Lit/Pub #IV - The Wake Up Issue - Spring2024

Prose
served with, about the ones who made it back home and especially about the ones who never did. The
saddest reminiscence is about the high school buddy with whom he enlisted and who didn’t reach
his twenty-third birthday. Hunched over the bar with his elbows resting on the smooth edge, Bradley
pauses only when he needs to tip his bottle back.
Brian owns a construction company down the road and stops in around 12:30 every weekday,
checking in on any other straggler over a shot of Blackberry Brandy and a few games of Keno. The
last time I saw him before I left for Rome, he joked about me meeting an Italian named Stefano and
having us blonde Italian babies. I laughed. “How does your wife put up with you?” I said.
Brian always seems to break out into a love-stricken smile when the subject of his wife and
three girls comes up. But then he’ll say something like, “Don’t settle down and have kids early; try and
live a little while longer.”
Eric runs a couple of Papa John’s pizzerias in neighboring towns. He can always be found buried
in Brownie’s underneath four jackets with the floor heater pointed his way. He likes to joke about
his toes freezing off because of my papa’s reluctance to turn up the heat. No matter what the weather
is like outside, the thermostat is set at exactly 62 degrees. Eric is one of the kindest souls; he promises
to visit me in Italy if his health allows it.
Barb is the bar's rabble rouser and one of my grandparents' oldest friends. She can always be
counted on to have a bottle of pinot grigio in hand. Her obsession with wine started a couple years ago
after her grandson, who is about my age, had three kids in two years. She had to take care of them all,
including the two baby mamas. The more grandkids she acquires the more she needs to drink wine.
Then there are the countless older ladies, with their pearl earrings and beaded necklaces, who
stare at me – is it awe or jealousy? – as my mom tells them about where I will go to college. I guess I
remind them of the dreams they never pursued and of the lives they now are stuck in.
And the twenty-something small town boys, who finally ask me for my number after weeks
and weeks hanging out at Brownie’s. Always coming up to the bar, sweet and boozy, to give me the
‘will you go on a date with me’ speech. No matter how many heifers they own, my grandpa, or one
of my grandpa’s friends, will pull them aside. They walk back to their seat, red in the face, with me
giggling in the background.
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