
Daydream
I lose myself when the gin runs out. Then I switch to Seagram’s,
then Pabst or lukewarm Genese. Eventually, I see a blurred vision
of half-finished ranch houses, and fields no developer has managed
yet to sell. This vice of ours, of mine, makes it awkward
to imagine anything future-related, especially leaving. It was easy once,
believing we were all headed somewhere — I’m thinking of the summers
we baled hay, picked strawberries. At each job, a boom box burned
through eight batteries an hour as Candlebox became Collective Soul,
our skin caught hell from the sun, and juice from berries or ripened grass
marred our palms’ age lines. Scrubbing away the stains took days.
Still, putting in long hours outdoors meant we could light Marlboros
and wedge the smoldering butts in the corners of our mouths
while we worked. So we learned to tolerate smoke in our eyes;
and so we matured, communed with the ideal — but which one,
masculinity? Strenuous living? Strength, grit, or impervious-ness?
What I can’t remember was when we discovered the harder stuff.
Was it Ben or Nate bought boots and gloves and battled fire hoses?
Who was it showed us his foot, seared and hairless and pink
after he’d dropped the hose and soaked his boot and sock both
so the fabric took a layer of skin with it when he’d peeled it off?
The job was hosing out the back ends of commercial trucks
into which local slaughterhouses had loaded useless animal parts,
heads, guts, gristle, bones — all of it to be ground and dried into meal.
Whoever it was, he never wanted to eat after his shifts, just drink —
or six, a dozen. We’d watched the sky darkening. It’d seemed infectious,
the way deep blue bore down on the stripe of white lengthening
like a wrenched finger scratching the horizon. I thought I’d found a way
to understand what happened to us, why we made choices
like boys crayoning backward through restaurant placemat mazes,
easily avoiding all the wrong turns. By the time I switched to gin nightly,
Nate’d become a beverage distributor. Ben’d been selling farm machinery
for years. I can’t imagine them heading back or even calling it home.
I, too, could’ve regarded my life differently. Thankless work’s exhausting,
but it can be transformative also. It’s shameful only if you let it be.
I know failure’s unique to each of us. But as I pour two fingers more,
a song pops into my head. It’s the stray tune I used to hum
when trying to scrub from mind the reek of seared meat scraped
from the grill I scoured and gloss-shined with grease at the end of each shift,
the buzz from the six-pack I pounded in the empty parking lot after closing,
the dirges of the guy I tipped a beer to buy for me from the Toot-n-Tell.
He was a burly bar-band guitarist masquerading as a line cook.
He played nightly, then drank to convince himself he still had a shot.

