The three men shuffled into the VFW as soon as the doors opened at noon. I waited for them behind the bar and they took their seats like they always did. I had been there for an hour already and they had been sitting in their cars in the parking lot when I showed up to work. I rubbed down the bar as they sat.
Morning!
Hell it’s afternoon now. Jerry laughed at the joke and slapped at the damp surface of the bar.
Usuals?
Do you know who I am, son?
I poured Jack Daniels into a glass with ice. The liquor clouded up in the melting cubes and I slid the drink toward Jerry. I opened his tab and turned on the television for the old men. Roger ordered beer and John called for one too. I served the men and set the cold bottles on coasters. I opened tabs for them too and they clinked their bottles together. The television was muted and the men watched the sports highlights that hadn’t changed from yesterday. The men sipped at their drinks and loosened into the wood backs of their chairs. Roger and John discussed the sports show and Jerry smoked silently. I wiped down the bar again and the smoke inked up into the ventilation system. They were old and their faces showed their campaigns and the men told their stories solemnly.
Jerry wore a flannel shirt with ribbons on the left breast pocket. His hat was olive drab and his bulbous nose jutted out of his ruined face like an errant mountain. He came in every day and, after his first joke, didn’t say much until the third whiskey, when the afternoon was well underway. He always told the same story: he was young, enlisted, shot a little Vietnamese man in the back. Then, after the Army, he had lived on the street and did some things he didn’t like to think about. He always looked past me when he got to that part of the story. Once, he showed me a picture he had taken from the little man’s pocket. I liked to imagine the family that Jerry had de-fathered and what bars they went to now.
Roger was the most ancient of the group. His belly eased into the bar and he wore a leather cowboy hat with some long extinct unit’s insignia. He had been the best and most decorated supply clerk in the entire history of the Marine Corps. It was a real man’s Corps back then. They didn’t fuck around. They beat the fuck out of you if you looked at them wrong. The officers were men you could respect, not like the faggots and pussies of today. Can you believe the kind of shit they let into his Corps today? One time, he went on liberty and came back with Chlamydia and the doc put a q-tip in the end of his dick. Burned like a son of a bitch. He said Semper Fidelis and tipped the bottle in a salute to his brothers with the beginning of each beer.
John never told me stories but I suspected that he had some ripe ones. When Roger and Jerry told their stories, John nodded silently and took confirming sips of his bottle. John was a thin, lanky man and it was hard to think of him as a young man, holding a rifle and thrusting the bayoneted tip into a dummy. John’s face was the worst of the group and I never looked at him directly, but peeked at it in the big, fish-eye mirror that hung at the end of the bar. He never said what service he was in, but Roger and Jerry didn’t ask and neither did I.
The afternoon doled out into the bar and the drinks and smokes came and went. The television repeated the highlights again and again while I rubbed the bar and served more and helped the men angle into their stupors. The men became more animated and sometimes made racist jokes about the sports players. I laughed when I was supposed to and didn’t say much about anything. They announced when they were going home and got up, slowly, after one last drink. Their hands each gripped the bar in their characteristic ways as they settled themselves again.
Well, Gents, ‘til tomorrow then! John said as they stood completely.
They put on their coats and Jerry adjusted his ribbons, Roger his hat, and John paid for the last round of the three. I helped them calculate their tabs and closed out the register. They left good tips for old men. They shuffled out into the coming night and I wiped the bar, washed the glasses, trashed out the big can under the bar, and killed the television. The bar smelled of smoke and I ran the fans after the men left while I closed down the building. I locked the door and walked out to my car, but I stopped under the parking lot’s lights and watched a thin bead of water drip from an icicle that hung from the car’s license plate. I stood there for a long time and watched the drops fall onto the cold, sanded asphalt.
I drove to the apartment and entered into its dark silence. I turned on the television and sat on the sofa for a while in the dim blue of it. I made my dinner and took it into the living room with the television. I watched some serial dramas and ate with the sound turned down on the set, but turned it up again when I took my dishes to the sink. I watched television for a long time, but started to yawn and so I laid on my side on the sofa. I turned the sound lower but not off and closed my eyes. I sighed and told myself, aloud, that there is no way I’d end up like those old bastards.
The internet is not only killing journalism, it is raping the corpse of literary fiction at the same time.
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