The pelting rain bombards the crumbling sidewalk as a tired man huddles for warmth in the corner of a decaying brick building. The beaten man’s face tenses up as he sucks down a swig of whiskey from a pint-sized bottle, concealed from the naked eye by a wrinkled brown bag. The heat from the whiskey makes his body feel revived and his mind feel a little more at ease. His tattered, blue denim coat does little to prevent the chilling rain water from making his body shiver. The grimy, yellow T-shirt that he wears under his soaked jacket begins to dampen.
He feels cold but thinks that his remedy bottle will provide the necessary warmth. His scrawny legs experience pin pricking pain as the effects of a strong cross wind jab droplets of water into his gray workman’s pants. The troubled man curses bitterly under his booze breath as he realizes his battered boots are submerged in a puddle of icy water.
After dragging his fatigued legs and drenched boots out of the puddle, he reaches for the bag, for another guzzle off his loving liquor. He needs to replenish that content feeling before the persistent cold invades his whole body. Feeling desperately around his jacket’s pockets, he searches for the cigarette pack that he had just smoked out of minutes earlier. Spells of disoriented anger and emotion evolve in his mind because of this treasure hunt without a find. Swirling his long, greasy, graying hair out of his eyes, this saturated soul tries rising up to relocate. Stumbling downward, he decides why move, so drawing out his bottle, he gulps some down. “If I moved, some big mouth was bound to bitch about it, anyway,” he mumbles.
A young boy dressed in a bright yellow raincoat splashes by him through a clear puddle. The boy’s boots stir the puddle to a dim brown. Distant memories wander forward in the man’s head. He thinks of his happy childhood and elementary school. He remembers his goals and morals, once organized in a not so cluttered mind. “How the hell did this ever happen. Man.” Dark pieces ripple like the clear puddle that was stirred.
For the first time in a long time, he thinks back to what he ran from. As a kid, his mother had tried. Things were good at the start. He never knew his real father. For a long time, he had figured that he had just disappeared. Although at the age of ten, he was told his father had been found dead in the deep woods of Maine on a logging road. He didn’t understand it then. No one ever explained it. He still didn’t understand how or why.
He remembered first using alcohol with his brother Jimmy at his mother’s second wedding reception; where they both sipped the bottom of people’s unattended and discarded drinks. He liked Jimmy; they had done crazy stuff together: throwing snowballs at cars, smashing pumpkins, prank phone calls. Then, his sole brother Jimmy died at seventeen; he died 73 days after the car crash. Speeding. He remembered the coma and the machine. Months of trips to the hospital, but he still ended up dead. Then his mother got divorced again, then she died. Heart attack. Maybe drugs. Alone at sixteen.
Things began to blur: a year of high school, weeks of hitch hiking, a month in the army, a day of back breaking labor. Everyone thought he was a victim, loser, felt sorry for him. It was irritating. He didn’t need it.
The endless encouragement to overcome what had happened to him just reminded him of how bad things really were. Some people play out the hand, he consciously folded.
Suddenly, his chest ached. He slams all his memories back into their cells. He whispers, “Well, that was a long time ago, enough. Thinking about it and imagining don’t change a damn thing.” As he stares at a rusting trash can, he feels happy enough. His bony fingers raise his whiskey bottle to toast success. Smiling, he watches the working class scatter and hustle throughout the jammed street in front of him. The booze hits his system. He has no more problems, no desires, none for this day. Life always seems more relaxed after drinking enough to reach happiness, to be alive. He stares forward.
The musty, sooty odor of his clothing rips him form his revelations with the smell of perspiration and watered down charcoal. No matter how long he has smelled that smell, he has never gotten used to it. He feels sick. He nods back and forth. He exhales his visible breath like steam from a sewer grate. He spits, then tears the paper bag from his bottle.
The ever-present and everlasting cold engulf his body as he greedily swallows down the last of his life for the day. At this point, it is bitter but fulfilling. The bottle drops. He lays out flat, resting on the sandpaper pavement. His eyes begin closing. His consciousness begins seeking shelter from the storm. He slowly passes out of the light.