The Water of Life by Charles Finn

At the dining room table in weekend jeans and sweater, I drop a single ice cube from a practiced height into an eight-ounce tumbler of cut glass, the lone cube sliding into place like a skier at the bottom of a run. Before it has time to settle, I drop a second and third in rapid succession, the three now skittering and skating, readjusting themselves like brothers shouldering each other out of the way. In mock discipline I shake them, raising the glass to my ear. Then, setting the glass down, I tip the first three ounces of a single malt Scotch over the hard squares of their backs.

This is how I like to drink: Home alone with the cat, the Lay-Z-Boy, a glass of whiskey at my side, and the novels of Cormac McCarthy telling me things about life I need to know. Or this: Any summer afternoon at about five, two stories up on a roof half laid down, the odor of tar, sawdust, and sweat wrapping around me, a lousy domestic beer in an aluminum can tossed up to me from the ground. Or this: Barefoot on the front steps of my backwoods cabin, half a bottle of merlot and the sun going down, together, slowly, like they should.

I began drinking when I was in my teens. It seemed a sensible thing to do. While my friends were getting high, I’d open another can of beer. I chose beer because it was easy to moderate, easy to get full on, and it went well with just about anything––baseball, pizza, music, open roads. I wasn’t what you’d call a natural, but I believe even from the start I had a certain knack for it, a flair you might say, swigging from long-necked Rolling Rocks without tipping my head back. I was a student of poses you see, practicing in my father’s mirror how to lean against a wall with insouciant ease. And right from the start we got along, alcohol and me, so that I came to relish the muffled feeling in the back of the brain, the gentle blizzard of thoughts slowing to a stall, the tiny bits of mortality I could see rounding the corner, chasing me down.

Twenty-five years later, I sit with my glass of Scotch––Usquebaugh in Gaelic, “The water of life.” Taking my first sip, I turn my eyes to the ceiling. The Scotch enters me like a dark secret, like holding a mouthful of crushed glass, electricity. Tiny needles of exquisite Highland pain attach themselves to the tip and sides of my tongue, and I swish the thin liquid cheek to cheek, igniting each one. Then I pass it along the roof of my mouth and gums, feeling the icy flames lingering after it. Scotch, or any fine whiskey for that matter, is like imbibing a bass chord––there’s a profundity to it. It is also inescapably masculine, power-hungry. At the same time, one senses something deeply, hauntingly feminine. This glass of Scotch, taken one sip at a time, is as smooth and smoky as a woman’s voice coming from bed.

Drinking alone is almost universally looked down upon. It’s the nadir of sociability.

It’s taking Thoreau’s second and third chair, “One for solitude, two for friendship, three for society,” and breaking them up for kindling. With my eyes still closed, I raise my glass over my head in what I hope to be the direction of Scotland. I toast the good men of The Glenlivet. There’s most of a continent and then the Atlantic in the way, but I think the gesture important. This evening, as it has many times before, the fruit of their labors will warm me on a cold Montana night. As the world wobbles on its axis, so too will the whiskey wobble me, setting the two of us in what I hope to be a fine conjunction. This is the role I have chosen for it, and it’s not in the nature of alcohol to disagree. Alcohol’s duty is to blur the edges, fuzz the boundaries, bevel the hard edges of the world that so desperately need it. It’s not a matter of confusing the details, but meshing them, allowing the drinker to sink like an olive into the martini of time.

I lift my head and look around. The stillness of the room is exquisite.  In preparation for tonight, I’ve unplugged the phone and thrown a blanket over the TV, and this afternoon I stood on one of the dining room chairs and removed the kitchen clock from the wall. Sitting back down, I held the clock face up in my lap, as if I were staring into a misanthropic mirror. Then with a penknife, I pried the plastic cover from the front and with swift amputation removed the hour and minute hands. Tonight, I want only seconds. 

I hold my half glass of whiskey up to the light. The ice has begun to melt, smoking out into the whiskey and forming fish-shaped bergs. Out of all the world’s drugs, alcohol is the most common, and oldest. On the molecular level, alcohol and water do not completely mix; and thus no one, science tells us, has ever tasted a perfectly mixed drink. 

I take another sip and gentle waves of warmth radiate out across my chest. I feel the muscles in my neck and back loosen, tension drops away. I feel the Scotch traveling down my esophagus, sending out waves of warmth that wrap around my heart and lungs, and finally, like a slow-burning log, coming to rest deep in the wood stove of my belly. Drinking is something I actively set out to do. It’s like scheduling time to read a good book, or cook. It’s a joy and pleasure, one that ranks right up there with summiting a mountain, swimming downstream. Alcohol challenges us to stop and be, or to jump up and dance––dance like there is no tomorrow, which there isn’t. This evening, I’ve set aside time to do nothing at all. Tomorrow, come what may, the world can continue, soberly, in plural numbers.

Charles Finn is the editor of the literary and fine arts magazine High Desert Journal and author of Wild Delicate Seconds: 29 Wildlife Encounters (OSU Press 2012) and the forthcoming On a Benediction of Wind (Chatwin Press) a collection of his nature poetry paired with the black and white landscape photography of Bay Area photographer Barbara Michelman. Charles  lives in Havre, MT with his wife Joyce Mphande-Finn and their cat Lutsa.