The stranger sidled up to the bar, ordered a non-descript beer, took a lazy sip, and looked around the bar.
He seemed a little rough; his jeans were grubby and torn but not deliberately, his boots had holes, his jacket, unravelling at the collar and cuffs, covered a washed-out t-shirt that might have been blue at one time. He said to the bartender, “My name is Jim Keller. I’m Harry Keller’s son. Is he here?”
Annie the bartender stopped. Her years of endless day shifts had fine-tuned her skepticism.
Someone down the bar said, “Harry doesn’t have any kids.”
Jim said, “This shit is none of your business, whoever said that.” He took another sip, looked at the knots in the wood of the bar, then raised his head at Annie. “Is he here?”
“Look around,” said Annie. “What do you think?”
“If it was any of your... never mind. I’ve never met him. He abandoned my mother and me forty years ago. I didn’t even know about him until this morning. Deal with it.”
“Sorry,” said Annie. “He’s the big guy at the end of the bar. The one with the plaid shirt and Twins’ cap.”
Jim picked up his beer and the coaster, moved down the bar, and sat down beside Harry. Literally everyone in the bar watched. The silence had a hum to it.
Quietly, Jim said to Harry, “I’m not pissed off. Shit happens.”
The bar’s buzz returned to normal when the others realized they couldn’t hear details and went back to sports trivia and medical conditions.
“You left my mother. I get that. No problem. It wasn’t right for you at the time decades ago.”
“Your mother is Eleanor, right?” said Harry as he nervously pounded back the rest of his rye-and-water, and ordered another.
Jim stayed silent. Annie gave Harry an extra-large shot.
Harry took a big slug, sized up Jim’s scruff, and said, “What can I do for you?”
Jim said, “There’s nothing. I just want you to know that it’s all good. I hold no grudges. I guess I just wanted to meet you. And maybe we could become friends.”
“You’re a good guy,” said Harry. “It ain’t gonna make a bit of difference in the long run. Let me...” He trailed off.
Jim waited.
“Look,” said Harry. “I messed up. Everyone does, right? I am so sorry,” and he paused before he added “son”. Harry staggered a bit on his stool, recovered, then said, “I know this won’t make any difference between us, won’t compensate for anything. I’m sorry I was that coward. Let me do this.”
Harry took his wallet out, extracted all the cash he had, about $200 worth, and passed it to Jim. He said nothing else.
Jim took the money, stuffed it into his jacket pocket, pounded the rest of his beer, then left the bar like a dustball into the corner of a room.
Silence returned to the bar except for a few regulars failing to console Harry. The place dissipated into another time. The people calmed down without knowing why. There was a quiet that didn’t seem quite right. Semi-chaos, semi-normality, semi-everything flashed everywhere.
Some guy, smashing that vibe, hovered into the bar, ordered a beer, and said to Annie, “My name is Jim Keller. I think my father might be here.”
William Kitcher’s stories, plays, and comedy sketches have been published, produced, and/or broadcast in Australia, Belgium, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Canada, Czechia, England, Germany, Guernsey, Holland, India, Ireland, Japan, Nigeria, Portugal, Singapore, South Africa, Sweden, the U.S., and Wales. His stories have appeared in Rye Whiskey Review, Ariel Chart, New Contrast, Horror Sleaze Trash, Eunoia Review, Defenestration, and many other journals. His comic noir novel, “Farewell And Goodbye, My Maltese Sleep”, the second funniest novel ever written, was published in 2023 by Close To The Bone Publishing, and is available on Amazon.
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