On The Rocks

A bar without a name, a street without a sign, a man without shadow! Not old, not young. Certain eyes, the kind that takes men years to fake, but he was born with it. A glass with rocks... but yet untouched.

Then a man walked in and sat with his back turned. He stared harder, the cigar smoke hazy between. No. It couldn't be. His grandfather had been gone for years. And yet.

As he stared, something in him began to loosen. The solid man cracked, and through the crack climbed a boy — the one he had been, before the world made him forget.

He was small again, climbing the cherry tree in his grandfather's garden, the bark rough under his hands, sweet cherries hanging above. He remembered racing his bicycle down the path, a rose thorn catching his forehead. His hand rose to the old scar without a thought. He remembered pillow fights with his cousins, breaking the dark into feathers and laughter. And the shy girl next door, the letters they passed while neither could find the words aloud. He wondered where she was now.

The pianist quickened, the notes tumbling faster, and his heart rose. He looked around the bar, and for the first time the room came alive — the laughter at the next table, a hand resting on a shoulder, two men deep in heated argument. Suddenly, he felt close to them all. Curious, the way he was as a child, with a faint smile.

With a strange feeling, he remembered a day he got lost as a boy. The same panic on the rise. The world again grew enormous and unknown. He looked down, and faces surfaced through the whisky glass: his mother, his father, the family he had left…

Behind every hardened man, he thought, there is a curious boy, still climbing trees, still waiting for a letter. He had buried his a long time ago. He was wounded — but so is everyone. What man reaches his age without scars?

Maybe it was time.

He set money down for the untouched glass and stood. As he passed, the man turned, and they shared a smile. Something had shifted the air, and someone else had taken his seat — the boy, perhaps going home at last.