s name. Those moments of feeling lost so deep inside a maze of your own mind that you were sure you’d never find your way out were no strangers to me, but this was the worst..

The Santa hat that was placed on me by the pretty brunette waitress who smiled as big and deep as a canyon flailed limbless in the wind. The waitress who smiled, winked, danced, clapped and laughed like a drunken frat girl who gets handed a joint filled with kitchen herbs and spices at a party just so everyone can see what a fucking fake she is. She slid me double and rum and cokes all throughout my almost pious ascent to infinity. But then when the dealer’s hand started bitch slapping mine, old Smiles R’ Us turned her attention elsewhere. Love you when you’re high, leave you when you’re low. John Lennon singing “nobody loves you when you’re down and out,” echoed in my head.

Now, the money I owed Billy Bigsby had vanished inside those rainbow coloured poker chips. Christmas Eve or not, there was no holiday spirit big enough to keep him from giving me the shit kicking of the century. Just a beating would take Billy’s heart growing three sizes inside of his massive chest like the Grinch. If I survived, now that would be a Christmas miracle.

But I had to admit the lion’s share of the blame. These guys were bad news. I knew it when I approached them. I knew it in the way they spoke to me, and the way they looked at me. Rather through me, like there was no human connection to be made. They didn’t see me as a being. As a soul, a consciousness. A father. A husband. Son. Brother. They saw me as collateral. Billy, through a simple look and a slight rise of the right side of his lip, conveyed the message clearer than any I’d ever received. He would stomp me out as quick and easily as an ant pitter pattering on stone slabs in the mid-July desert sun.

He loaned me the money, sure. He’d always loan the money. He had money to burn. And with his skyscraping interest rates, and his love of blood, there was no way Billy could lose. No way at all. It was your money, or your life. Both options made his pants tighten.

I bypassed the Dollar and cut through the parking lot of the Sacred Heart Church. Before I noticed myself doing it, I was yelling and cursing blasphemous names at the steel cross that stood like the eye of big brother on top of the large gothic structure. The church my mother dragged me to when the Sunday morning hangovers didn’t completely immobilize her.

We’d walk up the cracked stone steps and be greeted by a tall slender Irishmen named Father O’Connell. My mother would tell me to sit as still and silent as a corpse as the preacher went through his animated verses and psalms. Using his old bony fingers like they were electrical currents attached to a sky of great beings. He’d raise them in the air as though he could bring down the earth to crush the great sinners under the weight of omnipotence.

My mother would stare at him in awe as though he were a God himself, and not just one of millions of middlemen. Messengers. Devotees, who hoped that through a white collar and a rosary, they could gain access to treasures and pleasures far beyond anything the earthly plains could offer. But then, Father O’Connell was just another man. Another man who thought with the head below his Bible Belt. Another man who walked out my mother’s door after the pounding on the wall had stopped. Just another sick man.

Christmas Lights shined through Annandale. Long strips of bulbs illuminated the eaves of these old working-class homes. Then there were the Griswold families from National Lampoon, spending a king’s ransom on shit that would be boxed up and thrown in the attic or basement the day after tomorrow. But hey, they’d get their picture taken, with their fake smiles, fake love, fake lives for the small town paper. Hurrah.

Then Charlene’s voice returned to tell me it was okay for people to just enjoy things. Not everyone had an ulterior motive for each breath they took. Most folks took them just because they came, and the thought of another one coming in right behind didn’t fill them with self-loathing. Happiness didn’t make everyone want to self-sabotage their lives, and ensure, out of some form of self-fulfilling prophecy, that they deserved unhappiness. Let the people blow up their 30 foot Frosty the Snowman. Let those people smile like serial killers for the paper. Because you know what, Danny? Those people are having a hell of a lot better Christmas than you are. It isn’t their fault that you’re a drunken gambler who, despite your wife’s many tearful pleas, pissed away all your family’s money, and if that wasn’t bad enough, you decided to ask Billy Fucking Bigsby for a loan. And what did you do with that money? Oh right. Scattered in the wind. And now you’re walking through town trying to come up with a solution to an unsolvable problem. You’re avoiding the inevitable. Your life, Danny. Your life. It’s OVER! I repeat. It’s Over!

For a split second, I think of going into the Dollar and asking Billy for another loan. 5 grand, 10 max. Just enough to get back to the table. Get back to the felt and watch Miss prissy bitch show me the time of day once again. Once I beat the dealer at his own game.

But the thought’s short-lived, as Billy’s reaction pushes out all semblance of hope. He’d either express amusement at my begging, or he’d be savage with his brutality. Billy was capable of both Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, each within a snap of a finger of each other.

That thought takes me back to the first, and only time I asked the devil for a loan. Walking towards the bar, and pausing at the door. Knowing that it was the point of no return. Knowing that only a certain kind of desperation created through a complete and irrational kind of self-destructive behavior could lead me here. Billy’s clientele were all people with less control over their own beings than cattle inflicted with mad cow disease. So, he always looked calm, because in his line of business there wasn’t a worry to be had. Who amongst the tainted souls that came to him on hands and knees that stuck to spilled alcohol on the floor, and looked up to him like he was a Protestant King in times of great famine, would challenge him?

I walked in, and any chatter that might have been taking place amongst the regulars stopped abruptly. They looked at me like I imagine the guards on death row look after the last rites have been spoken and there’s nothing left but the mile.

Billy had a young woman on his lap. Christ, she couldn’t have been older than 18 years old, and my guess was that she was younger. He turned in his chair, placing his hand of cards on the table, and began to sing. “Oh, Danny boy. The pipes. The pipes are calling. From glen to glen, and down the mountain side.”

The men who sat around the table, and the rest of drunken regulars who formed a slumped semi circle around the bar, didn’t know if they should laugh, or clap, or remain as silent as ghosts. They looked nervous. The wrong decision never went over lightly with Billy.

“Come on guys, lighten up. Have a laugh. It’s on me.”

Then they began to laugh. I asked for the loan, gripping my ball cap like I was wringing out a soaking wet towel. And he just said yes. Yes, of course. No problem. Anything to help. “George, get the man his money. He’s good for it.” He said and turned back around. I stood, too scared to move for a few moments before eventually mustering the courage to spiral my body back towards the door.

As I took my first, maybe my second, step, Billy said. “You remember Bernie Geraghty?” Bernie was, of course, a big story in our small town. Everyone knew the name. He had become posthumously famous after being found in an empty boxcar down at the rail yard, with a couple dozen stab wounds, a torn out eye, burnt flesh, and a whole myriad of other contusions and dismemberments.

“Yeah” I said.

“Outstanding debt” was all he answered. Then George smiled the evilest, most vile grin I’d ever witnessed, and placed the duffel bag in my hands.

“Good luck at the tables, Charlie Babbitt” Then the bar erupted in degenerate laughter..

Charlene, I can’t go home. I can’t go home. I want to so goddamn bad. But I can’t. I can’t walk up our stairs and see you sleeping peacefully inside of our bed with little Jamie in the bassinet next to you. I can’t look at you or him and let the voices of your folks reassure me that I was never good enough. That you were foolish for taking a chance on me. Foolish for loving me, as though love was something even remotely in our control. I just can’t.

The whistle of the last freight train being built before Christmas sounded in the distance. They’d be heading towards the Iron Bridge soon. The sound was like an epiphany, and I knew that the only way out of my predicament was out of my life.

I started towards the edge of town. My legs hurt. But they’d get a rest when I sat on the frozen ties, and waited for the God of Labour and Steel to take me home. “I’m sorry,

Charlene. I’m sorry, Jamie. But you’re better off without me.”

Then I walked against the cold wind, trying to convince myself that Billy Bigsby wouldn’t hurt my family because I was a coward. But the thought wouldn’t stick.

—--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The same dream. The same damn dream every night. The tracks. He’s there and I’m parked right across the road at the vacant lot that used to be an Esso back in the 90s. I’m in the cab. I see him sitting there on the ties, with his legs crossed like he is chanting some kind of mantra. Praying to a Hindu God or something. I reach for my seatbelt, but it’s stuck. Then the strap wraps around my neck like a noose. It presses tight against my throat. I reach out my hand and scream his name, but there are no words. There’s no oxygen. Then a bright light. The headlight of the 347 heading east towards the sawmill in Cannery. It’s blowing its whistle. My boy still sits and at the last second, he looks over at the cab that I’m in, winks and says, “It’s all your fault.”

I’m up. My round belly is caked with sweat and it’s gyrating in and out at a speed that I know is not sustainable for my heart. The coughing fit begins. A couple of small ones to kick off the party, then the Goliath’s that stem from deep down. Down in my sternum, traveling up through my lungs, bringing with it a pound of mucus, and sometimes his red mistress. One after another, my throat burns like battery acid has just been poured into my mouth. I’m hitting my chest like a human defibrillator. Please stop. Jesus Christ. Stop.

Eventually, the fit slows. I can take in air again without choking on my own saliva. The coughs eventually subside down to throat clearing, and I think it’s over. In and out. In through your nose, and out through your mouth, just like Martha used to say when I was having one of my Everest-sized panic attacks.

Martha.

Then the vomiting starts.

I aim for the small basket garbage bin that’s been placed at the foot of my bed, for instances just like this one (I’m a regular bill of health, I know). But most of it hits the linoleum and the cracks in between the tiles. A place nearly impossible to clean. That is, unless I rip up all the flooring and get it redone, which I’ve been lying to myself about doing for the better part of a decade.

After the vomit subsides to dry heaves, I drag myself to the shower, and let the hot water beat off my face for as long as the tank will allow it. Which is about fifteen minutes, twenty tops.

Once I’m out, I look at the clock and see that it’s quarter to 10 p.m. It’s Christmas Eve. My cab is sitting outside. I know Reggie told me to take the night off. There wasn’t anything going on except maybe a couple of middle-aged partner swapping parties up in the Glendales. But even that wouldn’t be worth the skin off my ass, he told me.

“It’s far up in the country, and the stingy pricks never tip, anyway. So, it ain’t even worth your time, Gil. Stay home. Enjoy it.”

But what was there to enjoy here? I looked around the trailer. A picture of Martha was still magnetized to the fridge. Martha, in her graduating year of med school, back in 78. Then there was a picture of me and the Rangers in Quang Tri back in 68, and below that was…Christ. My boy. There wasn’t anything to enjoy here. The place was empty, except for beer cans scattered over the floor like my own private landfill, and the few pictures that brought back pain worse than any physical ills I’ve ever experienced..

So, I grabbed my coat, hat, a pack of Luckies and walked to the taxi. Picking up the radio, I said,

“Yeah, Reggie. It’s me. I’m just going to drive around town for a while. If there’s nothing, I’ll drive my old tired ass back home and hit the head, alright?”

Reggie sighed into the mic. “You old bastards don’t know how to do anything but work, do you?”

“It ain’t work, if you love what you do, hoss.” I answered, and this gave the dispatch a small laugh.

“Yeah. Reggie. No problem. Merry Christmas, ya mutt.”

“Back at you. You poodle.”

The snowfall was picturesque as I pulled out of College Road. The kind of Christmas Eve you wished for when you were a kid watching Charlie Brown, or one of those stop motion classics from the 60s. Rudolph, The Little Drummer Boy, and the one with Burgermeister Meisterburger.

Despite the financial crisis that plagued this town, along with most other industrial towns across the globe, the Christmas spirit didn’t collapse with it. If anything, it seemed like many of these middle-class homes had added to their repertoire of an all-out-see-it-from-space Christmas menagerie. A big fuck you to whoever was looking down on them.

It put a smile on my face. This was a tough place. And the fat cats on Wall Street, playing Russian roulette with the money of millions of people, weren’t going to knock us back into the caves, etching petroglyphs on the stone walls. We would persevere.

Even the drunk yelling profanities at the church steeple was still wearing a Santa hat.

I drove down King and turned left on Main Street in front of the bank, where I slowed to a crawl before parking in front of a performance by our town’s own Jameson Weller. Jameson was sitting on a milk crate strumming his acoustic guitar and singing his heart out to the vacant stores. I turned down Springsteen crooning “Merry Christmas, Baby. You surely treat me ni-iiii–ice” and rolled down the window.

In front of him were scattered framed portraits that he painted. He wasn’t even selling them. They were free. He was singing CCR with his eyes closed, and God knows where he thought he was. Madison Square Garden maybe, because he sure didn’t think he was on the corner of Main Street in front of the United Bank singing to the wind. Or maybe he did. I guess I don’t know what was swimming around his head. And who was I to talk? My head wasn’t swimming so much as pounding from the near fatal heart murmuring-vomit attack that plagued me not long ago.

“I’m your biggest fan,” I yelled, and his eyes opened with a startle before realizing who it was.

“Ain’t hard to be the biggest when you’re the only one.” He laughed.

“Gotta start somewhere.”

“I’m almost 60 years old. I’m too old for starting anything.”

“That’s not the attitude.”

“It’s the only one I got. Any requests?”

“How about warming up in the car and checking the lights?”

For the past few years, since Ben died, I drove Jameson around town on Christmas Eve to see the displays. Jameson was an old war vet like myself and a semi-popular folk musician back in the singer songwriter haze of the 70s. The lyrical poetry of Jim Croce, with a deep from-the-sternum rasp of Dave Van Ronk one reviewer wrote.

He had done pretty well for himself. A few club/cafe tours, but he never made the jump. He came back to town and worked at the paper mill for a few years. Got married. But eventually the war, and his failed dreams of stardom, took its toll. For the next couple of decades, he was in and out of the psych ward in Lone Pine. Now, he was living in a shelter, playing songs, writing poetry, and painting. Living a life of artistic integrity, he called it. Not caring for the money. Doing it for the peace of the mind. Doing it for the wind.

I don’t really know why I took it upon myself to be his busted-halo guardian angel. But I suppose it had something to do with a deal or bargain between me, the big man upstairs, Jameson, and my son. A lost soul for a lost soul, maybe? I don’t know.

All I do know is that Ben needed me his whole goddamn life, and I wasn’t there. Waking up in the morning and seeing that bright orange flame rise from the east would always serve as penance for that. But maybe doing this could alleviate some kind of pain. Maybe it could put me in good graces with the man upstairs, and maybe, just maybe, if there is such a place, allow me to see my boy once again. It was a fairytale; I know. But a broken man needs some faith to cling on to, even if it’s paper thin.

Jameson got up, walked over to the cab, threw his guitar in the trunk, slammed it shut and hopped in the front seat. I patted him on the shoulder before pulling out and heading for our annual sojourn.

He talked my ear off, like I was sure he would, barely letting me get a word in edgewise. But it was fine. It was nice. People who don’t get to talk much spend most of their days listening. And you’d be surprised what a person can learn with open ears and a closed mouth. Most of us go through life, living with a paradoxical principle.

Jameson knew everything that was going on in this town. Just from walking around, playing music, sitting in bars, standing in line at the soup kitchen. He listened, he learned, and created art through the broken tales of the disenfranchised.

“I was down at The Dollar a few nights ago.” He said. “Billy and his crew were there, ya know?”

“Oh yeah. Wouldn’t be The Dollar without its chief patron.” I answered, thinking about Billy as the fat loner kid who grew up two trailers down from me. His mother, who owned a sex shop downtown, was ripe for teenage brutality. An onslaught of taunts from little sexual deviants. A father who always had some kind of cash on him, but no one knew what he actually did for that money. He always had the bills stuffed into his thick woolie socks that were placed inside sandals, no matter what time of year it was.

He’d sit outside drinking beer, listening to the ballgame on a little transistor radio. Always half drunk, joking, laughing, swearing, seeming to have an inside joke with every kid, mom and dad in the neighbourhood, well, except for Billy. The rest of the world got his light, and the darkness was saved for the boy.

Billy would come home from school, sometimes a shoe missing, sometimes a bloody nose. Sometimes torn shirts and pants. Sometimes just crying. His old man would ask him what happened, before gripping his ear tight enough to rip it off as clean as a sheet of paper in a notebook.

We’d peer outside our window, pretending we were doing lawn work, or getting the mail, going for a bike ride. The public tune-ups were like a car wreck. You didn’t like what you saw, but you couldn’t look away either. Our trailer park congregation stared intently like it was a scene of a TV show, and not the harsh realities of College Street.

To the old man, everything was Billy’s fault. Whether it was rumours of his mother fucking the customers at the sex shop, or his father’s reputation as a man to be taken seriously, Billy was always ripe for his father’s wrath. His son was weak. His own flesh and blood, not only the laughingstock of the trailer park but of the city as a whole.

Well, Billy boy got the last laugh on that one. His father wanted a monster to carry around his sins after he died? He got that.

And the night he killed his old man, when Sheriff Pangborn knocked on my trailer and asked me about Billy. For some reason still unknown to myself, I became his alibi.

Without skipping a beat, I told the sheriff he was down at the quarry with me during the time the man was killed. Skipping stones. Talking about getting laid. You know? The shit kids do, and the shit kids talk about.

Billy became a monster, and through that development, there was always guilt on my part. It’s just that when a man has been kicked around his whole life, I always thought a hand to pick them up would steer them right. Of course, I was wrong. But Billy never forgot the brief conversation I held with the Sheriff all those years ago.

He gave me a card not long after he had anointed himself the King of Annandale, and told me it was a get out of jail free card for when I needed it. It was still placed in my wallet, behind an old picture of me and Martha, drinking beer and laughing on the bay.

Jameson snapped me back into reality. “You listening, old boy?”

“Sorry. Sorry. Go on.” I answered.

He snickered and rolled his eyes a little before jumping back into his story.

“Anyway, some poor guy comes in looking for a loan. Lost the family’s money by playing fast and loose with it. And apparently, he went to double on that cash across the river at the casino. Doesn’t the guy lose it all? The crazy bastard is now in deep for 40, 50 thousand dollars and apparently he’s wandering around town drunk as a skunk with a santa hat on.”

“What? Wandering around town with a Santa hat on?”

A brief vision of the stumbling man screaming, Fuck You at the steeple of the Sacred Heart, came into my mind. I had laughed at him, thinking of him as nothing more than a merry drunk stumbling his way through the holidays.

“I think I saw him.” I said. “Jesus’ information travels fast. How did you hear this so fast?

“Probably did. With a debt like that, what was it Springsteen said? A debt no honest man can pay. Anyway, a couple of Billy’s goons stumbled by before you got there, laughing and tossing a few pity bills my way. I think one of em is shacked up with one of the waitresses at Fairweather. Guess she was the one who put it on him and got him drunk enough to place overly confident bets that eventually blew up in his face. They say the casino loves her. She knows every gambler’s limit. She can read when they’ve just had enough to feel like betting big. ”

We drove around for a while longer, still no word from dispatch. The snow fell heavier, and so did my thoughts. Jameson continued to talk, and I looked over several times to see him with his head leaned up against the window. Talking just to talk at this point. Not really caring if anyone was listening. Or just assuming that I’d given up trying altogether.

I felt guilty, sure, but every time I tried to be present, the man in the Santa hat came to mind. I didn’t know his story, and of course, many of the people who went to Billy were really no better than he was. Just more desperate. But others were victims of a crisis that they had no more control over than the weather. Christmas was a time of great suffering for those without any hope,

After about a half hour or so, I brought him back to the United Bank. He thanked me, and I told him not to.

“Sorry, Jameson. Just that kid with the Santa hat. Something about him and Billy. Just making my stomach turn, ya know?”

Then it was his turn to pat me on the shoulder. “I know you blame yourself for Billy and your boy. But it’s killing you, you know? From one soldier to another. You look like shit, friend. Find peace before it’s too late.”

I laughed. He smiled, got up and grabbed his guitar from the trunk, before heading back to his home on the milk crate. I watched him for a minute and saw him finger pick the song that earned some form of national notoriety back in the spring of 73.

Lost in the Yesterday’s. Words that couldn’t be any truer. It was a lovely song. And I felt a mix of nostalgia, peace, and anger. Anger that guys like Jameson would always get the short end of the stick. Guys like Billy, with money, women, and connections, would forever control the way things were. Keeping things from being the way they should be. While people like Jameson, and I suppose myself, would wander around in a hamster’s wheel. Going nowhere.

The snow was now falling harder, and the picturesque movie quality of it had lost its magic. Now the tires spun at every turn, illuminating the dashboard like its own set of Christmas lights. Ronnie checked in to ask if I’d just go home, and I told him not yet, even though the heat in the car was making my eyes heavy. But with sleep came nightmares, and I was scared to death that the next time I had an episode like the one I just had, it would be my curtain call. Dead in a trailer, found facedown in a pool of his own vomit. Now there was a gravestone marker.

Despite fighting against sleep with every fibre of my being, I could tell I was losing the battle, because in the rearview mirror, Ben sat staring out the window, just like Jameson had, only moments ago. And just as soon as he appeared, he vanished.

I rubbed deeply at my eyes, truly wondering if I’d ever been this tired. Probably back in Vietnam, but it was too long ago to remember, and fatigue could slide off your back like monsoon rain on a flak jacket when you were young. Tired was a simple inconvenience. Now it clung like a leech and spread like cancer. There was no escaping it.

Again, Ben appeared. He looked like he did when he was 17. Tall and thin like a beanstalk. In the days of playing basketball, working out, and running across the river at the beck and call of his first love. Jemma. Running across the bridge in sub-zero temperatures because she said she was lonely. Oh, to be young again.

“Put on some weight, would ya?” I said, knowing that those words drove him batshit back in those days. Protein, creatine, heavy weights at the gym, stuffing himself full of calories, and he still weighed no more than a 150 lbs soaking wet. And standing at 6 foot 3, that was something that bothered him greatly. Bambi on Ice, his friends called him. Clumsy as all hell. But a good kid. Great kid. Smart as a whip, and driven, like his mother. The only attributes I ever gave him were his flat pug-like nose, and a fear of failure, and disappointment that led to heavyweight bouts with depression.

“Maybe I could steal some of yours, eh?” He answered, and I laughed. I wondered if I’d be awakened from my semi consciousness at any moment in a ditch, or maybe I just wouldn’t wake at all. Flattened by a semi. Could have already happened, I supposed. I could be dead right now. But I didn’t feel that way, though I guess I’d have no way of knowing what it felt like. Dead or not, being able to speak to my boy again was something that I wasn’t going to pinch my skin to awaken from.

“Yeah, yeah. That would be nice if life worked that way, wouldn’t it?” He just smiled and nodded and resumed looking out the window. Days and weeks, and months on end praying for a moment like this, and I couldn’t think of a word to say.

So, eventually I just simplified my guilt.

“I’m sorry, kid.”

“Sorry for what?” He answered, taking his head off the glass.

“For not being there.”

“You were there.”

“For not being what you wanted, I mean. Someone can be there physically, without actually being there, ya know?”

“Sure, I do.”

“I was caught up in the vicious cycle of working, drinking, gambling, and I realized too late.”

“Remember the old Esso?” He changed the subject. The one by the tracks?

“Yeah, of course.”

“I have a strange memory of that Esso. You were standing in the line. I must have been about ten years old. You were standing there in your dirty work overalls, work boots with the laces dragging on the floor. I always wanted to run up and tie your boots when they looked like that. I was looking through the small section of comic books and in the back was a magazine with plastic over it. Me being a kid, I thought it was some rare comic, and I pulled it up and with an issue of Hustler. Remember that? I stared at it in a trance, and your laughter took me out of it. I turned around, and you were looking at me with a proud smile. You told me there’s nothing better on earth than that. Though you gotta be careful. You tousled my hair, and we walked out. It was a silly memory, but it just made me smile because mom would have blown her lid had she seen me looking at that magazine.”

“You’re right about that.” I laughed as we pulled into the vacant lot. Only concrete and a solitary fuel pump remained. Lost in the Yesterday’s was ringing in my ear. “Don’t care about tomorrow’s, cause I’m lost in yesterday. Why does the sunshine always have to fade away?”

I couldn’t see the tracks because of the heavy snow. I could barely see a few feet ahead of me. The car idled, and my boy was gone. Now was the time to pinch my forearms and see if I was still among the living. I squeezed, leaving a nail mark. That must have meant something. Besides, I was still tired as hell. In heaven, hell or wherever, would I still be wrought with the exhaustion of an old out of shape cabbie? That seemed unlikely. But I guess not impossible.

Then across the street at the tracks, I swore I could see some red hidden beyond the white. I gave my face a couple of light slaps, followed by a harder one. Then I focused my eyes. There was red. Maybe it was the hat. The Santa Hat. Maybe that was why my boy brought me here. To the place where his life ended. So, maybe I could save this guy’s life. A soul for a soul? It’s all your fault, was what he said in the dream. But maybe that had a double meaning. Maybe he was talking about his death. But possibly, he was talking about retribution. A deal with the big man upstairs. That saving this man’s life was my fault, too.

Then the whistle and lights from the 327 knocked me out of my trance. I got up and opened the door with quickness and desperation that my heart clearly did not appreciate.

Just as soon as I got up, the pain returned. Bom-bom-bom-bom-bom-bommobommbommbombombobmbobm. My heart was in a desperate race, and it felt like my chest was caving in. Like my heart was racing to get out before it shut.

Fighting the pain and shortness of breath, I made my way across the street, the red becoming more apparent now. There was a steep incline where the snow went up to my knees. Trudging through it made me throw up twice. The second time, there was no mistaking the red in the snow.

Christ, this wasn’t good.

Something told me I wasn’t going to get out of this one. I clutched my chest, and saw the drunken man from the Sacred Heart Church sitting and crying, his hands to his face. Bombombobmbombobmobm. Slow down. Christ, please, slow down.

“Come on, pal. You don’t want to do this.”

He looked up at me slowly. “I’m dead, anyway.”

I sat down next to him, trying to catch my breath. “It’s okay, dad.” I heard Ben say. “You can help him.”

I reached into my wallet and hauled out the stained and crumpled card that had been handed to me by the devil all those years ago. “Here, take this.”

“What’s this?”

“Give it to Billy, alright? He owes me. He owes me big. Got him out of a serious jam when we were younger and he told me if I was in one, to use it. Give it to him, okay? Just please get the hell off the tracks.” I coughed up more blood into the snow.

“Jesus, man. Are you okay?”

“Just get out of here. The train is coming, man. You don’t want to do this. Please.”

He looked at it for a moment, flipping it back and forth, wondering if this was some kind of trick. Like maybe I was sent by Billy to get him back to the bar. But Billy wouldn’t waste the time. If the train was going to do the work he had planned, then let it. Dead is dead. It didn’t matter to him how it happened.

“Please get off.”

The train was coming now. Blowing its whistle as heavy snow fell.

“Please, get off.”

We locked eyes.

“Please.”

I returned home. Not a hero. Not a pariah. But somewhere in the middle. My father blocked out our cul-de-sac and forced the neighborhood to hold a welcome back BBQ for me. Flags flew high. I’d learn later that my old man threatened the lives of those who refused. Some raised their beer glasses when they saw me, some patted me on the back. Many refrained from looking in my direction. While a select few held back snarls of bitter rage. Babykiller written in their eyes. It would be a week before I’d sleep and a lifetime before I’d forget.

“Knock knock. Anyone home. Wake up, lad! Wake up, would ya?” Billy Fryer knocked on the dirt in front of a brand new headstone. The soil still loose from the freshly dug grave. “Who do we got here? Let me see.” He read the engravings.

Patrick Mann, 1974-2023 Beloved father, husband. A proud railroad man.

“Another railroader. Christ, I’m getting outnumbered here.” Frankie Jenson laughed.

“You’ll always be outnumbered, my friend. Ain’t many drunken poets around these parts. Except old Herbert. One of the greatest poets on this side of the grave.”

He winked, waiting for the reaction he knew he’d get from his old friend.

“Why that old fool ain’t no poet. Just a drunken fool. A rambling fool. And before you say anything, lad. I’m more than just a drunken rambler. Why in 1932, during famine and war in Ireland. I wrote a collection of poetry that made its way to the land of opportunity. Poems for the broken man. That was poetry. Do you want me to recite some of it?”

“No, God. Please, no more. Or I’ll opt for the eternal sleep.”

“Oh, you’d never, you tired old fool. You like me far too much.”

“Um. Excuse me. Pardon me!” A timid voice from behind the bickering friends made

them turn around and smile.

“Bloody hell, you owe me a drink,” Billy said.

“Yes, sir. You must be Mr. Patrick Mann. Beloved father, husband, and proud old railroad man,” he said, again looking at the headstone. “Let me guess, your old man told ya it was in yer blood? The way father’s guilt their sons into becoming them, even though they hate themselves, is beyond me.” He finished with a roll of his eyes. “Anyway, we’re here to welcome ya.”

“Where am I? Where the hell am I?”

“Frankie, do ya want to explain it to him?” Frankie was a tall, dark-skinned man in an old dirty suit that looked as though once upon a time it could have been white. It was ripped and torn, parts were charred and burned. Half his face in the same condition.

“Well, uh. Patrick. It’s always hard to tell the new ones. It’s going to take you some time to grasp what I’m about to tell you.”

“What’s going on?” Patrick looked around swiftly. Eyes of panic. Eyes that Frankie and Billy had seen many times before.

“Well, boy. You’re dead. Ain’t no simpler terms a man can put it.”

“Dead? What are you talking about, dead?”

“You’re dead, son.”

Then Billy cut in. Those five seconds of silence, far too much for him to bear. “You’ve bitten the dust. But the good news is you can spend your time here with the likes of us.” Then he began to sing “Here in Drunkard’s Row, where the working men they go. The ones who lived with just enough hate to miss their chance at the Pearly Gates.”

Frank rolled his eyes. “An old poet. Don’t worry about him.”

“But. But. But. The doctor. He. He told me I was getting better.” Patrick checked his arms where the IV had been placed when he was still in the land of the living.

“They do that, lad. They do that. Now come with us, would ya? You’ll understand what I’m talking about in due time, friend.”

The trio walked through the thick smog of the graveyard. Patrick’s head still on a swivel as he scanned the darkness of St Anthony’s. “What is this? Is. Is. This heaven?”

Billy looked at Frankie and the two burst into laughter. They awaited that question every time, and every time, the same reaction flowed through them like the ghosts of their flesh and blood.

“Not quite, pal.” Frankie answered.

“Well, then. Oh God. Am I in hell?” Patrick asked as he looked at the melted skin on the left side of Frank’s face.

Again, the two laughed despite telling themselves on the way to see Patrick, that they’d be courteous and respectful this time. The green ones just asked so many questions. So many existential questions that an old poet and and door-to-door vacuum salesman had to explain.

The two self-appointed greeters.

“Not quite, my friend.”

Then Patrick stopped in front of a giant white cross. “What the fuck is going on?” The two turned around and could see the anger in his eyes. That anger that belonged to a railroader. “You better fucking tell me right now what’s going on.” His fists were raised in front of his face. A stance that told the men that in life, old Patty had been accustomed to raising them. And probably doing quite well when they started flying.

“Yep. He’s a railroader alright.” Billy said. “Look lad, put those weapons down, would ya? There’s something you need to understand about death, alright? These are secrets that the living will never know, nor ever understand. It belongs to us, friend. Only to us. I’ll explain it as clearly as I can, though I’m half in the tank.” He said, hauling a brown paper bag out of his striped wool coat.

“You’re always half in the tank.” Frankie said. Billy just shrugged and took a swig that

quickly turned into a chug.

“Neverthe-fucking-less. I’m going to explain it to you, lad. Ya see, in life, they teach you about heaven and hell, right? How if you’re good, you go to heaven and. If you’re bad, you go for an eternal swim in the lake of fire. But even in the land of the living, you must have had some questions about that? You a religious man?”

Patrick shook his head.

“Good. The zealots are harder to explain this to.”

“Watch your mouth,” Frankie said.

“Oh relax, would ya? Drunkards’ Row in yer Bible?” Frankie didn’t answer. “Anyway, Mr. Mann.”

“Patrick”

“Sorry. Patrick. You see, life is far more complicated than good and bad. Most of us tread that line our entire lives. Because, well, how can you be saintly all the time? Christ, giving yerself a tug is grounds to be bedmates with Lennon. So where do we go? The Catholic Church never told me where I’d go. Because even as a young boy, I knew I wasn’t the good books definition of Abel. I wasn’t going to be met with a choir of angels waiting for me once old Pete let me through them Pearly Gates. But I also didn’t think that I belonged with the Old Red Spire.”

“The Red Spire?” Patrick asked.

“Just a goddamn killer. Killed a dozen or so women outside of Dublin when I was just a little lad. So, as I say. Where do the rest of us go? The ones who might drink a little too much. Frequent the gambling halls more than we should. Fight. Possibly some infidelity sprinkled on top. Where do the humans go? The real humans?”

“Here?” Patrick asked. Frankie wrapped his arm around Patrick’s shoulders.

“You got that right, pal. Right here in Drunkards’ Row”

“Drunkards’ Row?”

“Well, that’s what we call it, anyway. Seems better than purgatory, or the land of the kinda good, but kinda bad. See what I mean?”

Patrick was silent for a moment. He rubbed his thick black hair, tugging at it. And again he looked around. Then finally, at Frankie. He looked the gentler of the two.

“When did you die?” Patrick asked.

“1963. Birmingham. Alabama.”

“The church bombing?”

“The man knows his history. Yes, Patrick. I died in the riots after the bombing. But you know what? Even in death, you are not martyred, son. Even in death, you’re a marked man. My past never eluded me.” He touched the burned side of his face.

“What did you do that was so wrong?”

“Well, like we said, we weren’t exactly monsters. I was only in Alabama to meet up with a pretty young thing. Not my wife. Ya know? It doesn’t take much. Oh well. It’s better here, anyway. You know every self-righteous prick you ever met? Guess where they are.” Frankie pointed up. Patrick let out a short smile.

“What about you?” he asked Billy.

“1936 in Spain. Goddamn, O’Duffy and politics. I volunteered. I was young and wanted to fight. I died in a blood soaked foreign land. Want to hear some poetry I wrote during the war?”

“Uh. Maybe later. So, why no heaven for you?”

“My past, son. I killed a man. A dirty, dirty man, plus all the men I killed in the war. That’s kind of a grey area, I think. But, nevertheless, killing don’t get you the harps, my friend. We grew up in a hard place. Chances of making it out without blood in on yer hands were slim. Slim to none. Anyway, enough about me. So what brings you to Drunkards Row? Other than the cancer, of course. Sorry about that, by the way. Terrible way to go. Took me old man. Working in a factory his whole life. Breathing in chemicals.

Patrick paused. Thinking about his life. His wife. His kids. Friends. All the living people he wasn’t going to see again.

“Christ. I wasn’t a good man. I worked hard and kept a roof over my family’s head, but that’s all I ever did. I was a tired, cranky old drunk. No time for anyone. Not even my boy. Jesus. I need to tell them. I need to tell them I’m sorry.”

“Sorry, pal,” Frankie interjected, patting him on the back. “But that’s the mystery. They can never know until they come themselves. I’m sorry, friend.”

“Jesus. Jesus. I wasn’t good.” Patrick began to cry. “I could have been better. Christ, I could have been better.”

“Regrets run rampant here, Patrick. Let us introduce you to the rest, alright?”

“The rest?”

“Well, Jesus H. Christ, ya didn’t think it was only the two of us in this sea of lost souls?” Billy asked.

“Why am I here?” Patrick asked. “I mean, why am I not just, you know, dead? I mean, dead, dead.”

“It’s a fair question.” Billy answered. “The way it works here is strange, friend. Some folks die peacefully. They died having lived a full life and they feel no need to go on. This place here is for those who bit the dust before having their full say. You know what I mean? Died before their time, even though maybe that doesn’t make sense, because whenever you die is your time, I guess. But you know what I mean. And if you don’t want to do this anymore, you can go right back to yer resting place. But once you do that, then that’s it. Dead dead, as you put it”

“Really?” He looked back towards his grave.

“I know what yer thinking. We’ve all thought about it. But come with us before ya decide, alright?”

Patrick nodded.

Billy continued leading the way through a path between headstones on either side that looked as old as time. Full ecosystems were growing through the cracks, and the words were barely legible, if legible at all.

Eventually, they reached a tall eucalyptus tree. “Well, here we are. You ready?” Billy asked Patrick. Who stared into the darkness before answering. “As ready as I’ll ever be.”

“That’s my boy.”

Then the three men of different times walked by the eucalyptus to the place where time blended in sweet sacred harmony. Drunkards’ Row.

The bar looked like an old English Tavern. Somewhere you’d expect to find the Shelby brothers in an episode of Peaky Blinders. Patrick stared at it in disbelief. He looked around and there was nothing but darkness on either side of the bar.

A sign read Drunkards’ Row, and the S was hanging upside down. There were men outside, smoking, drinking, and laughing. Telling dirty jokes about a lonely housewife and a foreign pool cleaner. The men were laughing hysterically, and clinking their beer glasses together, spilling half the drought in the process.

“Well, come on, lad. Let me introduce ya to the renegades.” Billy waved him forward, and Patrick looked at Frankie, who supplied a generous nod, letting him know that it was alright. It was safe.

“Billy! Frankie!” The men in front of the bar yelled. “You got another new one?”

“Meet. Mr Patrick Mann. Devoted father. Husband. And a proud railroader.”

“You hear that, Jim?” A big burly man walked down the steps towards Patrick. He looked mean. Patrick was ready to raise his fists again, before Big Jim put his hand out.”

“My grandfather, my father, and myself were all railroaders. It’s in our blood.” Billy rolled his eyes, and the two men shook hands. “Worked in Kansas City for 35 years.

What about you?”

“Uh, Annandale. Small industrial town in the North. 23 years. Then the cancer..”

“Line drive right to the throat at a summer softball tournament between the railroaders and the men at the pulp mill. Struck down in my prime. Come on, let’s go inside.” Big Jim lead him to the old tavern doors like in the old west. He pushed them open, and the aroma of eternal life welcomed Patrick.

Inside looked like the pages of an introduction to World History textbook. Although on the outside, Drunkards’ Row looked like a small time hole in the wall pub, inside it was endless. Tables upon tables, and a bar that stretched the length of the Great Wall. It was filled with laughter, stories, and singing.

A corner table had a 15th century peasant, speaking with what looked to be a blood relative of Lucky Luciano. There were vikings, moors, some kind of royalty, and a myriad of working class labourers. One large man with a flat brim hat was yelling about unions and McCarthy. A scientist was claiming that he worked in Los Alamos as part of The Manhattan Project under Oppenheimer, while a veteran of the second world war talked about the bloody carnage during the Battle of the Bulge.

Patrick couldn’t wrap his head around what he was seeing. Billy and Frank were smiling slyly at each other, knowing full-well that everyone who rose up from the grave, to see a thick dark fog and two haggard souls, who looked nothing like angels to greet them, wanted to crawl right back in. But Drunkards’ Row was a place that most wanted to be a part of.

The door closed behind Patrick as the sounds of an English band singing their version of Dirty Old Town.

“I met my girl by the gas works wall. Dreamed a dream by the old canal”

Life is good. The air here is so fresh. I never thought the automatic rhythm of breathing would provide such euphoria. A feeling that says you’re alive. You’re here. This is now. Don’t you dare let it pass.

I don’t know where I am, or how I ended up here, but I hope to never leave. The mountains look like a painting, and the morning dew covers the tangle of weeds and grass like a sheet of ice. The moose drink slowly and peacefully from ovals of water. Chipmunks and squirrels chitter beautifully as they scale the sides of great oaks like daredevils, explorers, fearless observers of the law of nature and its speechless beauty.

The forest is endless and quiet, like the mouth of paradise has opened wide just for me to frolic. There’s no fear. No reprehension. No doubt that a meal is within hopping distance. Perhaps in the tall fields, where lilies, and sunflowers, lilacs, and lavender stand like stilted Gods of unblemished beauty. It’s perfect. Almost too perfect.

Then the sound. Followed by lightning bolts that shoot through my small frame. I scream out in pain. And all of a sudden, this dreamscape turns into a vivid nightmare. The world of colour, of peace, of love, gets sucked into a vacuum of endless black.

I look down and sharp metal teeth are wrapped around my hind legs. My blood is soaked in the steel and I hear a pair of footsteps rustling through the fallen leaves.

“We got one. We got one.” A voice calls out, and I look to it.

In his eyes is an unfathomable darkness. He will not let me go. I know this. He would watch me suffer for his own amusement. But, next to him are soft, caring eyes that are scared and filled with regret.

They’re both dressed in the colours of the forest, and wearing vests of fluorescent orange and yellow. I cry out. I cry and I cry, and I hope I can reach those soft eyes through the only common language we share.

He points a barrel right in my face, but his hands shake. And in those muscle vibrations, I hope I can convince him to release these metal teeth, and let me on my way. For what good am I to them? A rabbit without much meat on his bones. What good could I provide?

I make sure to lock eyes on this man as the other tells him to kill me. “Shoot it, James. Shoot the thing. Christ. Shoot it, or I’ll do it.”

I’m not concerned with the killer. His mind is made up. I’m concerned with the other. The hands, the eyes, the body of someone who doesn’t want to do what he’s doing. I can see that. I can feel it. But will he do it, anyway? Will he do it, because the devil is breathing down his neck?

He lowers the barrel. “I can’t. I’m sorry. I can’t.”

He bends down as his knees touch the forest green. With a strong grip, he pries the steel teeth off me. “Go on. Go on.” He says, as the devil laughs, and points his barrel at me, “I knew you weren’t man enough,” he says. "It's just going to die anyway. But slower and more painfully." Then he laughs.

The pain is beyond anything I’ve ever felt. But I waste no time. I hop towards the lilies like a rabbit with no blood seeping into its fur. I hop with a speed I’ve never reached before, and eventually the devil puts down the barrel.

They turn around and head back from where they came. I breathe a sigh of relief. I am hungry. I am hurt. I limp into the beauty of the tall fields.

But the eyes of the forest can smell pain, weakness, and especially blood.

I know they’re coming.

But I’m feeling confident. I’ve just made a narrow escape. Why not another? But even I laugh at this. And the soft blowing wind sounds like the sigh of Nature’s God.

The man loved Elvis Presley. I mean, he loved him so much that he had a rustic looking wooden framed picture of him from the 60s hanging from the Cypress Tree in his front yard. I mean, I know that doesn’t make him a certified killer, but I’ll tell you when I came home from the mill that morning after working the night shift. A pain in the ass shift if there ever was one.

Riot quiet, they call it. You ever heard of that? Well, it’s a term they use in like maximum security prisons. It means when things are too quiet, that the shit’s about to hit the fan. Anyway, a couple guys got into a fight. The new guy broke his ring finger edging wood. And it was just one of those nights, man. One thing after another. You’re running from Point A to Point B, and you ain’t even at Point B before you’re hanging a hard left over to Point C, ya know? The guys told me not to take the promotion. It wasn’t worth it for an extra 50 cents an hour, but it just felt right. It’s like people always complain about not being noticed. Just like Tommy Hill, great worker, good guy, but he complains all the time that no one ever pats him on the back. No one says good job. But then he gets offered a supervisor job for doing so good, and he tells em to jam it up their ass. Me, I don’t talk to people like that. I got the offer, and I said I’ll give it a try. Won’t know unless you try it, right?

Anyway, sorry. I get sidetracked something awful sometimes. Too many things spinning around in this nogging. You wouldn’t wanna take a vacation in there I tell ya. Sorry. Sorry. Where was I? Oh yeah. Oh right. When I came home that morning after the riot shift, and I saw old Bernie Adams coming out of that creep factory, he called a house. I wasn’t surprised. No. No. Not one bit. The people on Hillside, I mean, they all gathered round, saying oh “I can’t believe it. I can’t believe he’d do something like that.” And I told em straight up. I can be a real straight shooter. Some folks don’t like that, but I mean, that’s just my daddy right inside me. Sometimes I feel like it’s his soul or something come out of the grave to give me a hand navigating this world. Cause sometimes I ain’t too good at doing it for myself.

So I told them, I said “You can believe it just fine. You don’t want to believe it because no one likes to know that there’s someone that sick living on their street. Living close to their kids and whatnot. But you all avoided this man like the goddamn plague. No one went near him. Never. Y’all told your kids to stay away from that house on Halloween.

Christ, Bertha brought that yellow police tape, ya know, the stuff they use on crime scenes. She walked up Bernie’s step on Halloween, I don’t know, two, maybe three years back, and she tapes the front door, and railings on the stairs, and she hollers, no one goes to this man’s house. So, again, I repeat, people might not have thought he did what he did, but don’t try to turn this man into no saint, either.

But yeah, I mean, I had my suspicions to a point. And now that I see that they were right, I feel like maybe I could have called the cops or something earlier, but I mean, you never do. Hillside is the first step above living on the street. We take in the strange, the deranged, the unwanted. Christ, the halfway house down by the highway. Those folks come here when the doctor tells em that they can live in society again. And the doctors only tell them that when they have too many folks and not enough padded rooms.

So, to say I was suspicious, or I saw some weird stuff, well it would be true, but it would also be true, to say I see weird stuff almost every day. I mean just last week. Jacob Hansen, 20 something years old, was walking down the street bare ass naked. Nothing but his iPod and his earphones. He’s singing some kid of shit, and no one bats an eye. I mean, Paula, just waves to him. She’s out knitting or crocheting or whatever, making mittens for some reason in the middle of July. She looks and sees this naked man singing and dancing, and she just waves, “Hey, Jake. How’s it going hun?” And goes back to her Iced-T. Probably a Long Island one, if you know what I mean.

So, this place is filled with strangeness. But yes, Mr. Delong, to answer your question, I think I became suspicious when I’d go for my evening walks along the railroad tracks with Pepper here. I’d take the dog down the street, and she’d eventually drag me down a little dirt path between Old Abe’s house, and Jimmy Johnson’s, and then we’d be on the tracks. But it ain’t bad to walk on that track anymore. There used to be twelve tracks, plus the mainline down there. Now there’s six, and the mainline only has one passenger train every three days, and it only arrives at 9:10 pm. Long after I’m gone to work.

The tracks go right behind Bernie’s house. I mean, they’re crazy close. Homes that close to the tracks go for dirt cheap. Or At least they did. Back in the 70s and 80s, I remember old Herbert Walker yelling at the midnight shunters to keep it the fuck down because he was trying to get some shuteye. Sorry, pardon my French, but boy was it ever funny.

But I don’t make it a mission of mine to go snooping, ya know? There're folks round here, they ain’t got no shame and looking into a window, boy, you could see some stuff. But Bernie would always be playing Elvis. Just a hunka-hunka Burning Love, and you know, uh, that one. Shit. Oh yeah. Well, that’s all right now, mama. You know? You’re young, but everyone knows the king. They’re great tunes, and naturally my ears would hear the sounds and I’d look over. And right in his living room, Bernie would be dancing. The whole thing, the swooning, the spinning, the stepping, all of it. He was dancing with some black-haired lady, but it looked weird, man. It looked wrong. She was so stiff. Like she was sleeping, or knocked out on drugs or something. It was like she was boneless or something. Cripes. Gives me the willies just thinking about it.

Bernie was quiet. You never saw much of him. He worked as a janitor down at the hospital, and he’d leave in the morning and come back at night. But I never saw anyone in there with him. I never saw him as a man with a woman or kids or anything. Just a man who, uh, worked his job, came back home, and I guess listened to Elvis.

But again, I mean. I tried not to think nothing of it. Like I told you, we don’t live in high society down here on Hillside. Strange happenings, well, are normal. You know? Like, if strange things weren’t happening, then that would be strange. I know I sound crazy, but I just want to let you know why I didn’t say anything sooner.

So, a few nights later, me and old Pepper are doing our walk again. Same route. Same everything. And I goddamn hear Elvis again. This time it’s Suspicious Minds. Loved that song, and now, I don’t think I’ll ever be able to listen to it again. I tell myself, I say, “Hey Reggie, just keep walking partner. Keep walking. Whatever is going on in that house, it ain’t none of your business. So, just keep on walking. You ain’t made it this far in life by sticking your nose where it don’t belong.”

But I can’t. I look in again, and there he is, dancing with the boneless lady. And this time, I go in for a closer look. I keep telling myself that now it’s getting too weird. I can’t walk by every night and just pretend that my eyes are playing tricks on me. My doctor always tells me I got 20/20.

And Pepper, she’s a good dog. I know she won’t make any noise. I just tell her to be quiet little girl. Daddy needs to check on something. I walk closer through his tiny little backyard that had blades of grass nearly up to my head. I make it to the window, and to my left, I see the back of the heads of what looks to be a couple of kids sitting at the couch.

Now I lived on Hillside my whole life. There’s no way this man has a wife and two kids. There’s just no way. But still, I don’t say anything. Once I get back home, I grab a bite to eat and get ready for my shift.

And it was on that shift that I asked Billy Boyd. Billy’s a strange kid. About 30 years old. Just walks around, sits at coffee shops, shoots pool with Cueball and the gang down at Dooly's. He just gets stories out of everyone. He knows things about people you wouldn’t believe. Anyway, he’s sitting in the lunchroom eating a cheese sandwich. Just two pieces of white bread with a square of processed cheese, nothing else. I says to him, I say, “hey, Billy.” Of course, his first reaction is to roll his eyes and answer, “What did I do wrong, mister boss man?” And I say, “no,no. It’s nothing like that.”

I ask him about Bernie. Like, what did he do before Hillside? The man is in his 50s, maybe early 60s and he’s been around for fifteen, twenty years, but he ain’t been around long enough. This man had another life before here. So, I ask, what the hell did he do?

Billy says he heard he worked in a funeral parlour or something. He can’t remember where, but he did the embalming or whatever it’s called. Like where they put the chemicals and all that in the body, so they don’t decompose right away or whatever. Hell, I don’t know anything about that. But when he said that, it was like these sirens went off in my head. I pondered it for a bit, but I ended up calling the cops.

The next morning when my shift is finished. I drive down Hillside and I see the striped boys taking old Bernie down his steps. The look on his face is cold. Like he doesn’t care one bit. Almost as if he wanted to get caught, eventually. I wouldn’t have believed that myself until he looked over at me before being put in the back of the cruiser, and he smiled. The grin sends chills down my spine, and I’m sure it’s telling me that he planned those nights of dancing. Planned them for when I’d be taking my walks. He was just playing me. Waiting to see how long it would take for someone to see enough to do something about it.

So, the story is that Bernie took three bodies from the morgue he worked at. Along with oodles of chemicals and makeup and everything else, and created a family. He had them in that house for almost 20 years. Dancing with them. Playing Elvis Presley.

Across the street from me. In the house where the king hangs from a tree.