Breaking

~from “Pilgrim’s Bay”

We’re at Sammy’s on 2^nd Avenue. Sitting in the same ratty old booth we sit in every night from ten to midnight. We are drinking five-dollar pitchers of Lumber Lager Red.

     “Suckers are runnin’ in Polack Creek,” Jake says. His elbows are on the table, both hands on his beer.

     Kali’s playing with her hair. Twirling her brown locks round and round with her finger. She smells good, like she’s just showered, and I’m doing my best to take her all in without getting taken back in.

     “Jake, why do you have to say that?” she asks.

     “Say what?”

     “Polack,” she says, and takes a drink.

     “I call it ‘Polack’ because that’s its goddamned name,” he says.  

     “And that too,” Kali says. “You and all your goddamns. Ignorance. That’s what it is.”

     I’ve been waiting for this. For Kali to introduce us to her college knowledge. Since we’ve broken apart, she’s been attending classes three days a week so she can learn about life, she says. The good. The bad. The right and wrong. But Kali—as deep as she wants to be—is moving through life like the rest of us. Biding time on the surface, immersed in daily distractions so she’s not tempted to go deep—to the places where secrets are hidden.

     “Polack is a derogatory term, Jake.”

     Jake looks at me. Slowly shakes his head in disgust.

     We’ve called it Polack Creek since we were kids because that’s what the sign’s always said. POLACK CREEK. Painted in big black letters on a white metal sign mounted to an old railroad tie that’s stuck into the ground near the culvert that filters water through the cedar swamp. A sign put there by Bob Donakowski. A big, burly farmer who made his fortune playing the Michigan lottery. He hit it big. Made his millions. And bought as much property along Issacson Bay as he could so that it would never be developed. Zoned for housing. Changed. And that was just fine with me and Jake because it was one of our favorite places to fish.

     “Kali,” I say, “Don’t go off on Jake. We’re not here for anything, but this.”

     I raise my glass to toast. Kali smiles.

     “And what is this, Aden?”

     “This is us. Friends in a booth, drinking.”

     “Ah yes,” Kali says. “Once again, I have the pleasure of watching boys drown their sorrows.”

     “I’m not a boy,” Jake snaps. “And I’m not drowning sorrows.”

     He raises his glass to mine.

     “A toast!” he shouts.

     Reluctantly, Kali raises her glass. Jake flashes his crooked smile.

     “To ignorant Poles everywhere!” he hollers.

     Jake and I race to the bottom. Slam our glasses to the table. Kali lowers hers and moves it around in big wet circles. She looks at me, but our eyes do not meet. She stares through me toward the jukebox, but I am used to it. This my punishment. For leaving her. For not saving us. For our loss. And slowly, it is killing me.

     She leans forward. Her long hair touches the table.

     “Jake, you do realize that you’re a Polack, don’t you?”

     “Goddamned right I do!” he beams.

     I know I shouldn’t, but the beer’s reached my belly, entered my bloodstream and started its run.

     “Jake is thee finest goddamned Polack I know!” I say.

     Jake winks.

     “You’re not so bad yourself,” he says and then their eyes meet. She is pleading with him without words, without movement, with only her eyes. She wants all of this to stop. But I know better, and Jake knows better and by now Kali should know better than to ask. All she can do, all she can hope for, is that we’ll slow down. Jake, in the only way he knows how, grants her silent request.

     “There’ll be no more Polacks and no more goddamns. We don’t want to disappoint sweet Kali.”

     He shakes his finger at the ceiling.

     “And we mustn’t forget. The big man is watching.”

     Kali bites her lip and twirls her hair with fury as she watches people walk into the bar.

     “Jake and God have a lot in common,” I say.

     She sighs, turns toward me.

     “Something tells me I shouldn’t ask, but what is it that Jake and God have in common?”

     Jake leans forward.

     “We’re both carpenters!” he shouts, and he pounds his fist on the table. Kali doesn’t flinch.

     “To carpenters, I say!”

     Jake is a carpenter. In fact, he’s so good at it that instead of going to college after high school, or taking over his old man’s shoe store, he built a workshop, bought a van, filled it with wood and tools, and became known as Pilgrim’s Bay’s very own Woodwork on Wheels.

     I raise my glass. Jake raises his. We wait for Kali to raise hers, but she snubs us.

     “To Jake and God!” I say, “Creators both!”

     “It’s a shame,” Jake says. “Nobody giving a shit about God no more. A damned shame. People got distractions. And they’re moving farther away from God every day. Goddamned people. Everyone’s losing God—”

     He stops. Breathes deeply.  

     “When’s the last time you went to church?” Kali asks.

     “The van, the wood, and Polack Creek. Those are my church.”

     He grabs the pitcher, fills our glasses, and we are quiet for a time with our thoughts and our drinking. Jake sits and smiles into the round flickering light that dangles above our booth. Kali drinks and sighs. I sip my beer and feel good. We’re one pitcher into the night, Eddie Vedder reminds us that we’re still Alive, and I’m glancing at a blonde playing pool.

     Her hair is straight and shoulder length. Her body is slender, but full of shape and curve. Her cheeks are dimpled when she smiles, and she’s smiling a lot. Twice so far, I think she’s smiled at me.

     “That dame’s a scorcher,” Jake says, his attention gone from booth light to blonde.

     “A dame?” Kali asks. “A scorcher? Dammit Jake, you’re sick. A sick little boy.”

     I take my eyes off the blonde and chime in.

     “Jake’s not sick. He’s just gone from looking at one light to another.”

     Jake nods toward the blonde.

     “And, Miss Kali, you forget one crucial detail.”

     “What’s that?” she asks.

     “The big carpenter upstairs made that little angel. All light and glory. Hallelujah!”

     He laughs and drinks. Condensation beads and trickles down his glass. Kali looks at me, our eyes meet, and we wander into each other for only a few seconds, but long enough so that everything comes rushing back—moments shared, secrets known, the sorrow and the pity, the desire and the resentment, and of course our great loss. She is the place I once belonged and there’s nothing I can do but break the gaze, look away, and begin forgetting again because I cannot go back and be inside her again.

     I stand. Dig into my pockets for change.

     “What are you doing?” she asks.

     “Jukebox,” I say.  

     Jake tops our glasses. Empties the pitcher. Kali rises and takes it from him. Glides away to the bar.

     “Any requests?” I shout after her.

     She turns and smiles and flips me the bird.

     Sammy’s is usually dead, but tonight there are extra bodies. College kids wearing college sweatshirts and college hats. Central Michigan University. Albion. U of M. I can’t imagine why they’ve all come to Sammy’s. There are other places closer to where they’re from. Clubs with hips shaking and bodies rocking to pounding bass. Cover-charging, three-level joints serving Jell-O-shots in tiny plastic cups and watered down booze in test tubes. All of it sold by beautiful waiters and waitresses flirting for dollars.

     At the jukebox two girls scan through the music catalog. Their long dark hair is pulled into ponytails. They reek of perfume and wear identical red sweatshirts.

     “Look at this garbage,” one groans.

     I move closer to them, jingling change.

     “Excuse me. Can I squeeze in there and play some music?”

     They crane their necks to look at me.

     Very pretty girls. Experts at camouflage and concealment. Made up nice with fake tans, Revlon, and Maybelline. They scowl at me, then smile at each other.

     “Excuse us,” one says. “That’s what we’re trying to do. You’re going to have to wait until we’ve made our selections.”

     They turn back to the jukebox. I stand there steaming. Jake appears at my side. Looks at the girls. Gives me an elbow and a wink.

     “What’s taking so long?” he asks.

     “Waiting for these young ladies,” I say.  “They seem to be having a most difficult time with their music selections.”

     “Most difficult?” Jake asks.

     “Yes. Most difficult.”

     The girls turn and look at us. On the front of their shirts it says, Success is getting IT. Greeks get IT. Me and Jake move closer to them. Squint at the writing on their chests. They back away.

     “You really think they get it, Jake?”

     He gulps his beer. Burps and smiles wide.

     “Oh, fuck yes they do. These Greek chicks get it all the time.”

     The girls shove by us and walk away.

     Jake takes my change. Puts it in the jukebox. Punches in the numbers. We’ve been here so many times that we have the music memorized.

     #1005—Black by Pearl Jam

     #1070—Take a Little Piece of my Heart by Janis Joplin

     #0771—People are Strange by The Doors

     Kali’s back at the booth, pouring beer. We move through the crowd toward her, bumping and brushing against bodies and every time I touch someone, I feel I’m losing bits and pieces of myself. It’s a familiar feeling. Quick like lightning, but intimate and lasting all the same. I wonder how many others feel this way—that with every connection and bit of contact, we make—we give ourselves away.  

     “Have fun, flirting?” Kali asks.

     I sit next to her. Compliment her the only way I know how.

     “Those are a couple of grade-A bitches, Kali. Not like you. You’re one of the nice ones.”

     Jake stretches out in the booth. Puts his feet up and yawns.

     “Kali’s not nice,” he says.

     “That’s right,” Kali adds.

     She slides away from me.

     “I’m a bitch, too. I just haven’t persuaded anyone I’m bitchy enough for them.”

     I lean forward and rest my elbows on the table. I look into my glass and stare into the beer until a foamy face appears. It has an elongated head. Hollow eyes. A wide grin. I think about how it won’t be long before I’m to the bottom again and suddenly, I feel her. Kali, the girl I used to know. She is as far away from me as she can get in the booth but radiating heat and warming me all the same. She smells so damn good that all I want to do is bury my face in her hair and just breathe. I want to hold her and stay that way for always and because of this I lift the glass, take a long

 drink and wash everything away, down deep, until it reaches the knot in my gut and drowns.

     “What about your little angel at the pool table?” Kali asks. “I bet she’s the real deal. Pretty, funny and smart.”

     “Bet she’s a goddamned genius,” Jake says, as he slides his half-empty glass across the table. “A goddamned genius. Just like all those other college girls.”

     I top off his glass and mine. Jake talks more about the suckers in Polack Creek. He’ll go tonight after the bar and shine the water, he says. He’s got a miner’s helmet that his grandpa used to wear when he worked the copper mine in the U.P. It’s good luck, he says, but the light on top makes it practical too. He will walk out onto the end of the big culvert, lean over the edge, steady himself, and listen to crickets and frogs and the sounds deer make when navigating the swamp in the dark. And then, when everything feels just right, when there is no other time but the now a man feels when he is just drunk enough and free enough and alone enough, holding a spear in the dark, he’ll turn on the light and see the thick run of fish just a few feet beneath him. All of them blasting upstream to the places he’ll later find and catch them. Spearing them in the head while he balances on log jams. Snatching them barehanded from hollows under the bank. And the more Jake talks about suckers in the dark, the more I realize he’s better than the rest of us. He is stronger. More durable. The kind of person that lasts. Kali, I can tell, senses this too and she raises her glass.

     “To Jake and fishing,” she says.  

     The three of us clink glasses. Drink, sip and spill. I look to the pool table. There isn’t anyone playing. The blonde’s gone to a corner to talk with her Greek, pony-tailed friends. And there are more Greeks too. Frat boys and sorority girls standing around everywhere sporting their Alphas, Omegas, Sigmas and Pis.

     “Let’s shoot pool,” Jake asks.

     Kali sighs.

     “You boys and your games. Why can’t we sit and talk?”

     I rise from the booth. My vision whirls. I try focusing on Jake as he carries his glass and the pitcher toward the pool table, but he looks like a different man. It’s as if I’ve never seen him before. Dirty jeans covered in wood dust. Faded black shirt with the sleeves torn off. Steel-toed work boots dragging frayed leather laces behind. I feel I’m lost in unfamiliar space. Moving around in someone else’s body. Spending time with someone else’s friends. Seeing everything for the first time again.

     I guzzle my beer as I approach the pool table. There are four quarters sitting on the rail. Bar etiquette says I’m to wait for the person who has the quarters up because they have control of the table. I look around at the Greeks. Most have their backs toward the table. Some look through me. The two girls in red sweatshirts stare at me and scowl.

     “Is this an open table?” I ask, loud enough so everyone can hear. Nobody answers.

     “Fuck these preppies,” Jake says. “Let’s play.”

     I take the quarters off the rail and shove them into the slots. The balls fall, rumble and roll. The blonde steps up.

     “Those quarters are mine.”

     I take four quarters out of my pocket and put them on the rail.

     “You can use these,” I say. “Besides, I asked if the table was open.”

     “You didn’t ask me. You stepped over here like you own the place, took my quarters and took the table.”

     “With the amount of time and money we spend here, we sorta do own the place.”

     I take a pool stick from the rack. Call to Jake and Kali.

     “Who wants to break?”

     The blonde waits. I walk by her and rack the balls. Jake sidles up to her.

     “I’m Jake. That’s Kali. And this—” he says, shaking a finger at me, “is Aden.”

     She comes to me. Takes the stick from my hands.

     “I’m Maggie. My quarters. My table. I break.”

     Kali chalks her stick. Jake walks to the bar and orders a round of shots.

     I rack the balls and watch Maggie. She isn’t wearing any makeup. Or at least, very little. She has pleasant green eyes, thin lips, a fair complexion. There is something about her that strikes me. Makes me nervous, self-conscious, aware. I center the balls, remove the rack and watch as she leans over the table to break.  A tiny silver cross falls out of her shirt. It dangles from a delicate chain, spins and sparkles above the green felt.

     “Kamikazees!” Jake cheers. He hands each of us a shot. “How about a toast?” he says to me.

     The small glass feels big and heavy in my hand. The bar buzzes and swirls. The people, the lights, the barstools and the booths—everything—moves round and round, and once again I am anchored to the center of my own dysfunctional universe going down, down, down. Sinking to the bottom as everything on the surface grows in layers and levels and I find myself floating farther and farther away from any ideas of having control in this world. I take a deep breath and toast.

     “To playing the game,” I say.  

     I am a weak voice aiming farther than it can carry. I fall on deaf ears and cannot be seen by all the eyes around me as they have gone glassy and glazed. And as I look around Sammy’s in search of a feeling—an idea, a spark, something new—that will rise from the deep and change me, I see myself in the mirror behind the bar. A boyish looking man. A red-faced stranger. Just another person that’s gone heavy under the chin and gotten thicker at the bottom than at the top. Getting older and weaker and slower, so that even the shiniest things can only temporarily heal the heart. Maggie moves behind me. Toward me. Her silver cross flickers in the light. She touches it with her long, white fingers. Tucks it into her shirt. And I feel like I’ve seen her thousands of times.

     Jake swears up and down that suckers are running in Polack Creek. That it’s one of the most beautiful things a man can see. Kali laughs, begins to relax, and though she looks happy I can tell she’s just as lost as Jake and me. We are wasting our lives in Sammy’s Bar in Pilgrim’s Bay. Drinking away at quiet desperation until it feels like contentment. Numbing reality so that the true, fragile lines of happiness are impossible to see. But none of that matters. Not now. Not most days. I stare at the triangle of balls—colors and numbers, organization and form given to small spheres floating on a green sea—and I wait for the break. My guts roll over and acid burns my throat. My arms and legs tingle. My hands shake, but just a little.

     We down more shots. Pitchers are filled. Emptied. We consume the offerings. Sedate ourselves with distraction so that whatever rises is kept down. Weighted. Anchored where it belongs.

     Maggie smells like a spring morning. She is close enough to touch, to have and to hold.

     “I’ll let you break this time,” she says. And it feels like she means everything.

~ KJ