Main Street Magazine Spring 2021

“What’s that?”
“Song.” Allergies watering eyes.
“Which?”
“I saw him live when he was still alive.”
“You’re not going to tell me?”
“I forget the name,” I say dumbly.
My wife, she sighs, and I take her hand and kiss it and roll
over and she says, “Let’s go home, the pollen’s really fucking
me.”
She grins then and rolls into my side.
“We aren’t going to be able to pull this off forever.”
And it was time to move things along. It was near
sunrise and I had woken up in a grass patch not a hundred
yards from that wet house. My face was burnt with sunshine.
There was a bald, fat man lying next to me, eyes open,
wheezing, hands clasped on his refrigerator stomach, legs
crossed.
“Who are you?”
“Good morning, Chantry.”
“We met last night?”
“Don’t you know me?”
“I thought I had left the bar alone.”
“What bar?”
“The bulb spot.”
“Nonexistent.”
“No?”
“Return to Milton.”
“What’s the use.”
“Milton Berkshaw, I mean.”
“I don’t feel good, man.”
“Nobody does.”
“No, but.”
“It’s been days since you accounted for yourself.
How’s the wife.”
“Nonexistent.”
“Chantry,” he implored.
“Back home.”
“I know a lot about you.”
“Do you?”
“You’re obstinate. That's, that’s pigheaded.” He
turned girlishly on his side, arm propping up head.
“You’re a drinking man. You’re sly and a cheater.
You ought to be getting a message soon, but I don’t
for the life of me know why.”
“In my laundry, I bet.”
“Have a nip,” he said and offered me a nip of banana
schnapps. I took the thing but only put it in my pocket.
He laughed. “You’d be proner to dryness if you
were a fish. You almost are, and almost rotten, but
blessed be you’re already caught, salted, sold, and
bought. Not to say almost consumed. I should go,
though, Chantry. My message is about said.” He
shifted, barely. “Do you feel at ease?”
“Sometimes.”
“Good, good. You know, we all care about you. You
may return, sins forgiven.”
“Am I so far off?”
“You’re derelict, Chantry, if you pricked your navel
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