Reflections at the Last Chance Saloon

The saloon entrance bears the image of a steer's skull facing outward, defiant, its horns splayed to the high hinges. Yet the doors part with barely a push. I scoff at the cheap construction.

The white noise of mass conversation envelops me. People crowd the tables, but the bar is open. I claim the 2nd stool from the left.

The bartender glides into my field of view: “What’s your poison?” he asks.

“Oh, I don’t drink alcohol.”

“Good. We don’t serve it.”

“Water to start.” He moves off. “And prune juice as well,” I call after him. I add a shake of my head to express ambivalence at the idea.

I swivel around to scan the crowd. Strange that I sit alone at the bar, suspicious even. It’s all groups though, clustered around the tables, families with children in most cases. They chatter pleasantly, though I can’t make out any details. And I can’t read their faces at this distance.

The barman returns with my order, places the juice to my left, the water to my right. His right hand pauses in front of me, when he moves it again he leaves a spinning coin on the bar.

“Nice magic trick,” I say as I watch the coin closely. The spin is tight, and should last ten seconds or more. I meet the bartender’s eye. “I’ve seen sleight of hand like that before, it’s advanced though. Where’d you learn it?”

“Don’t recall exactly. Picked it up some years back, probably from a book. I remember clearly how much practice it took though.”

I chuckle. The coin slows and comes up tails. It’s a penny.

“Oh, you want my thoughts huh?”

“That’s the custom.”

“More like cliche.”

“Still.”

“All right. I’m lost. Stopped in to get my bearings.”

“You find them?”

“No. Someone keeps bothering me.”

He nods with a smirk and moves off. 

Time to collect my thoughts. What am I doing here? I’m going to a conference. No, I’ve come to a conference and am looking for something. What? My hotel? That feels correct, or in the vicinity of correct. What city am I in? It’s in one of those great plains states. Why is my head so foggy? Is this a dream?

I seek out the barman. He’s pouring drinks and placing them on a trey, various juices mostly: orange, apple, looks like cranberry, quite colorful.

He’s an older man, light hair with only an occasional dot of gray. A bald spot the circumference of a soda can top shines from the back of his head, born proudly, no attempt at combover. He has solid arms, maybe a little overweight. I feel like I’d be a match for him if things got ugly. I watch too many movies.

He turns and meets my gaze. I think of glancing away, pretending like I wasn’t staring. Instead I raise a hand to call him over. As he approaches I need a question. I pull out my wallet, fumble with it as he approaches. There’s no money inside, but a VISA, a health insurance card, and a picture… a woman and two girls. A family photo: mine?

The barman stands over me expectantly. I gesture at the drinks. “How much will this be? I haven’t brought cash but-”

“There’s no charge.”

“Oh, I suspect there's a slight negative charge.” Did I just make an electricity pun? A joke about free electrons, what would that imply? A static shock I suppose.

“This is a family establishment, dad jokes are welcome, even if they don’t make sense.”

I am a dad, aren’t I? I look at the photo still in my hand; my wife and daughters, smiling. Behind them lies a cityscape, the sun dipping behind skyscrapers. I note their rainbow of hair colors, as I must have many times before: dark, then light, then red. My first daughter's hair is like mine, I remember. I must be the one taking the picture.

“You haven’t touched your drinks.”

“You’re right, how rude of me.”

I look closer at the prune juice. The glass is tall yet slender, barely a swallow. It’s like the sort of shotglass rich people use. As I stare, tiny sparks appear to arc between the sides of the glass. I reach out and get a small shock. 

“My nonsensical joke made real,” I exclaim. I look to the bar man. “Are you trying to give me another heart attack? Is this a dream? It feels like a dream.”

“I know no more than you. But don’t you normally wake up when you realize it’s a dream?”

I narrow my gaze at this man. He looks down at me, his blue eyes soft and sympathetic, hands behind his back. I stand to meet him exactly at eye level. I try to say my name, but I can’t remember it. The incessant white noise of the crowd flows around us. How am I supposed to remember who I am? Or wake up? Or do whatever it is I’m supposed to do? 

I whirl on the crowd, children and adults in equal numbers, families, all their faces indistinct at this distance. Around them their meals and drinks: macaroni, pizza, chicken tenders, casual fare. There are pictures on the walls of old west scenes: crossroads and way stations on dusty roads. I can even make out dark stains and scuff marks in the corners. I can discern all these details, but the faces stay muddled, pixelated like an old video game.

I approach the nearest table; four figures sit there, locked in reverie, their arms and faces at all angles to imply animation, but they don’t move. And their faces gain no clarity or detail as I approach. I get right in one’s face, a man based on the suit, and his features are as hazy as if viewed from across a football field. They’re all window dressing, placed here, painted on in three dimensions. My heart flutters and the feeling runs up my back.

“It’s like a Twilight Zone episode. Like a few different Twilight Zone episodes I can think of.”

“It’s just you and me,” the bartender says behind me.

“Yes, lonely isn’t it.”

“But peaceful,” and I notice the crowd noise has stopped. 

“This no longer feels like a dream. Am I trapped here?”

“There’s the way you came in. Also an exit in the back if you want to slip away.”

“Slip away… I don’t need to leave yet. Maybe I’m dead. Maybe this is hell, or purgatory. Not likely to be heaven.”

“I thought the ambiance was nice. Feels a little small for an afterlife though.”

I look back at the pictures on the walls, those old-timey black-and-white images of railroad stations, depots, 3-way stops on dusty roads. “A waiting room maybe. Or a crossroads.”

“Two ways out. A crossroads, sure.”

“Back out the way I came… to the conference,” I say with a little more certainty, “or out the back, slip away, move along.”

“Seems like.”

“Life or death? Not a hard choice.”

“You haven’t made it yet.”

“I’m still getting my bearings. I know nothing about myself.”

“You’ve said a few things.”

I think back. I run this story through my mind as best as I can remember. The barman waits placidly. I look to the floor, monochrome tiling, to concentrate. 

“I have a family. Wife and two daughters. Have a family. I am not divorced.”

“That’s good.”

“I don’t drink alcohol, also a point in my favor. And I’m at a conference for… I can’t remember. That’s good too though. If I can’t remember my own name or my wife’s name or my daughters’ names I’m sure glad I can’t remember the damn conference’s name. I might just take the back way out if that were the case.”

“Still, there’s a reason you’re here.”

“Another heart attack,” I say, quoting myself from earlier “emphasis on another.”

“That’s what physically brought you here.”

“I’m probably belly-up in the middle of the symposium floor. Maybe an EMT is already kneeling over me. Poor sap has no idea I’m in fantasy land deciding for myself whether I live or die. If this were The Twilight Zone it would be a middling episode.”

I can feel a sneer crossing my face. Contempt boils up inside me. For what? For this ridiculous situation? For myself and my dumb jokes? For something I’ve done? I turn my gaze from the floor to the barman. He looks afraid.

“Is there a mirror?” I ask.

“You’ve got one.” He looks me straight in the eyes.

“I’m no longer sure which path to take.”

“Maybe there’s another detail to explore.”

Is my doppelganger wiser than I? Is his perspective even different? I stare at his blue eyes, light hair still thick despite the bald spot, thick frame. Nothing about this countenance suggests a man in deep crisis. But his eyes are searching, as mine are now.

“There’s only one real detail here.” I go back to my wallet. I am not surprised to find that the medical card and VISA feature no name or signature. I retrieve the picture: three figures before a sunset in the city.

My wife, her hair so dark. Why am I so hung up on hair color? My first daughter, hair light like mine. My second daughter, hair red, not bright red but distinct. Hair red, like neither of her parents.

I know now. I know the guilt. It flows outward from my heart, invading every corner of my body. My arms and legs grow heavy, pull me down.

“What is it?” The other asks.

“Jokes. Jokes! Dumb jokes. At the expense of my poor daughter.”

“You tell lots of jokes.”

“Yes, and they eat at me. But these. I was unfair, cruel.”

“About her red hair?”

“Yes.”

“This seems important.”

“It is.”

“Enough to say out loud.”

“With only myself to listen.”

“Why don’t we sit?”

“Yes. That’s a good idea.” We take our places at the middle of the bar.

“Different feel than when I stood over you and played counselor.”

“We are finally equals.”

“Still, it’s you who has something to get off his chest.”

“Yes, but one thing first.” I stand up, move to the end of the bar, and return with a drink in each hand. “Let’s each take one. Which would you prefer.”

“Always been more of a water man.”

“Same. But I did give you the choice.”

I sip the prune juice. It’s tangier than I expect and I smack my lips. My mirror chuckles and downs his water like a shot of vodka. I copy him and let out an exaggerated “Ah!”

“Might want to get to it. Can’t know how time works here.”

“Yeah, for all we know they’re zipping up my body bag as we speak and all this soul-searching is for naught.”

“I won’t interrupt you.”

“Alright then, alright. I have made jokes about my daughter’s parentage: four of them over the years. She’s got red hair, you see, you can literally see. My hair is light brown, my wife’s is dark, or raven she likes to say. So it’s an issue of my daughter not fitting in, not feeling quite right.

“It’s silly, obviously. Red hair is recessive and so can hide and emerge sneakily like that in a family tree. I have an aunt with red hair so it shouldn’t be some huge surprise.”

I pause. I want to delay, just a little. I look to the glass beside me, a small purple puddle at the bottom. I upturn it over my head and wait for the last drops of sharply-sweet liquid to drain down my throat.

“I thought about it as soon as her hair first came in as a baby. ‘We have one beautiful daughter and one beautiful alien.’ That was the first joke. She wasn’t old enough to understand… Anastasia wasn’t old enough to understand. That’s her name, I remember now. We call her Ana mostly, though she goes by Stacy with her friends. Maybe her college friends will call her Sia.

“The second time I made a joke like this, Ana was old enough to understand a bit. We were playing some silly game, Hungry Hungry Hippos I think. And I started saying ‘who’s your daddy?’ which is really dating the situation. And she would giggle and say ‘You are! You are!’ and I said ‘There is some real doubt about that’ and she looked confused and gave me this long stare. So I made some other joke and we went back to playing the game.

“The third time she could fully understand. She was… eleven I think, all eager for wilderness camp. And I was bitter about how much it would cost so I said ‘Why should I pay for camp when she’s not even my daughter? We rescued her from the wilderness, why send her back there?’ I must have been talking to her mother, but Ana was there, and she looked thoughtful, like she was turning the idea that we’d plucked her out of the forest over in her mind.

“The last time was maybe thirteen. She’d gotten straight A's for the first time in a long time, really learned to study, figured out how to motivate herself. And I was proud of her too, but what I said was ‘Your father would be so proud.’

“And she laughed, that was the darndest thing. Thoroughly confused me as I thought she’d be devastated. That’s the sort of joke I’d hurt people’s feelings with after an evening whiskey or two; mockery would just spill out of me. As the words left my mouth I was already prepared to take them back, to say it was just a dumb joke. But she just laughed and skipped away to tell her mother about her grades. 

“It was another year or two later when it finally hit home, Ana made a joke of her own. This red-haired cable-repair guy was coming up the lawn and she remarked: ‘I think daddy’s home.’ Her sister looked scandalized. I was relieved at first, clearly I hadn’t dented her soul or so I thought.

“But Ana’s turned into a joker. She’d always been quick to laugh, but she’s become this caustic jester, mouthing off to teachers despite being a good student. I feel like I infected her. Like I turned a happy-go-lucky child into a sarcastic teen.”

“You’re taking an awful lot of credit.”

“I thought you said you wouldn’t interrupt.”

“I thought you were finished.”

“I was, but you couldn’t know that. And maybe I’m not expressing things properly. This felt like a huge weight just a minute ago now it sounds like I’m worrying over normal family drama. The thing is I make these horrible jokes and never apologize. I’m pushing my family away and they’re so inured to it they don’t push back. That’s the sort of person I am.”

“You’re also the sort of person that feels guilty about it.”

“What good is guilt?”

“Tough to change without it.”

I turn away and narrow my eyes. I don’t want to be fixed by this dime-store psychological pablum. But what choice have I left myself?

“That’s why I stopped drinking, you know. So that I only think the wretched jokes instead of speaking them. It doesn’t always work. But in my defense, I don’t do horrible things, I just say them.”

“You’re not the worst father of all time.”

“Almost no one is.” 

We share a smile. The barman stands and collects the empty glasses.

“Suppose I’ll be heading out the way I came,” I say with a sigh.

“It’s been nice meeting you.”

“Assuming I pull through, if I get to meet my EMT, I’ll tell them they’re a good person, that they do good work. Try on sincerity for a bit. Then I’ll go through my phone, call everyone, tell them how much I appreciate them. I’ll start with Anastasia, she might even be first alphabetically.”

“Sounds good.”

“And if I’m already dead, I’ll aim for reincarnation. Maybe I’ll come back as a tabby cat with the sort of stripes everyone loves to look at. And I’ll only rub on people’s legs when they’re feeling low and need some affection.”

“Ambitious. I like it.”

I stand and stride to the saloon doors with as much confidence as I can muster. There’s no steer skull emblazoned on this side. Instead, a humble cow tail made of cloth and hair is nailed onto the right-hand door.

“I’ll see you around,” I call back.

“Everyday in the mirror.”

I give the doors a push.