In The Wake Of Old Mills
Gold In The Abraham Chapter 2
You’re a dime, man. You’re a dime.
In the slow traffic out of the farmer’s market you can slip in the back of a pickup real easy. The radio leaked KFYR-AM through the rear window and the local news muffled 11º and howlin’ rain. As if I didn’t already know. A few shivers and a handful of hours and I’d be far from home. Far from the ranch, far from Danny’s dirt ’n crosses.
If I were telling you this story in that much detail I’d tell you I was scratching Mary Elizabeth’s name into the pickup with a nickel in my fist. For now I’ll move on to Carey, the first time the truck slowed down enough for me to ditch out and find three fingers of Kansas and a bed for the night.
The Absent Gate. A blister on the prairie but a busy bar worthy of a hide and a place to figure out where to begin. I lined up all the coins in my pocket from Roosevelt to Lincoln and thumbed out enough for a double. A young man in a black shirt and wispy stubble sat down beside me.
“Order two,” he said, rustling in his ironed creases for some change.
“Looks like you’re on your way to a funeral,” I said, looking over the bar, all cool. On the other side of the room there was a jukebox with a scrawled note on the dark glass cabinet.
Jukebox out of order until Johnny Madison JR pays his tab.
signed,
Milly May (owner)
The young man nodded to the bartender and told me it had been a funeral.
“Buried him by the back door’,” he said, “this here’s the wake of old gurnin’ Mills.”
My cover was blown. I’d tried to hide in the crowd but all this time I was the only stranger in the place. Some rain-soaked interloper dripping circles on the bar, only now noticing the bristly eyes of the mourners sweeping me back out the door.
“Kansas neat,” I said to the bartender, “make it a double.”
“What’s the charity?” The young man asked, his attention caught for a moment by a girl in a green dress by the jukebox. She was the only colour in the room and she lit up against a tall man’s black suit, leaning into his chest with giggles and wondering hands.
“Charity?” I asked.
The young man reached his arm to the rucksack by my feet and tapped on Danny’s jar with his fingernail. “What you collecting?”
I’ll tell you the same thing I told him.
You’re a dime, man.
The young man downed his Kansas in one and wiped his mouth with his ironed sleeve. “You comin’ on to me?”
I was still revving since he clinked Danny’s jar. That felt like he pissed on my shoes.
“There are dollars and there are dimes.” I put my hand flat against the coins in front of me. “And you’re a dime.”
The man looked up at the bartender who shook his head. The young man turned his body on the stool to face me. I could tell without looking that he was trying to figure out how insulted he should be.
“Hey man, since you didn’t know Mills perhaps you should find yourself another bar.”
That dime was perhaps the least worthy of my retribution. I was just the wrong man on the wrong day.
That giggling girl by the silent jukebox was by far the brightest thing town until the dirty yellow flame of my lighter licked around the young man’s shirt tails and raced towards his chin.
The girl screamed and the bar became a chorus of shouts. I imagined the scene behind me as I walked away. The bartender reaching for a hose. The young man dropping to the floor dressed in flames and smoke. The wake in chaos.