The Farmer's Son

Chapter 31 The Odyssey

Amber colored liquid sloshed quietly into the whiskey glass, disturbing the ice cubes and making them clink as they settled to the bottom. Ray watched the pour with bleary eyes, so out of it even the man on the other side of the bar hesitated to give him the drink.

"Maybe you had enough for tonight," Hank said, tipping the bottle back and capping it.

"This is my first," Ray said looking up at him with red rimmed eyes. He was not a convincing sight, with his glassy gaze, limp black hair, and a few days of growth shadowing his cheeks and chin.

"Why don't you go on home," Hank said. "Better yet, there's a cot in the storage room where I let patrons sleep it off."

"Thanks," Ray said with tired gratitude.

Only a few days had passed since he found himself back in corn country. Overall, he'd only been gone a week—maybe more, maybe less, he didn't really know, his days were all blurred together. But while his head was filled with fog, his feet had taken him back to where his heart wanted to be. Now he sat at the bar he'd come with Alan to, with a glass of single malt whiskey in front of him, watching the ice cubes melt in the dark amber liquid. With one shot he knocked it back and set the glass back on the bar with a dull thud.

Hank's bar was a strictly nighttime establishment, open from sundown to sunup, and at almost sunrise Ray and Hank and another gentleman asleep against the jukebox were the only ones in there. He sighed. Turning his head, he looked out of the glass in the bar's front door to the brightening parking lot outside, and couldn't help but think about what he'd be doing if he was still on the farm. Bear would be licking his face right about now, and from the open door would come the smell of fresh brewed coffee and sound of sizzling of bacon. Noah's grumpy morning grunts and Alan's perky voice would float above the early morning weather report on the radio in the sunlight flooded kitchen.

The cheerful illusion did nothing to lift his spirits, however. If anything it lowered them, because it just highlighted the fact that while it could be happening not that far away, Ray was not there to be a part of it. "It's true what they say," he murmured. "You really can't go home again."

Hank was wiping a glass, turned towards the small TV mounted on the wall, watching a baseball game, the sound low but enough to hear the crack of the bat and cheer of the crowd. Slipping off the stool, Ray bent wearily to pick up his bag and hat from the floor. He made his way to the back storage room, half of the small space full of shelves of alcohol and snacks and napkins, the other half taken over by a small army fold out cot, covered in a thin cotton sheet and pillow with no case. Ray didn't care. After falling asleep under a streetlight and waking up covered in rats, this hot, stuffy, sticky room that smelled like pickles was paradise.

The duffle dropped at the foot of the cot, his hat on top of it. He fell face down on the naked pillow, closed his eyes, let the whiskey take over and fell into a deep, but in no way restful, sleep. He would sleep the whole day, and Hank would let him, rising as the sun sank into the sea of corn.

*

As Ray woke from troubled dreams, some miles away, in the middle of an ocean of corn, in the kitchen of a certain farmhouse, a black telephone on the wall rang. Suntanned fingers hooked under the receiver and lifted it to an ear.

"Hello?" Alan said, licking the spoon he was using to make dinner.

"Is this Alan Walker?" asked the voice over the line, low and mild.

"Yes, this is him."

"My name is Joel Wicker."

The spoon froze as sugar colored eyes widened. "Oh..."