Here’s a story that defied me the last few months of this past summer. I tried to put it into words three different ways yet I find it still lies dormant in a few mixed up files on my hard drive. Recent correspondence implies I must get rid of it now even if it’s just crudely recalled from rapid-fire memory.
The story is presently titled “Every Day Above the Green Grass” and, according to my scattered notes, the motivation behind it goes like this…
ONE SUNNY AFTERNOON IN JUNE, I had grown tired of aimlessly fishing and hanging around the house so I stopped in one of my favorite local watering holes.
No big surprise there, I know.
I sauntered in and bellied up beside my next door neighbor who just happened to be there, too. We were the only two yahoos in the place on a hot summer’s day.
This is in a small town where everybody knows everybody. When a person walks into an establishment around here, it’s just natural that greetings are spoken. Strangers and out-of-towners often tell me that it’s rather unnerving to walk into these places. They feel as though all eyes are upon them when they come through the door. They tend to feel like they’re interrupting some private party or something.
I tell them that the regulars aren’t trying to be rude. They just don’t want to be caught not saying hello to somebody they recognize, lest they be considered arrogant or stuck up among the members of the community.
So, when I opened the door and entered the bar that day, I was immediately greeted with the standard line, “How’s Bamboo doin’ today?”
I guess it’s sort of an odd way of asking, maybe a bit detached but it is the accepted familiar fashion for around here. The customary replies are equally uncertain, I suppose, never much more than a “Good, how are y’all doin’?” response expected.
As it is in the typical manner of human speech around the world, nobody really wants an honest answer to that question. It’s just the local way of saying hello.
People surely have their own way of talking in these parts. I’m sure the particular style has evolved over the years, settling in for everyone in a way that is comfortable to them. For some unknown reason, as with greetings, the detached, second-person style also fits well for the standard local rebuke, “Fuck Off”, which is regularly spoken more like one drawn out word rather than two separate ones, the hard “off” sounding more like a curved “awwf”, and it’s usually met with laughter, not having nearly the same sinister intent that most out-of-towners are accustomed to expecting.
My neighbor is called Duke. He’s a short, thin guy who talks very softly. He’s about 45 years old with a long black pony tail tied back tight behind his head and sports an uneven, stringy beard on his chin. His family is large and well known in these parts. For the last 25 years he’s worked four nights a week, twelve hour shifts as a printing press operator for a big outfit. He generally wears an old Sturgis ball cap on his head and, except for funerals or weddings, is never caught in anything but blue jeans. When he’s not working or tending to his family, Duke’s generally drinking Coors Light bottled beer somewhere.
The afternoon bartender at this place is named Henry. His voice is a loud baritone. He’s a tall, lanky sort with wire-framed spectacles. Short-haired and single, he’s in his mid-30’s and works a day job as an overpaid, on-call computer geek for a large telephone company. Henry is prone to wearing nylon basketball shorts, free t-shirts and old tennis shoes for everyday professional wear.
I can’t think of a more happy-go-lucky pair of guys in this county. I get along with both gentlemen just fine.
Well, I did argue with Henry once when I thought he was putting too much liquor in my drink. I do not prefer to get instantly inebriated from a single swallow. I quickly learned, though, that he knew more about what he was doing than I did.
This particular afternoon played out as it normally does. Outside the sun was shining while Duke and I made quick work of sports topics and the conflicting politics of the day before jumping directly into our routine trivia contest.
Duke is a well-versed on mid-20th century rock and roll. He can also pull out a few sports zingers on me now and then. I, of course, tend to be more generalized in my trivia knowledge but I can beat him at geography and world history since I am more of a vagabond. Henry, being a bit younger, is a great help because he can always bring us both up to date on the latest fads.
The conversation went along quite well for a while, drinks were traded back and forth, and before we knew it, it was shift change. Trish, the evening bartender, entered the scene to relieve Henry.
Trish is a squat, rounded gal, mid-40ish with thick arms and a short, dyed-black, bobbed-style hairdo. She’s very touchy-feely but straightforward and speaks in what ends up as a loud squeak. Twice divorced, she heavily spices her language with common vulgarities that would redden the ears of most drunken sailors. Trish definitely can be described as a confident, independent and quick-thinking person.
They swapped the till in a flash and then Henry, seeing no good reason to leave, saddled up next to Duke and me to continue the trivia game and drink an after-hours Budweiser with us.
A few minutes later, before Trish had a chance to spruce up or really get settled in behind the brightly lighted bar, a huge man known as Sugar Ray barreled in the front door with his oldest son.
Ray worked as a short-order cook at a country restaurant out on the highway. It’s a popular kind of old-fashioned place which serves an entire menu of deep fried goodies, all covered in dangerously thick gravy. Obviously a life-long fan of that style of food, Ray stood about six feet tall and probably weighed in somewhere near 300 pounds. He was very recognizable but not often seen in the bar as such regularity was not within his means.
A few years back, when I had dabbled as a part-time tax man, I had completed Sugar Ray’s annual return. Married with three grown children still living with him, I confess he earned the grand sum of $14 thousand that year. I recall I had actually fudged quite a bit of his return once I realized he owed the government way too much money on such a shallow income. I even short-circuited the usual cost of the paperwork and short-changed the corporate dividend by a few pennies for my services. He never realized that and I never let on what the hell I was doing. He was somewhat happy to numbly pay about a quarter on the dollar and went on with his life and so did I. (I suppose if the Homeland Security nazis sink their teeth too far into this lengthy story then I may be welcomed by anxious IRS agents any day now.)
Anyway, the scene now set, even as limited in their recreational funding as they may have been, Sugar Ray and his muted, free-loading son approached the bar and ordered two Busch Light beers.
Duke, in his typical low-key but familiar greeting, asked, “How’s Ray doin’ today?”
Sugar Ray, pulling a few wadded, greasy dollar bills from his pocket, growled his reply in the breathless style of a grossly obese 55 year old man, “Ahh, you know, I guess any day above the green grass is a good one.”
With those words spoken, before he even touched his cold bottle of beer, Sugar Ray’s eyes rolled up into their sockets. He wavered for a moment before toppling over back from the counter like a giant tree felled by a swift axe. A loud crack echoed in an eerie silence as his wide, balding head smashed into a short wooden wall that separated round dining tables from the bar area.
Duke, Henry and I shared astonished looks. At first we thought it was a joke, I guess. An odd confusion crossed Duke’s face as we sat there contemplating the curious last words of a dead man.
Then, seeing the frozen stance of his son, Henry and I rushed over to Sugar Ray’s limp body as he had fallen in an uncomfortable pile on the floor. We stretched Ray’s massive, lumpy frame out as best we could and rolled him over but the death rattle had already begun, Ray’s lungs instinctively grasping for air that his body no longer needed.
We gave a few obligatory whacks to his thick chest area but, as we later conferred and agreed, his heart gave up quickly and he was most likely dead before he hit the floor.
Trish, visibly shaking and spewing every profanity that’s ever been hastily uttered from behind a bar, immediately phoned for emergency services. Her squeaky yet frantic tone of voice was clearly effective since damn near every cop in town, firefighters and the EMTs were on the scene in less then eight minutes. (Another benefit of small town life, no doubt.)
By my count, the EMTs gave Sugar Ray a total of seven shocks with a portable defibulator but they received no natural response. I gritted my teeth as one of the cops who I am familiar with stood back, looked at me and shook his head knowingly.
It took the whole crew but before they were done lifting his lifeless, whale-like body on the gurney and removing him forever from the bar, Ray’s entire family arrived on the scene.
News, especially bad news, travels quickly around here.
The boys all huddled around their fitful mother and held her back while she trembled and screamed, “Ray! Ray! Wake up!”
It’s generally at this point that I have a hard time recalling further details of this story…Duke, Henry and I have privately discussed the course of this event several times now but some of it remains a bit of a mystery to us.
We’ve wondered if what we often hear is true. We wondered if Sugar Ray’s spirit floated above this scene in the bar, looking down on us from a shining light while we pounded and zapped his body with electricity. We wondered if he still wanted that cold beer or if it suddenly didn’t seem so important to him. We wondered if his soul realized what had happened, if he remembered what he said seconds before his heart exploded. We wondered if he felt our anxiety and anguish, if he read our thoughts. We wondered if he heard his wife and children calling to him, if he wanted to answer us but he couldn’t, if his life’s events played out before his eyes and if he was happy or he was sad. We wondered if he was just afraid or curious enough to go where the light or the dark would lead him, if he suddenly felt like a stranger or an out-of-towner as he entered a new realm or if some thing or someone else recognized him and greeted him with a better offer than we had given him only moments before … and we wondered if his senses truly died before he hit the floor, if he never knew what hit him, if his memory, his emotions, his spirit, his soul all just instantly ceased to exist along with his earthly life.
And we wondered why he chose that moment to say what he said.
We know those questions will never be answered, of course. We have no way of knowing the truth. And, like common everyday greetings, maybe we think we don’t want an honest answer to any of those questions. Not yet, anyway.
But, even without Sugar Ray or his deep fried delicacies, with his last spoken admonishment to us still curiously lingering fresh in our minds, we do know the living went on with their lives as they always do.
About a week later, after Sugar Ray’s body was buried under the green grass two city blocks from the site of his demise, I returned to that same establishment on another beautifully lazy summer’s afternoon. I felt somehow that it was the only right to continue on at my normal lethargic pace even in the face of such fearful reality.
When I entered the bar, I was not shocked to find Duke sitting at his preferred corner stool and Henry dutifully cleaning a few glasses back behind the counter. Once again, just like the last day of old Sugar Ray’s life, lounging only a few steps from the spot where he took his last breath, we were the only yahoos in the place.
Henry and Duke eyed me cautiously as I entered but they didn’t say anything.
Henry gave me his practiced, “You want a drink? The usual?” look and I silently nodded, “Yeah, sure.” He then poured me a stronger than usual 7&7 and deftly placed the full glass in front of me.
Then Henry stood back and smiled silently.
Then Duke smiled.
I looked at them both, unable to control a growing grin on my own face, but I squinted my eyes and said firmly, “Don’t even say it, Duke.”
“I know, I know,” he laughed easily.
Henry relaxed, hung a bar towel over his shoulder, leaned on the counter, then smiled wider, “We’re not saying nuthin' to people who walk in the door anymore.”
“To tell you the truth,” I replied while grabbing my glass, “if Duke had said a word to me, I was going to tell him to fuck-awwf.”
In a very relieved way, we all laughed loudly at that.
Cheers and thanks for letting me get that off my mind for now,
Mb
