Weathered

Weathered

 

     A crash of thunder shook the place, and the handful of occupants writhed in their seats and ducked for cover in the inevitable, though futile human response. One woman gave a shriek and quickly hushed herself, as if no one else was embarrassed by their own reactions. Everyone quickly found their humor, and just as quickly returned to whatever it was they were doing with drinks in hand. I too, returned to my scotch after adjusting my coat; not that the place was cold in any menacing fashion, but it was just cool enough to encourage keeping ones’ coat on.

  

   The Drunken Mule, or ‘The Mule’, as known by the regulars, was the sort of place that, despite its seemingly run-down appearance, was held dear to those that frequented it. It was a nice enough place. Once, it had been the toast of the town in all of its rustic, country-themed elegance, but that must have been fifteen or twenty years ago. Now, the wood trimmings were worn, cracking, and marked. The tables and chairs were in need of re-finishing or replacing, and the swing-doors beside the bar squeaked badly. The mirror behind the bar itself was cracked in one corner and missing another. Cheap booze has its price apparent. I found myself slowly tracing a set of initials carved into my table with my free hand. “T.J. Hearts S.J.” it read.

     Inevitably, this led to reminiscing on my life, a habit I abused more frequently than I could stand. I thought of all of the should haves’, the could haves’, and the many should not haves’. Thunder bellowed its laughter, and the lights flickered; a door slamming brought me back.

“I’ll have a bourbon, Sam” a man shouted across the room as he made his way past me and took the table next to mine. His hand was covering the mouthpiece of his phone. He was wearing a suit, but his tie was loose, and his coat was wet.

“What do you want me to do about it, babe, cry to my boss? He was laid off too. Everyone but Sarah and Derek were laid off. The new owners already had our positions filled.”

     I could barely hear a voice on the other line shrieking, but couldn’t make out what she was saying. I became aware I was staring, so I turned my gaze to the rain soaking the earth outside the window, my ear now facing the man. The clouds were unusually dark and ominous, the rain now pounding. Lightening lit the sky in the distance every couple of seconds, making its way towards us.

“Stop yelling at me, Amanda. I’ll figure it out. I always have. We’ll be fi-“the man stopped short as Sam arrived with his drink.

“Thank you” he said. 

“No problem” Sam responded as she made her way to me. “Another scotch?”

“Yeah, sure. I’ll take a beer as well. …F**k it, might as well set me up with a tequila. One for him too” I told her, pointing to my neighbor on the phone.

“Dressed?”

“…You bet.”

     Sam took my glass and went back to the bar.

“…I said I will figure it o-“he was cut off again, this time by being hung up on. He slammed his phone against the wall at the end of the table and looked to his bourbon. I was staring at the rain again.  Sam was back quickly with our drinks.

“I didn’t order this Sam.”

“No you didn’t, he did.” She pointed at me. I raised my shot glass towards him, and he towards me. We took our shots.

“I guess I was yelling” he said while giving a slight, struggling chuckle.

 “…Couldn’t help but notice the sounds of a rough day. We all have those. I like to talk to tequila on those kinds of days.” He laughed again. “Thank you.” I gave him the ‘no worries’ shrug.

 “Sam” I shouted. “Can you turn the weather on? It looks pretty nasty out there.” She went for the TV behind the bar. A group of men made their way inside and shook off the rain just ahead a double-crash of thunder. They were older men, crow-eyed and weary looking from a hard 50 years work and no home to go to, or at least none they wanted to be at. A few asked for Budweiser, some asked for Sam’s cheapest whiskey, all ice cold or on the rocks.

     Sam served them, then switched the television to a local news channel. The first thing I noticed was the anchor. She was seductively beautiful, as if to suggest this was not a newscast, but the start to some soft-core porn scene. She had highlighted brunette hair, bright green eyes that stared right through you and into the bedroom, and her red dress seemed to wear her, ashamed to cover such a body. She talked with an elegance and southern grace that any man would want to listen to nightly, and not just on the news. I shook myself to reality and shifted my attention to what she was actually saying, and the weather map behind her.

The entire northeast part of the state was under either a tornado warning or watch. A tornado had touched down two counties over but hadn’t caused much damage to be reported. It looked like it was only going to get nastier my way, and soon. The goddess in the red dress was advising that everyone seek shelter immediately with an almost sexy sternness. I took a long drink of my beer, and shifted my attention back to the lightning skip through the streaks of rain tumbling down the window. I had better get home soon, I thought to myself. But then again, perhaps it was too late for that. I took a drink of my scotch, and wondered if another tequila would help me decide. I turned back to my disgruntled friend.

“Another shot?”

“Sure, but this one’s on me.”

     He shouted to Sam. I didn’t complain.  

     He was on his phone again when we took our shots. At this point I realized I hadn’t checked my own in several hours and produced it from my pocket, placing it on the table. I knew it was futile; that there were no messages, no missed calls- least of all from anyone important or that should have been, for that matter.

I checked it anyways to no surprise. I hadn’t heard from anyone to speak of for days, possibly weeks, but it was for the better. To hell with the contact list; full of b******s and trash, and folks that no matter how hard I tried, I felt estranged from, inferior; poisonous by any right. Sometimes it felt as if there was a knife in my back for nearly everyone in my contacts. I turned the phone upside down on the table, then went the extra mile and put it back in my pocket. I tried to keep up with the newscaster in red, but couldn’t hear her over the conversations going on and the occasional boasts of the weather. I turned to my newfound drinking partner as if to begin a conversation when we were both interrupted by a sharp cry from the middle of the room.

“WHY? Why should I ever…” a slightly younger, beautiful woman shrieked to the man sitting across from her. The man held his head down towards the table, grasping his beer with both hands, searching for a legitimate response I somehow doubted he had. My neighbor and I exchanged a smirk and watched on, both lighting a smoke.

“You fucked my best friend. There is no coming back from that. Ever. What would people think of me, what kind of person would I have to be to accept you back after that? Or her for that matter?”

“But, I was drunk babe, you know I get stupid…” he sobbed. She pushed her margarita to the side and pulled his beer from his hands. Lightening lit the scene as she reached for his hands in a sort of half hold as sometimes intimates do.

“I’ve asked you over and over to quit drinking. Over and over. Besides, being drunk is no excuse, and you know it. You would never forgive me if I fucked your best friends after a few shots of tequila. Would you? You would never look at me the same after knowing your friends had had their way with me. Would you? I’ve loved you through a lot of things,” she said, still holding his hands “But I have too much self-respect to let this slide. I’m sorry.” The man sobbed a little more, and stroked the tops of her hands with his thumbs. The rain and the hail pounded the tin roof.

“I promise I’ll quit drinking. I swear it.” She ripped her hands from his and slapped the beer from the table, and it crashed against a barstool and shattered. They had the attention of everyone now.

“…And you expect me to take that seriously while you’re sitting here drinking a beer knowing this argument was coming? F**k you.”

“So we can’t work on this? Not one more time?”

“I’m sorry, there’s nothing to work on. You took love away from me…” she turned her face from his.

“And the kids? What do we tell them?”

“I’ll tell them their father died of alcohol poisoning. If I tell them anything at all” she said, sobbing. He, now sobbing himself, slowly stood up and tucked his chair in, then headed into the rain to his Nissan without another word. The girl first looked on after him longingly, regretfully, then looked down into her drink, her strong and beautiful face now tired and betrayed, confused like many of us around this place.

I exchanged another sidelong glance with my drinking partner, who had joined me at my table sometime during the exchange. We whispered our thoughts over our drinks, until the weather sirens began to sound and Sam shouted over the entire bar.

“Hey guys! We might be getting hit! Everybody get to the back, now!”

     I nearly left my drink at the table, but managed to rescue it and a few bottles from behind the counter, as well as catch another glimpse of the sky goddess as we all made our way back into the ‘kitchen’ area of The Mule to await the wrath of the gods. I’d be damned if I was going to lasso a tornado into oblivion sober. 

     For a few minutes the place shook with the wrath of thunder and hail, and winds that seemed to shake the very foundations of the earth as if the Titans themselves were whistling Chaos in Dixie. The stench of fear, alcohol-laden vomit, and perhaps urine filled the air. The entire process might have seemed an eternity had I been paying much attention in my detached condition, and then it was over, not that many of my fear-stricken and paralyzed co-patrons noticed. The sirens stopped and the majority of us slowly made our way back to the front of the bar.

     To my dismay, there was another newscaster on now (we had maintained power), a man, resembling the monopoly guy without the eyepiece had hijacked the airtime. The signal was distorted horribly. He was reporting on what seemed to be damage just outside of town. The girl betrayed was attempting to use her phone frantically, as was everyone else. My drinking partner had disappeared for a short time, but emerged from the restroom momentarily. I saw no need to check my phone, so I just kept drinking.

“I can’t get ahold of him” the girl exclaimed to no one in particular. Why do you care, I thought to myself. Looking around, I could see that no one’s phones worked. Now they knew how I felt. I laughed, with only a slight tinge of guilt. They probably had loved ones, or perhaps even a home to go check on. Many of the patrons, including my drinking partner frantically cleared the building to assess the damage to their lives. I made my way back to my table in the window to see hail damage everywhere, and a few scattered pieces of debris. A fire burned in the distance, despite the return of the rain.

“…You gonna drink all those to yourself…” Sam asked. I turned to her. She was staring at the armful of bottles I had placed at the end of the table.

“Hell, a few more drinks and I could have already bought them all anyways.”

“I’m pretty sure you already did AJ” She laughed as he left me the bottle of scotch and a glass, and made her way back the bar.

I poured myself a glass, shaking the mixture of liquor an ice around a bit, and watched the newscaster assess the damage. From a helicopter view, I could see parts of a neighborhood destroyed, and a few cars overturned. A Nissan was tangled and burning in a power-line. Other than that, limited area, the town had been spared. We had passed go. The storm was clearing out slowly. The worst was over, though I noticed those who remained here had all switched to harder drinks as any sensible person would.

     I pulled my phone from my pocket, once again out of misguided hope, as if some subliminal and life altering message would come through even without much, if any, working cell service. Allowing myself to feel cheated once again, I barely resisted the urge to snap the phone in half, so I just tossed it into the chair beside mine; a tablemate as downtrodden and misused as I, searching for a meaning to anything, as I. I poured a splash of scotch on it and lit a cigarette.

     A group of people came in wearing headsets and carrying computers, talking amongst themselves excitedly. They ordered a round of Bud Lights, all save one.

“I’m done, Brian. That was too close.”

“What are you talking about? This is what you signed up for.”

“Yeah, well, now I’m signing out. I’m going home” the man said, slamming his video camera down on their table and hastily walking out.

     I concluded from the groups further conversation afterwards that this was a group of storm chasers, and that fact was confirmed by the small convoy of specialized vehicles now parked outside my window. I poured another glass of scotch and assessed the group. They were talking over each other about the storm that had just passed, and about other systems in the area. From what I could gather, they would soon be on their way north into another fray. I looked around the bar at all of those defeated souls, at my own distorted image in the still rain-streaked window, and back at the group of chasers.

     I couldn’t tell if it was the scotch or something subliminal, but I began to consider the possibility that of all of the people gathered in this bar, perhaps the storm chasers had the right philosophy. They were not defeated by the weathering. They embraced it. They were molded by it.

I stared at the ownerless camera sitting on their table through the bottom of my glass. I walked over to Sam and ordered a bucket of Bud Light and another scotch on the rocks for myself.

“I noticed you guys are a man short” I said, offering them the bucket of beer.

“…Got any experience?”

“None. But I have a lasso and a death wish.” They laughed.

“Well I guess that’ll do. Come along when we’re ready to go. You’ll have to sign some papers.”

As we finished our drinks, in a semi-rush, a one-legged Marine and a group of his family and friends made their way inside. Some carried welcome home signs. The Marine and I exchanged glances. Though we didn’t know each other personally, I knew him, and he knew me.

“It’s time to get out of here. We’ve got to catch this thing” Brian said. I grabbed the camera, claiming it as my own, and my pack of smokes. And walked over to the bar to pay Sam. I tipped her, and gave her another twenty.

“Buy that Marine a few rounds of Jameson for me” I said as I headed for the door. He had weathered his storm.

     As I exited the building, I considered going back for my phone, but just let the door slam behind me. I was making changes; Headlong instead of head bowed. Even though the sky was thunderous, dark, and menacing, as I climbed into a stranger’s van-turned-tank, the sun had never shone so bright.