Stephen Dixon - Garbage

I tape a sign on my bar window saying “Tomorrow, big party, going away wake sort of, all day, blizzard or shine, so come one and all if you’ve been customers of mine anytime over the years or my father’s or grandpa’s and if you like bring your family and friends, good people welcome,” and go to the hotel and get drunk in my room and sing songs I knew as a boy and haven’t sung since when about young love and war and fall asleep and in my dream I’m in a room big as a mansion’s biggest room, a baron’s hall or whatever it’s called, not where the people eat but meet after dinner and maybe have brandy and dance, hundred-fifty feet long, forty feet wide, and it’s a bar with stools for a hundred drinkers and round oak tables in back for two hundred diners and great paintings and grand chandeliers all lit instead of my prints and fluorescent tubes and all my customers well dressed almost in tuxedo and evening gown clothes and the wood floors shiny like I could never get mine and wood walls as if just moistened with oil and no television set or butts and cocktail napkins on the floor or cough-making cigarette smoke and spit and everyone enjoying themselves and talkative though not raucous and throwing down dollars after dollars for their drinks and I’m behind the bar not so much pouring anymore as supervising a dozen bartenders to and I’m in a suit with a shirt and tie like Stovin’s and also a vest and my hands in my pants pocket and watch fob chain across my chest.

Next day I sleep late and get to the bar around noon. There’s about ten people waiting in front and one says “We thought you were joking about the party and would never show up. What do you mean by it, they tripled your rent so you’re through?”

“Through as I’ll ever be in this bar and probably also the business,” and I open up and say “Help me bring the cases of beer and soda up from downstairs and put them in the icebox and refrigerator. I’ll look after the liquor and try and make sandwiches, for as I forgot to say in my sign, you can have all you want of that too.”

So my party begins. Weather cooperates by being milder. Some women help me out bagging the garbage and making sandwiches and boiling eggs. In an hour the bar’s jammed. In two almost no more people can fit in and an hour later a policeman squeezes himself through to the bar I’m behind and says “This place is a firetrap if you let any more in. You’ll have to admit them one at a time when someone leaves.”

A man I never saw before but who says he used to come and pick his dad off the floor of my grandfather’s bar years ago volunteers to be the doorman so long as he’s constantly supplied with bitters and gin. I give him the bitters bottle and tumbler of ice with my best gin and promise he’ll get more whenever he calls for it and he sits on a stool by the door and starts letting people out and in.

I don’t hold back on the drinks but can’t do as most people want me to and that’s leave the bottles on the bar, as it’s against the city’s tavern law and I want the party to last till its natural end. When someone gets drunk or sick I tell a couple of men to put him in the back to rest or in a cab if he wants to go home or back to work and if he wants to tell his family he’s on his way or to pick him up here, to use my phone.

Another policeman comes in and says “You know you’re not permitted to serve alcohol to anyone intoxicated,” and I say “Have I ever broken the law to you before? So give me a break on my last day and forget it this once. Have a drink yourself and sandwich or whatever you like on the house — scrambled eggs,” and everybody around us joins in with me and says “Forget it, Nick,” or “Officer, this is a once-in-a-lifetime bar party so have some fun and don’t spoil it for everyone.” He says “I guess once in my life I can try it if no one calls the precinct to confess my sins,” and accepts a drink in a coffee mug and drinks it and another and two more policemen come in and one says “So this is where you are, Nick, we thought you were mugged,” and they take off their hats and coats till only their regular flannel shirts show and drink from coffee mugs and eat too.

Someone has a radio and plays loud music and I dance though I can’t dance with a young woman I never met and then with her little girl and next with the girl’s rag doll and a couple of couples dance on the tables and a large group dances on the sidewalk. One man dances on the bar till I ask him off and then say to him “What the hell, dance all you want on it, step on hands, kick the beer mugs off. This is the end of the place anyway and we’re all good sports here, so do what you want as long as your aim’s true so no one gets hurt and it’s in clean fun.”

Three people fall to the floor drunk almost at once and are carried to the back and some men and a woman sleeping it off in back get awake and start drinking and singing up front again. By ten o’clock I run out of food to make sandwiches with and next run out of ice and eggs and keg beer and later out of liquor and ale and lots of people thank me and leave because there’s almost no wine or bottled or canned beer left. Then there’s nothing left and people pool their money and go out and bring back a case of liquor and ice and later someone borrows another drinker’s car and drives back with cases of beer and ale. Then it’s nearly three and getting close to closing time and I’m tired though for the last few hours haven’t made anyone drinks but just walked around joking and reminiscing and I say “Goodnight everybody, it’s been great. Best night of my life or almost and I love you one and all but you have to go.” I get slapped on the back a lot and hugged and kissed which never happened here before and my hands shook till they hurt and cheeks pinched and several people push ones and fives and a ten in my shirts and pants pockets and say something like “I don’t care if all this was supposed to be free, go take a holiday or get laid someplace or give it to charity on me.”

One of the last ones leaving says “Why not make it an after-hours club for one night?” and I say “What’s to lose and I’m getting back my third wind.” I lock the door and pull down the shades and party goes on with what drinks we’ve left and old customers I haven’t seen for weeks and were probably at other bars and maybe till now told by Stovin’s or someone to stay away knock on my window and door and are let in. Other bartenders and owners also come by after their places close with more liquor and mixers and beer, even the ones who wouldn’t help me against Stovin or said they’d never see or speak to me again till my trouble was over with him. I don’t say anything to them about it. Past’s past, I might need one of them for a job in the future if I stick in the same trade or later return to it, and they’re really nice people with their own I suppose reasonable self-interests and almost none with my kind of bar background and fatherly business and why spoil the night with harsh words, so I just continue to gab, drink, laugh and dance.

Around five a policeman raps on the window and says “You’ll have to close, Shaney. Neighbors have complained of the noise all morning. I stalled them because I heard some of our own boys were having a feast in here, but these people say they have to get a couple-hours sleep before they go to work.”

I announce to the bar “It’s definitely goodnight now, folks. Anyone wants to take the mugs or even the stools home as a memento or whatever you see except my coat, hat and boots, please do. I don’t want anything here left.”

A few take stools and mugs and ashtrays and someone lifts the cash register and says “Okay?” and I nod and he leaves with it calling it an antique. Couple of the better tables go and some of the cheap prints and working equipment and all the bar tools are pocketed by the bartenders and owners. Then everyone’s gone and I look in back, see that someone fell asleep on the toilet seat and zipper him up and walk him to the street and give a cabby more than enough money to drive him home. Then it’s absolutely quiet inside, nothing left to drink except a bottle of scotch I hid, and I start drinking it mixed with some fizzled out soda water and begin smashing up the place.