Bleating Brooklyn Accents

       I announce last call early that night.  Everyone is talking about some storm that’s supposed to be coming. Apparently the weatherman called it the Storm of the Century but you’d never know it was a big deal.  All the men are finishing up the evening, ready to wander home and get up early for work tomorrow.  They’re all joking about the clear sky, calling it a harbinger of the hurricane to come. I’m laughing along like always but also thinking that these days, I’ll find any excuse to close the bar early.

            “Marty!” one guy shouts from the far end. I wave and avoid eye contact. That’s not even my name—they just can’t tell me apart from the other guy who tends bar on Saturdays.

            “Another!” the man calls again. This time I look over. He is sitting on a stool, tilting in either direction and swaying to the music that is no longer playing.  I serve him and start to clean up as everyone else files out.  

I nod to the guys I know, the regulars, but it’s not the scene you’re picturing.  These days, bars are different.  I only know the names of guys if I hear their buddies call them from across the crowded room. All I know is that they all have the same Irish-American names and they’re all firefighters or police officers and some even own bars themselves and I wonder why they don’t spend more time over there.  Some of them hand me crumpled dollar bills and say their tip should help pay my kid’s college tuition. They don’t know that I’m forty years old and I work the last shift six days a week and I live alone.  

            I stack the chairs carefully on the tabletops.  I know the owner will be in early tomorrow to open the pub for lunch.  It’s the end of the season but we still have surfers come in midday. I’m guessing it’s because we are closer to the beach than the deli is.  I only bother stacking the chairs because the owner will want to make sure we were prepared for the storm that never came.

            “You know what I like about this place?” a voice slurs from the end of the pub.

            I ignore him again, placing the last chair on the table by the window.  These old drunks drive me crazy sometimes.  They come early, leave late, chat you up and then leave and forget your name.  But it’s not worth the effort of kicking them out.  They’re old geezers; plenty of them are friends of the owners.  It’s too small here—you can’t fight with anyone.

            “You know what I like about it here?” the man repeats, “it never changes.”

            Now, I am back behind the counter, moving the liquor we keep in the lower cabinets to the top of the shelving unit.  The man sways a bit as he stands up and leans against the counter in what I hope is not an attempt at a conversation initiating gesture.  I keep moving around the bar, cleaning up and moving things in a way that will make it seem like I made an effort to defend the bar against the wind and waters.

            “I had my first drink right here, in this bar,” he continues, “my dad let me take one sip of his beer.  I was nine.  Johnny was tending bar back then, must have been sixty years ago.”

            “You’re probably just making that up,” I say, mostly to myself. “Everyone around here is named John, or Jimmy, or Tom…any guess is as good as the next” But I’m trailing off, rubbing the tables with an old rag and listening to the old man’s monologue. 

            “The Irish Riviera, they used to call it!  That was before all these Italians came to town.  But that doesn’t change much.  It’s still the same old drinking town.  I’ll never tire of those bleating Brooklyn accents…the lull of the ocean down the block.  Hell, even the sand on the kitchen floor.  My wife used to complain about that all the time…”

            I can’t help it. Something about this line stops me. I’m drawn, for a moment, back to the way my own mother used to sweep the floors behind us when we came in off the beach, dripping salt water and sand all the way down the hall to the bathtub…it seems like a different time, listening to her laugh as the sand scraped against the tile floors. 

            The man is looking mournfully down the bottle, swirling around the remaining drops.  I’m thinking of something to say.  But these days I don’t try so hard.  He’ll forget me by the morning.

            “I’m sorry about your wife,” I tell him, and I’m about to say something polite about him getting home before the winds pick up when the man interrupts.

            “Don’t be.  She left me.  Cuz I’m a drunk.” He says, and laughs in not such a bitter way. It’s a drunken, carefree laugh.  The kind that shows he might miss her sometimes when he watches TV alone or microwaves his dinner but most of the time, he just laughs and drinks.

            I want to say something to him, but there’s a lump in my throat that stops me. I’m not sure why. Normally, I can tell these guys off, joking around and teasing them. But I don’t want to laugh at this guy. I just can’t help but wonder if he’s thinking the same thoughts as me. If he’s still imagining the way things used to be, and how a town can stay the same forever when your life never stops changing. 

            I’m almost done cleaning off all the tables, and I’m finally getting around to the counter.  This is the worst part, kicking out the old guys.  Some of them have nowhere to go.  Not that I usually care about stuff like that these days. 

“We’re closing soon,” I tell the drunk.

            “There are some things you never get tired of.  A lot of things I’ll miss about this town,” the man continues.  For a moment I wonder why he’ll miss it, and when he’s leaving. But then he gets up and smiles at me.  He doesn’t shake my hand or ask my name but he says, “you take care now” in a weird old-fashioned way that makes me think he means it.  And it makes me wonder if he’s leaving or I am.  

When he walked out the door I take a good look at the pub.  It’s dark and dirty and wouldn’t last except in a town like this, where people are brutally loyal to their town and their bar but don’t know the name of their bartender.  It wouldn’t exist in a place where men come home to their wives after work and spend Saturday evenings teaching their kids how to throw a football. And it wouldn’t survive without people like me, who serve the geezers drinks and listen without saying much.  

            I walk home alone, and, as the winds pick up, I think about how Brooklyn accents could sound like bleating.  But I don’t think about anything bigger because, these days, I know I’m only as big as I’ve drawn myself in my head.  

That night, the waves crash against the boardwalk and the ocean floods the streets, washing away broken beer bottles and leaving sand underneath the bar stools at the pub.  The water reaches the third shelf and the next day the owner sees the wreckage and tears up so he almost forgets to blame me.  

That night, electrical fires burn down the most popular grocery and even the church rectory gets singed.  The hospital gets shut down and one or two people drown in their own basements.  

Someday, maybe a year from now, they’ll build memorials and collect funds to Bring Back Our Bars!, but the hospital will be abandoned.  They’ll rebuild the boardwalk and the young boys will grow into geezers who stay in the bar after closing and chat with the bartender in their bleating Brooklyn accents.  And no one will ever complain about that.