Well

by Matthew McIntosh

  There were some bartenders who didn’t want to see him anymore so he avoided those bars, and there were some old friends who didn’t want to see him anymore and had never been happy to see him. He had done bad and stupid things to people in the old days and he felt terrible about it. One of these people was his wife. He had never been good to his wife and she had a legitimate beef about a lot of things. One of the first things he always did after the boat came back to Seattle was mail a letter to his wife with some money in it. He’d write her a long letter and tell her jokes in the letter and reminisce and ask if she remembered the good times and at the end of each letter he would ask her to send him a picture of their daughter and he would always hint that he’d like to come for dinner or for a weekend here or there, but with the picture she’d send him each year, there would never be an invitation.

  The last time James ever came back from the boat he bought some heroin and went to the Saloon where he met a kid in a sports jacket. He talked to the kid for a long time and they had drinks and shots of tequila and the kid said, They lose tonight they won’t make the playoffs, and James said, Is that so? I had no idea. It’s been so long since I kept up, and he showed his tube to the kid and told him he could go ahead and have a smoke if he wanted. The kid stood up, and walked into the other room where the bar was. James went into the bathroom and smoked some of the heroin and washed his face and when he came back out the bartender was clearing James’ glass off the counter and he told James to get out, he told him he’d been warned before, he told him not to come back, and as James was walking out with his pack, he saw the kid in the sports jacket sitting at the bar, staring up at the ballgame on the television. James was high and very drunk and he stumbled out the door. It was raining hard and he walked down an alley and ducked into a doorway. He hadn’t found a place to sleep for the night yet and he sat on the ground and didn’t want to ever move again, but after a few minutes in the cold, he took his pack and walked down to the mission where he got in line. He ate his dinner and talked to the men around him. He stayed awake for a long time down in the basement, talking in the dark to the man on the cot next to his, an Indian with a swollen red face named Ralph. Ralph listened to James talk about his daughter and life on the boat and the kid he’d met in the Saloon earlier and all the kids who used to come and hang out with him. Ralph listened to James talk about his Cadillac and trumpeters he’d played with and his funk band and those long drives. James liked talking to Ralph remembering these things and they held the foil for each other, blowing the sweet smoke into their blankets. Ralph listened for a long time and said he hated every fucking white man he’d ever met, and James told him, Now, people were people and it’s not the color of a man that counts, but what’s inside. He’d learned that over the years and Ralph listened, staring at the ceiling, and seemed hip to it. James dug Ralph. He loved him. Ralph was cool. Ralph was the type of guy who would never let another guy down. It was wonderful how cool people could be.