A Shade of Ash # 44 – One of the Best Chapters Bar None

A chronic smoker, that white-haired man who never stopped talking, and the backwash guy. Three reg barflies and a keep. Lies told, secrets shared, and all I heard was “Ah, one more for the road”. Swiftly, I would grab a frosty beer glass from a humming cooler, then reach for the silver tap. Froth to pour, the perfect head, and ding went the register. Sale…total….enter…$2.25.

An old lady smoked her cigarettes near the back, rifling through her handbag for more coins most likely. She bids goodbye to her “smoken-exhales” with a pursed kiss. I watch them one by one, like ballets. Little dances and tiny jumps. Drifting up…pulled this way and that. Across the yellowed fly strips by the notice me exit sign except the X is still not fixed.

There they come, like clockwork bursting through the door. Scrambling toward the table close to the slot machine in the corner. Ready and rearing to make games out of playing games with bells and whistles. All games of chance. Lured like moths to a flame with pockets full of one week’s earnings. Their true characters on the verge of shining through. While thinking that one’s next to go. Play that one? They bellow. I can already hear their jabs that I am the gatekeeper to their small fortunes.

A song changes on the country station playing on the satellite big screen TV. I’ve come to like this one because it was the oil for the picture I was painting. Just like the shade of the always on-time four o’clock ray of sunlight. That stretched the whole beer-stained floor. Draping itself only to stop by the big dark one spotted next to the pool table. That’s where I’d drift and wander further watching dust swim in its sunning bathe. I dreamed, I wondered, I passed the time.

That pub, the Hook ‘N Line is a chapter in my past written with deep shaded ink. Adventures and stories to fill a legend. Ghosts and travellers. Fights and first times. Fists and flirts. Lies and lays. Sports and rows. Spills and thrills. Shots and mops. Mary Jane and Merry Clinks. Tips and pours. Songs and dances. All of it with happy hour in between. While my ears were at the ready. For those “Hey, another round?” and a scatter “Hey, let’s start a tab.” Staying friends with everyone and their new ale-ish personas. Spending time with all of their versions of what first walked through the door. Wishing some goodnight, and the others good riddance. Each one of them welcomed but studied. Like a good keep does. Learning them drunkards from noon to nine past sunrise or whenever they are finally full. Please come again.

That Saturday and Saturdays just like it felt like paintings to me. Spawned from my presence on that day and them days. Every stroke pulled across my soul in the medium of real life. Time wanted to spend all of itself with me behind that bar. Because I did too, it gave me every one of those memories created from it. Now, I display a piece for you in my gallery of moments.

When your soul is fully intact. I mean fully and completely intact, life moves differently, I know it does. It allows you to absorb it like a substance, so you can consume it all over whenever you need to.

Until…