The Old Man

Here I am in this loud, crowded bar, sitting, listening to this weathered soul expound his own greatness, his modesty on display elsewhere. Part of me doesn't want to be here, wants, in the way the soul aches for itself while still doubting its existence, to be free of, and from, something. I drink my beer and listen to him tell his stories, a spark in his eyes. He's been here for a while, he's cheerful, still full of vitality. He's drunk.

He's made for himself a profitable little rag of a newspaper, "serious journalism" he says, and I don't dispute him. Harry Bright, by dint of his ancestors, bears strongly his Scottish heritage, his simple beginnings in Oklahoma amidst the poverty and ignorance of the rural South. He bears the scars of Vietnam, the failed dreams of an entire generation that has become the thing it despised. He's almost itching to kick off, not wait around for what comes next, how far the mighty will fall, or what will be left.

He sits and talks of all the great books, the great writers, the great politicians and how the world should work -then he sits back, momentarily sober, the sanity slipping back in and out again, an ebbing tide allowing him to weather the storm of life for another day, another week, another month, another year...

As he talks, I sip my beer and dart my eyes around the room and back to his face. His eyes, though bright, are duller than usual, sunken into his face, his cheeks red. He shows his youth and his age in the same gesture, though he is a pale imitation of the young, idealistic fool he once was. My beer becomes an empty glass I roll between my hands, unsure if another wouldn't hit that magical spot between divine intoxication and drunken foolishness.

Birght seizes the opportunity. A lull in the conversation and the juke box causes him to stand, a bit wobbly, and point to my empty glass that used to be a beer.

"How 'bout another," he says.

"Well, I probably should call it quits for the night..."

"What, now?" He seems startled, his face pulling up into a whince, his shoulders rising to meet his confusion. "Come on -have another. I'll buy. What do you want?"

It was decided -another beer would come, I would drink it, and this night would join the rest somewhere between eternity and tomorrow, never as clear as it had seemed at the time, only a vague recollection of what had been said. All the nights of my life, the lonely ones, the drunken ones, the ones forgotten for their wonderful simplicity, the ones that only seem like a dream now; all the nights of my life are recorded somewhere for the blind eyes of God to read. And somewhere, in all those thousands of nights and days there is a lost portion of my soul that believes tonight has happened only for the first time.