The last time I checked in at Governor's was under a moon holding water. This time, it was giving me a sideways grin.
As soon as my right foot hit the faded paisley carpet, the bartender looked up and barked a greeting in my direction. Actually, he says just about everything in a bark and I reckon from the look of him that he's got the bite to back it up. I hadn't even sat down yet and he was already pouring my pint. He doesn't know my name, but he remembers my drink. Lord, I love this place.
It was the day after Valentine's Day, that marvelous invention to fulfill our need to buy some useless shit and bridge the chasm between New Year's and St. Patrick's Day when we can drink ourselves stupid and have an excuse...but it didn't matter because the décor here is prepared for all occasions.
There are cardboard cut-outs hung here and there via staple gun, the kind you see on your kid's wall at grade school. Hearts and cupids of course, but they share the wall with shamrocks and pots of gold, a turkey, and a cock-eyed baby new year that has long since worn through all but one staple in his top hat. The baby's feet move away from the wall from the puff of air that pushes in whenever someone enters. Top it off with a bar festooned with colored Christmas lights wrapped in a garland made of material I'm sure was banned in the 70's, and you've got a one-stop holiday hangover installer. It's very festive.
The only thing missing are the ashtrays. They adopted the indoor smoking ban early up here, and you have to be one hardcore smoker to go stand outside for a cigarette this time of year...and these people do it without coats in 5 degree weather. They'll have whole conversations, just standin' out there smoking like its goddam spring.
Boone was there, legs akimbo, perched on the corner stool. I get here about twice a month and he's always on hand; he lives in the neighborhood. The 64 bus, the same line I take to work, lets out right at the corner. Boone gets off the bus and then ducks in for a drink and to read the paper before he goes home, but tonight he had stayed longer. He was mid-stream in a PBR tallboy and a story about how winters like this make people go crazy.
“This should be good...” I thought to myself as I unzipped my jacket and parked across the corner from him.
The bartender is an ol boy called Lou. As I got situated, he swabbed the bar in front of me and roughly set down my beer, sloshing some onto the area he'd just wiped. Lou is kinda what you'd call a 'skinny-fat guy'. He's tall and lanky, but solid and broad chested. His pants go up higher in the back so the waistband can accommodate the belly that's sloppin' over the front. Rail thin legs, but thick Popeye forearms with a few faded military oriented tattoos. You know the type...he used to be really thin, probably an athlete, then let himself go. Puts you in mind of a sweet potato experiment in a mason jar on the kitchen window sill when you were kid.
I got out my wallet as Boone went back into his rant, tapping a Newport filter side down onto a coaster. He said “people tell stories, those urban legends, 'bout how a one room school house in the country gets snowed in, then the teacher goes ape-shit and kills the kids."
I pointed out that a one-room country school house is a strange topic for an urban legend.
"Put that one on my tab, Lou.” Boone said, directing me to the jukebox. I used the fiver there instead and he picked up where he left off.
“Butchered every one of 'em. They say if you go out there at night you can hear the screams. It's an urban legend, but that shit happens. And let me tell you, after the shit we've been through up here these past 5 months, there ain't a jury in this state that would convict the teacher.”
Lou agreed with a stifled bark and rolled his eyes. He says hibernation can be good, but like anything...'good' is best in doses. Believe it or not a body can only sleep so much before it starts to rebel; it gets to a point where sleep is all you really want, but your body says “screw you, I've been sleeping for months now, we're staying up”. You don't know which way is which and every time you wake up you have to figure out if its dawn or dusk.
Someone really put a nickel in Boone tonight, he was full of examples of people going nuts and doing unexplainable things. Short tempers ruining relationships. For the better part of a half hour he shared these stories with enthusiasm fueled by cheap beer. I didn't have the heart to tell him that some of the details from his stories were actually out-takes from The Shining.
“Going ape-shit is right.” Lou said, finally taking a break and leaning against the cooler as Van Morrison's An Evening in June came over the speakers. Boone looked up and gave me that “oh, aren't you cute” look.
“My uncle did a stint in the Coast Guard on the east coast, when he got out he pulled six months as a lighthouse keeper built on this little...turd of an island”, Lou said. His uncle fashioned himself as the independent sort, and didn't think the isolation would be a problem.
He held up one finger and kinda shook it, explaining that “isolation is one thing, going mental is another, and then there's being by yourself on an island...working your ass off to tend a light you're not sure is even necessary.”
See, lighthouses had become easier to manage by the time his uncle came on. This particular light was previously manned by three people even though the work could have been done by two; the third man's job was to keep the other two from killing each other if a fight broke out after someone suddenly lost their mind; snapping when someone says "pass me that wrench" wrong. Obviously that part of the job description was interchangeable, any one of the three might be called to break up a fight, however there was no contingency plan for a situation where two guys suddenly realize they've had it with the other's superior attitude...then what? With a bit of 1950's technology and some automation, everything could be monitored by just one person at this point.
The first people on the island to tend the light was a family; a couple in their thirties and their young daughter. Evidently their living quarters weren't finished, and they were staying in a wood shack that had been set-up nearby when a huge storm rolled in with high winds, snow, and temperatures colder than a well digger's kerblocken. The water around the island was frozen solid 50 yards out on all sides for three weeks with 15 feet waves beyond that, there was no getting in or out. They didn't have a radio. The little girl got sick. She died since they couldn't get help.
“My uncle told this great story about how the wife took their daughter to the mainland as soon as a boat was able to get there. She told him she would be back after she had seen to a proper funeral...get the kid buried and that. Obviously he had to stay. Days turned to weeks. Weeks to months. Months to the realization that she wasn't coming back. Before the winter was over, he had hung himself from the top railing just after cleaning the lens.”
Lou paused for effect, then his voice dropped way down. The bark softened to a deep murmur; that comforting tone a normally gruff man takes on when you put a baby in his hands. He added “Can you imagine that? He kept that light going...just hoping that the next boat was going to bring his wife back. Finally he realizes that she's joined the world, and is probably well out of sight of that light he's tending.”
I was expecting more, but suddenly he snapped back to himself and got busy with some glassware.
Boone piped up with a couple choice words and a rather incredulous response to Lou's uncle's wife leaving him on that frozen rock.
Lou exhaled heavily and then corrected him. "No dipshit, weren't you listening? My uncle was alone, this was the first keepers on the island. I don't even know if its true."
"See that? That's what I'm talking about. Gettin' all frustrated over a simple question. Damn man, have a highball. I'll buy it for you."
“How did your uncle do?” I asked.
“Oh, he was always kind of an asshole so who knows.” Lou said flatly.
There. That's the ending I was after.
Boone laughed his way out to smoke. Lou started dragging trash cans to the back.
For a few moments it's just me and suddenly I want to leave, but I've still got half a beer and 5 or 6 more songs on the juke.
*here are the lyrics, if you want to sing along.
No comments:
Post a Comment