The Sins of Your Gods

The bar was supposed to be
closing in ten minutes; the black-shirted kid
behind the tap had flashed the lights
three times to designate Last Call
but none of the seasoned old men
sitting in the smoke-filled room seemed
to notice. It'd take more than some
amateur mixologist to drag them out
of a ginmill before they were ready to go.

I approached Ernie first.
He was standing, just as he wrote
with a short, melting tumbler next to
his right hand. A sweater choked his neck
and bull chest as he sweat into his moustache.
He looked more like a Rizzo than a Hemingway somehow.

"You got such a bad rap unfairly," my subconscious
told him. "They called you sexist, but your females
were always stronger if you really read the lines.
The sun only rose when they told it to, and arms were
dropped when they declared armistice. It doesn't get
much closer to the truth than that."

"They still didn't get it," he sighed to someone else.

"It was enough to drive a man to his shotgun."

"A man should never keep it far away," he replied
as his eyes drifted off to his happy hunting grounds.
I was thankful that his eyes and the rest of his head
were still intact for my dream. It would've been
traumatic otherwise.

"But what about the ones that got away?"
It was a feeble attempt, but I had to make it;
I knew he was already gone.

Bukowski must've overheard me from his corner
of the bar. He shot a thumb in my direction
and whispered something to the spineless bartender
who had given up on kicking anyone out.
I picked up my cocktail with the intention
of heading over to see Hank and clarify
what I meant so I wouldn't be crushed
by the thought of a hero laughing at my naivety.
The bartender must've responded with something
that the old man didn't much appreciate. Hank
knocked his wine glass to the floor and swore
at the terrified young man behind the oak.
"Try saying that after you've been weened
from your mother's tit, you ignorant little shit.
Now hand me that bottle of scotch."
I decided not to go see Hank. Some images are best
preserved by never being seen up close.

"I'll tell you about the ones who got away,"
came a soft voice from behind me. Sherwood Anderson
tapped me on the shoulder and handed me his card.
I slipped it into my back pocket and had a seat next
to him. His business suit and oil-slicked hair
seemed far too classy for such a dive. It made sense
that he'd rather be associated with these men
than the ones he had been forced to interact with
in the real world, though. He made the sign
of a throat being slashed to the bartender
to suggest cutting Bukowski off. We both
tried not to laugh at the attempted manslaughter joke.

"Do you know what the real shame is, boy?"
he asked in his usually hidden Ohio accent.
"Not the skirts that escaped, but the stories."

I thought back to how he died. Splinters from
a toothpick that garnished a martini consumed
during a going away party had been caught
in his throat and caused an infection
during his cruise to South America.
He died in some humid hospital in a country
that didn't understand the langauge he loved.

Hank succumbed to cancer; Hem offed himself--
they both saw it coming, had time
to fire those last shots from the hip.
Sherwood still had some aces up his sleeve
when he was called home. His notebooks were
probably found by relatives and auctioned off
to the highest bidder, the roots of the random
words and phrases tragically misunderstood.
He was heartbroken by his inability
to get it all down in time-- a writer's greatest fear.
I could see that the handkerchief in
the breast pocket of his blazer had been used
recently, probably in a toilet stall
where no one would see a gentleman weeping.

I didn't know how to console the poor man
so I didn't bother trying. A good writer
knows what not to say and when not to say it.
I patted him on the shoulder and pointed
towards our belligerent friend who was now
passed out on his placemat, his forearms his pillow
the bottle of scotch in the crotch of his elbow.
The bartender looked relieved
as he scrubbed a pint glass.

"And to think that man outlived all of us,"
Sherwood said with a grin as the color
returned to his face.

"He couldn't have done it without you two,"
I replied, counting my singles and leaving
a generous tip under my coaster.

It was time for me to leave.
I had a new story to wake to.