ABOUT THE AUTHOR

KEVIN KEATING’s stories have been nominated for a Pushcart Prize, Story South’s Million Writers Award, and the Ben Hoffer/Best New Writing Award. His essays and fiction have appeared in a number of literary journals, including Identity Theory, The Stickman Review, Mad Hatter’s Review, Underground Voices, Smokebox, Fringe, Perigee, Megaera, Plum Ruby Review, Fiction Warehouse, Fifth Street Review, Juked, and many others.

Lethe

By Kevin Keating


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Garrett’s friends, the few who believed his version of events, politely advised him to speak to someone, not necessarily to a shrink, no, but maybe a spiritual advisor, a Buddhist monk, a Zen master, a yogi.  He had an interest in Eastern mysticism, right?  And during a spiritual crisis it was important that a man unburden himself.   Garrett considered this.  It was true that, when drunk, he tried to impress his guests with all of the books he read--the Upanishads, the Diamond Sutra, the Analects of Confucius--but of late he’d become something of a Doubting Taoist, had lost his faith in these esoteric teachings.  The sages spoke of great silences, the purgation of memory, the eradication of the ego, strange and impossible things, but right now philosophy was not the solution to his troubles.  Neither was sobriety.  What he needed could only be found one place. 

Crane’s Lounge clung to a treeless slope overlooking the sulfur-spewing stacks of the mills and threatened after every torrential rainstorm to slide into the industrial valley and the diseased river below.  It catered mainly to steelworkers, though it was also the regular haunt of rheumy-eyed drunks and old whores, pushers and addicts, lives so far beyond redemption that the pastor who ran the small church next door railed against the bar’s “septic contagion, its night-spawned and leprous madness!”  Garrett often thought of visiting the church but found the bar much more tolerant of humanity in all of its wretchedness. 

It took a moment for Garrett’s eyes to adjust to the deep shadows and the red viscous light from the jukebox.  He searched for the barmaid and found her standing at a sink, polishing pint glasses.  A little too old, thought Garrett, to be playing the chain-smoking, alienated bohemian.  Her nostrils and ears and lower lip were pierced with silver studs, her wrists tattooed with strange Celtic designs, her hair cut short and dyed jet-black.  These things only accentuated her vanishing youth.  She had crow’s feet at the corners of her eyes, a little roll of fat under her chin, a web of dark veins crisscrossing her pale forehead.

“Haven’t seen you in a while,” she said.  “What’s it been?  Two months now?”

Garrett nodded.  “Something like that, yeah.”

She didn’t exactly smile or make direct eye contact, but he noticed the hint of surprise pushing past the condescension in her eyes, a small crack in the hard shell of her indifference and contempt.  No doubt she wanted information, some dirt, but he wasn’t about to go into the details and make a confession of his sins.  He was here on business, not a spiritual quest.

“You busy right now?” he asked.

“I’m on duty for the next hour.  What’s up?”

“You know.”

She glanced up and down the bar, lowered her voice.  “Well, you’ll have to wait.”   

“Okay, so I’ll wait.”

Since booze no longer tempted him (too pedestrian) he ordered a cup of coffee and went to a distant table where he slouched low in his seat, and for the next sixty minutes he studied the men as they came and went.  Soon he noticed something rather curious.  Their exits and entrances were not random.  They arrived in discrete packets, in waves, and then left suddenly as if swept away by a current.  Fifteen minutes later the cycle would repeat itself.  Another group of men straggled in, rested their elbows on the bar, drank their whiskey and beer, then made for the exit in a mysteriously organized mass exodus.  It was a kind of game, Garrett realized.  The object was to avoid the herd, to leave during a lull, not to be carried off by the inexplicable cosmic forces directing the lives of the unsuspecting masses.

Garrett looked up.  The barmaid stood at his table. 

“Hey, you awake?” she asked.  “Want me to brew another pot of coffee?”

“Are you off yet?”

“Ready whenever you are, hon.”

“Let’s go.”

Together they drove through the labyrinth of streets and alleys to her apartment.

“So where’ve you been?” She fished around inside her purse until she found a pack of cigarettes.  She handed him one.  “Can’t believe you could go for so long.  Some serious shit went down, right?  Old lady told you to straighten up?  Gave you an ultimatum?”

“More or less.”

“I thought she liked to party as much as you.”

“Not any more.”

Back at her third floor walk-up she threw her purse down on the kitchen counter and told Garrett to make himself comfortable.  He looked around.  Except for an old sofa covered with a pile of dirty clothes there was nowhere for him to sit so he leaned against the door and listened to the mournful and maniacal sounds of the damned and downtrodden.  This was a building where vicious dogs, Dobermans and pit bulls, barked all night long, where cacophonous drum beats erupted through the thin walls, and where the impossibly high-pitched and inconsolable cries of children mingled with the lusty screams and drunken laughter of men and women.

“You have a daughter, don’t you?” asked Garrett, picking up a baby doll off the floor and placing it on the couch.

“That’s right,” she said.  She lifted the lids on the small clay jars that lined the fireplace mantle.  “Five-years old.  But she’s living with her daddy now.  You know how that goes.  How about you?  You got a son, right?  About the same age?”

“A stepson, yes.”

The barmaid groaned.  “That’s the pits, man, isn’t it?  Shacking up with someone’s kid.  No thanks.  I got my own problems.”  She moved the jars and put the lids back in place.  “So exactly what are you in the market for?  An eightball?  Moonrock?  Angel dust?  Got another big party coming up?  Got some hash here.  Good shit. Always a crowd pleaser.”        

“No more parties. Summer’s over.  I just need something that will take my mind off things for a while.  My wife used to make this wicked brew but…”

She looked at him, nodded.  “Gotcha covered, sweetie.  Try this.”  She showed him a packet of dried green leaves.  “Got it from some dude who spent a few weeks with a Mazatec shaman in Oaxaca Mexico.  Salvia divinorum.  It’ll help you to see things differently.  You drink it.  Like a tea.  Want me to brew some now?”

Thirty minutes later he was stumbling around her apartment, looking for his car keys and found them by pure chance in his pocket.  She was right.  The world seemed less oppressive.  Colors, what few there were in that dim little den, were brighter and more vivid.  Objects glowed with great energy.  The dirty dishes rattled in the sink.  The barking dogs sounded like a chorus of singers trained at a prestigious conservatory.

“You need anything else, hon?”  The barmaid sat on a windowsill, smoking a joint. 

“Not tonight.  I have to talk to my wife about a few things.”

She smirked.  “I gotta admit, I never thought you’d tie the knot, a maniac like you.”  She took a long drag on the joint and then passed it to him.  “So you wanna tell me what went down?  Did she leave you?  Or you leave her?”

“No, nothing like that.  Nothing I can’t work out.” 

Garrett gazed past his reflection in the window.  Outside, towering above the distant mills, a gray formless membrane of sparkling graphite dust spread across the sky and fell in thin sheets like rock’n’roll glitter from a magic volcano.  The streets, flushed with neon firelight, looked like rising rivulets of lava, arteries of sin pouring out from the center of the earth--liquor, beer, ESP, girls, XXX--before cooling into the pale yellow glow of streetlights that cast hard shadows on the faces of men, blind with drink, who staggered and swayed beneath them so that their skin looked bloodless, goblin green, their cheekbones pronounced, their eyes black and empty as skulls lining the walls of a catacomb.  As the midnight hour rolled around, the sidewalks teemed with these restless ghouls, shambling in solidarity, united in their desire to have one more double shot of bourbon, a final glimpse of young pussy straddling the stripper pole before last call, the cock’s crow, and the law ordered them to return to the torment of their tedious lives.  To Garrett it was wonderful, even the police sirens that warned of the rapid accretion of chaos. 

“I should treat my wife to a generous cup of this fine, fine tea,” said Garrett.  “It’ll help her to see things just as I see them.  Malcolm, too, that prick.”

The barmaid licked her lips, played with the ends of her hair.  “You sure that’s such a good idea?  It’s pretty late.  Maybe you should hang out here.  Spend the night.”

“No, this is too important.  It can’t wait.”

“Hey, man, that’s cool. If you ever wanna talk, you know where to find me.”

He nodded and before staggering out the door and down the dark stairwell he stuffed some money into her hands and said, “Maybe I’ll catch you in a day or two.” 



Published July 2008