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Closer To God

Some things are better left unexplained. People like to draw their own conclusions, especially about strangers, those who don’t belong. Those who aren’t from around here. The locals had already made up their minds about me before I ever climbed up the stairs to the stage. I noticed their stares as soon as I walked through the front doors. As I perched upon an empty stool and waited to order a drink I could hear their drunken whispers. Who’s this guy? Where’d he come from? What’s he doing here? The barkeep shot me a glance and then went back to drying the glass in his hand, a more important task than serving a stranger. Surely, I was only there to cause trouble. I creased a fresh blue hundred lengthwise and sat it upon the bar top. The tender snarled as he sat down the extremely dry glass, slung his towel over his shoulder and finally approached.

“Bourbon on the rocks, any kind will do.” I never drank bourbon, or any liquor for that matter. Truth was I didn’t drink much at all, and when I did I preferred a cold draught to the burning of a higher proof. But this was a special occasion.

Without saying a word, the dubious publican grabbed a familiar, black-labeled bottle with a large No. 7 printed on the front. Since we were a lot closer to Tennessee than Kentucky I felt it wise to not correct him.

“Ice machine’s down.” The bartender filled a shot glass and sat it down in front of me, careful not to flatten the blue tent. Without touching the money, he asked if there was anything else I needed. I flashed him a peace-sign and he filled 2 more jiggers.

“Where you from, friend?” His sarcasm hung off that last word like clothes on a wire.

“California,” I answered, and he gave me an exaggerated aaahh, as if I had given him a lot more than the state of my origin.  I returned to my booze without any further self-revelations.  Some things are better left unexplained.

. .  .

What if Death held a grudge? What if, upon being summoned, Death would not rest until he had amassed the required allotment of souls? And what if you were able to outrun Death, and in doing so would turn Death loose on your family or friends or loved ones? What if Death behaved like a bookie owed a debt by a would-be cardsharp that found it easier to skip town than pay up, so goons were dispatched to break the arms and legs of brothers and cousins and mothers until the degenerate could be found?

When I awoke in the hospital, there were three doctors standing bedside, all of them peering over a folder in the middle doctor’s hands. Pages were flipped back and forth, beards and heads were scratched, brows furrowed. Once they saw that I had regained consciousness their queries came so quickly I could barely keep track of who was asking which question.  They ultimately attributed my survival to some sort of miracle; surely no human body should retain its functionality after ingesting that many pills. Unbeknownst to them, I attributed it to my previous year of cocaine abuse strengthening my tolerance for all narcotics. All of my tests showed normal brain function and after a few hours I was released.

Two days after my failed attempt my grandmother died. Acute myocardial infarction, my dad had said over the phone, between sobs. Grandma had been a beacon of health. She ran the daily bingo games at her local senior center, still bowled in the same alley my dad grew up in, still waited tables at a local pub not because she needed the money but because she got bored of staying home all day and watching her stories. She didn’t want to be the stereotypical old lady. She didn’t drink, didn’t smoke, she ate all her vegetables. She was as vigorous at 80 as she had been at 40, and I had killed her. My body had consumed the deadly mélange like Children’s Tylenol, so instead, Death took Grandma’s heart as collateral.

It had rained the night of my fruitless felo-de-se and continued to rain throughout the next day, a much needed relief from the drought being suffered all throughout Los Angeles. The cab that picked me up at Cedars-Sinai featured a leaky roof, only above the backseat, and came equipped with manual windshield wipers that were operated by the driver’s pulling and releasing of shoe strings tied to the blades.

The next morning, I was roused from sleep by a woodpecker jackhammering away at the tree just outside my window. Pulling back the curtains I was temporarily blinded by the startling sunshine. It must have been very early in the morning, for my east-facing jalousie revealed the sun barely cresting the horizon. The rainclouds had run away in the middle of the night, and I marveled at the beautiful greenery of the landscape.

I pulled the glass louvers shut and closed the curtains, shutting out the sun’s rays and the bird’s trepanning. My cell phone confirmed the sun’s time-telling, and I noticed I had a missed call from my dad. No voicemail, no text message. I returned the call and was given the grim news. After consoling my dad and offering to help him with my grandmother’s final services, I terminated the call and booked the next flight to Atlanta. Surely Death wouldn’t be so cruel as to take down an entire airbus just to get me.

. .  .

The drive from Atlanta to Helen, GA is about two hours. My grandmother was born and raised in Helen, as was my father. He had gone off to college in Atlanta but moved back home the day he graduated. I was a third-generation Helenite, but I’d left for Hollywood the minute I turned 18 and hadn’t been back to the south since. My hometown now appeared foreign.

The sun had set long before I drove into town. Before going to see my dad, I had planned on visiting Grandma’s favorite places, the spots where she felt most at home. Consequently, Tuesday’s Pub was the only establishment still open for business after midnight. I did not need GPS to find Grandma’s final place of employment. Helen was that small of a town.

“That thing work?” I eventually asked my new friend, downing my fifth whiskey and pointing to the karaoke machine shoved in the corner of the otherwise empty stage.

“It does, but you won’t find anyone in here that knows how to work it.”

“Mind if I give it a shot”? I hopped off my wooden perch and headed for the stage, not waiting for permission. I gave the mouse a wiggle, waking the monitor from its slumber, and fired up the karaoke software, the only icon on the desktop besides defaults. I was amazed at the decent strength of their internet connection, and quickly found the song I wanted to sing. I clicked the right-pointing triangle, the universal symbol for Play, and approached the mic stand.  Two taps from my fingertips reverberated loudly from the subwoofers, echoing throughout the tavern and startling the surly patrons, who all turned their unfriendly gazes towards me.

“This song is for you, Grandma.” I hardly recognized my own voice at that amplification.  After all, I played the drums. I was no singer. But this was a special occasion.

As I sang along with Trent, telling the crowd they let me violate and desecrate and penetrate them, I could feel their anger swell. As I crooned for their help, a beer bottle whizzed by my head and shattered against the wall behind me. By the time I was telling the crowd what I wanted to do like an animal, several large, angry locals were quickly approaching the stage, casting aside tables and stools, leaving splintered wood in their wake.

The insults hit the stage before the mob. This faggot wants to fuck his grandma! You ain’t fuckin my grandma, asshole! He’s lucky Carol’s grandsons ain’t here yet, they’d fuck him up! Before making it out of the first chorus I was being carried and drug towards the entrance, fists and fingernails finding my face, steel-toed and high-heeled boots finding my ribcage.

Some things are better left unexplained.

Helen’s Finest had summed me up well before the first shot I took. There was no changing their minds. They wouldn’t be the least bit moved by me telling them how, after my mom ran off to love some man who wasn’t my dad, how Grandma used to drive me to high school. How she used to let me tune the stereo in her station wagon to an alternative rock station, the only other station besides a gospel one and a country western one that we could get clear reception from.  How she used to love when a single by a band called Nine Inch Nails would come on. How she would hum along, not knowing any of the words and not caring to know them. How the FCC was probably always listening and so the songs were all censored, so even if she was trying to learn the lyrics she’d never hear what Mr. Reznor wanted to do like an animal. Know, they could never understand how that song could be attributed to a grandson’s favorite memories of his recently deceased Grandma Carol. How, with their beating and punching and kicking and insulting, they were bringing me closer to God.

It was the bartender who eventually ended the melee. Casting everyone aside until he was the only one standing over me, hands on his hips, staring into my bloody face and toothless grin, looking for a glimpse of someone recognizable.

“Michael?” My name came from his lips in the form of a question, his hand jutted out towards me, offering to help me to my feet. Without any words I accepted his offer, smiling a big bloody toothless grin at him. Some things are better left unexplained.

I brushed myself off, found my shoes and returned them to my feet. The circle of locals had widened at the bartender’s behest. Pushing through the crowd without any words, I ran back into the tavern, jumped onto the stage from the front, foregoing the stairs. I gave the mouse a wiggle, waking the monitor from its slumber, and clicked to replay the last song. I turned up the volume, both for the microphone and the music track.

“This next song is for my Grandma!”