It took a moment for the news to register. It was repeating for a while before I really heard it. I was turning onto the lit road of an actual town, and could see my destination, “Chubby’s Bar, Serving Spirits for More Than Forty Years,” just beyond the stop sign, when the news knocked five times, hard on the cognizant part of my brain, and I let it step inside.
Hello, nice to meet you, “Osama bin Laden Is Dead.” Come in. Have a seat. Or not. Shuffle around awhile. You seem a bit unsettled.
I pulled into Chubby’s parking lot and turned off the car, along with the repeating news.
The bar was permanently stuck in the late seventies, in the best way. Everything was black leather and red paint. A mirror made up the wall behind the bar, reflecting bottles of spirits. Smoke hung in the air, although it’s no longer legal to smoke inside in Illinois. Chubby’s owner was a real rebel. The three people sitting inside hushed and turned as I entered. They stared at me blankly. Not quite like I was a green gaseous alien orb, but as if watching to see if I might turn into one. I guess they weren’t used to seeing chicks in ties and vests with psychobilly faux-hawks around there. Weird little faggot, I was. The staring lasted and lasted, even as I perched myself on a barstool and tried to act casual, just a person wanting a drink in a bar, the staring went on. “Can I get a whiskey, neat, with a seltzer backer?”
The female bartender, who was now standing in front of me, stared even harder. “Huh? What did you say?”
“A whiskey with nothing in it and a soda water, a seltzer, separate,” I tried again.
“You just want me to pour you whiskey in a cup?” she said angrily.
“Just like if you would do it on the rocks, but without the ice,” I said timidly, almost as a question. This wasn’t helping at all. I thought it was the simplest thing I could have ordered. Apparently, it was an alien libation. An old man in a ball cap and overalls nursed a Budweiser in the far corner. At a table near him, an old woman sat twirling a straw in a Coca-Cola can with what appeared to be the Bible open beside it. They were both still staring at me too. “However you usually do it is fine,” I kept on.
“I don’t never do nothing like any of that. You want soda (pause) water? You want that alone in a different glass? I don’t have any of that. I might have some tonic in the back. You want that?”
I didn’t give a shit about any of this. I just wanted to know if Osama bin Laden was really dead. But I had totally pissed off this bartender, and I didn’t know how to un-piss her off. She looked like everybody’s aunt. She was in her late thirties with clean, short blond hair, and generally appeared to be a legal, sane, normal person. But boy had my drink selection pissed her off.
“It’s fine. I’ll just take a whiskey and a regular water.” She filled up a glass of water and set it in front of me, clankingly. Then she got a pint glass and headed for the whiskey. “Oh that’s, yeah. Um. That’s too big. I mean,” I tried to make it a joke, “I can’t hold my liquor that good. Ha! Not that I’m a drunk, but . . .”
She was now still, holding the whiskey and pint glass, glaring at me. “How big a cup do you want?” I pointed to a regular tumbler. If it is possible to point with embarrassment, that’s what I did. She grabbed the tumbler and slammed it down in front of me. “Why don’t you just tell me when.” She started pouring. I told her when. She stopped. I got out my wallet. She stepped back and chewed her bottom lip, staring at the glass, then shook her head. “I don’t know how much to charge for that,” she said aggressively, as if asking me for an answer. I heard the old man “hmph” loudly in my direction. Then, thank god, the door opened behind me, and my old buddy from my teenage years, Jessica, stepped in.
“Hey there,” she squealed, smiling the bright, perpetual smile of the kind of optimistic lady who can bounce into any bar in the southern rural Midwest without everyone turning to stare at her. She hugged me and sat her pleasantly plump self down next to me. “Hey there. How you doing?” she asked the bartender.
“Just fine. What can I get you to drink?” the bartender asked, still suspicious, but seeming to thaw.
“I’ll have a Hot Cherry Bomb, if it’s not too much trouble,” Jessica chirped.
“Coming right up,” the bartender chirped back, very happy about knowing what someone meant again. She then proceeded to mix cayenne pepper, lime juice, Dr Pepper, vodka, and Red Bull in a pint glass, topping off the concoction with two cherries and a straw. Easy as pie. Hot Cherry Bomb. Sure. Why not? “That’ll be four dollars.”
Really? I thought. Are these people fucking with me?
The bartender eyed my drink, a little friendlier now. It was like magic. I had a translator. “I guess yours’ll be three-fifty. That sound fair?”
“Fine by me.” I laid my money on the bar and took out my cigarettes. “You can smoke in here,” I told Jessica. She smiled and nodded. I lit up and sipped my whiskey. I wasn’t being stared down anymore and could finally pay attention to something besides my drink order. The television above the bar showed what appeared to be hundreds of frat boys waving American flags. The bartender noticed me watching.
“They got him. Can you believe it?”
“I just heard. Just before I came in.”
“Where’ve you been?” Jessica asked. “It happened hours ago.”
“I’ll turn it up.” The bartender went to the TV and turned the volume on. The news anchors just kept repeating, “Osama bin Laden is dead,” in slightly different ways each time. Sometimes they said, “Osama bin Laden has been taken out.” Sometimes they said, “Osama bin Laden was successfully killed by SEAL Team Six,” and sometimes they said, “Barack Obama is dead, I’m sorry I mean . . . Osama . . .” It was Fox News they were watching. Everyone in the bar was staring intently at the screen, but no one seemed very happy about it. They looked much happier in New York City, where the world’s largest and most morbid tailgate party had suddenly erupted at Ground Zero. I read the words scrolling across the bottom of the screen: “Usama bin Laden Is Dead.”
I hmphed. “Jesus, they can’t even spell it right.”
Bin Laden’s face popped up like a Hungry Hungry Hippo. Then the thin, wrinkled old lady with the Coke popped up like a Hungry Hungry Hippo as well, right up off her barstool, and growled, “Yer dead now, motherfucker. We gotcha, motherfuckerrrrrrr!”
“Calm down, Iris.” The bartender smacked the bar counter. Iris went back into the pond.
“I really like this place,” Jessica chirped. “It’s weird.” She smiled big and giggled. “I’ll have to come back again sometime.” She looked around herself. “It’s like another world in here.” Jessica grew up two towns away in a slightly bigger town. Chubby’s was my hometown bar.
“Barack Obama has successfully killed Usama bin Laden,” the news anchor said.
“Obama didn’t kill him,” the old man at the bar muttered at no one and everyone, “the SEALs killed him.” He looked disgusted, like he’d just vomited a bit in his mouth. “Obama,” he sneered. “Hmph.”
“I’m glad he’s dead, anyway. We can all rest a little easier now,” the bartender told us.
“What’s your name?” Jessica asked sweetly.
“Donna.”
Jessica introduced herself and me to Donna the bartender.
“Where are you from?” Donna asked.
“She lives in New York City,” Jessica told her proudly. I guess that question was mostly directed at me.
“New York City? Well then, you must be more excited about this than anyone,” Donna told me.
I kept watching the TV. “They’re spelling it wrong,” I repeated. “Look.”
Donna turned and looked. “Well, how ’bout that? They’re spelling Osama with a U. Is that an alternate way or something?”
“I don’t think so.”
“Usama bin Laden is dead,” the news anchor repeated. And I couldn’t help but notice, she was pronouncing it by the new spelling. I extinguished my cigarette in the black ashtray.
“I don’
t think it’s a mistake,” I told them. Jessica smiled big at me. “It’s on purpose, see, it’s USA-m-a. They’re doing it on purpose. They’re renaming him as if he’s now property of the USA. Get it? USAma.”
“I’m not really a political person,” Jessica said, shrugging and smiling. But Donna was listening and looking incredulously at the screen.
“That is weird,” she concurred.
“I haven’t seen you in years. Tell me everything,” Jessica said, changing the subject.
“I’ve had about enough of that myself.” Donna muted the TV and headed over to the jukebox. In a minute, Travis Tritt was serenading us.
“Tell me all about New York City,” Jessica smiled big and her perfect eye makeup sparkled. “I want to know everything. I want to live vicariously through you.” She leaned toward me excitedly. Her elbow bumped a cup that was sitting next to the ashtray. It fell over, spilling out a wad of cash and some change. I thought it was a tip jar, but as I put it back in its original position, I read the words scrawled on the side in black marker: “Donations for Chastity’s funeral.”
Jessica and I stared at it. Her smile fell down so hard it scraped its knees and looked like it might not be skipping around again for a while. I grimaced. “Oh. That’s depressing.” I slid the donation jar far away, out of sight and mind. I lit up another cigarette. When I exhaled, a noise came from my chest that sounded like Satan’s dog with a throat infection. I started coughing.
Jessica recoiled. “That sounds really bad. Are you okay?” I banged on my chest with my fist. It felt like I had an alien in there. And I didn’t have Sigourney Weaver around to come help me if it decided to burst through my chest. I gasped for breath, hunched over, and grabbed Jessica’s wrist. She jumped.
“Listen, Jessie, forget about New York City. I don’t even remember New York City. There’s something weird happening around here,” I whispered, and took up my desperate coughing again.
Jessica stiffened. I held tighter. “What do you mean?” she asked, her voice shaking with confusion.
“I saw these . . . things. These green things. I was out in the woods tonight, with this kid who’s wanted for manslaughter,” I whispered. Jessica’s eyes got big and her eyebrows got all twisty. “It’s only second degree. It’s nothing. Forget it. Like I was saying, I saw these things . . .” Jessica was looking at me like I was crazy. I tried to figure out how to proceed. Someone touched my shoulder, softly tapping.
I turned to find Iris staring at me, nearly nose to nose. The wrinkles around her eyes looked like a dried-up beach. “Can we help you?” Jessica asked, trying to keep it cool.
Iris’s thin lips moved. “The time is coming.”
“I’m sorry?” Jessica came back. I let go of her wrist and swiveled around on my stool. My chest growled. Iris took a pamphlet out of her Bible and handed it to me. On the front was a picture of the sky and what seemed to be silhouettes of people floating up into the clouds. There were words printed in a very kitschy font across the blue sky: But what if it IS true?
“Iris! I told ya.” Donna was coming out of the ladies’ room. “I told ya, Iris,” she hollered. “You can sit in here, but you gotta leave people alone.”
“It’s coming!” Iris informed us, nodding vehemently and sidestepping toward the door as Donna made her way toward her. “The time is coming. Prepare yourself.”
“You gotta get now,” Donna said, taking her by the arm. They walked out together.
I gasped and something in me growled louder. “Weird shit has been happening all night. I’m telling you. There’s something going on.” My level of paranoid desperation startled even me. I began to worry I might be losing my mind.
Jessica patted me on the shoulder and shook her head. “Calm down, hon. She’s just a crazy old woman. Every bar has one.”
She picked up my cigarette from the ashtray and started to put it out, but I snatched it from her and nearly shouted, “I’m not done smoking that!” The beast in me growled too. It was an unearthly double-growl. Jessica laid her hands squarely on the table and stiffened defensively, eyeing me from the side.
Donna came back in. “Sorry about that, girls. She does that all the time.”
“It’s fine,” Jessica assured her, trying to get her smile back up off the sidewalk, but it was all wobbly. Donna went and sat at a booth far away from us and read the paper. The old man in the ball cap was still there at the other end of the bar, smoking and drinking, occasionally muttering at the screen. Silently, ten hundred million frat boys waved American flags, their bulbous lips chanting “U! S! A!” like a birth cry, as they held their glittering girlfriends up on their broad, white shoulders, above the streaming words “Usama bin Laden Is Dead.”
“I hear you’ve been doing really good in New York. You just had a book published. How’s that going?” She was trying so hard, poor thing.
The beast and me sucked down my cigarette loudly. “Yeah. I had a book published. It’s going great. I got an award. Listen, Jessie, have you ever seen any, like, green orbs in the woods around here?”
Her face did a little dance. I realized, as I watched her face go from the twist to the two-step, that she was scared of me. She hadn’t seen me in three years. How was she to know I wasn’t totally bonkers? Luckily, she’d known me as a kid, so she was also concerned for me. She inhaled deeply and straightened herself. “Okay.” That word was like a reset button. “You saw something you can’t explain? Okay.” Still resetting.
I nodded. “Yeah. I definitely saw something. Have you heard of anyone seeing, I know it sounds weird, but green floating balls?”
She pointed to my box of Winstons. “Can I have one?” I nodded and handed her a cigarette. “People have said they’ve seen things around here.” She put the cigarette to her lips. I lit it. She sucked on it lightly, then picked up her drink and took a big sip from the straw. That thing could have been a chocolate milkshake the way she drank it right then. “I’ve only heard about silver saucers. Not green balls. Who knows. I’ve never seen anything like that. But I hear a lot of things. Farmers have always seen things. You know that.” She shrugged. “We made fun of them. You made fun of them. I think they’re a little crazy. Maybe it’s sunstroke. But, I don’t know.” She stared up at the light, pondering. The alien beast in my chest gnawed at the end of my cigarette. “I did used to see this dead Indian in the field behind my house when I was little. My dad saw him a few times too. I’ve told you about that. You remember? The Indian ghost?”
I nodded. “That’s right. I remember those stories. I thought you might just be trying to scare us, though. It was real?”
She set her drink down. “I think so. I know what I saw.” We silently contemplated the existence of other worlds. “It’s hard to tell, though.” Her hand shook slightly as she ashed her cigarette. “Some things are a little fuzzy since the electroshock therapy.”
“The what?”
“Oh I didn’t tell you about that?” Her blond hair was perfectly cut in a bob. Her makeup was clean and shining. Her mouth always held a slight smile, even as she said those awful words. “It was nothing,” she said, shrugging it off. “I just had a bad few months a couple of years ago. They did the electroshock therapy, and it really helped. It’s just that now, some of my memories are a little fuzzy.” I was looking worriedly at her now. Where the hell was I? What alternate universe had I fallen into? Apparently, you can go home again, but maybe you just shouldn’t. “No it’s fine,” she told me reassuringly. “I got my degree. I have a great job, a nice house, a new boyfriend. I’m really happy.”
She did look fine. She looked better than me. It all sounded just great except for the electroshock therapy part. “I didn’t even know they still did that,” I said.
“Sometimes they do,” she chirped, and smiled, lifting her glass to toast. Toast what? I had no idea. But I toasted back.
The old man at the end of the bar muttered something and raised his beer bottle. Donna came over to get him another. Sh
e asked me if I wanted another one of the same. I told her I did. She poured it easy as pie.
“Fuck the country, and fuck this country too,” I said, lifting my glass for my own toast. Donna was already at the other end of the bar getting that old man beer, but I didn’t give a damn if she could hear me. Jessica shuddered though. She didn’t toast back. “Sorry, it’s just been a really intense night. I’m an asshole.” Her drink was almost gone and she wasn’t ordering another. She had a look on her face like she wanted to leave.
“It’s okay. I know you always hated it here.” She patted my hand. “What the hell happened tonight? Did you say something about manslaughter?”
I shook my head no. “Yeah. It doesn’t make any sense. This kid is hiding out from the police. He’s wanted for second-degree manslaughter. He’s staying at my brother’s place. My big little brother. He’s my brother’s cousin. He’s not my cousin. He’s my not-cousin.” I laughed out loud.
“You know what, I’ll have another one too.” She held up her glass. She was intrigued. Donna came over and started mixing the weird concoction. “What did you mean it doesn’t make any sense?”
I gulped down the top third of my new whiskey and lit up another smoke. I like to smoke when I tell stories. “I don’t see how anyone could call it manslaughter, of any degree. He had this girlfriend, and he cheated on her, broke up with her, whatever. She was, like, seventeen. She started sending him messages saying that if he didn’t come over, she was going to kill herself. And he didn’t and she—” The story was broken off by the sound of glass breaking on the old cracked floor, like a broken heart breaking over something that was already broken long before.
Donna’s hands were cupped in midair like they were still holding cups and mixers, but they weren’t. Her face was as pale as yesterday’s ghost, her eyes intense, watery, and her lips barely parted. Her voice was deep and serious, touched here and there with a southern accent.
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