Wild Irish Rose

Wild Irish Rose

            I’ve been sitting on the corner of Main and Sixth for three hours and I only have forty cents in my cup.  I dug the cup out of the trash, and there was half a fancy coffee drink that tasted like caramel left in it.  Used to be the cups were all Styrofoam, which made for better begging.  Now, they’re all made from paper and don’t hold up so good.  I don’t know what those damn environmentalists thing they’re accomplishing with changing the cups, but it doesn’t help me at all.  They should consider the little man before they starting making world changes.

            Forty cents ain’t going to get me shit, so I’ll have to keep sitting here.  I’m hungry.  Not for food, no, I can keep on for two days without any food.  I know this because I’ve lived through the gnawing pain of hunger.  It’s not the nutrition I need; I need drink.  Fermented sugars and fructose distilled into something that will blend away the pain.  What pain?  The pain of living this life, unloved.

            It doesn’t matter I’m homeless, or that everything I own on this Earth fits into the military issued duffle I carry around.  I don’t mind being simple.  Folks might think it’s a bit crazy to keep everything right next to me, but I see it as a sort of security.  Better than living a life in the suburbs, trying to keep up with the neighbors across the street.  I tried that once, even had a wife and a couple of kids, but that was too much pressure.  I like walking alone, keeping to myself, forgetting there was a past and ignoring the fact that there’s a future.

            Well.  I say that, but I’m really always looking for the future drink.  It’s the one thing that keeps me moving.  A group of office mates are walking toward me.  The women are dressed like they came out of some glossy magazine and the men are pretending like they don’t notice the way high heels make a woman’s legs stand out.  I shake my forty cents in my cup and look up, pretending to be plaintive.  They might think they have the upper hand, but they have no idea.  They’re just as chained to their name brand addictions as I am to my Wild Irish Rose.

            A petite blonde looks me dead in the eye.  Her green eyes are sad, and her smile is forced.  In her small ears are diamonds as big as the size of cranberries.  Instinctively, I look at her left hand, and sure enough, she’s wearing a ring.  Of course she is.  She makes me think of my now-lost wife, Jenny.  I once gave her a diamond as big as I could afford, but it was nothing like what the blonde has on her finger or in her ears.  Of the group, I know she’s going to be the one to give me something.  She looks too kind, too green to know better than to give a drunk money.

            “Here you go, sir,” she says, pushing a twenty dollar bill into my cup.  “And thank you for your service.”  I forgot that I’m wearing a USMC hat.  I forgot for a moment that I’m a veteran.

            I squint my eyes at her and consider telling her that her path will lead her nowhere.  She’ll end up fat and sad in the middle of cookie-cutter sprawl, wondering what happened to her life.  But I need that twenty like I need air, so I don’t say anything.  I nod and look her dead in the eye.  I think she’ll remember me the next time she goes to the mall and spends four hundred dollars on a handbag that she’ll only carry for two months. 

            The group walks off and I slowly stand.  My joints ache.  I don’t know if it’s because I’m getting old, or if it’s from sitting, or if I’m starting to go through the withdraws.  Last time I was at the VA, the doc told me I had to cut the booze or I was going to die.  Easy for him to say because he was young enough to think that dying was a strange sort of thing.  I didn’t go back for my follow-up.

            Angels II Carryout is musty as I pull open the door.  The son’s owner, Faris, knows me well.  Every chance I get to buy some booze, I come to him.  He’s always open, and he’s nice to me.  Last winter, he gave me gloves when the temperature dipped below freezing.  A kind soul but he has a coke problem and I know it.  I can see these things.

            “How’s it going, Carl,” he calls out to me from behind the bullet-proof glass.  These days, you can’t be too careful.

            I raise my hand to acknowledge his greeting, but can’t find the strength to speak.  My body is rattled with the shakes.  It’s been twelve long hours since I’ve had any alcohol.

            I pluck three bottles of Rose from the stand-up cooler in the back of the store.  The twenty will only get me so far, but I want to try to get some kind of buzz before I drift off to sleep.  I haven’t gone to bed sober in three decades.

            Faris totals my purchase and I hand over the bill.

            “A twenty?  Dang, that’s impressive, man.”  Faris doesn’t pretend.  He knows I’m a drunk and he knows I beg.  I don’t pretend either, but smile wanly.

            He puts two of the slender bottles in a paper bag that smells like childhood and hands me the other.  Pulling a pack of cheap cigarettes from the rack behind him he tells me, “There are on the house.  And why don’t you take a bag of peanuts or something too?  You’re looking a little lean.”  Faris means well, and I hope he kicks his habit before he ends up like me. 

            “Thank you, sir,” I manage to reply, my voice as quiet as a butterfly whisper.  I take a jumbo sized bag of peanuts from the display next to the register and look longingly at the bottle of Rose.  “Mind if I?”  I don’t finish, but twist off the safety seal of the cheap booze and take a long swallow.  I drain the bottle without realizing it.  Faris watches me, nostrils flaring, but doesn’t say anything.  He might be one of those Muslims, but his daddy Ibraham raised him right to respect his elders.  I breathe in deep after the last swallow and hand him the bottle. 

            “Can you recycle that for me,” I ask as I hand it over.

            Faris smirks but takes the bottle.