The Crossing

The Crossing

By G. P. Muniak 

There was a Blues song playing in the bar. Dick was a little surprised that he didn't recognizing the artist. He assumed it was some ancient, comma re-mastered recording, some old classic that only a "hard core" Blues fan would recognize and fully appreciate. He thought the song sounded good, real good, almost mesmerizing, haunting even. It helped him relax, like a cigarette after sex or after a long gig in front of an enthusiastic audience. Dick couldn't quite hear all the lyrics over the yelling and drunken conversation, but the few he could catch were about escaping prison, some kind of battle, and a crossroads.  Dick could relate.

The Blues singer continued to wail and moan as Dick pulled a fresh pack of cigarettes from his breast pocket. He removed the wrapping and slapped the box against his palm before he opened the lid and removed a stick. Smoking was forbidden by his wife, and more importantly to him as his band's backup singer, not the best thing for his singing voice. In the past, he had only smoked while he drank anyway. It had been five long years since he last smoked, but the bar he sat in was so dense with second hand smoke that he figured lighting up his own cigarette made little difference.

Dick sat alone. He had the frame of man who ate little and exercised even less. His black Pixies T-shirt had been washed so many times it had turned a charcoal grey, and his blue jeans clung snuggly to his thin thighs. His hair was short, wavy and dark brown, it was thick enough to comb back from his forehead without the use of product and gave him the appearance of a much younger man. He was using his right thumbnail to pick at the dense, well developed callouses on his left hand's bony fingertips. He was proud of those callouses, earned from some ten thousand hours of playing his guitar. The picking went methodically, from the index finger to the pinky, and then back again.  Otherwise, he was motionless. He was in a stall, staring at his beer bottle absentmindedly, watching bead after bead of condensation form and then fall, slowly sliding down the bottle's side to puddle on the table around the beer's base, like a brown, glass castle growing its own sweaty moat.

He judged that in another twenty minutes, due to the bar's broken down A/C, he too would be sitting in a puddle of his own sweat. Dick hated Louisiana. He'd moved down almost a decade ago because his wife "needed to be closer to family." Dick hated the cultish, religious fervor of the Bible Belt. He was no fan of country music either. But what he hated most about the South was the sauna like humidity of the seemingly endless summers. Only five of the bar's seven ceiling fans were moving, and one of those five buzzed and clicked as it moved slower than the others. There was some exposed wiring hanging from one of the motionless fans.

Dick chose that particular bar for its one strategic advantage. It was probably the only bar in that cow-dung spackled county that his wife was unaware of. It sat around the backside of a strip mall next to the intersection of two congested highways. It was completely hidden from the roads by a Super Walmart. Dick had noticed the place almost a month back when he took his car for a new tire. The parking lot was dark, like boogie man dark, like meth-head, mugger and rapist dark. There was literally not a single lamp to help the patrons navigate the lot's minefield of bottomless potholes.

Dick took issue with the bar's sign as well. It was small and unlit, with red lettering against a white background. The letters weren't quite centered, and the faded paint was starting to crack and peel. It read "Lead's Crossing INN." Nobody has thought of a bar as an "INN," Dick thought, since the day Abraham Lincoln took a bullet to the back of his skull.  It showed zero, -no, less than zero- it showed negative business savvy to name a bar an INN.

The bar didn't have a single window, only a solid brick fade and a single, solid black door. A bouncer, one of the biggest and darkest skinned black men Dick had ever seen, sat in the shadows near the door. He wore jeans and an ordinary black T-shirt, nothing to indicate that he actually worked there. Dick almost walked past him in the dark, unaware that the man sat close enough to touch him, until the bouncer took a deep drag of his cigarette, illuminating his face with the dull-red glow. He didn't ask to see Dick's ID. He only gave Dick a long, stone-faced stare.

Inside the bar there were two billiard tables with discolored red felt, three dirty booths, a couple circular tables, and a bar just large enough to comfortably fit six stools. There wasn't much else, except for a sporadic selection of liquor behind the bar and a fish tank. There were no fish in the fish tank, unless you count the tiny black crawfish that managed to survive in the gray, hazy murk above a broken coffee mug and pile of broken glass that sat at the bottom of the tank.

The only types of beer the bar offered were Budweiser, Bud light, or Miller Highlife, all in bottles, and all for only two dollars. Sitting in the heat, you could smell the sour musk of stale beer mixed with cigarette ash ground into the carpet. Dick smiled briefly, wondering if a guy could get a contact high from sitting there too long, or a yeast infection? Or both?

Dick was still sitting in his booth, watching as a fly circled around the rim of his Bud and thinking. Then, just as the fly looked ready to take a swim, he blew it away. The air rushed into the bottle and resonated in a dense base note that Dick found appealing. He picked up his beer and quietly said "Cheers" to himself.  He sipped the beer first, and then breathed in deeply. His shoulders went slack and the lungful of air he was unconsciously holding in his chest exited his body through his mouth. Millions of little pleasure neurons began to glow and spark and bounce around his brain. The taste was exactly what he remembered.  He tilted the bottle almost upside down as he took one long, drawn-out swig.

The black fly had returned, circling near the right side of his face. He could hear its little wings buzzing as it passed, and then it landed on the bottom edge of his earlobe. Dick felt it quickly crawl across his ear and into the ear canal. Dick had flinched then, lowering the bottle to dig his pinky finger deep into his ear, and then he raised the bottle and started drinking again.

"What's your hurry Dick?"

The voice was an intimate, breathy, hot whisper coming from just behind his right ear.  It was Southern, and feminine, and it had startled Dick so badly that he choked on his drink. He reached for a napkin to wipe the spit from off his chin and lips.  He was coughing, red faced, as he turned his head to see the woman. Dick's first view of the woman started at her feet. She was wearing classic black and white Chuck Tailors. She was also wearing a pair of form fitting jeans and a little white tank top with a black and white photo of Shane Macgowan on the front. The picture on the tank top had elicited immediate appreciation from Dick. Many Americans had never even heard a Poques song, and even fewer owned Shane Macgowan merchandise.

Her body fit his taste with the precision and penetration of a Scud missile. She was perfectly proportioned. Everything was tight and toned. The photo of Shane Macgowan, only inches from Dick's nose, covered the lower half of her ample chest.  Above that, her elegant shoulders and neck faded into the smoky darkness above the blinding glow of the table's low hung lamp.  Her face was unseen in the darkness above until she ducked down lower, bending at the hips and resting her elbows on the table. Dick wasn't even tempted to glance at the cleavage in front of him. He was too fascinated by her eyes. They were bright and cheerful, wrinkled around the edges with amusement. They were emerald green with a heavy inflection of orange mixed in. Her skin was covered in a thin layer of perspiration. He could smell her then, not her perfume, but her. He could smell her hair, and he could feel her heat against his face. It was a good smell. Dick suddenly felt intoxicated. Her straight blond hair was just long enough to tuck behind her ears. The cut was modern, stylish. It left her neck and jawline on display. It looked good on her.

"What," he wheezed between the last of the coughs. Then he repeated, "What did you say?"

"I said...what's... your...hurry...Dick. There's no need to suck 'em down so quick bub. We got all night," she said with a thick and slow southern draw.

"Umm, yeah, OK, sure, but who are you and how do you know my name?"  He asked, finally collected.

"I was next to you when you started your tab," she said. "I saw your credit card." Dick thought this over for a moment and concluded that she was full of shit. There was no way this woman could have escaped his notice if she had been sitting at the bar.

"That's funny," he said, "because I didn't see you."

"Well", she said, "it ain't that funny. May I sit?" Dick gave his consent with a wave of his hand, and she slid into the seat across from him. She leaned in close, as if she was about to share a secret, or a dirty joke, and with a smile she said, "You didn't see me Mr. Dick, because I wasn't so sure I wanted to be seen just yet."

"OK," he said, "So you knew my name was Richard, but how did you know I go by Dick?"

"Well mister Dick," She said giggling, "I guess to me, everything about you just screams dick." She sat back in her seat and continued to chuckle. Her breasts jiggled, and her smile had grown huge and inviting.  Her teeth were straight and white.  Dick had a thing for good teeth.

"You're not old enough to be making dirty jokes like that," he said with obvious amusement and a touch of theatrical, fatherly concern. "Actually, come to think of it, I'm not sure you are old enough to be here at all. How old are you anyway?"

"Me?" she said, dragging out the word and placing her hands over the gap between her breasts in an effort to over exaggerate shock. "I'm plenty old for dirty jokes," she said. "But you're right, not old enough to be in a beer-drenched den-of-sin like this one, at least, not legally-speaking."

"And how do you know I won't tell on you?" he asked playfully.

"Well Gran-Pa, you don't strike me as the snitchin' type."

"Hey, watch the old man jokes," he said, with his turn to act overly defensive.  "I just turned 35 today."

"Liar," she burst with a big smile and a stab of her finger in the air. "You just turned 40 today. But don't worry..." she grinned, "you don't look a day over 20."

"How d... "

"Your tab," she cut him short.  "I saw your driver's license too."

"Holy shit," he exclaimed. "Well, you caught me.  You're pretty damn observant.  What are you, some kind of detective, or just a stalker?"

She shrugged her shoulders. "More like a bounty hunter."

Dick laughed loudly. "You mean to tell me you are a bounty hunter."

"Well, not really," she said.  "I just... collect folks. Some of these folks don't want to be collected."

"Do you like it?" Dick asked.

"I liked it more when I first started," she said. "I've been doin' it for a while. I'm pretty good at it, but a change would be nice."

"How long have you been at it," Dick asked.

"A very long time," she said thoughtfully and with a little smile. Then she glanced down at the ring on Dick's left hand.  "So Dick, where's the little misses on your big four-owe?"

The question wiped the smile immediately from Dick's face and left him silent. He began to fidget, twisting the ring around his fingers. He was considering his response carefully, and just before he opened his mouth she interrupted.

"Your beer is getting warm. Polish it off real quick an' I'll go an' get us another round."

"They'll serve you?" he asked as she quickly stood up.

"Sure they will Mr. Dick," she said. "What else do you think a girl like me is doing in a place like this?"

"Well have them put it on my tab," he said.

"You can get the next round Dick," She said with a smile as she turned and walked away. Dick managed to pour his remaining beer into his mouth without ever taking his eyes off of her. Her posture was good, but her ass was spellbinding.  He watched as her two round ass cheeks moved alternately back and forth.  One for the records, Dick mused in silent appreciation. Just before she got to the bar she turned her head and looked back at him.  She smiled, more seductively then before Dick thought, when she saw him watching her. She returned with a tray containing two beers and two shot glasses full of light brown liquid.

         "Jameson," she said as she sat down and placed the tray on the table. "It's my favorite."

         "Well what do you know? It's mine too" he responded as he picked up the drinks and divided them evenly between them.

         "So Dick," She began, "You know what I do. Now what do you do?"

         "What, you don't know already?" he asked sarcastically. "I thought you knew everything about me."

         "Well, let me guess," she said playfully. She made a big show of looking under the table so she could examine him from head to toe. "An artist," she said with undue certainty.

         Dick laughed at that. "OK, well, what kind of artist do you think I am?"

         She gave this question another moment of consideration before she said, "Like a painter or something"

         "Close," he said. "Very close actually. I'm a musician. To be honest, my pride's a little wounded. I figured the only reason you came over here to keep me company was because you recognized me."

         "So you get recognized do you? Are you tryin' to tell me you have groupies Mr. Dick? So you're like some big-shit rock star or something"? What's the name of your band? Maybe I've heard of ya'll? What kind of music do you play?" She was getting excited, and she squirmed in her seat with interest as she spoke.

         "We're called The Monkey M, and most people would call our music Indie rock," he said with the deliberate pace of a man who has explained this hundreds of times before. "Some might call it alternative or rock. But really, it's not all that easy to classify, which is why it took us a long time to get a record deal, and why we never get a lot of radio play. Our music's different. It's real melodic, and kind of low key and dark. Our singer's a baritone, which you don't hear often, but his lyrics are amazing."

         "So you're with a label?" she asked.

         "Yeah, we are. American Records," he said.  We're not like Beatles famous, far from it, but we have a growing fan base. Some are very loyal, I guess you could call them groupies."

"Well Mr. Rock-star Dick, I think that is very cool," she said as she lifted her shot above the table's center.  "Cheers! To your birthday, and your music."

         With a clink of glass, the two had swallowed their shots and polished off the remaining beer.

         "Your turn to get the round," she said. "And Dick, don't forget the Jameson."

         When Dick stood up for the first time since he started drinking, he had to steady himself before he could walk, careful not to let her notice. It had been too long since he had touched a drop of alcohol, and his tolerance for the poison had gotten low. While waiting for the bartender to take his order, he wondered exactly how long it had been, but had trouble concentrating and soon gave up trying to remember. He purchased four beers, and four shots.  He figured they were throwing them back quick enough; doubling up would save them at least one trip to the bar.

         "So Mr. Dick," she asked after he sat back down at the table.  "What does Mrs. Dick feel about the fact that her husband has groupies?"

         He leaned back and sighed, "Well, Mrs. Dick doesn't think much about the groupies at all.  Mrs. Dick thinks about health insurance."

"Health insurance?" she asked.  "What about health insurance?"

"Well," he said.  "Here's the backstory.  I wasn't always a musician.  At one point, I was a tax accountant, which made me want to slit my own wrists.  My wife agreed to let me do what she calls the whole musician thing as long as it took off within three years."

He stopped to take a long swig of beer. "That was about twelve years ago," he said, and then he drank again. "The thing is, I make some decent money making music, a little more than doing taxes, and I love it. I can't picture myself doing anything else."

He shook his head and took another drink.  He was beginning to speak much slower then, more deliberately.

"But to make that money, I have to tour almost constantly.  We make our money off of tickets, not album sales. I have two children, Max and Amy, and the wife's tired of raising them on her own.  Tell you the truth, I'm a little tired of watching them grow by inches at a time, but I can't give up the music, not now, not after I worked so hard."

He moved on to a fresh beer, and within seconds, half of it was gone.  She waited patiently for him to continue.

"We had a big blowup tonight.  She says she's tired of me only being a voice over the telephone, she says we can't afford to pay for goddamn health insurance, and that I need to get a real job, with benefits."

He took another heavy drink, and his eyes were getting glossy and he swallowed hard.

"I love my wife," he said. "And I love my kids, but I also love making music.  I'm good at it, and I don't want to go back to my old life."

Dick drank again. He felt like a man stuck in a bear trap, and he was getting ready to chew off his own arm. He drank again.

She had sat there with her elbow on the table, nibbling gently on her fingertips, sipping her beer from time to time, and listening quietly. She looked him in the eyes the entire time. Dick found himself wondering when was the last time anyone had ever really listened to him.

She lifted up her shot glass and held it out to Dick, who then, glassy eyed, picked up his. They clinked the glasses together and each threw one down.  They slammed the glasses on the table with dramatic flare, and then she watched as Dick threw down his second shot immediately after the first.  She placed her second shot in front of Dick and watched, with what he thought was admiration, as he drank that one too.  She was still smiling, she was always smiling, but Dick felt that somehow, the smile seemed to fade just slightly in that moment. She leaned her head across the table.

"Do you wanna know what I think Mr. Dick?" she asked in a low and conspiratorial voice.

"Sure," Dick mumbled.

"I think... I think your wife should go get fucked"

Dick was finishing the last of his beer when she said it. He had to turn his head to the side to avoid covering her in beer-spit as it went spraying from his mouth, and then they both sat there laughing.

"No, seriously though, who does she think she is?" she asked, waving her arms around emphatically. "You do all the work, you make the money and you pay the rent. And she sits around on her fat ass."

The fact that his wife did have a job actually made it through the alcohol-enforced barriers of Dick's agitated mind, but it didn't seem like a good time to bring it up.

"Who is she to tell you how you should live your life? She would rather have a half dead, miserable husband hangin' around the house every night, teaching your children that life is all about misery, than let you be happy doing what you love. YOLO Dick! You only live once! I'd divorce that woman tomorrow if I were you."

Dick felt speechless, bloated, sleepy, enlightened and content all at the same time. He listened to her words and couldn't find the flaws in her logic because he wanted badly to believe her.

She leaned a little farther across the table as she lowered her voice and asked "And you know somethin' else Mr. Dick?"

He leaned in too and whispered into her ear. "What?"

And then very quietly, with a hot, warm, whispered breath into his ear she said, "I think you're a lost puppy that I'd like to take home."

He backed his head up just far enough to look into her eyes, like deep, emerald green forests alive with tiny fires. He slowly nodded his head yes, and then she raised a thin, graceful hand and ran it through his hair.

After that gentle touch along his temple, he never felt another thing again.  Dick's head slammed instantly down on the table.  The blues continued to play through the speakers, and the commotion of the bar continued uninterrupted as the black fly crawled out of Dick's ear and flew out the opening door and into the humid night air.

The Leads Crossing Inn is the type of place accustomed to a sleeping drunk. That's why Dick's lifeless body layed in the booth undisturbed until after the bar had closed. By the time the paramedics had arrived, the sweat that once drenched Dick's clothes had long evaporated. The local papers reported the official cause of death as a brain aneurysm, the type of thing that could happen to anyone.

Dick's widow went through the funeral with her face covered in snot and tears. She wished that their last conversation had gone differently. She wished that she had told him that she loved him. Hundreds of Dick's fans had overwhelmed the chapel. There were crowds of mourners that stretched way down the street in every direction. Every single person had brought an item to leave as a tribute: flowers, candles, letters, posters, records, and old guitars.  Dick's children would never forget the sight of all those people at their father's funeral.  Before then, they had no idea how much he had meant to so many people.

The pastor gave an eloquent sermon.  It was about Richard the man, the musician, the friend, and the loving father and dedicated husband.  The preacher told the story of a man who did all he could with his life in the short time he had.  He said that he will be missed, and that "we will someday all be reunited in Heaven."