Graf #7

The bar stool, at 6 o'clock to the bartender, was never taken by anyone other than him. It had a reserved sign whom anyone who knew anything about basic bar etiquette could read. It said that only a certain kind of lush was allowed to sit there. The kind where the bar stool was more like the couch and the bar itself, more like home. And some people simply don't leave either of those places. Not for very long, anyway. He came in every day at 10:30 am, half an hour after the bar opened. He'd walk in, which was more like an exhausting saunter only people who carry all their weight in the gut have, and reach for his tap beer as soon as he was in arm's length of it. A dry stout, Guinness preferably, placed gently so as not to ruin the head.

I asked enough questions about him to have written a biography if I'd ever gotten any real answers. Who is he? Why is he always wearing the same worn denim jeans with the hole over the right knee, gaping wide like a dead fish's mouth, and a leather jacket that no sane person would wear all summer? What does that tattoo on his left forearm mean, the one that looks suspiciously homemade? Does he have a job? Does he even have a freaking name? I would've believed our boss wasn't obviously cheating on his wife before I'd ever believe the bunch of horseshit my coworkers shuttled between them.
"I heard he was in some really big war, you know, like Vietnam, and he carried a dead man who had both legs blown off on his back for two weeks," one would say, which was a really popular theory.
"I heard that tattoo came from one of the prison guards he was having a sexual affair with after getting out on parole," came from another.
"Maybe the sexual affair part is true, but I know for a fact he's really a millionaire with split personalities and ends up getting in trouble with the law when he blacks out."
And, the most unbelievable of all, "A friend told me they heard someone say in the grocery store that he lives with his dying mother who invested really well and is living off her income while he takes care of her." We all knew that last one was pure fabrication. Maybe.

Eventually seasons changed and not a single one of us were any wiser. We'd tried grilling him a few times, sometimes casually other times fiercely, and he'd always smile and talk about how Maine had really lovely seasons. Sometimes he'd strike up a game of darts with a fellow bar stool babysitter and they'd nurse their beers together in silent comradery. Mostly, though, he sat with the darkest sunglasses on I'd ever seen and eavesdrop on the conversations between drunk girls and smile. Eighteen months later, Thanksgiving day, after having become as permanent a fixture as the taps themselves, he didn't show up. His Guinness, with the most beautiful frothy head, sat alone and grew warm. The story goes now that the Guinness sat for three days in that one spot, but like all stories, people embellish. It really only sat for one because the boss didn't want fruit flies. We hoped his mother hadn't died or that his other personality hadn't gotten him in trouble again. Mostly, we hoped he was spending the holidays with his prison guard lover and getting a new tattoo.