A Half-Full Bottle of Rum

The wet red footprints did little to distract from the fiery beauty of the Wednesday sun, which had started to duck below the curved tips of the mountains. It was a magnificent sight, one that filled the heart with a lust to explore wherever the source of the burning light came from, and to Eddie that seemed like a viable quest. At that moment Eddie felt like he could do anything. At that moment Eddie felt the most alive he had ever been. But, at that moment, Eddie also felt the most dead. 

It had been roughly twelve hours earlier that Eddie had sat on the same fallen tree he sat now, watching the same burning orb, and feeling the same sort of way. In his heart, Eddie Durly felt like he had finally reached the end. It had been forty-three long, spectacular, horrible, joyful, and yet woeful years, and now those forty-three years were all about to come to a close. He could feel every single one of those years coming together as if his heart had been spending each of those forty-three years conducting an extravagant orchestra. That orchestra had not only played a gorgeous song, no, it had done much more than that; it had played a story. And now, after an electrifying crescendo, the tune was coming to an end. 

Ok, Eddie thought, it hadn’t actually been the exact same feeling. Eddie Durly remembered how, roughly twelve hours earlier, he had been feeling the beginning of the crescendo, but not the end. In that moment his heart had been racing, he knew what he was going to do, but ‘how it was going to go,’ that was an entirely different question. 

He remembered the biting cold of the morning hours that cheekily chewed chunks out of his bare skin. He remembered the sleepiness of his eyes, a cloud that would stay hidden under his lids until the caffeine kicked in, and most importantly he remembered how heavy the bottle of Captain Morgan felt in his tired arms. But no matter how cold or tired he was, deep inside Eddie was ready. 

The taste of the rum was a sweet solace to Eddie Durly’s tongue. His father had been a ship captain in the years before the unfortunate bastard’s death, so the thought of drinking rum excited him. It made Eddie feel like he was a pirate, sailing the open waters with no care in the world but when his next drink was, and where the nearest whore lived. 

It was a good thing that Eddie liked the taste of the alcohol too. He needed it for what he was about to do, and he needed a lot of it. The burning liquid spilled straight from the neck of the bottle and down his throat. Eddie Durly had no need for glasses. He drank until he could feel the poison begin to take his mind. The sweet power he felt at that moment was overwhelming, he had been planning this day for months, and it was finally going to happen. 

He set the half-empty bottle beside the log. (It seemed like Eddie had drunk half of it, but his vision had started to blur which made it hard to tell). His legs wobbled as he stood, but Eddie had enough experience with the bottle to know how to steady himself, so it wasn’t long before his strides were as confident as they had ever been. 

The chilled steel that sat pinned in between Eddie Durly’s stomach and waistband was an uncomfortable burden, but in the midst of the man’s drunkenness and thoughts, it was easily forgotten about. His brain wandered throughout the walk. What had led him to this point? What was he going to do? Why was he going to do this? These questions continued to nag him, but for some reason, Eddie Durly failed to bring up any answers. Although he could recall the central reason. 

Eddie Durly had met Claire Hanes when he was twenty-two, and from the moment he handed the bills to the bartender and gave her her drink, he had known. It was barely three years later when Eddie found himself on one knee with a nice shiny ring in his hand, proclaiming his love to her and asking if she would spend the rest of her life with him?’ And she had said yes. It was another year later, but soon Claire Hanes became Claire Durly. With a little help from their parents, Claire and Eddie bought a house on the coast where they eventually conceived their one and only child, a beautiful baby boy who they named Sammy Durly. From then on Eddie, Claire, and Sammy all lived a quaint happy life, that is until about a year ago when Eddie went to the mailbox and chose the wrong letter to open. The note had been from a man named James Fitzgerald, who signed the bottom of the card as ‘Fitzy.’ The urge overtook Eddie, and he found himself following Claire to work. She must have taken a wrong turn because she somehow ended up at a house Eddie Durly had never seen in his life. Eddie never got the nerve to confront Claire, but throughout the rest of that year, it was apparent that their relationship had begun to deteriorate.  

And that was when the rest of Eddie Durly’s plan started to reappear in his mind. Each arguably wobbly, yet confident step he took, brought Eddie even closer to the local bank which sat comfortably in between the town’s barber and grocery outlet. It sat there waiting for 9 am. sharp to open its doors, where Eddie would be waiting, Smith and Wesson in hand, ready to rob the place. He planned to take as much money in the seven minutes and thirteen seconds it would take for the police to arrive, and then deliver fifty percent of it to his family. After that, he would leave and return to the same log, where the police would find him sitting, finishing his bottle of Captain Morgan, and waiting to be apprehended and then quickly swept off to prison. 

It only took Eddie one and half weeks after he found out about Claire, for him to begin developing his plan. The man simply could not live with the knowledge that he had an unfaithful partner. At first, his plan was simple: Get a divorce. However, soon it evolved. He spent endless nights calculating exactly how much time it would take for the police to arrive, how much money he could get in that time, how much money could “disappear” without the police looking into it. For some reason this all seemed so much simpler to Eddie Durly. He would leave his only son with a fair chunk of change, a chunk of change he could use for a car, college, or anything else to make that sweet boy’s life that much easier, then Eddie Durly would be whisked away to the state penitentiary, where he would be able to grow as happy and old as he could, knowing he was well away from his cheating wife. It was a win-win. 

So Eddie walked, hand on his waistband, where underneath, the cold steel handgun snuggled comfortably against his hip. The day was bright and warm thanks to the sun, which Eddie had just watched climb high into the sky, but the handle to the door was cold. It gave Eddie Durly a small shock as he gripped the entrance to the bank. In his hand he held cold metal, not much different than the cold metal that was pressed against his waist. What steps had led this to be a door handle instead of his gun? What events had caused Eddie Durly to be standing outside a bank, ready to pull a gun on all the poor people in the building? To that question, Eddie had no answer except that it had to be fate. The metal of the door handle had no choice whether it was going to be a barrier in between worlds or a gun, so what was to say that Eddie had a choice in what he was about to do? He didn’t, so he opened the door. 

It was a cool breeze that had hit Eddie first. The AC in the bank was lively and well and blasted each of the three customers in the building. Eddie did not bother to get a good look at the three people, or any of the workers either, he was too focused on getting the job done. He strode with confidence towards the back of the building (he and Claire had been going to this bank for years so Eddie knew exactly where to go).

Eddie remembered the rush he felt in his heart as he approached the woman at the back counter, and reached into the waist of his pants. She had gasped as he tugged the gun from its hiding spot, and that had given Eddie even more of a thrill; she had gasped because of him, he had caused that. 

EVERYONE DOWN! He had remembered screaming at the top of his lungs. Oh God, how that had felt good. 

Then there was an ear-shattering explosion as Eddie squeezed the trigger of the Smith and Wesson, and a bullet was sent slamming up into the ceiling. He remembered how each of the words left his mouth, and they had felt smooth as if there was a glob of butter seeping through his teeth. And the woman listened! That had possibly felt better than anything In Eddie’s life. This stranger was doing what he had told her to do, in that moment Eddie had the power, and nothing could hurt him.

Next, Eddie remembered hearing his name. That had pulled him out of his bliss for a moment, stunning him like a cold bucket of water. His heart raced as he whirled around to see another woman rushing towards him… so, instinctually, Eddie pulled the trigger one last time. The bullet left the chamber with another bang, but this time it seemed louder.

For a moment, time had stopped for Eddie. He looked in front of him, where the bullet had struck, and made direct eye contact with Claire Durly. Her mouth was a cave as it hung open in utter shock, the tears spilling out of her eyes. He watched as the blood fell from Claire’s chest, which had imploded on the solar plex. Eddie remembered, and doubted he would never stop remembering, how the blood had fallen out of her and splattered onto the bank floor. It splattered like a loogie that had been spit from a thick-lipped, wet mouth, hitting with a heavy moist slap.

What just happened? How had this happened? Eddie Durly had never felt his mind race as fast as it had at that moment. He had planned this perfectly, nothing was supposed to go wrong because there was no room for anything to go wrong. But it had, and it had because Claire was there. She was there because it was a Wednesday, and Claire always went to the bank on Wednesday. She had to go because she needed cash for the cute little cafe that she always ate at on Wednesday morning before work, Eddie had known that. No, that can’t be right, Eddie had thought. If he had known that, why had he chosen Wednesday to rob this bank out of all days? It had to have been an accident because he had known that Wednesday was the day the stupid, lying, cheating, little slu… unless. No, there could not be an ‘unless’ because Eddie Durly was not a killer. He may have been mad, even furious, at Claire. Furious enough to think awful, horrible, terrible things, but not furious enough for this. He had only wanted to rob the place… right?

So Eddie walked. He walked out of the bank, no money in hand, and down the street. He walked, and walked, and walked, and walked. He walked until his legs could no longer carry him, and then he kept walking. He walked until his mind could no longer carry him, and then he kept walking. He walked all the way back to the same log where the half-full bottle of Captain Morgan sat waiting.

Eddie had no idea how the police had not caught him yet, but as he sat, watching the sun run away, he could finally hear the beginnings of sirens start their wails somewhere in the distance. It did not scare him though, the beauty of the setting sun was all that mattered to him. At this point, Eddie was the sun.

So as Eddie sat there, he smiled. It was a sweet delicious smile because at that moment he was truly happy. Eddie Durly had done what he needed to do, and he knew that.