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F. J. Gouldner |
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SEASONS BEATINGS Little Mac came into the bar around Christmas time with two black eyes and a nose blown up like a rotten potato. I was behind the stick when he walked through the door. "What the hell happened to you?" I queried. "Captain Mental had at me again," he said, with a sigh. Captain Mental was the bar owner/rooming house landlord from down the street. I had worked for him for almost three years before I had decided to jump ship. He was a degenerate gambler as well as an intermittent drunk and the combination was lethal. If Mental was drinking stay the hell out of his way. He would throw his own mother out of his bar if he were on a double threat binge, hence the nickname Captain Mental. Losing a thousand dollars at the track and then drowning your sorrows with a whole bottle of Grand Marnier is no way to go through life. But he chose to live his life that way and I couldn't take it anymore. So I moved to the brand new place right up the street and now Mental detested me with every fiber of his being. I sold him out, I was disloyal, and I without mincing any words was a Motherfucker, with a capital M. I stood behind the bar looking at Mac really wishing I could go over there and beat the shit out of old Mental. Mac was about 140 pounds soaking wet and a very thorough alcoholic. He never stopped drinking. Ever. Not in the morning, afternoon, and especially not at night. The last time he ever had a non-alcoholic beverage was probably a mini-milk carton at his high school cafeteria. He was totally unable to defend himself. But Captain Mental had this way about him that seemed to hypnotize his boarders into thinking he was a righteous man. If anyone so much as laid a hand on him he would have his legions of down and out boarders after you faster than you could say Night of the Living Dead. So I stayed right where I was. Behind the stick in a new and better joint looking across at a man that I considered my friend despite his drunken fool status around town. Mac was a good man and I knew it. His heart was as big as they come. And I hated to see him hurting. Mental beat the shit out of him because he filched a bottle of beer. He snuck downstairs to the bar in the middle of the night and helped himself to a cold Coors Light. Unbeknownst to him the Captain was sitting somewhere in the darkness. And when the moment was right he pounced. The only thing I could hope was that one day Mac and all of the other people who this psycho had hurt would band together and pull a sort of alcoholic Nine to Five type vengeance on him, something that might make Dolly Parton and Lily Tomlin proud. I see him tied up in one of his slummy railroad flats screaming expletives into the duct tape placed firmly across his mouth and it makes me smile. For now, Mac rises from his barstool, shakes my hand, and shows me how humor is always stronger than adversity. "Seasons Beatings," he utters. And I almost bust a gut I start laughing so hard. |