Tick-Tock

The bartender is friendly but he isn’t your friend. He doesn’t care that you had to walk here in the rain from the motel. He doesn’t care that your boss drops notes about you into a file folder. He doesn’t care that the best meal you’ve eaten in three days is a pickled egg and a handful of peanuts. He doesn’t care about anything except the tips, and you don’t care about anything as long as he keeps pouring the bourbon.

Bourbon is the opposite of caring.

Tick-tock.

How many is it now? You can’t remember. If the bartender left the empties, you'd count them. But he’s a magician. You empty a shot and sip a beer, tap two fingers on the wood, and fresh ones appear like rabbits out of a top hat before you notice what happened to the old ones.

Tap, tap.

Tap, tap.

Tap, tap.

Two o'clock arrives and the bartender shuts it down.

Tap, tap.

But the bartender shakes his head, no.

He isn’t your friend. He never was.

You close your eyes and wish you could roll the clock back to 10, or even to midnight. To a time before the buzz you felt then went numb.

Back. Back to better times when your liver wasn’t polluted and your dog wasn’t living in another state with your ex-wife and her new boyfriend. Back to when you identified your friends by their names instead of their favorite drinks. Back to yesterday, or the day or week or year or decade before that. The glory days before the steel rusted and the asphalt cracked and the chrome peeled off the Cadillac and dropped onto the concrete driveway like shattered mirrors.

You remember those sunshine days with a clarity you can’t apply to last week or yesterday or an hour ago. Now? Forget everything, learn nothing. Because there isn’t anything to learn today that’s worth a damn. Everything was perfect the way it was. Now nothing matters. You know this even if nobody else agrees.

Never mind the bartender.

You toss a few bills on the bar and slide off the stool, landing on your feet.

Tick-tock.

You were inside, now you’re outside. You can’t remember exactly how you got here, but it doesn’t matter.

It's chilly. Looking up, you see the clouds are gone and the sky is clear. No clouds, no moon. Nothing but stars overhead and the path upriver to the motel at your feet.

So you start walking, or what passes for walking with the bourbon steering. One foot more or less in front of the other, each one dancing to a different song. Repeat. Repeat again, and then again and again and again until you’re voodoo-waltzing in the direction of your room and your bed down a serpentine track laid out by a blind man.

You’re doing well, too. Solid, considering the bourbon.

Then you step off a ledge in the dark. Not that high. Maybe two or three feet. You could’ve hopped down if you’d seen it. Sober, anyway.

But you aren’t sober and you didn’t see it and you land on your face in the dirt, arms at your side because your reflexes didn’t kick in like they’re supposed to. You hear the thump of your body and you hear your nose crack, and there’s a flash of white light inside your skull that burns up all the oxygen, leaving charcoal and ash in its place. Then it goes darker than dark and you’re pretty sure you’re going to pass out or have passed out until another lightning-bolt sears a gash across the inside of your skull and forces you awake.

You lay there in the dirt, head turned to the side, breathing hard. You can taste the iron on your upper lip and your tongue feels slick. You aren’t moving. You don’t even consider trying.

Tick-tock.

After a while, the throbbing and the shock dull enough that you consider rolling over onto your back. It takes you a while to decide, and then you push against the ground with one arm and twist your torso. Now you’re looking at the stars.

You wipe dirt off your forehead and chin, and gingerly examine your nose. It’s crooked and swollen. You’ll have black eyes in the morning. Your boss or somebody you work with will ask you if you got into a fight, and you’ll laugh and say, “You should see the other guy,” because that’s easier than explaining that you got drunk and timbered onto your face in the dark.

Everything hurts.

You lie there breathing shallowly. Breathing the night air, and staring at the stars.

Tick-tock.

You feel small. Barely alive. More like the dirt you’re lying on than a person. Part of you wonders if you’re dead and if this is what it’s like to be buried. Part of you wishes you were dead, and you close your eyes for a minute to get a feel for living below ground.

You hear a noise and turn your head in its direction. Seven raccoons emerge from a thicket to your left. Four adults and three babies, all in a line, nose-to-tail. They’re close enough that you could stretch out an arm and pet them.

The lead raccoon, a large male, stops and looks in your direction. Sniffs the air and inches closer. The parade follows him, and you wonder if raccoons are carnivorous. They look like meat-eaters with those sharp claws and pointed teeth, but you don’t know. You’re too scared to make any sudden moves, but you bare your teeth and hiss. The big one growls back at you, and for a second you’re afraid it’ll attack. But it turns away, and moves on. The procession trails him, disappearing into the dark.

You take a deep breath and hold it, waiting for your heart to calm down. When you finally exhale, your breath forms a small cloud that hovers over your face for a few seconds before it rises into the air and dissipates.

Tick-tock.

You don’t want to get up. It’s quiet here. Peaceful. You might sleep here.

The vault of heaven looks like it’s either a million miles away or so close that the stars might’ve been stuck to the inside of a black bowl set over your face. You’ve lost perspective and it’s impossible to tell.

The stars seem unusually bright, and you search for the constellations you know.

The Big Dipper, which points to Polaris, the North Star. Orion, the hunter, the easiest one to find. Leo, Virgo, Libra. Draco, the dragon, one of the ancient giants who battled the gods for Mount Olympus. Draco was killed by Minerva, the goddess of wisdom, and she tossed its long, meandering body into the northern sky, where it froze in time.

As you trace the lines between the stars, it occurs to you that time isn’t linear. It isn’t even like a river, winding through the universe like Draco. It’s a sphere radiating out from a single point into eternity. At the center of that point rests a hollow iron ball so small it’s barely bigger than nothing. You’re curled up inside the ball, immobile and infinitely small. Everyone you know is inside an iron ball of their own, floating inside their own sphere that also stretches into eternity. Everyone you don’t know, too. Billions of people suspended in the ether, like the stars. Billions of infinite spheres overlapping one another infinitely but never touching. Unknowable.

You spot a shooting star. The tail is long and glows like a rainbow and then it’s gone. You gave up making wishes a long time ago, but watch the sky for another one just in case.

Tick-tock.

You fell asleep and didn’t dream. You haven’t dreamt in years. Not that you can remember. Sleep is a black hole you tumble into. No memories, no worries, no plans, no aspirations. For a few hours, you’re the empty space between three stars if there were three stars to define the space. There aren’t. You’re just an empty bucket falling into a well that never bottoms out.

Sometimes you’re so far gone you piss yourself, and one day you might not climb out of that hole.

Today, the sun is rising.

You watch the sky go from black to gray, and from red and gold to pale blue. The sun rises above the horizon, hot and yellow. The light reaches your body, and the heat thins the coolant in your veins.

What kind of a man sleeps out in the open, on the ground like an animal?

You’re broken, but maybe God expects more from you. Dis aliter visum. Your thoughts are not His thoughts, your ways are not His ways.

Or maybe there is no god and expectations are just false wish-dreams parents impose on their children to give them enough drive and hope to continue procreating in defiance of their own inevitable rot and decay. Reaching for eternity, hope springs infernal. Amen.

You sit up, then stand up. You check to make sure the river's to the right and start walking, eyes focused on the ground in front of you like it might unexpectedly drop away any second. The motel's that way, upriver.

Tick-tock.