beckstraordinarya tumblelog

Please keep in mind it is a first draft.

A Barley Carol

Snow was coming. The two neighborhood cats walked in with Kyle to the ding! of the motion detector and the Christmas-lit cave. The bar was quiet, almost as tired as the young man, only of playing host as opposed to sleeping on strangers’ floors. The hanging lights coughed to life with the flip of a switch. Kyle moved on to the PA system and turned it on. He could hear the zip and hum of each speaker and monitor as they fought against the empty cold of the room.

His attention turned to the bar where he took count of what needed to be pulled from the stock room. The trick on a cold night was to count five times, pull once. Making back and forth trips to the Frigidaire would take the temp down a couple notches already, people coming and going would make it painful to work. The things cold bottles and frequent dips in sanitizer can do to one’s hands is made only more severe by frequent or constant contact with cold air.

He took stock of the peanuts in bags behind the counter and poured the last contents from a bag. There was something about the end of a bag of peanuts that caught him, but only for the amount of time it takes to make a mental snapshot. The longer a bag would stay, the darker the nuts. As he pushed the open bowls and shucking buckets at intervals along the bar, one of the cats jumped up, curious, searching the scent. The cat grew immediately tired of his search and continued on, butting his head against the tap.

Kyle walked over to the far end of the bar and plugged in the poker machine. He grabbed the remote to the closed caption television and it buzzed bright and flashed and flickered without a peep. He walked to the back and grabbed a broom and dustpan and a bucket of salt. He dropped the bucket by the door and began to move the stools away from the bar.

Sweeping night after night becomes meditative. Going on muscle memory with no one to hear you talk, one begins to hold court with the left to right motion and conversation with the wispy voice of the broom’s head. These conversations, though many and often varied, held consistent themes for him: what to do and when and how (all well and good and simple enough as long as they’re never broken down). Kyle moved the stools back one by one, only pausing to let one of the cats decide if the chair were to be moved with or without him on it. The cat jumped off the chair and onto the floor, staying there only long enough to let Kyle move his chair back.

When he finished sweeping everything into the dustpan, he contemplated washing his hands and cutting fruit or salting the sidewalk. Again he considered the mincemeat shape of his hands and the wanton ache in his lungs for a smoke. He turned to grab his coat and reached for the open sign to hang over the front door. He heard the motion detector ding! but dismissed it as one of the cats when he didn’t hear any movement at the door.

He came out from behind the bar holding an unlit cigarette between his lips. His mouth trembled on seeing her. She just stood there not moving, not speaking.

She was someone who had once meant a great deal to him – so much so that when he no longer had her, he didn’t much consider himself to have anything. He could feel his lungs constricting as he continued to stare, not sure if he was staring past her or through her or somewhere in the middle.

One of the cats jumped off the bar and mewed at his feet. Distracted, Kyle looked down at the cat, and when he looked back up, she was gone. He leaned over to grab the bucket and the cat followed him out.

Any suggestions? Spelling or grammatical errors?

posted 1 month ago