Green Grow The Rashes And Other Stories

by William Meikle

  ~-o0O0o-~

  In the morning I woke to find them gone. I couldn’t even remember where our next stop was to be. There was a bird involved in the place name, that I knew, but whether it was Gander, or Happy Valley Goose Bay, I had no idea. Not that it mattered, for I had no intention of following them. All I wanted was to find the man who had stood in that dark corner; find him, and learn how to bring up the emotion that was too deeply buried to find at any other time.

  I spent the rest of the day in the bar, supping beer and casting looks into the corner. Several patrons tried to engage me in conversation, mostly about the song, but a couple of grunts soon put paid to that, and eventually I was left alone with my beer and my memories. All too soon I was back on the hard stuff again.

  And so it went, through a long afternoon that turned into a fuzzy evening.

  I had been good, once upon a time, a lifetime ago. I left Scotland in my twenties with the voice of an angel and the confidence to send it out to any audience who would listen. I played gigs all over North America, to ever-bigger crowds, ever bigger acclaim. I met Jennie, and we did all of that, but together.

  Then she went and died on me. My voice shrank, and so did the crowds, and my life got smaller, circling Newfoundland in a decrepit van, singing the same songs every night, and drinking, always drinking. I had thought I was as dead as my love. The man in the shadow had shown me different. And I hated him for it.

  I only shook myself out of my reverie when the night’s entertainment started up -- a band of youngsters, musically gifted, but with about as much heart as a lump of wood. I left them to it and headed for the washroom. To do so I had to pass by the shadowed corner.

  He was there again, a darker blackness but recognisable as the same stout man from the night before.

  "Hey!" I called out, and headed in his direction. But as I closed on him, so he seemed to slide away from me. I followed the shifting shadow, around the wall of the bar and out, into a biting cold night.