//|\\ dave hansen \\|//
Grenade was the Name of a Drink We Used to Serve
Grenade was the name of a drink we used to serve. It was a drinking
glass full of whiskey and a single shot of scotch. It was a novelty item, mostly.
You couldn’t just walk in off the street and order it. You had to do your
time. This was a VIP drink. Some punk from the artist’s quarter comes in
after hours and says grenade to you, you just turn your head and walk away.
But frat boys who’d earned their wings could split one three ways and walk
out the door hammered. That’s how it is with almost everything. You set
aside something, even an ordinary thing, and make it special. It’s something
I’ve always liked doing. Withholding something small for just the right
occasion. The last person I served a grenade to, as it happens, was a war veteran,
I don’t know which war. I don’t know his age, and his face didn’t
tell anything. He could have been young or old. When he whispered it to me I
was swabbing the bar. His voice was solemn. Serious. Grave enough to give me
chills. He had his hair cut to bristle, squared around the ears with a craterous,
pale face. He didn’t want to fuck around. This man wanted to drink himself
blind. Come again I asked and he said don’t play dumb. No games. I’ve
had my fill of games. Ordinarily I would have thrown him out. I’m no slouch.
I used to lift, though you wouldn’t know it to look at me now. But I didn’t.
I took a mug, wiped it down and looked closely at his face. It’s something
you earn, I said, but my voice, which as I’m sure you know is usually loud
as a thunderclap was weak as a kitten, and he gave me this look. I almost reached
for the bottle then. I earned it, he said. He tapped a badge on the arm of his
jacket. POW it said. And MIA too. I asked him which one he had been. POW, he
said. Must have been rough I said. You can’t know, he said. So I made him
the drink. Ten seconds of whiskey and a shot of scotch. You weren’t going
to make me this, he said. No I wasn’t, I said. I said that you have to
keep a few things inaccessable. Like retiring a jersey number sort of. He nodded
his head. Fair enough, he said, and for a moment slipped into a state of deep
thought. I could tell by the slackening of the flesh near his eyes, which were
rimmed with bruises and streaked by something moist. What convinced you, he
asked, and I said that I didn’t know. He pointed out a customer who wanted
to settle up at the other end of the bar, a trashy brunette that I’d just
as soon ignore. But I did it and came back to him. This is the last drink of
my life, he said, allegedly. He smiled. Then he added That’s what the doctor
says anyway. Woah, I said. Stop the show. I put my hand over the glass. I looked
into his eyes. They were dancing with some internal light. He had a smile. I
noticed he’d already had a third of the liquor in there. What doctor. Some
doctor, he said. I’m not in the killing business, I said. What business
do you call it? You want the drink to be special. Can’t be much more special
than this. I kept my hand where it was. I mean special like a book is special.
Like a shirt you never wear except around your one true love, or in bed alone.
That’s the kind of special I mean. Same dif, he said. He lifted my hand
from the glass and took a bold gulp. I leaned against the bar. I watched him
swallow. The muscles in his neck working, his eyes fixing at something on the
bar. We didn’t speak for unmeasured moments, until he said Special. You
were talking about special. Keep going. What else is special. Jesus, I said.
Come on, he said. Tell me something else. I couldn’t begin to, I said.
I’ll tell you what’s special to me, he said. He closed his eyes, and
he breathed through his nose, soimething a sane man would never do in the bar
at closing time. Ordinarily the place reeked of niccotine and fryer grease.
But he savored that air. I knew he wasn’t there any longer, but somewhere
sweet and fragrant, sun scorched and sticky. Rain, he said. Rain is special.
I wish I could save every drop. He came out of the trance in a heartbeat. He
took a long drink and smacked his lips. I sat against the bottle rack looking
at him. I waited on it for a while. I was really thinking though. I was thinking
so hard my temples throbbed. My mouth opened a few inches all on its own. An
apple, I said. I have a bronzed apple. He looked up. Where’d you get a
thing like that? My father gave it to me, I said. I picked it when we went to
Madison Orchard. My mother was dying. I was going to have it buried with her.
But I kept it. I look at it damn near everyday. We sat in mutual silence. My
stomach was flopping like a fish chucked out of the water. He took the whole
drink tried to settle up, but I wouldn’t take the money. He pushed it on
me but I wasn’t having it. He smiled at me. Rain and apples, he said. Quite
a matchup. He took the money and went for the exit. I was left almost dizzy.
That night I did a shitty close. Didn’t even vaccuum, and drove fast all
the way home. I looked at the apple that night. Smooth bronze skin that gave
a few centimeters if you squeezed it by the equator. I remember my mother’s
hair. You see? One thing doesn’t just mean one thing. It can mean everything.
That apple means my mother, and her hair before it all fell out, and the summer
we spent watching her froom the doorway as she srhunk to invisibility. And grenade
means a drink we don’t serve anymore, and when I hear the word, I think
of rain. A flood washed pasture, a tall man with fair skin pacing the length
of a dock, cradling a rifle beneath his arms, waiting out the unbearable heat
with a light heart.