The Cellar

by Peter Fugazzotto

  One, two, three. I counted to ten as many times as I could until my breath finally slowed. Still my heart rattled in my chest. Things were falling apart. Was it just this moment of things conspiring together or had I pointed myself in the wrong direction one day and ended up in a distant land?

  I gave myself a few moments then slipped out of the stall. I looked the same in the mirror: confident, dressed to the nines, youthful despite the half century. And the twinkle still floated in my eyes.

  A few more deep breaths and I was ready to stride back out into the chaos, the moment of crisis passed.

  The phone vibrated again.

  I looked at the screen. A text from Tug.

  I finally read it.

  "Sorry to have to share this. Dave passed away yesterday. His Mom sent an email saying he died after a long battle with alcoholism. Fuck, we should have been there for him."

  5

  We were like brothers, the five of us.

  Neighborhood rats. The pack of us.

  Me, Tug, Jay, Lipksy, and Dave.

  And now Dave was gone. Dead. Drunk himself to death.

  We had known each other since kindergarten. Thumb-sucking stupid kids. Screaming maniacs. We had stuck together through all those years, right up through high school after which we all went our separate ways promising that we would be tight forever. But that was an empty promise.

  I was always the face, the charmer, the one who had the girlfriends, the smartest of the bunch. I didn't lead, no one did, but they gravitated towards me.

  Tug was the jock. Big, bulging with muscles even in grade school; the one whose fist never hesitated if anyone came after one of us. Our enforcer. His path led to the Marines and two wars and his problems now.

  That was when he drifted away from me. I was deep in law school, then those early years at the Public Defender's office. We were living in two different worlds, and even now that he was back in town, returned from the sandbox as he liked to say, we still floated in different circles. His being the dive bars, the park benches, his shit hole apartment complex.

  Then there was Lipsky.

  Lipsky never really made it out of middle school. He did. I mean he went to university in Seattle and moved there permanently, but it was like his growth stunted in middle school – always small, awkward with those bottle lens glasses, no concern about the way he dressed.

  But it made sense in some ways because back in those middle school years he was important: he was the Dungeon Master. We were obsessed for a few years with the game of Dungeons and Dragons. We spent hours in his basement, rolling dice, drinking sodas, and living adventures beyond this world. We were as tight as we ever could have been, and we stuck together through the chaos of evil wizards, dragons, trolls, and beholders. And we survived. We fought and we survived.

  Then time passed. Sports. Girls. School. We moved on. But Lipsky never really did. Those were the best of times for him.

  Next we had Jay. He and I were the closest once. Like brothers.

  Jay hung around California. Never left really. Ever. He had big plans. After college, he was going to travel the world. Then return for his Ph.D. and become some bigwig classics history professor.

  Farthest he got was Los Angeles but not for what he should have been.

  He was the brain. The smartest of all of us knuckleheads. Straight A's through high school. Right into Stanford. The world was waiting for him. But he was also the stupidest. Fell madly in love with a girl his senior year. She got pregnant. He followed her down to Los Angeles. His trip around the world got put on hold. He put off graduate school and took the first job he could find. A high school history teacher in a shitty school district. Two divorces later, he's still teaching high school history and never took that trip around the world. His dreams deferred. He's like a shell of what he could have been.

  Finally there was Dave. The jokester. The partier. But deep beneath it, one of the nicest guys. Never could hurt anyone. Always wanted everyone else to be happy. Wanted the world to be a place full of toasts, laughter, and slaps on the back. When I visited him in Boulder during college, I was high within two minutes of getting off the plane, and hung over when the plane landed back in San Francisco. I thought he would end up owning a bar. Then he met Anna. A Born Again Christian. He fell madly in love with her, though I never understood why, especially since she came from a different world than he did. Dave tried to walk her path. He never could. He always veered off the line. On the outside, he seemed to embrace her righteous way of life. He attended church weekly, bowed his head in grace before meals, and coached his son's baseball teams from the PeeWee leagues right through college. But he never stopped drinking.

  I should have done something. I knew he had a problem. The few times we talked or the long ago times I visited, he was always heavy in his drink. So heavy but stable beneath it for a long time. Then the quick succession of jobs and the unemployment. The rambling late night calls for a short while reminiscing about the old days. I did try to reach out to Anna but she left a voice mail message telling me that I was not the influence he needed in his life right now, that God would watch out for his sheep.

  The five of us. We were like brothers. And now one of us was dead.

  And I did nothing to stop it.

  6

  A week after I received that fateful text from Tug, I fidgeted in a church pew in Boulder listening to the preacher prattle on about Jesus, our destiny, and for a few brief moments Dave.

  The preacher, dressed in a suit well above his station, rubbed his palms on the sides of the pulpit. "We all have struggles with faith, my children. We all wander into the wilderness, sheep without our shepherd. Into the darkness, we walk lost without the pure and guiding light. Years we can wander in this wilderness. Blind, lost, away from our loved ones, away from our Lord." His voice rose, a Southern accent emerging from the bland Midwestern. "But we can find the light." He raised his hands. Gold rings glittered. "The light of our Lord."

  An amen burst from the crowd.

  "The Lord is our Shepherd!"

  A gathering of voices this time.

  "And he shall lead us from the darkness!"

  "Save me Jesus!" A man stood in the sea of suits and dresses, hands flung towards the ceiling.

  "Do not despair, Brother Stephen. No matter how dark the day. The light of Jesus awaits you."

  "Amen."

  "We have lost Brother David. A man who waited too long to come to Jesus. A man with a loving wife and an innocent son. He could not shake the evil seed planted in his youth. If only he had truly accepted our Lord and Savior."

  I stared around the church. Who were these people? Who was this lying joker behind the pulpit? Did they even know Dave at all?

  "We lost him. To sin. To temptation. But now he has gone to the awaiting arms of Jesus. His head shall be anointed. His feet washed. The long journey done. He has come to the light."

  Anna wept loudly in the front row, her son stoic beside her.

  Then the service ended. I slipped out the door during the hallelujahs and praise Jesuses. I didn't care about the scowls and shaking heads. After all, I was there when the evil seed was planted.

  Eventually the service let out and folks gathered on the green church lawn. I kept my distance by the aspen trees near the parking lot. I dug my hands into my pockets. The distant peaks were snow covered.

  I recognized a few people. Some of his friends from college, a few fellow classmates from high school. In that moment, I almost wished that I would have asked Liz to come with me. Or Bridget. Anyone so I would not have to be alone.

  I had been standing there by myself for a while before a face from the past found me. An old high school classmate, one of the others who had gone to Boulder, but for the life of me I could not remember his name. We were in Spanish class together one year.

  He was thin, skeletal really, and hollow cheeked. His skin was dry and yellow. So old. Had I too aged so much beyond recognition? He grabbed my hand in his
and shook it hard. "Skip, so good to see you." What was his name? Scott? Andrew? He was one of the guys who wanted to fit in, to be cool, but he played baseball instead of lacrosse, cross-country instead of soccer. "Dave would have been glad to see you here. He talked about you and the crew all the time. The good old days. But he was lost." He shrugged towards the church. "Not in that way. Just lost in the bottle. Not sure any of this was good. His kid Max was good, but Anna, I don't think that helped things. Never solved any of his problems."

  "You see him often?" I asked.

  "We were in business together for a few years. You knew that, right?"

  I nodded stupidly.

  "Why didn't you come visit him more? It would've helped."

  Eventually after more questions I could not really answer, I made an excuse. About having to catch my flight back to the Bay Area even though the flight was not until the next day.

  I was in the parking lot staring at the rental car, keys in hands, wondering if I should drive to the airport and try to get a flight back home that afternoon when I heard my name.

  I turned to find Tug. He had already pulled the tie from his thick neck and sweat darkened his armpits. He dug a finger into his collar.

  "What are you doing here?" he asked.

  "I didn't see you in there."

  "I can fucking ninja it sometimes."

  I laughed. "Jolly green giant ninja."

  He hit my shoulder with a big fist. "Let's get a drink. Toss back a few for old Dave."

  "I don't know, Tug. Doesn't seem right to drink. Not after his funeral."

  "He's dead man. Just the rest of us suckers now. I'll even let you buy."

  7

  It was a mistake. Going to that bar with Tug.

  And not just because it was right after the funeral of our friend who drank himself to death.

  But because the bar was seedy, out in the worst part of town, and Tug had that bat-shit crazy look in his eye.

  The look he had when we were kids. The look that always got us in trouble.

  Like that time in the Mission neighborhood in San Francisco.

  Even back then Tug was a bear of a person. Despite being only fifteen. You'd think his size would have deterred the other kids but it didn't.

  Our high school Spanish teacher took us on a field trip, leaving the well-heeled comfort of Marin County, crossing the fog-laden Golden Gate Bridge, and into the largely Latino, working class Mission District of San Francisco where we were to tour the church and take photos of the murals. The real value of the trip from the teacher's point of view was for us to go into a few stores and buy items in Spanish. Immersion. Put us in the heart of the Mission and put our schoolwork to use.

  When it came time to practice our Spanish, our group separated in different ways. I went with Julie to get a taco. I didn't really want to get a taco but I wanted to be alone with her, and see if I could steal a beso or two. Practice my Spanish wooing.

  Tug knew what he had wanted to buy. He had talked about it the whole bus ride over. A pie. He was supposed to get one of these famous pies. Thing was the pies were made by a Russian who lived in the Mission so Tug was not even going to complete his assignment. I told him that the pie wouldn't count, that it was okay if he tagged along with me and Julie. But he insisted. He was getting a pie for his mother. His mother had always talked about these pies. He wanted to do something nice for her.

  I ended up getting my taco and a few hurried kisses from Julie with her back pressed against one of the famous murals. Then we waited by the BART station for the others to return. A bunch of privileged white kids laughing and hanging out in the heart of the Mission. Tug was one of the last to return, two pies in pink cardboard boxes wrapped in yellow ribbon balanced in his outstretched hands.

  I should have said something but I didn't. I saw it all unfolding but I thought it was a dream. I thought it would never happen.

  In the corner of the BART plaza, a dozen or so kids milled about, local kids, middle schoolers, blue bandanas tied around their necks, or covering their heads. They were kids, in middle school, and in among them was one older skinny tattooed gang member, whispering, encouraging. I could see it happening. They swarmed among us, the little gangbangers taunting, laughing.

  At first, we thought they were just trying to talk to us in Spanish as if this were all a specially arranged part of the field trip. But then fists flew, hair was pulled, piñatas torn out of hands. I grabbed Julie by the elbow and dragged her away, from the chaos, back towards the church where the bus waited for us.

  As I scurried away I saw Tug standing there, big kid in the middle of all of it, and for a moment I thought that he would walk away unscathed. The punks respected his size and skirted around him. Then one of the smallest punks got his eyes on Tug. The kid leapt onto a garbage can, sprung off it, and with a single kick sent the pies flying.

  That's when the crazy flooded Tug's eyes. Fists flew. The gang jumped him, all at once, and then burst away as Tug had shook them off like water from the fur of a dog.

  It was chaos. Madness. And I had sweet Julie at my side. So I dragged her away.

  Half an hour later, we all trembled by the school bus, all the kids accounted for. The girls wept. The boys chewed their lips. A police officer spoke in hushed tones to our Spanish teacher.

  Tug sidled his way next to me, his breath still heaving, his eyes wide and wild, focused as if in another world. A bit of blood caked beneath his nose. In his hands, he held the two pie boxes, the corners collapsed, the cardboard bottoms soaked blue.

  "You should have stood with me," he said. "Where'd you go?"

  "I had to protect Julie." I could not take my eyes from his swollen lip, the blood below his nose.

  "Next time stick with me."

  I nodded.

  And I did stick with him the next time, and the few times after that. But eventually it got old. Tug's short temper. His fast flying fists. The wild look in his eyes.

  Eventually I walked away and let him fight his own demons.

  And that's why it was a mistake going to that bar with him after Dave's funeral service. I should have just headed back to my motel. But I needed to be with someone. I did not want to be alone. And I had no one.

  8

  I stopped drinking after the third burning shot of whiskey. But Tug kept going, the empty glasses lining up on the table in front of us. It was as if those first three shots were to get him warmed up.

  "Everything's gone to shit," I said.

  "Welcome to my world."

  The bar, dark and smelling of stale cigarettes and bleach, had a surprising number of patrons for the middle of a Sunday. And most looked like regulars. Worn down at the edges. Too intent on the bottles in their hands. Tug looked right at home there.

  "My daughter, my wife," I said. "And lately work. It's not been feeling right."

  "I can lend you an ear, brother. That's about it." Tug ran his big fingers through his beard.

  I wondered if my beard would have so much gray if I grew it out. The years had crept up on us.

  Tug raised his shot glass. "To Dave. And everything that's fucked up in our life." This time he only sipped the whiskey. He inhaled deeply though his nostrils. "Don't tell anyone this but I miss it over there."

  "Afghanistan?"

  He nodded. He looked off into the distance, as falling into a trance, his eyes half-lidding.

  "That was years ago, and, I don't know, Tug, you think that really set you on the right path? How many times did I pull you out of the drunk tank? And your knee's fucked up. And when's the last time you didn't get fired?"

  He swept a hand across the table sending a bottle skittering to the floor. Angry faces looked up from their drinks. "Was somebody there. Needed. Here I'm nothing."

  "That place was killing you. I read your letters. Don't make it off to be something that it wasn't."

  "You didn't write back. Hardly at all."

  I stared at my empty shot glass, rotating it between my f
orefinger and thumb. I didn't know what he wanted me to say. I never knew what to write. The horror stories he described didn't make me want to write back. He had buddies blow up right in front of him, their skin and blood showering him. He killed kids. After the third time he wrote about it I was not sure whether it was an accident or an intentional thing. He even wrote to me about how he and a few others had snuck off the base to track down a suspected snitch. They had tortured the old man, gouged out his eyes, cut out his tongue, and then left him hanging from a rope where his family and neighbors would see him.

  How was I supposed to write back when I got letters like that? Was I supposed to be the impartial friend? Was I supposed to just turn a blind eye to the madness that consumed him? It was easier to turn away. It was easier to let the letters pile up.

  I was there for him when he came back, organized the party, got him an apartment, even set him up for the first of many jobs that he would get fired from. I could be there for him, but just from an arm's length where I didn't have to skirt the edges of hell.

  "This round's on me." I pushed away from our table and returned to the bar.

  The bartender looked long and hard at me, and then over my shoulder with a frown, before bending to pick up fresh glasses. "One more drink and then you boys best be on your way."

  A woman at the bar, a little tired looking around her eyes, but otherwise quite attractive leaned towards me. I tried not to stare at her cleavage. "How you doing today, honey?" Her words rolled out in a breathy whisper.

  I let my gaze drift to her legs, her breasts, her lips. "Starting to feel much better."

  The bartender slammed the drinks on the bar in front of me. "Last drinks."

  When I returned to our table, Tug had torn a napkin into shreds. His eyes were wide, bloodshot, filled with that focus from the fights of childhood. "Fuckers staring at me."