“Shaney, can you hear me in there? What happened to your head or don’t you want to say?”
“Garbage happened to my head. You know garbage so you know how it can come from nowhere sometimes and hit your head. A brick filled with it — a private one — but maybe the less said of it the better for me and quicker the garbage brick hitters will go away.”
“I don’t understand you but do that you don’t want to talk about it, so okay.”
I give him another beer, get my shovel, go outside and clean the sidewalk of snow, throw rock salt, come back, dishwash, pour, mix, cook, make sandwiches, drinks, tap a keg, fill a three-pound coffee can with grill grease, pack two huge plastic barrels with whole liquor bottles I’m by law supposed to first break and cover them with kitchen scraps, clean out the toilets and urinals, mop the washrooms and bar floors, scour the refrigerators inside and out, dust every bottle on the bar, place phone orders for food, beer, liquor, soft drinks and different kitchen and bar accessories for the coming weeks, stock the deliveries that come in, do some accounting, pay my bills, send out laundry, work like this for only ten hours today.
I’m tired through most of the day and at midnight I shoo everybody out early but one regular who says when he’s about to step out the door “Need some help, Shaney?” and I say “Nah, I can do it myself,” and he says “What are you talking — you can’t handle those big cans,” and I say “I don’t know — sure, if you can manage it, as I’m really feeling too weak to and the garbage has already been here three days.”
After Al carries the barrels out he says “Worth a shot of gin, isn’t it?” and I say “Think I’d’ve let you if it wasn’t?” and he says “Not that I wouldn’t have done it for you for nothing the way you’re banged up,” and I say “Don’t worry, nobody does anything for me for nothing, just enjoy,” and pour a double gin for him and he says “Can you also spare a split of ginger ale with a lime twist in it?” and I say “For sure.”
I leave the bar with him, look around when I step outside and lock up to see nobody’s going to suddenly run up and throw something at or jump on me. I ask Al to walk me home “so if I do drop dead along the way someone will be there to take me to my grave,” though what I really want him for is sort of as protection. We walk, he talks. About his lost job, kids, sports, exsonofabitch boss, too-slim wife, funny and sexy TV shows, films and dinners he wishes he’d the money to go to and how I really shouldn’t come in tomorrow with my head wrapped like so, though he guesses I probably know best what I’m doing for myself or at least better than he.
“Yes.”
“If you want, give me your keys and I’ll open up. I’ve tended bar quarter of my life and you can come in when you like.”
“No thanks.”
“Bar’s a bar. Beer goes, I know how to tap. And I never drank a drink till six any day but my folks’ funeral, God’s word.”
“It’s not that.”
“Six in the evening and by drinking I mean alcohol.”
“So I thought.”
“Then what? It’s references, I can get. Because I’m only thinking of you and your head and of course a few bucks off the books for me.”
“I’m okay.”
“You’re okay? You’re not okay.”
“What can I say? I’ll survive.”
“Then if you want I can take your garbage out every night and walk you home this way till you don’t need me, my only pay maybe a couple double-gins on the side and coin or two just to get me home, all right?”
“Fine.”
“Great — This walking. It’s so strange for me. All the years I know you — maybe a dozen — and never seen you once out of your bar, even by accident on the street.”
“I know.”
“I’m being truthful, not diddling with you. You’re all right. You’re well liked. You’ve been generous and more kind than all the other bars around and that’s why drinkers will always go to you even if your prices are a bit high.”
“Mine?”
“The Manor House for instance on G.”
“All the Manor Houses are dives with the worst pimps, hookers and sprawled-out crazies and drunks in them and oversmoky, dirty and unhealthy beyond belief and wouldn’t give you credit for a beer on your birthday if you showed them the birth certificate where the exact same time you asked for credit was the exact same time fifty years ago you were born. And far as their food and one on the house is concerned — well I don’t know. Maybe their food’s good, mine’s not so hot.”
“And they give free drinks.”
“One after every three like me?”
“Their ratio might be lower, but believe me—”
“Pour as tall a glass and not in your big hollowed-out bottom that I think a sin to have?”
“If you slip the barman something. As to the hollow bottom, I’d have to inspect, as I didn’t even know yours wasn’t. But believe me, nobody I know lays a bad word on you except maybe if they’re gassed.”
“Why you telling me all this?”
“Like I said, to show you’re liked.”
“No, people always have other reasons.”
“Not me. It’s the truth with proof. I thought with your head hurt you needed encouragement and to know good feelings come your way from people too.”
“Thanks.”
“Welcome. Look, I don’t mean to get personal now that I feel we know each other better. But head injury aside, I’ve never seen you with no smiles like this. What actually happened? Someone said something about garbage and I said ‘ He got slugged over that?’”
“I didn’t, thanks again and I’ll see you,” as we’re at my hotel.
“Tomorrow. You closing same time as tonight till the bandages come off?”
“Earlier.”
“I’ll be in before then. Ten. Help you around, sweep up, do that — pots even. I draw the line at toilets, at least inside them unless you pay me real well, and take out your garbage and see you to home. Still on?”
“Sure.”
We shake, I go in, not expecting to see him tomorrow because what drinkers promise the night before are like light-years away in memory the next day, check for messages, are none, wonder if Stovin’s is through with me figuring as I do that we’re all squared up now: one of each of us landing in the hospital and me with several forever lost workdays. If they let me alone from now on I won’t broadcast to the world what went on between us anymore. They wouldn’t want me to, thinking other storeowners they want to do or do garbage business with’ might get similar ideas and defy them or try to which Stovin’s might hold me responsible for starting it all. I just want to get better and find an apartment and work and do business the way I’ve always done it: alone with the tradesmen I want to do it with.
A telegram’s under my door. No name on it, just my hotel address and room number and the message says “Nice and quiet now huh?”
I go downstairs and ask the nightclerk “How’d I get this?” “Telegraph people. Wanted to phone it in and when you didn’t answer, delivered it by hand.”
“How come it wasn’t in my box?”
“Telegrams we think are important messages, and since people are inclined to rob from boxes when we’re not looking, we stick them under your door.”
“If it’s so important why wasn’t it pushed all the way into my room instead of hanging half outside into the hall?”
“Boy who pushed it didn’t do his job. In any case we got it away from downstairs.”
“And there’s no name on it, just the room. Why you so sure it was for me?”