The woman was an attractive collection of wrinkles. She had quit smoking 20 years before but the lines around her mouth still reflected all the long, deep draws that had given her so much pleasure for so many years. There were lines from a million, million smiles and lines leading to her eyes. She sat on her bar stool and was an easy laugh for the drunken boys telling stories and cracking jokes she had heard before. Everyone there knew her name and even knew that that particular stool was her's. And they knew the one next to it belonged to her brother Earl.
Earl sat beside her with not nearly so many lines. She was older than him by three years but that didn't explain it. Earl would have been the perfect poker player. You could almost never tell what Earl was thinking by looking at him. You couldn't tell his mood and some folks wondered if he even had them. He heard the same stories and the same jokes and if he thought one was particularly funny, he might purse his lips a little closer together. But you had to be especially observant to notice.
They sat together every night on those same stools and had done so for years and years. He usually nursed six or eight beers over the course of the night. Sometimes, when work had been especially hard, for a whole week when the new plant manager started, he would sit and sip bourbon. Whether it was the beer or the whiskey, it was a lot for a night. It was especially a lot when you consider it was every night.
But he paled beside his sister. Ruth would sit beside him drinking three to four beers to his one. She would sip for a bit and then take a great gulp and then, when the bottle was running low, she would pull down hard on the last of it with her head turned up and bubbles running back up the bottle. Some of the boys would buy her shots and she would nail them down one after another. She would eventually make soothing sounds to the one who eventually threw them all back up. And then she would drink the shot that had been left in front of the poor soul.
That was her life. Wake up each morning still a little drunk, drink coffee and water at work fighting against the inevitable hangover, and then killing the hangover back on her stool. The routine varied only in the food - onion rings some nights. Sometimes the mozzarella sticks. The chili cheese fries if she was particularly hungry. Of course she had half a steak and a baked potato slathered in sour cream on Thursday Night Ten Dollar Steak Night - always. But otherwise it was the same night every night.
This night was different. Her son sat down from her on the other side of Earl. She had bought him a shot just to piss him off. He wouldn't drink it but of course it wouldn't go to waste. He had come to try to talk her into going to rehab again. That would be a waste - of time and of effort. But it was his time and his effort and she had his shot to look forward to so she let him go on. Earl sipped his bourbon - she would have to remember to ask him about his day. You couldn't tell that he was listening to them at all even though the words had to slide around him.
All the boy's words (she would always think of him as her boy) all the boy's words were the same and she kept playing with him by trying to change the subject. She had learned it was better to let him get it all out until he had to start repeating himself. Eventually even he would get tired of the same reasons and the same assurances and the same platitudes and he would run down and finally tell her that he loved her. Then he would shake his head at Earl and he would leave. The whole thing annoyed the hell out of her but she let it pass because she knew he genuinely loved her and wanted what he thought was best for her. But he had been more fun back in his twenties when he would sit and have a drink with them.
This time played out much the same. Almost. He said all the same things and he repeated them all just like all the times before. But this time he took the shot glass and slammed it down on the floor and the whole bar went silent and Roscoe the bartender had shouted, "Hey!" and had started to come down to their end of the bar. Earl never raised his left fist from the bar. He just extended his forefinger and pointed Roscoe back to the other end of the bar.
The boy saw the gesture and it pissed him off all the more, "And you, you just sit there watching her kill herself and you don't do a damn thing about it!"
Ruth found her voice, "I'm a grown ass woman you little shit. What exactly do you think he is going to do, Jimmy?"
The boy looked at her and then quickly back to Earl. "You enable all this. She can't hit rock bottom because you keep catching her and propping her back up! If you actually gave a damn, you'd put her out of your house and get her off that damn bar stool!"
Earl never looked at the boy. He always thought of him as a boy too. Earl had changed his diapers and had bounced him on his knee and picked him up from school and had watched him puke when he had stolen one of Earl's bottles of Beam. Earl just lifted his glass to his lips. But the boy grabbed his wrist and the liquor sloshed up to his nose and dripped down his chin.
"Don't sit there getting drunker and drunker while I'm talking to you old man!"
"Jimmy," Earl replied, "I get that you are upset. You see your mama drinking herself to death and that gets you one pass. But I am an old man. I ain't got time for bar fights and rolling around on a dirty floor with somebody. You just might be able to kick my ass, maybe. I doubt it, but maybe. But, boy, I will hurt you permanently while you are busy kicking my ass. I swear I will bite something off and you won't ever get it back unless you pick it out of my shit. Now get your damn hand off of me."
The boy slowly removed the hand. There really wasn't any fear on his face. But there was embarrassment that had seemed to cut through his anger. "I'm...I'm sorry Uncle Earl. I shouldn't have done that."
Ruth was still quiet and Earl simply looked the boy in the eye and nodded. The apology was something. He was at least a good boy and Earl felt a certain amount of pride at that. Ruth had never been much of a mother and she had never told anyone who the boy's father had been - if she even knew. Earl had had no idea how to be a parent but he had tried to get the boy to be accountable for his actions. And that thought, the idea of accountability, made Earl take a deep breath.
"Boy, if I was here or not, she would still be on that stool."
"Hello! I'm sitting right here - you ain't going to talk about me like I ain't even here."
Earl looked at his sister. She started to say something to him and he leaned his head to the left and brows came together just enough to show he was getting angry and she turned back to her beer.
Earl turned back to the boy,"She ain't ever going any where but from that stool to bed to work and back to that stool. She's gonna do it again and again until she leaves that stool and goes to the grave. I come here with her. I make sure she don't get robbed or raped or killed. I make sure she don't freeze to death in the winter and I make sure she eats something at least once a day. I know she's killing herself - it may be slower than a bullet but I still can't stop it and you can't either.
But you keep trying. It is what a good son does. You try to stop the bullet. I'm just doing my best to make sure she don't die alone. Neither one of us has it easy."
The boy sat there with his mouth just a bit open and that squint a man gets when he is trying to hold onto a tear. He finally closed his mouth and turned to the other end of the bar, "Roscoe, how much do I owe you for the shot glass?"
Roscoe shook his head and waved his bar towel at him. The boy left and gradually sound returned to the bar. Earl took a sip of this bourbon and looked up at the game on the silent television.
"You really think that? You really think I am just sitting here every night killing myself? What the hell does that make what you're doing? How are we so damn different?"
Earl never looked down from the game and took another sip of his drink.
Ruth found she had to swallow a little harder that normal. "Well then," and she took a deep breath, "Roscoe, let me try one of those bourbons."
