In this valley, thronged, the crack of ice as bluest shards implode and drop, crystal tails and powder—oh my dreamland castaway lady and lord—trailing. When at last we emerge from this frozen northern twilit place, a dark hut squats in our path, weak smoke tendriling from a busted chimney, the faintest muddy orange dim and low in its pitiful windows playacting muted glances.
Inside is a place of men. Large and bruised men, nursing their watery beers and their cryptic histories.
Bradford finds a small table and we sit opposite, like chess rivals. A man brings us beer in bottles.
“Tab?” he asks like he knows.
We both nod and he leaves.
I point to my head and point with my other finger at another part of my head. “Look at this. Look.”
“What?” Bradford is somewhere between bored and on board.
“I don’t know how to make this part work with this part.”
“Huh?”
“I got an intellectual and a lowlife creep at war in here. I don’t know how to reconcile these parts. I’m a goddamn high-rolling sweet-ass motherfucker with negative aspirations. One foot in the gutter while the other strolls the shining city on the hill. No sooner do I sink a Bud Lite than I dream of Freda Kahlo. I sue for peace while spoiling for a brawl. I don’t know what the fuck I am.”
“You a whole circus without the ringmaster.”
“I guess. And no taste-master either. I got no taste ’cause I want to taste all the tastes.”
“Not sure I can help you with that, brother.”
“Place needs music,” I say loudly, which only makes the barroom quieter.
These hard-drinking men might be men at a stream, casting lines. Steady. Stoic. No one really knows. The night outside might darken or not, the songs of birds stretching out some elongated moment. Might could drop a quarter in the slot and hit a letter and a number, hoping for Neil or Drake or Lana or RiRi.
Men like these don’t compromise—a weakness, not the strength they proclaim. Look. A tree connects the sky to the earth. And it reminds us to also grasp limbs. Put it this way: even the guys who ridicule “tree huggers” still knock on wood, I’ll wager.
A song selects, and y’all know its effect, and its dress rehearsal respect blares external.
Neil. Old now. Grey. Still shredding those one-note solos. What something was and what it no longer ain’t.
The stymied wolverine wince and ruined caribou rasp of Old Black. A dark northern lament under slow-turning star wheels, the nighttime snow wide-as-fuck open blue under a half moon. Or under the aurora. And yes, as the man said, the old man now, go look at his life, it’s all one song.
He enunciates the word borealis like Elton sings auditorium.
Whatever the grisly outcome tonight, this is all and fine and damn near everything.
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Image © Rebecca Loranger