A Rum Fire
Joe Markman

He is sixty-eight years old and his eyes hurt when he opens them in the morning. It hurts when he stands up to go to the bathroom, and it hurts, more than anything except the sad visions of his past, when he sits down on the toilet.

Never again, John thinks. But then he puts on his clothes and limps through his silent house into the kitchen. In the cupboard, there is a bottle of rum, and another, and another, and another. He pours himself a deep glass and holds it before him, considering it. The harsh rays of the morning sun streak through the window above the counter and lighten the color of the drink. A still life.

The liver spots on John’s arm are funny to him. They make him laugh when he thinks of the irony. Liver spots. On his arm. He slugs the drink back and the hardened liver inside his body takes another hit. It’s been over fifty years since John took his first drink.

“Hello Jonathan,” his neighbor Lilly says when he walks outside to get the paper.

“Hello Jonathan” for ten years and he laughs. He laughs when life sits still and he laughs when the world rushes by, too quickly for someone with creaky bones to notice.

John goes inside with Lilly and sits down at her kitchen table. Looking at the flowers crowded delicately around the silverware, he is unaware of the urge within. He is content to look into Lilly’s clear eyes and talk to her about old television shows, the news, and each other’s grandchildren.

“Jesse turned twenty-one last Thursday,” says Lilly. It doesn’t matter what she says, John loves to hear her rich voice. “He and his friends drove to Las Vegas. I spoke with him on the phone yesterday and he said they had a rollicking good time.”

“Did he say ‘rollicking’ Lilly?” She smiles in response and John pours her another cup of coffee. As the conversation mellows and the sun rises higher, one part of his brain tells him to ask Lilly to join him for lunch at the grille down the street. The other part tells him to leave and return to his cluttered living room, his television, and his bottle of rum.

The part that wins is the part that has always won. John slips quietly out the door after giving Lilly a kiss on the cheek. His footsteps are lighter in the early afternoon. In a cloudless sky, the sun shines down on his bald head and his joints feel the ease of a day without rain. Although the television and the comforting darkness of John’s living room beckon, the sun feels too good. He fills a glass and sit down in the small garden in his backyard. Lilly’s hands, borne of ceaseless time, have done wonders with his pitiful attempt at gardening. John sips his rum and looks at the sky. A bird flaps in front of the sun and he watches it dive toward some spot in the distance, some unknown horizon where strength and youth climax.

* * *

John is fifty-four years old and the pain that will hobble him in thirteen years has begun to show itself when he fixes the kitchen pipes and hauls firewood into the house. When he drinks most of a bottle of rum, the pain disappears.

The phone rings and he curses at it. It’s always bill collectors and telemarketers and his ex-wife. They all want money. John lets the phone ring until it shrieks in his soul. He picks it up and heaves it against the wall. It smashes loudly, leaving a rip in the floral wallpaper that his ex-wife insisted on buying for the living room. It looks horrendous, it makes him pick up the bottle on the counter and tilt it back into his mouth. Three seconds, four, five, six.

The doorbell rings and he almost smashes the half-empty bottle against the wall too, before remembering that his son is due soon. Quickly, he puts the bottle in the cupboard and goes into the bathroom for mouthwash. He told his son, Joe, that he’ll give him a hand moving his dishwasher to Joe’s house, and the rum on John’s breath is not the best way to greet someone he hasn’t seen in almost a year.

“Hello.” Joe’s voice lacks emotion. Or perhaps John has grown so accustomed to screaming and silence that he can’t hear the underlying tug of Joe’s heartstrings.

“Hey Joe.” The old joke, the old Hendrix song, maybe it will work. But Joe doesn’t laugh or speak the refrain, and when John hugs him, he stands in the doorway with his arms at his sides.

“Are you ready?” Joe asks.

John nods and Joe returns to his truck to get the hand-truck. Inside John looks at the dishwasher, but the cupboard catches his eye. He can smell it. Through the window, he sees his son untying the hand-truck, struggling with the knot. Moving like a thief, he puts his back to the window and takes the bottle out of the cupboard. John stands there for a minute, debating the drink, wondering if this is the time to put down the bottle and clear his mind, even if just for a little while.

“What’s that?”

John turns like a child caught playing in the street.

“I thought you stopped. You told me you stopped.” Tears well in Joe's eyes. He leaves the hand-truck in John’s living room, gets in his truck and leaves. John says nothing, but opens the bottle when Joe is gone. He smells the rum and smiles unconsciously, then remembers the last fifty-something years.

He remembers none of the sappy memories- memories tinged with a thick glaze- that have made his life bearable. Instead now he remembers only the landmark days that he will never share with his family, not because he died young and drunk, but because he’s lived so long with a constant need that he’s almost completely gone and alone.

* * *

John is forty-four years old and it’s New Years Eve. Everything bored, ridiculous, and patently American is coursing around his head like the fond, graying memories of an exaggerated youth.

“John.”

“John” for nineteen years and he laughs. When Valerie first said John’s name, the word rolled off her tongue, laden with hope and care. Now she jabs at him with it.

“John. It’s time, are you ready?” she says.

He’s ready. John is ready for anything. He’s got his drinking shoes on and his drinking jacket. He’s got on his drinking pants, his drinking eyes, his drinking cheeks. It’s New Years Eve and even Valerie, ever the strained balance to John’s heavy burden, has on her drinking dress and drinking heels.

Charlie and Beth’s house is three blocks away and the night is cool, but the air is calm and Valerie and John walk to the party. The crowd is slim when they arrive at 9:30.

“Where’s Mike?” asks Charlie and hands John a drink. Valerie slips away to the kitchen and John stands in the living room with half-a-dozen other neighbors.

“You didn’t hear?” says John.

“What?”

“He split. Mike took off about three days ago and no one’s heard from him.”

Charlie and John commiserate for a few minutes. They remember their heyday and Charlie pats John on the back before he goes into the kitchen. John stands in the living room, looking at the people around him. He slugs back what’s left in his glass and goes into the kitchen to find Valerie and a refill.

At midnight, John is sprawled on the couch by himself. Valerie, Beth, Charlie, and everyone else are standing around the table behind him, cheering and carrying on. Everyone is drunk and John shouts at them.

“You hollow bastards!”

Valerie goes over to John and puts her hand on his leg.

“John, what’s wrong?”

John whispers, “Why are you cheering?”

“What do you mean?” she asks.

“We’re all one more year closer to death,” he whispers.

Valerie squeezes John’s leg and tries to take the glass from his hand. He pulls it away and storms into the kitchen, where he takes a swig straight from the bottle. Everyone looks at him as he stumbles out of the kitchen. John gives Charlie a sloppy hug and whispers in his ear, “It was just a joke.”

John spirals out the door and Valerie stays for ten minutes, walks home slowly, and draws a bath. She soaks for a long time.

It’s nearly four-thirty in the morning now. John’s eyelids flutter as he tries to stay awake through his receding drunk and Valerie’s soul-searching. John knows that she wishes everything was different, that John didn’t drink, and that he didn’t love her so much. He knows Valerie wishes she didn’t love him, and that the good times were worse, so she could leave.

The bath water is cooling and John turns over on the bed. Valerie drains the bath and dries herself. She sits down on the bed beside her husband and strokes his forehead. His eyes closed, he smiles crookedly and she curls herself into his arms. John opens his eyelids, the pain of the small motion distant.

* * *

John is twenty-five years old and the room is spinning. Someone steps on his chest and he almost vomits. It’s his buddy Mike.

“Mmmphhhh,” John says.

“There you are, you schmuck. Get up and take a frickin’ shot with me.” Mike lends John a hand and pulls him to his feet.

They stumble to the bar, where an overweight woman with pounds of metal earrings lines up shots on the lacquered counter-top. John waits for the count of one, two, three, charge, to send the flaming rum down his throat. He tilts backward, but a wooden stool stops his fall. Mike slaps John’s back and tells him that it’s a classic night, one of the best. There’s no way he’ll ever drink more than when he’s with his townie buddies. This is the far edge of John’s heyday.

An hour later, John is looking for Mike, who’s lying on the floor somewhere amidst the milling people. It’s past midnight and the bar is packed. John sits alone at a small round table with two of his closest friends; Jack and Morgan. Somehow, after consuming more alcohol than a horse should reasonably be expected to drink without keeling over with sudden liver failure, he can still see. He can still talk and walk around, although there isn’t much reason to, considering John’s buddies have either left or passed out. But he keeps drinking.

Across the bar, John spots a girl, and what he notices aren’t her breasts or even her attractive face, but her eyes, which are soft, not the usual hard and knowing eyes of former lovers. She finally looks his way and John gives her a sloppy smile. She’s with a group of women, but seems out of place, standing at the edge of the circle. Another smile and a nod and she’s on her way to his table.

She frowns when John takes another shot and spills a few drops on his shirt. He wipes his mouth and smiles again, extending his hand. “I’m John.”

“I’m Valerie, nice to meet you.” She sits down and he asks her a few questions about her friends, making her laugh with observations about the bar customs.

“I don’t usually go out to places like this,” she says.

“You should come more often,” John says. “This place was looking lousier and lousier until I saw you standing there.”

Valerie laughs and touches his hand resting on the table. He offers her a shot and she declines. She’s slowly drinking a beer.

“Come on. Live a little.” John tries to stop a burp, but it slips out and he grabs his stomach, the pain of a thousand nights creeping into his gut.

“What’s the matter?” she says.
“Just some indigestion.” He leans over the table, grabbing the edge with his hand.

“Are you ok? Are you going to be sick?” she asks, with such compassion that John thinks for a moment he should bring the bottles back to the bar. But it passes and he pours another shot.

“If it’s making you feel that way, why don’t you stop drinking?”

“I’ll be ok,” he says.

After another hour, John and Valerie meet her friends in the parking lot. She slips him her phone number on a piece of paper and he puts it in a pocket close to his heart. When she gets into her car, he stumbles back into the bar.

* * *

John is thirteen years old. There’s a radio in front of him and the announcer describes two men dancing around each other in a square ring. He taps his fingers against the arm of the couch. Mike is sitting to John’s left, not listening He yawns a fake yawn. The fight goes on and on, neither fighter giving enough of himself to earn victory or risk defeat. It’s a Saturday afternoon in the middle of summer and John’s eyelids flutter as he tries to stay awake.

Mike gets up and goes into the kitchen to look for a snack.

“You got any relish?” he shouts.

“What the hell for?”

“All you have is baloney.”

“There might be some in the cupboard.”

Mike opens a few wooden doors and then John hears the clinking of glass.

“Hey, what’s this?”

Eager to be pried away from the radio, John goes into the kitchen to see what Mike’s found. He’s standing in front of the kitchen sink, a large glass bottle filled with an amber liquid in his hand. He twists off the cap and sniffs the contents.

“Gross. I think it’s gone bad,” he says.

“Let me see,” John says. Mike hands him the bottle and he takes a sip. For a brief moment John gags and can’t stop thinking about how disgusting it tastes. Then, after handing Mike back the bottle, he feels the slow warmth of a rum fire creeping into his stomach.

Mikes takes a bigger swallow and nearly pukes in the sink. He hands the bottle back and John pours some into a glass. He does the same for Mike and they slug it down. After the fifth shot each, Mike places the bottle on the counter. Both teens sway, saying nothing for a few minutes, just standing and smiling.

“That stuff’s good. I never would…” John trips over his words “… have guessed. Let’s have… another.”

The room tilts more and Mike falls face first onto the floor. John falters and slumps against the counter, grabbing it as he slides to the floor. His last vision before he blacks out is the bottle of rum in front of the window, rays of summer sun lightening the color of the drink. A still life.

* * *

John is seven years old and everything bright and eager is flowing around and behind him like a carnival gravity ride. His sister Ashley is sitting next to him at a large round table, whispering in his ear about one their aunts. She’s telling John that aunt Rose is mad because their uncle Bill, Rose’s new husband’s brother, is sloppy at the bar.

“Sloppy?” John asks.

“Look at his cheeks. They’re all shiny and red,” Ashley says.

“He looks happy.”

“Auntie Rose doesn’t look happy.” She smiles mischievously. “I dare you to tell uncle Bill he has Santa Claus cheeks.”

“No way.”

“I double dog dare you,” she says.

“Right to him? Just walk up and say it?”

“Yep.”

John hammers the dare around for a bit and decides it’s worthy of any possible punishment. With a slight push from Ashley, he moves furtively toward the bar. Bill is sitting on a stool, his elbows on the bar, hunched over his drink. The bartender splashes a few more drops into his glass and John taps him on the back.

“Whatcha want, kid?”

“You have Santa Claus cheeks.” John cringes and waits for him to explode.

“Do I?” Bill asks the man sitting next to him.

“Sure do.”

“Listen kid, Santa always says, ‘drink and be merry’.”

He picks John up and places him on a stool. John smells acrid stinking breath and cigarette soiled fabrics. “Have a taste kid.” He puts the glass in John’s hand.

His smile hides a questioning young mind. Curiosity and a will-to-strength climax in a burst of sour-faced experimentation and he sips the drink. John gives the glass back to his uncle. He laughs and pats John on the back.

“How’d you like it? Now you have Santa Claus cheeks.”

“It’s gross.”

“Just wait till you’re older, kid. Taste comes with age.”

John returns to his sister and tells her about his success. His first drink has already begun to slip back into the untouched recesses of his mind.

* * *

John is back in the garden now, thinking about how it’s almost over, thinking about his early youth, the long days down by the water, jumping off the rocks, the tree frogs, the excited joys of young loves, the no one can do me any harm loves- all stretching into the mindless heartbreaks of a life lived. Evening is around the corner and all he can think about is morning and afternoon. The sun is calmer in the early evening, it’s softer, a kind of nameless yellow, lavender, and burnt-orange color.

“Hello Jonathan,” says Lilly from beyond the fence.

He has been sitting still, staring at the sky for a long time.

“Hey Lilly.”

She comes over and sits next to John, following his eyes to the sky. There isn’t much to say.

“Isn’t it beautiful?” she says after a while.

He’s not sure if it’s a question that requires a response, so he nods his head and turns to Lilly and smiles.

“It is…” she begins. Her words seem to be floating somewhere beyond the horizon.

“Lilly, tell me something.” John looks very serious all of the sudden.

“Anything, Jonathan.”

“Could you live, without ever seeing..." He hesitates, again staring at the sky for the answer to an unknown question. "... without seeing at least once in a thousand rainstorms, the deep blue of a clean, bright sky?
She looks at him and smiles. “No, I couldn’t. You’re funny, Jonathan. There never was a life that could match those wonderful words tumbling around inside your head, was there?”

He shakes his head and stares into the deep amber hue at the bottom of his glass. Not much to say that can’t be said in a few simple sentences or a faraway look. John looks at Lilly and thinks about how he loves her, his neighbor of ten years, more than anyone in his life.

There are other things he loves Lilly for, besides her gardening and coffee. He loves her precision. The way she cuts to the bone any phony self-deprecating words he throws around when the glass is near empty. With her he laughs and smiles, he doesn’t wait for phone calls that will never be made and visitors that will never come. John craves a few more moments of precious time, but Lilly returns home before it gets too dark, and he realizes that more than anything else, he’s missed a million seconds with people he could have loved.

Night falls and John goes inside. His stomach is hollow but satisfied. Only rum and oxygen are necessary in those bittersweet minutes before he falls asleep. He turns on the television for a bedtime background symphony and, after only a moment’s hesitation, pours himself a final two fingers.

Lying under his wool blanket, his head propped on two pillows, John listens to different voices on television saying the same things he’s heard for years and years. He laughs and cries when he thinks of life flying by, too fast for itself, unable to adapt to the abrupt changes that come after decades of careless planning. He cries for Mike, not for the soiled body found in the gutter years ago, but the Mike he knew before, the Mike he knew when rum was ice cream and the lights and sounds flying past his head were clear and bright.

John laughs for the constant, penetrating pain that he’s drowned slowly over the years. The god-awful hollow feeling was never filled properly, it was only drenched constantly. And always it dried out and he found himself again staring at a wavering liquid line in a half-empty glass. All the heartbreak, all the loss, all the burning years, and John lights his throat with a rum fire and falls into a long and meditative sleep.

 

Author's Note

Joe says: I was born in Newport, Rhode Island at approximately 8:30 p.m. on the night of December 24th, 1985. A Christmas Eve baby, as my mother calls me. The years of my life from birth until I entered High School were standard for a middle-class white male living in the suburbs of a small city rife with summer visitors. Cub Scouts and tee-ball. Traffic and directions. I am currently a student at the University of Rhode Island, graduating this May with a degree in journalism. I've always loved books and words, and my love of writing was sparked my freshmen year at URI by increased political interest and the realization that I'd rather write about animals, and fiction, than work at a zoo. So I switched to journalism and now I'm looking forward to writing as a profession, a craft, and a life.