The Long Fall (26 page)

Frank’s about to be a grandfather again. His daughter over in Billings has been having a difficult pregnancy, and he’s flown there to stay with her for a while, so for the last couple of weeks, Jimmy’s been working like a regular citizen, putting in the overtime and after conferring with Lawson on the phone each afternoon, going on to pick up some of the slack in the managerial duties for running the bar.

Any other circumstances, Jimmy would’ve worked hard to duck that kind, or any kind, of work, but he’s learning some of the citizens’ secrets, one of which is if you work hard and stay busy, you don’t have time to think, and that suits Jimmy just fine, the not thinking part, because when he does, nothing in his brain is his friend.

The nights, after closing, are the worst, Jimmy all loose ends in the apartment above the bar, no center to anything, no hand-or footholds around, everything painful, broken, and lost in his life flying in, coming at him from under the radar, each tick of the clock its own little cage, memory marking him—his father clutching his chest and losing control of the car as it hit the entrance ramp to Route 10, Don Ruger bleeding on him in a toy store parking lot, Aaron Limbe and his dead-end eyes, Evelyn with an IV patched into the back of her hand and lost in the stewardess smile, no chapter and verse or buyer protection plan to help out with any of that, Jimmy right up against it.

He’s found out the empty hours after midnight take everything on their own terms.

Insomnia is a long hello. You get to meet your demons.

So each night, after closing, Jimmy rides things out the best he can, sitting in front of the television on a piece of lawn furniture, an old chaise lounge with frayed plastic webbing he found tucked away in the bar’s storage room, Jimmy armed with an ashtray and lighter and some cold ones and watching old Westerns that he checks out earlier in the day from Lawson’s video store.

Cowboy movies is what Jimmy had called them as a kid.

High Noon, Rio Bravo, She Wore a Yellow Ribbon, Stagecoach, ?y Darling Clementine, Gunfight at the OK Corral, The Magnificent Seven, The Left-Handed Gun, The Searchers, 3:10 to Yuma.

His favorites are
Shane
and
The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance.
Those are the ones he saves for the heart of his insomnia, the 3
A.M.
viewings.

Then sleep, when it comes, if it comes, depending on his luck.

Once he’s behind the bar again, Jimmy’s okay. There’s a routine to tending and a rhythm to that routine that smooth things out. Jimmy does not have to think too long about how Evelyn has never answered any of his letters or postcards. He does not have to remember a particular shade of lipstick or its taste or the lift and bend of a leg as Evelyn leaned back on a bed and peeled off a stocking. He does not have to think about the claims flesh makes upon flesh or about their hold on you.

What’s left is Jimmy and the regulars at The Corner Place. Each day, the regulars settle in and hunker down, and it’s his job to keep the drinks coming. The regulars like him. Jimmy’s got the touch for drawing a draft right. He knows the art and physics behind a cold one—the proper temperature of the glass, the angle of the glass to the spout, the weight and pressure of the fingertips on the lever, the precise duration of the pull to produce the perfect head, which, if anyone asks, Jimmy will tell them it’s five-sixteenths of an inch. Jimmy brings his in right on the money, and if proof is necessary, Jimmy will take out the wooden ruler he keeps behind the bar next to the box for the in-house sports bets and let you check it out for yourself.

Those at The Corner Place, like the regulars at any other small neighborhood bar, want a side order of talk or silence with their drinks. There are those who sit in front of their drafts with the thousand-yard stare and there are those who talk it up, complaining about the federal government, jobs, spouses, children, the conditions of the roads, the tax base, the cost of food, the fate of their favorite teams, or the weather; and Jimmy’s come to figure out there’s finally not much difference between the two, except in the noise level. What brings each group to the bar and keeps them there is what everybody else knows too—that things can curdle, shrink, dissolve, explode, expire, or disappear on you.

And sooner or later will.

But not end.

That’s also what Jimmy’s come to figure out from his side of the bar.

Nothing ends.

Nothing.

Liar’s Night, that’s what Jimmy has dubbed the second and last Fridays of each month at The Corner Place. There’s something different in the air then. Friday’s payday, and everyone’s got the green. The regulars are restless. They plot and scheme and hatch plans. They revisit and revise their lives. They conjure possibility. Promise is their pal. Life’s sweet. They have some money in their pockets, and the world’s bigger all of a sudden. So are they. So, for a while, are their dreams.

On those nights, the place hops.

If you walk into The Corner Place on one of those Fridays, you’ll find Jimmy, who’s never been a big fan of the facts himself, behind the bar, and at some point in the evening, you’ll see him take an empty tab sheet and fold it just so—right down the center so that the paper’s tented—and he’ll pull out a pen and block-letter RESERVED on each side of the sheet, and then he’ll set the paper on the stool in front of his station and go back to levering drafts.

No matter how crowded the place is, none of the regulars bother the stool or Jimmy about sitting there.

If you ask around, someone will tell you it’s saved for Jimmy’s father.

Ask someone else, you’ll hear it’s reserved for Jimmy’s good buddy Don Ruger.

A woman, this woman named Evelyn, is what you’ll hear from someone else.

Of course, you could ask Jimmy himself. He’ll pause, scratch his ear, look over at the door, and smile before answering.

Hey, he’ll tell you, the bar’s open. The beer’s cold. You never know who might show up.

Lynn Kostoff
is currently an associate professor of English at Francis Marion University in Florence, South Carolina, and is at work on his second novel, the first of a projected series featuring a Northern patrolman transplanted to the Myrtle Beach Police Department.

Published in Electronic Format by
TYRUS BOOKS
an imprint of F+W Media, Inc.
4700 East Galbraith Road
Cincinnati, Ohio 45236
www.tyrusbooks.com

Copyright © 2003 by Lynn Kostoff

All rights reserved.

No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

This is a work of fiction.
Any similarities to people or places, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

eISBN 10: 1-4405-3188-9
eISBN 13: 978-1-4405-3188-0

This e-book edition: March 2012 (v.kf8.1.1)

This work has been previously published in print format by:
Carroll & Graf Publishers
An imprint of Avalon Publishing Group, Inc.
Print ISBN: 0-7867-1165-5