The Opening

by Ron Savarese

  Luckily, our flight arrived on time in late afternoon before the storm hit. But John and Caryn weren’t so lucky. Their flights were delayed, so they decided they would wait for each other at the airport and drive up together later that day.

  We loaded our bags into the rental car and got on the road. I drove as fast as I dared, trying to outrun the storm. But we hit the snow about twenty miles from Paul’s house. As we drove along the shores of the lake, heaps of snowflakes the size of maple leaves dropped from the sky and clung to our windshield before being swatted away by the hypnotic swish of the wipers.

  A couple of times, I couldn’t see the road for the whiteness of it, and I had to pull over until the deluge slowed down. We passed a few cars that had slid off the road and onto the shoulder. We kept going. There wasn’t a lot of choice. It was as bad behind us as it was ahead. But, nerves frazzled, I pulled the car into Paul’s driveway around six o’clock. It was already dark. Paul’s wife, Nancy, waved us in from just inside the front door.

  “Hi you guys! You brought us a white Christmas. First one in four years!” she yelled, as we felt our way up the driveway toward the front porch steps. “You better get in here quick before you get covered in snow.”

  Nancy held the door open. Like always, her pretty face, milky white skin, and bright blue eyes, brought a lively energy to the room. We walked in, stomping our shoes on the doormat, kicking off slush and snow.

  “It’s been a long time since I’ve seen snow like this,” I said, giving her a kiss on the cheek and looking around for Paul. “It reminds me of when I was kid.”

  Thomas and Jessica brushed the snow off their shoulders. Just then Paul sauntered in. He’d come around the corner from the hallway that led to the bedrooms. He tugged at his pants, pulling them up around his waist. He rested one hand on his hips, while the other rested on his round belly.

  He looked at us and smiled. “It’s about time you got here! Merry Christmas!” he said.

  Before I could reply, Nancy stepped behind me and wrapped her arms around Jessica. Jessica melted into her. I looked at Paul and he looked back at me. He knew Jessica’s prognosis was dicey.

  “I wouldn’t have even known you’d been sick, Jesse! You look great!” Nancy said, and she released Jessica from the hug.

  Jessica let out a sigh, tightened her lips and looked down at the floor. I knew Nancy meant well. I also knew Jessica wanted to change the subject, to avoid having to talk about her condition. “It’s been a long road,” is all she said.

  Silence hung in the air for a while until Nancy spoke again. “Oh, I’m so glad you’re here.” She grabbed Jessica’s arm and looked over her shoulder at Thomas and me. “Let’s get you guys something to drink. Paul, why don’t you help the boys to some goodies?”

  Thomas and I walked into the dining room with Paul. A platter of cheese and crackers, a bowl of olives, a bottle of wine chilling in a metal bucket, and a bottle of whiskey rested on the white table cloth. A wreath of green cut-pine boughs and glowing ivory-colored candles, made the scene look like a picture in a magazine.

  We picked at the food while Nancy motioned for Jessica to follow her through the doorway to the family room.

  “We’ll let the men talk about football or something,” she said. We’ll relax and get caught up. We have a lot to talk about.” Jesse gave me a glance I couldn’t read. Or maybe I could read it pretty clearly. Then she followed Nancy through the door.

  “You ladies go right ahead,” Paul said.

  He stepped toward the table, ignored the bottle of wine in the ice bucket, and opened the bottle of whiskey. He poured three glasses and handed one to me and one to Thomas.

  “It’s good to see you,” he said, as he raised his glass, “Salute!”

  Salute. It was old hometown slang. A play on the toast, salud—to your health. It had been awhile since I’d heard that one.

  As we talked, I looked around the room. Things had sure changed, I thought. When we were kids, Paul and Albert and I used to play on the floor here with our little, green plastic army men. Then I heard the weather report on TV— more snow was coming. I thought about the kids driving in.

  Paul clanged his glass against Thomas’s, then mine, tilted his head back, and with one gulp, threw it down. He turned toward the front window just as lights from a car lit up the driveway.

  I moved closer to the window. “It’s not the kids, is it?” I asked. I knew they couldn’t possibly be here already. But I’d been fretting about their making that drive, especially since the storm hadn’t let up. I hoped they’d call when they reached the airport, so I could tell them to find a hotel and drive in the next morning. It would be a tough sell—they were eager to get here.

  “No,” Paul said. “It’s Mike. He’s come by to pick us up. We’re heading down to The Pub. Some of the old gang is in town. They want to see you, Joe—I don’t know why.” He smiled to let me know he was joking, and slapped me on the back.

  Oh great, I thought, the Eagle’s Nest Pub, best workingman’s bar in town. I hadn’t been there in a while. But what the hell, I could use a good stiff drink right about now. Calm the nerves.

  Paul turned back toward the table and looked at Thomas. “You coming with us, Tom?”

  Thomas swung his long wavy brown hair out of his eyes with a slight swing of his head.

  “No thanks, I think I’ll stay here and wait for my brother and sister to get in.”

  “Okay,” Paul said. He yelled toward Jesse and Nancy. “Joe and I are headed to The Pub. We’ll be back in a little while.” He pulled some of his winter gear from the coat closet: a dark blue parka with zip pockets in front, a black knit hat, and black fleece gloves.

  “Hey, it’s good to have you here for the holidays. It’s been a long time since you’ve been back for Christmas. You know, it hasn’t been the same around here at Christmastime since Albert’s…”

  “Not now, Paul,” I said. “I’m not up for that, okay? Let’s go have that drink.”

  Paul got the message. He tossed the parka and hat at me. “Here, you might need these. You’re not in the tropics anymore.” He raised an eyebrow and smirked. The same way he did when we were kids. Funny how some things never change. “We have snowstorms up here. Did you forget?”

  No, I hadn’t forgotten. I hadn’t forgotten anything that happened here—most of it so far away from everything I had become.

  Paul opened the door. A gust of snow blew in.

  “Have fun you guys. And be careful!” Nancy yelled. “There’s a lot of snow on the roads and lots more coming. Don’t stay out too late, okay? We don’t want to have to send the dogs out looking look for you.”

  “Don’t worry. We’ll be back before midnight,” Paul answered.

  We ducked our heads against the storm and pushed our way into the cold.

  THE PUB

  The Eagle’s Nest was crowded that night. And although I hadn’t been there in over ten years, the pub looked almost exactly like it had the last time—a time warp from the mid-seventies. As soon as I walked in the door, I saw Ben Simpson, an old friend from my Little League days, standing at the bar.

  “Oh my god—Joe St. John. I haven’t seen you in years,” he said. “Get over here and let me buy you a drink.” He swung his arm around me and pulled me to the bar. Next thing I knew I was downing a shot of tequila. Not bad, I thought—I hadn’t had one of those in a long time.

  Ben was almost half a foot taller than me. His thick brown hair and broad shoulders made him look younger than he was. He slapped me on the back a few times and made some small talk and then started yakking about the time our high school baseball team went all the way to the state finals and had the game won until Mark Fedderson let a routine ground ball— which would have been the last “out” of the game—bounce between his legs. Ben shook his head. “All he had to do was catch it, step on third base, and we’d have been state champs!”

  Two runs scored and we lost that game in the last inning. We were sev
enteen years old then, and Ben was still talking about it. I don’t think he ever forgave Mark. Funny how some guys never grow up. Ben nodded to Mark who was standing across the bar. I hoped Mark couldn’t read Ben’s lips. Ben proceeded to tell me about his life—how his daughter had just had a baby girl, and how his two sons were doing well in business.

  I don’t know if it was the shots of tequila or all the noise in the crowded smoky bar but at some point I tuned Ben out and drifted off, thinking about my kids driving in the snow. Maybe I shouldn’t have come here with Paul and Mike. Maybe I should have stayed at the house and waited for them to make it in. I downed another shot of tequila. Oh well, Jessica could handle it.

  Ben kept talking and I nodded and pretended I was listening but as I looked at the picture of Danny that had hung above the fireplace mantle for years, I drifted away and thought about him and the old times.

  The Eagles Nest Pub got its name from the original owner: Danny “Eagle Eyes” Ferrari. Back in the day we used to just call it “The Pub” and that’s what most of the people in town still called it. The old-timers said Danny got the name Eagle Eyes because he had perfect vision. And since he loved to play baseball his perfect vision served him well. He could hit just about anything. He was one hell of a ball player. One hell of a hitter. No matter how hard a pitcher could throw or how much junk a pitcher had, Danny could hit it.

  They said he held the all-time, all-state record for least amount of strike-outs in a single season: one. I don’t think anybody really checked the record books on that one but the stat sounded good and it added to Danny’s reputation. He could read a license plate a mile away, people said. Obviously, more hometown lore, but everybody loved Danny and I guess people just like to believe things that can’t possibly be true because it makes them feel good.

  Danny was drafted by the St. Louis Cardinals and played one year in the majors before he got hurt. When he opened the bar in the early 50’s dock workers and railroaders hung out in droves. The story goes that one night the wife of a man who lived next door to the pub called the cops to complain that a group of men were being noisy and rowdy. She was probably just tired of her husband coming home drunk every Friday night. She told the cops there were “more men hangin’ around that place on Friday nights after work than hornets buzzin’ around a hornet’s nest.”

  Word got out about the incident and for a while folks called the place Danny’s Nest. After a while it was known as Danny Eagle’s Nest. Finally it became The Eagle’s Nest Pub, and then, just The Pub. That name stuck. Old Eagle Eyes put up a lighted outdoor sign with a picture of a great big soaring blue eagle with huge white eyes that you could see all the way to the harbor.

  When Danny hit eighty-five he got cancer in one eye and had to have it removed. Soon after that he lost his vision in the other eye. Go figure. Eagle Eyes can’t see anymore. The locals said he got the cancer from all the second-hand smoke in the bar. Danny deserved a better fate. He sold the pub two years ago just before he died, to my old buddy Fred, a retired fireman looking for a way to make a few extra bucks. Fred got a gold mine. He made a pretty good living off it for a guy who never went to college. He hung a picture of Old Eagle Eyes above the fireplace, right between Danny’s two favorite entertainers: Frank Sinatra and Dean Martin.

  When we were in high school, before we were old enough to drink, we’d sneak into the pub and Danny poured us shots of whisky and served us up some cold beers. That was back in the day when you could do that sort of thing without somebody blowing the whistle.

  The Eagle’s Nest had the look and feel of an English pub. Dark wooden paneled walls and dim lights and a big fireplace. A big horseshoe-shaped bar of polished mahogany filled almost the entire bar area. On one side of the fireplace was a small room with a pool table. Sometimes the pool table was used for crap games. Danny’s office was behind the pool room.

  The pub was packed that night with the old hometown gang and high school friends and even some guys from grammar school. I probably knew more than eighty percent of the people in the bar by name. A few were throwing darts in the corner and others were singing Christmas carols. A few were walking around slapping each other on the back; laughing and carrying on: smoking cigarettes, chomping cigars, going outside to get high.

  Mark Fedderson staggered over to Ben and me. He ordered three more shots of tequila. Mark had married my childhood sweetheart Maria—who was more like a sister than a girlfriend, really—shortly after high school. Mark had a string of bad luck that started about five years earlier when he lost his only child—a daughter—to leukemia. And then he lost Maria three years after their little girl’s death, she died in her sleep. An aneurism, the doctors said.

  After Maria’s death, Mark went through a rough patch. Just this past summer though, he remarried. I thought about Maria briefly and that strange dream I had about her just before she died. I hadn’t thought about that in a while—must have been the tequila. We toasted Mark’s recent marriage.

  I snapped back from my thoughts just long enough to throw back the shot, and then began to worry about the kids again. Maybe I should call Jesse and see if they made it in, I thought.

  But I didn’t.

  THE VOICE

  I drank way too much that night. No doubt about it—too many shots of tequila. Not my usual spirit, but it seemed to be the thing the guys were into drinking those days. It was late, or early, depending on your point of view. At a certain point I realized that most everyone was gone. Just a few stragglers still sitting at the bar. It was time for me to get back to the house. Jessica probably wondered what had happened to me. Paul left hours ago.

  I was surprised Jessica or Nancy or one of the kids hadn’t called. Or maybe they did. Oh damn, I’d left my cell phone in the car. Maybe they tried the bar phone. Bartenders in this hard-drinking part of the country are trained to be discrete about who’s there and who’s not, especially when it comes to the wives. I wasn’t really sure how I got to be one of the last in the bar, or why Paul left without me. Then I remembered: Paul tried to get me to come with him. Tried to get me to stop drinking, for that matter. He must have just given up, and gone home, thinking I would call for a ride if I needed to.

  The fire was still burning. Bruce Springsteen’s “Thunder Road” was on the jukebox. I looked at my watch, but I couldn’t quite see the hands on that expensive piece of silver and gold machinery. “Hey…” Oh god, I forgot the bartender’s name. And he owned the joint. He was a guy I went to high school with, for Christ’s sake. “Uh…hey, got the time?”

  “It’s almost three,” he said. “I’ll be closing up soon. Hey Joe, don’t you have some family to go home to tonight?”

  I ignored the comment as being impertinent. What the hell is a high school graduate bartender doing saying something like that to me? I fished a fifty from my pocket. “This do it?” The barkeep, whatever the hell his name was, just nodded.

  I walked toward the door. Fred, oh yeah, his name was Fred, barked out something that sounded like “Merry Christmas.”

  I glanced at Fred, then saw the clock next to the Budweiser sign. Sure enough—almost three. How’d that happen? I turned away and pushed on the old wooden door. The wind and snow pushed back harder, and the door crashed inward. Whoa! It was windy. I jumped back just in time to avoid a bloody nose, but I took a knock on the side of my head instead of being hit straight on. I pushed again, putting my shoulders into it. The door swung open, and I staggered out into the parking lot. Two cars still there were covered in snow. They looked like slightly melted, giant blocks of vanilla ice-cream: the kind that comes in a box.

  The temperature had dropped even more. The snow was crackly and crunchy. Did Paul leave me the keys for one of these cars? Is that how I was supposed to get home? I felt around in one of my coat pockets for keys.

  Snow swirled around the hazy yellow glow of streetlights. Streetlights dangled from slanted wooden poles and swayed back and forth in the wind. No sign of life anywhere: just
me, the snow, and the lights.

  It was a good thing I knew this part of town. I could vaguely make out the sidewalk by the line of dark trees and the Christmas lights on the shrubs outside some of the houses nearby. As I turned in the direction of one of the cars, I heard something. A quiet little voice. It sounded like it said, “Walk.”

  What? I turned around, but no one was there. Did Fred yell something from the door of the pub? I squinted through the snow. The heavy, dark door was still closed, and I saw a flicker of light from the fire through the frosted windows. Who said that? Ah hell, it’s probably just the wind. But then I heard it again.

  “Walk back to the house. It’s not that far.”

  Again I turned around. Nothing. Nothing at all. The streetlights barely made an impression against the dark. But wait—was there something moving up ahead, or was it just a bush, tossed into human shape by the wind?

  “Walk. Come on now. Walk.”

  There’s that voice again. Am I having DT’s? No, it’s real this time. “Who the hell are you?” I yelled.

  I followed the voice. And I walked. I walked along a sidewalk that appeared recently shoveled. When the sidewalk ended, I switched to the part of the road that looked like it was plowed a while ago. I walked, invigorated by the snow and cold. Then something caught my eye again. What was that? A bush isn’t going to be moving ahead of me at a steady pace. Was it a person?

  Instead of heading for Paul’s house, I followed the barely perceptible figure down a path between two buildings. I walked into an open field near an abandoned railroad yard. What am I doing, I thought. I’ve got to get back to the house. It’s late. I was about to turn back when I saw it again. Something moving about fifty yards ahead of me: this time there were two figures running in the snow.

  Were they playing a game? I couldn’t see anything through the snow. And the images seemed to get closer, then fade away. But then I saw that they were two little boys, running and hopping around.