The Pier
Another excerpt from The Ramble Noose, already in progress...
"The young dream of transcending their circumstances, of shaming the mediocrities around them; of saving lives, of being martyrs..."
Burt was three-quarters through a tall tale about his youth and equally far through his bottle. Everyone there knew the story, and lamented quietly that it neither changed direction nor improved the more shitfaced its orator became. I took my place among the patient crowd and waited to see if the court would call upon their jester again this night.
"...and there I was out back behind the barn. Who you think came strollin' around?"
"Your Dad, looking for some help with the corn!" Someone from the back yelled.
"Yeah, and found you shuckin' something else!"
The room volcanoed into laughter. Whipped cream on this Sunday night. The pier of had arrived. Second cousin to the quarter-evening lull, the pier is a pinnacle that shows up after all natural energy is depleted. You can feel when you reach it. There was nowhere to go now but down. You look up to see a border, a point of inertial demarcation. Here you have two options. One, you smile at the moon and its warbled twin and return home to the roost; else you hail a barge and carry the night to shores more distant still, where the lights have yet to be dimmed, and last call is still four faux pas away.
We all waited there on that pier as we finished our nightcaps. Closing time. Fall out, men. It was as it should be, according to the rhythm of the spheres. Out here, there is no side-stepping nature. As the platoon disbanded into SUVs and oversized sedans, I made for the pier, the other one, the one that ended at the lake. The path wound down beside the interstate and, even at this late hour, one had to mind the after-bar traffic. Why did it seem more ominous at night? Same weeds. Same critters coming and going. Was that its gradient seemed more pronounced, snaking away from light and shadow at a decline away from the known world? Was it the odd sounds emanating from the local underbrush? Clumsy human mixed with industrious badger? The hills have eyes, for you. Or was it that you were basically winding your way down, geographically, to oblivion?
The path ended at the water. Dream as you might, there is no swimming across. The water is too deep and too far. Standing now on the warped wood, where was I really? Alone. 39 years of nothing under a cheap ass belt. Potential recycled into a thrift-store excuse. Time, alchemied into shame. In the end, I think tears are just a loss of water if there's no one to see them, and water's what you're going to need where you're going. Stepping beyond the drama youth wears with its leather, alone is not a sharpened edge. It is a pit lodged tight in the throat. Seconds count and alone, really alone, becomes a binary, on or off, left or right. Fight or tap out. Alone there is only the choice, and you have to make it. As I look at the city skyline two million miles away, I am the choked up fork in the road. Cool Hand Luke standing at the window. Robespierre staring up at the blade and quoting himself on terror. And on this warm and meaningless night, I'm pretty sure, alone, I am the reason there is no going back.
"...When you have so much future before you, life seems cheap; perhaps you cannot fully imagine, as older people can, being extinguished, simply coming to nothing."
-- Hilary Mantel