Etc.

Reminiscing (A short story)

     I sat alone in an empty booth.  Cigarette smoke pervaded the air and it seemed to swallow the diner like Jonah and the whale.  I was the only occupant in the diner.  The clock on the wall read 3:30 a.m.  The loud crowd had cleared out ages ago but I wasn’t lonely in the least bit.  I actually preferred to be alone.  I signaled the bartender for another gin and tonic and in another moment he brought it over.  I sipped it sparingly.  My account was considerably hollow lately and I couldn’t afford to swallow it all within one sip.  There was a pool table with a rack of balls.  I got up from my seat and grabbed a stick.

     “Play a game?”  The bartender, who was wiping off the counter with a rag, looked up at me surprised that I could even speak.

     “Sure.  Why not?”  He picked up a stick himself and continued to break.  We played in silence.  Not one word was spoken the entire game.  I wasn’t very good at pool.  My elder brother tried to teach me all the angles but I never practiced enough for it to stick.  Now I was receiving the consequences.  We weren’t playing for money but the embarrassment of losing was enough for me.  After he won by a long shot, I payed my tab of $15.27 (it was a lot of money in 1946) and headed home.  Wherever home would be that night.  

     It was a cold night, wretchedly, bitterly cold.  The world hadn’t woken up yet but snow had started to fall.  Being a kid once myself, I knew that all the children in the area would be happy when they awoke.  I smiled to myself thinking of the days when I was a kid.  It wasn’t that long ago but, boy, did I have a good time carrying on like a fool.  Nothing seemed to matter then.  For some reason, it all did now.  I walked down a lane with Christmas lights hanging from the houses.  I knew this street.  I used to live there wiparents, my elder brother and a poodle named Fizz.  Fizz.  Good old Fizz.  Fizz had left this world years ago.  She didn’t get run over by a car or anything.  She died from old age.  I was twelve when she passed and I put up such a fight when she died.  I refused to believe she was gone.  I suppose that I didn’t want to admit things would change.  I never handled change well.  I stood in the driveway of my old house.  So many wonderful memories existed inside that house.  A lump developed in my throat but I managed to swallow it.  I didn’t want to cry.  I didn’t want to be sad that nothing of my old life existed anymore.  Memories are what counts.  And I had lots of them.  I continued to walk.  Where to, I didn’t know.  But I continued to walk on.  Down streets and past houses.  I walked until the sun peaked it’s colors from behind the mountain.  My weary legs carried me to a park bench where I sat down and watched the sun rise.  As a great writer once said, I like living.  I have sometimes been wildly, despairingly, acutely miserable, racked with sorrow, but through it all I still know quite certainly that just to be alive is a grand thing.