Drink for the Thirst to Come

by Lawrence Santoro

  “‘And…’ Shorty says.

  “‘And there is Paradise,’ Daryl says.”

  The old guy turned to me. Something sparked in his eye.

  “‘There is Paradise,’” he repeated. “See? Daryl was looking for words. ‘There was a place…’ he says finally, ‘not heaven but a place…’ He went looking for the word again. ‘Someplace forever, someplace maybe they don’t boot you, no one ever rags on you. Paradise. It wasn’t real, I’m sure of that. I think they were taking whatever was real out of me and leaving me with…’

  “‘Paradise,’ Shorty said.

  “‘I ain’t ever gonna see no Paradise,’ Halfheart said. PD whacked his leg. He grabbed the spot and started in again but PD smacked him again.

  “‘Yeah,’ Daryl said. ‘They gave me Paradise for a little bit. It was big, a place like heaven. But…’

  “Suddenly PD’s cussing. PD never cusses. He forgets about being PD and shouts, ‘What? The Fuck? Happened? In Skid’s?’ It’s like Halfheart talking Jap. ‘Where? Is fucking? Keegan?’ He’s shaking.

  “‘Fucking Keegan?’ Daryl says. ‘Fucking Keegan, oh, that’s complicated.’

  “The story comes. The story’s this. Daryl is up the steps, through the electric eye, Whoosh. Another Whoosh and it shuts, light’s gone. Just beer signs and jukebox, Como crooning, and some other sounds. And the other sounds: American Shuffleboard goes clink, thunk.

  “That’s first. Then it’s sawdust, peanut shells, something whatever goes crunch under Daryl’s feet. That’s next. Como quits. The juke goes hiss-hiss-hiss. Daryl’s still yelling, ‘Keegan! Keegan, you’re not gone!’ thumb up his butt like always but with the dark and now just a hiss-hiss from the juke, he’s winding down, winding down.

  “But see? No one’s drinking, no one’s talking. Skid’s not calling ‘fuck youse’ and no one’s actually playing American Shuffleboard. So the clinks and thunks are what? Imaginary? Yes. And something else. The air goes from cool to cold, not conditioned, this is the shadow under a summer thunderstorm and the stink isn’t rummy bod and shit-streak clothes, it’s worm, it’s rot and open cellar. The juke hiss blends with the clink, thunk and it becomes a voice. ‘Who invited you?’ the voice says. It’s maybe Skid. Probably not.

  “‘Keegan?’ Daryl gets out a squeak.

  “The regulars turn. They are not as remembered. ‘It was like reading small print,’ Daryl says later. ‘The space, the stink, the voice, the faces. You squint at it, it clears.’”

  “And it was?”

  The old guy took a breath. “‘Dust,’” he says, letting it go. “What Daryl said. Daryl, he’s standing in shadow and vines in the Place. He’s with the guys. Everybody’s safe. And he says it was ‘vapor like dust,’ he says, ‘dust out of the walls, the floor, coming out of the juke, the john, it’s sifting from the ceiling, pouring from the bottles, out the taps, overflowing the glasses, the ashtrays. It’s everywhere, it’s dissolving out of the air.’

  “‘Like dew does,’ Shorty says.

  “‘Like dew does!’ Daryl says. ‘Out of air. Bright and alive. Dust like vapor and it’s rolling toward me.’

  “‘Like snow snakes!’ Halfheart shouts.

  “Everyone looks at Halfheart.

  “‘Yeah. Like at the beginning? And snow starts? Just light stuff in the wind and it rolls? You seen it, curling like them sidewinders in…’

  “PD punches Halfheart. Halfheart punches PD back. ‘I didn’t see no dust in there anyway,’ Halfheart says, ‘or dew, fog, or what-the-fuck!’

  “‘Go on, Daryl,’ Shorty says

  “Daryl uses a lot of words now. What it came to was dust, vapor, whatever, was everywhere. ‘Gathering light,’ he says it’s doing. ‘My light,’ he says, ‘my life.’ And the bar, Skidoo’s, that’s becoming nowhere.”

  I verify. “Nowhere?”

  “Like it doesn’t exist. Like maybe it never did. The regulars stand, looking at Daryl, who is now not saying ‘Keegan, Keegan’ or anything. They are ‘bright and shadow,’ Daryl says, ‘bright like they’ve got fire oozing out of them and what’s left of the world is black stuff rising all around. Sewer water black, thick.’ Daryl squints at his sneaks. He’s trying to see a long way away. Then he goes on, says their light makes them hazy in the vapor or dust or what-the-fuck. The rising dark swirls around them, and them, they’re being carried with it. ‘Floating,’ Daryl says. ‘Flames drifting on night,’ is what he said.”

  He pointed at my book again. “But like I said, all that’s literary convention.

  “So, they float toward Daryl. Daryl, as mentioned, is in the middle of it all, thumb up his butt.

  “Then. In the corner. In what would have been the corner if the world had corners anymore and, I don’t know, maybe in that last second before, Daryl catches a peek at…” the old guy thought for a second, “at ‘real people,’ what Daryl said. ’Boes, regular guys, the ones ‘invited.’ Them and Keegan. Real people. And this is the thing, this is the main thing: ‘Next to Keegan, is Rory,’ he says, Daryl says.”

  “The dead kid?”

  “Dead Rory, yeah. Rory, dead, there with Jackie, his brother, our Keegan. There they are, the Keegan brothers, one real, the other not so much. A flame, a small one, that was Rore. A small flame embracing its brother.”

  “‘Then, time changed,’ he said, Daryl said. ‘One look at that dead kid, time wasn’t real no more.’ What he said. ‘The room was already not real. Now it was, I don’t know, a dream of burning and the burning was all around…’”

  The old guy was quiet.

  “Yeah?”

  “Yeah, yeah,” he said. “I just realized,” he said after a second, “this is a road. We’re on a road, a mountain road.”

  Ahead, the road rushed toward us, in white dashes under us.

  “Okay. Skidoo’s is fading into something not real.”

  “A dream.”

  “Yeah, a dream. Daryl said. The people—except for Keegan and the ’boes—were light and dust…”

  “Vapor!”

  “And light. Yeah, vapor and light. ‘And the darkness they float on is night. Or time and the world,’ Daryl said. The inside of the bar became outside and outside it was night, quiet night with stars. ‘And a long road,’ Daryl said. ‘The way unrolled down a hill then up. Like our mountain if our mountain went on forever and didn’t have houses or people. The road goes down and down like the Nutcracker if the Nutcracker was forever,’ he said that too. Then he said, ‘The road is silver in starlight. Then they touch me,’ he said. ‘They touch me.’ That’s Daryl. ‘I felt them, cold, they took me. I feel their flame, it’s cold and it comes into me. And they take. They take and I am on the road. And I don’t mind, see? The road unrolls like coming down from the End faster than ever but not having to pedal, not even a little. The world passes, mountains, trees, they whisper, and the sky is dark and silver,’ he says. He says, ‘It’s like an old movie, a negative in dark silk and old snow,’ he says, ‘and I’m going farther and farther from…’”

  The old guy stopped.

  “What?”

  “Oh, cripes, he didn’t know what he was getting farther from! From ‘the beginning,’ he says, but he didn’t know. He never did know, not until…”

  “Where was he?”

  “‘Where was he?’ Nothing. He was there. He was in Skidoo’s. Get your questions right. ‘What?’ That’s your question. What’re they sucking from him? I’ll say. They’re taking whatchacallit? The real. Like I said, there’s blood and then there’s blood. They were taking day and night, they’re taking parents, school, hell, taking us, the Enders, taking the End, the good shit and the lousy, all the crap of being alive, being in Brewer, all the shit of being Darly, being one of the guys, being a no-one among nobodies. All that’s draining out of him and into them. And he’s happy to let it go, glad to be rid of being smacked by Keegan, by everyone. He’s stupid and glad to be rid of having to go to Stenawatt next year for bigger smacks, happy as hell to see t
he back of Mrs. Feinerfrock, whom I haven’t mentioned, nor will I! He’s jumping over all that shit.”

  The old guy looked at me.

  “But you know, you add up all those jumps, all the crap living shovels you, and you got half, no, maybe most of a life. But he doesn’t know that. Not then. And he was happy to be on the road to...” He stopped.

  “Paradise?” I said.

  “Yeah, where forever happens. ‘Paradise,’ he says. And that’s far, far from the beginning.

  “Then Whoosh. The door blasts. Sunlight slams. In runs Halfheart, in comes Shorty, the Enders to the rescue. Halfheart’s in the eye beam, letting in the sun. Sunshine rips it all to hell. Shorty’s shouting Redskin, Halfheart’s yelling Kraut, stuff he heard in picture shows at the Pacific. Daryl is saved. Snatched, thrown out the door, he and Short Draw. Halfheart behind, flying, ends on top. As I said.”

  “Well,” I say.

  “Well, well. Daryl’s eyes swim up from Paradise, like I said, and we’re back and up to the Place and the tale being told.”

  “Keegan? And Rory? The ghost of Rory…”

  “Is not a fucking ghost. No more than.” He took a breath, let it out. “I was to say no more than I am, but I’m not so sure I’m not.”

  “No,” I said. “No, you’re real.”

  “Yeah, yeah, and a swell fellow too. But Rory was dead. No more to him than.” He looked at me. “What’s left after we’ve left? Huh?”

  “Memory and lies,” I said.

  He looked as though I’d frozen him.

  “Memory and lies. Yeah. Or lies and illusions. But there they were. Solid. Out of the grave, all the regulars. Back from years ago and sitting in Skidoo’s drinking and waiting.”

  “For?”

  “For someone with too much of the real. Someone who needs an invite. You know?”

  “So what’d you do?” I said.

  “What’d they all do?”

  “About your friend? Keegan?”

  “Oh, Keegan. Yeah, I guess the guys killed him.” It came simply.

  “You?” I said.

  “The guys. Yeah.”

  He explained. Evening. The air had chilled. The guys sat in the crawling dark under the branches of the Angel Yew in Chucky B’s. They wondered what to do. After telling his story Daryl was sort of there, sort of not. The rest wondered what to do. Night came. They were still there, still wondering. Finally, they left their bikes sheltered at the Place and walked back to the bar, still wondering what they’d do.

  “That walk through the cemetery, it wasn’t scary,” the old guy said. “Always was before, thinking about ghosts and whatever’s coming. What a boneyard’s supposed to be. You want a little bit, right? Now?” There was that rusted chuckle. “Now it was black grass, white stones, trees. The pond where Rory drowned was just black water and white carp. A smell like rotted mud. The fish splashed now and then. A little of Rory in them, I guess. There were rabbit screams. Owls taking rabbits. But see? The guys were headed to Skidoo’s. Another scoot, the last scoot, they figured. They didn’t scare. Like the end of The Wild Bunch, you know.”

  I didn’t.

  “The corner was almost empty, like never before. Lonely. That pretty view of the End by night, wasted. Home lights all along Spring Road running up on the far side of the yards.

  “‘There’s my house,’ Halfheart said. And there it was, his house and the others’. All the houses of the East End climbed, one over the other, till they reached Stenawatt High. Above them, the mountain was dark until the sky and then were stars.

  “All but one of the ’boes had gone. He was an old one, tears crying out of him. He’s curled by the steps. The steps are still sun warm. He’s hugging them. ‘Please,’ he says, ‘please leave it be.’

  “‘Please, please?’ Daryl says. ‘Please what, please? There’s Paradise,’ Daryl says, ‘then there ain’t. Once Heaven gets to you, what the fuck, you’re a goner. We have come to save you all!’ Someone snickered. Halfheart.”

  “Daryl,” I said, “he sounds, forgive me, kind of nuts.”

  “Daryl? May be,” the old guy said. “But he’d been there and come back. So let me finish this. Let me finish.”

  I did.

  “In they went. Whoosh. Into dark, into a stink of freezer meat gone off. No Como, no Stafford. Just scratches learning to talk. Their feet crunch. They run on what no one could see, but what they all knew.”

  “Sawdust, peanut shells?” I said.

  “Yeah, sawdust and peanut shells,” he said, “in the real. But now, in what Skidoo’s was becoming, it was spider, snake, roach, and bone. Living twitches cracked, skittered under their sneaks, tried to slither or carry them with. But it was air that stopped them, not crackles or speaking scratches. Thick air yanked tether on them and they dead-stopped at the edge of the dark that Skidoo’s was oozing.

  “Halfheart, it was, who lit a match. A barn-burner. He lights it with a thumb and a smirk. There’s a headful of sulfur, a flare, then there are eyes everywhere. Red eyes of the regulars, white eyes of the real folk off in Paradise, and a million small eyes on the floor, walls, the ceiling. Who knows what eyes they were. And the guys, their eight good eyes, two behind Daryl’s specs, I guess, in Halfheart’s matchlight. A quick bright second, then it all fades. A single match working to light Forever.”

  The old guy was breathing heavily. “You okay?” I said.

  “Yeah. And sadness, not terror. Oh fear, yeah. Hell yesFear-sweat down the back. But the heart of that place was sadness. The sadness went on and on as the eyes faded with the matchlight. Everything ever lost? Everything not gotten to get lost, every assumption come to pass, there it was. A sad song, one you can’t sing. In here.”

  I didn’t need to see him touch his chest.

  “Shorty yells, ‘There!’ Shorty points. Halfheart turns. Another match flare, more sulfur. Eyes brighten again. At the far end of seeing, there’s Keegan. Keegan’s smile, anyway, and a shape. Aside him, behind and half above, is Rory. A dream of Rory, soft and waterlogged. Too long with the fish then too long underground. He’s attached. He’s melted with Keegan.

  “Light hits them. Like Halfheart’s barn-burner was a searchlight. Their shadow hits the wall, Rory’s arms around his brother. What passes for arms among them: shreds of a best suit, bones, muscle, hanging sinews and mist, smoke, maybe for effect, snow-snakes like Halfheart said. Them and other critters, white and gold carp, smooth, fat. Rory’s arms. They wrapped Keegan, the still-alive brother. And Keegan? He says nothing. White eyes. He’s there and another somewhere with his brother. Family. Warm. Time, home, and, yeah, I guess love.” The old guy gave a sudden snort. “Orphans!” he said. “Sadness.”

  I said nothing.

  “Halfheart jumps back. Rory and Keegan are afloat, they’re still. There’s just a drip, drip, drip where Rory leaks pond or whatever. The drips flow down Keegan and spread.

  “Halfheart tries to see more with his match. That Siamese shadow does a slow hootchie, like a stalking snake in Jungle Jim, like Yma Sumac warbling in Secret of the Incas, like…

  “Then everyone, all of sudden, everyone gets it. Same time, I guess, everyone realizes Rory, Keegan, they’re bait and the hook’s setting good.

  “PD is the one who went for it, PD who apologized for everything. Imagine. PD runs at them, like he’s going to, I don’t know, snatch Keegan, save him from that embrace there in Skidoo’s Tap or wherever the hell they were. And the others follow. Daryl at ass end, Daryl who’d had a taste and for the first time in his life knew what was what.

  “Halfheart’s match gets close. Rory and Keegan’s shadow spreads. Their darkness fills the wall, the sky, whatever. They withdraw, Rory holding his big brother. He opens. He’s a kite, a sail. And they fly. They fly into their own shadow, high and out of reach. Except for PD. The leap of his life. He catches Keegan by the sneak and he’s off with them, dangling, hanging, slow.

  “There are voices, sounds, but I guess voices. Words, language I
don’t know, not German, which we all knew a little of, not Polish, not Dago or Indian.

  “Then we’re out. Outside, running after, following hard. Out somewhere, a place we’d never been, a place where nobody’d been. Except it was…”

  The old guy looked at me, just eyes for a few seconds. A few seconds of eye can be forever on a dark bus, at the end of a long story, middle of the night.

  “Except outside was the corner, Spring Road, the underpass. Okay. We were all still standing in Skidoo’s Tap. Sure, sure. But where we ran was that road into starlight, the world Daryl told us. We’re on that road to forever, nothing holding us like Rory held Keegan and Keegan’s sneaks held PD. We ran. Like topping the Nutcracker, like the first time a run takes you whole and you know you’re free of gravity, earth, body.”

  “Yes,” I said.

  “Yeah, then we’re under. The subway. Something like the subway. Smelled like the subway…”

  “Dusty farts,” I said.

  “And antique piss,” he said. “Then that smell of meat, dead meat and old. Rory and Keegan, they’re ahead and we follow them up the wall curving onto that arched ceiling. We’re small things. Animals or bugs running upside down, we leap old stars or burned out lamps, we find old holes in the world up there, we burrow into the ceiling’s cracks and we wiggle, follow Keegan and Rory and dangling PD through…” He thought for a second. “Funny, you know. All the years gone since then. I’ve thought about it. But this now, this is the farthest I’ve gotten into it. Aloud. You know how it is? To yourself a thing’s one thing, saying makes it something else.”

  “Yes.”

  “So. It’s dirt, rock, root, and grubs. All that flows by as we wriggle. Rory, Keegan, and PD are just ahead. The world sings. And we flow, now. No wriggles or running. We’re riding the rails, bottom of the rails, under the steel rails of the yards, we’re sliding a greased track to someplace ahead, someplace forever, and…

  “And I don’t know who it was who stopped. Stopping was a son-of-a-bitch. Fall down a well. Try to stop. It all keeps moving. Remember 2001? The falling keeps on and on.

  “But someone was a hero. Someone said, ‘No!’ Put on the binders. Saved us all. We stopped, then there we were.”