“Well, it was like I said, I’d been drinkin’ at the Tortoise for a few years, and at this point I was almost up to the legal drinkin’ age and people seemed to have accepted I wasn’t goin’ to be run out of town by their dirty looks and their comments in the bar, so the looks became shorter and the voices quieter. Sometimes, they didn’t say anything or even try to make eye contact. That didn’t mean I couldn’t still hear their thoughts or feel their eyes burnin’ holes in the back of my head.
“Anyway, the looks and whatnot I could deal with, but at the time, I was still young and still angry. I’m still angry, but I don’t wear it like some sort of badge like I did then. Pap used to tell me to pour the anger into my work, but I didn’t listen. I let it fuel my drinkin’ instead.
“I wasn’t so angry I ever said anything stupid at the Tortoise. I wouldn’t be talkin’ to you now if I had. I had my fun with the air in the truck tires, but that wasn’t enough to satisfy the rage, so once a month I’d go around and howl at the moon.”
“You’d howl at the moon? Like a dog?”
He ignored me, “you know the hill toward the other side of town, away from the Melanski? The one where all the folks who make their money elsewhere live in the big white houses with the huge front porches and the wrought iron fences? Once a month, when the moon was full, I’d leave the Tortoise early. I’d stop at Coop’s Liquor Store and get a bottle of whatever was cheap.
“I’d set out toward the hill mumbling to myself about how I’d been wronged and how I was going to make all these bastards in the town who took the name Holmes in vain. As I got closer to the hill, and further into the bottle, my volume would rise and I’d rail against them, calling out how it wasn’t my fault.
“These people on the hill didn’t know how good they had it. They lived up above the rest of the town. My grandfather, he’d built his house right in the middle of the town, close to the mills and the river. He’d hired local men to build it. He didn’t want any of us to forget what we meant to the town.
“Up on the hill, those people my father would rub elbows with to keep the mill running, they didn’t care about the people in the mills, or those of the town. My father did. It’s what made him so desperate. He knew just who was being let down by the failure of the mills. That’s what I’d tell the whole town as I climbed the hill.
“I’d get to the top ‘bout the time I was at the bottom of the bottle. I’d rain my fury down upon Berwick – sound carried from up there – I’d recount all the cuts and sleights I’d received since my father’s death. I’d rear my head back and call out names; at the top of my lungs I’d list the hurts they’d caused me and the common folk of the town. I rained truth down up on them. Not that any of them heard it.
“The police would come get me and haul me in. Pap would bail me out the next morning. He wouldn’t say a word. He’d take a bit out of my pay and that would be that. After a while, folks came to expect my full moon ramblin’s, and they just kept doing what they’d always done: ignored me.
“I know they all hated it, but they couldn’t do anything about it. Your Pap had something on Judge Duval, so he wouldn’t ever let them prosecute me.
“Well, one night, it must have been August – it was so hot and humid it felt like you could cut through the air – I went too far. People had gotten used to seeing me at the Tortoise and monthly rambles, but I wasn’t any less hated. And I myself was still angry, and feeling like I had to prove myself.
I’d had a full day at the cemetery. We’d had three or four burials in the middle of needing to get the grass cut. When I got down to the Tortoise, I hadn’t had more than a glass or two of water. In those days I wasn’t drinking as much beer on the job, so there was room for a bit of water.
“I’d skipped lunch as well with us having so much to do, so my usual hit me hard and fast. I was rolling by the time I headed out howlin’.
“For the first time in my life I picked up a bottle of Coop’s Homemade at the liquor store. I’m not sure why I did it. Must have been the heat, ‘cause Coop’s was legend in Berwick for its ability to run small engines an in a real pinch, cars. It was best served cold, but I was still parched from the day, and rollin’, so I dug right in.
“When you’re young, there’s no statute of limitations on the number of stupid things you’re able to do, drunk or otherwise. With Coop’s shine in me, I was delirious, roaming the streets, roaring into oncoming traffic, careening off signs and buildings, a menace to objects both mobile and immobile.
“At a certain point, things became a blur. Even now, I only remember pieces of the rest of the night. I think I’m lucky to be alive, and after that night, I know the list of those who wished I wasn’t increased by quite a few.
“It’s a wonder I made it anywhere I was so belligerent. I still don’t know how I did it. Spirit of my father maybe, but he was not a vengeful man. Anyhow, I ended up outside the Tavern, and then I was through the door.
“I can only imagine what a sweaty mess I looked like as I slammed through the door. The cold air jumped up and slapped me, but it didn’t sober me up. The lights of the room blurred around me.
“I remember sliding into an empty chair at the table of Stan Millen, my pop’s old drinking buddy, who’d made his name in synthetic sportswear. The mayor was sitting nearby with his wife. Pap’s face flashed through somewhere. There was a lot of shouting. Big Mike Tatum – Pap ever tell you about him? – the old foreman at the mill – mid-level employees could drink at the Tavern during the week, but Fridays and Saturdays the were at the Tortoise commiserating with the rank and file – punched me. I pulled on the sleeve of Zeke Watson’s sport coat. A table of kids I went to high school with was laughing. Your mother gave me a pained smile and a towel full of ice. I woke up in my bed at the cemetery.
“That’s what I remember from that night. I don’t know how I got there, or what I said, but after that night, Pap drank with me at the Tortoise the next couple full moons, leaving me to understand maybe I shouldn’t go back out howlin’.
“And things were worse than ever in town. People wouldn’t even look at me with disdain anymore. Those old ladies at the grocery store, who hated me, now they looked at me with pity or they’d just shake their heads in sadness.
“Give me disdain and anger any day of the week. Pity? Well, that’s ten different kinds of worse.”
