Sour As Gin

I'm as foreign, he thought, as every other one else. Thought so, used to, then didn't, now think I do again. So few streets between these old neighborhoods different like night and day, one way there's this, one way there's that, them; shit: us.

The stench of body, dirt, mud, muck, skin in its natural or unnatural state, it bellows about him. An old man with empty eyes, an aging man if not old, sits on a city bus in the middle of the afternoon but it's Seattle, it's winter, so it's dark. Black tar dark at four and a half, four and three quarters for sure. His smell rolls around him like a globe and he sits, knees pressed into the seat in front of him, he's looking out the window, straining to see beyond his own image in the light-reflected window, image of a dark, wrinkled, busted man who isn't who he remembers but might as well be himself, detached as he feels from that younger man, even the older young man, and especially the child, himself some fifty years ago, maybe, fifty?

It's been that long, hasn't it, he thought, holy balls it's been fifty goddamn years. Fifty years, I was sneaking cars, me and Ronnie, not stealing because what's the stealing in it when you know the car, and the owner, and you give it back—later that night, even—what's that called, it's sneaking. Ain't stealing. Fifty years, anyway. Sixtyfour and what do I have for it.

He truly believed that depression made a man smell worse, more sour, like a gin hangover, if that actually was a sour smell and he thought it was, and he shuddered to imagine the smell coming off him, a man more homeless than not, what he smelled like with the sourness, the depression sour pressing through, he wondered whether people, anyone, whether anyone had any idea that it make him sick to his stomach, too, that he sometimes threw up on his own torn shoes because of how bad he smelled. That he made himself sick. He moaned when the bus stopped to drop three people off on the way down the hill, and as he moaned he pressed his back to the seat with all his power to keep him from falling straight forward, stop him from hitting his nose or forehead on the seat in front, and he moaned again three blocks later when it stopped once more. He was completely coherent.

What kind of dumb old bastard must I be, he wondered, dying in this old dark town in the goddamn winter.

He had imagined going somewhere else to kill himself, Miami or Mexico, he wanted sunshine to watch him go. To watch sunshine himself as he went. He believed he would be forgiven if there was sunshine, or else he would forgive himself. Same thing, he figured. But he couldn't, couldn't even probably have the heart to make it down to the airport even if he did have a ticket, much less actually leave on a plane.

A tall young woman stood near the rear of the bus as it came to a stop. "Back door, please," she called quietly to the driver.

So many pretty women this part of town, he thought, fifty years it ain't changed that at least. Don't remember one of them that I've talked to the last twentyfive, though, so what's the difference. What's the goddamn point is what I mean. Pretty women love a sneaking old dog, shoot, they do, and a little chit chat. But what have I got left. Don't even have chit chat.

The bus, with its electric wires overhead, wheeled slowly up the hill, climbing out of the stunted Central District valley and heading east toward the lake. The old man wanted to see the water before he died. Every time someone pulled the cord, lighting the red next-stop sign, every time the light lit and it dinged someone's next-stop ding he felt sick because he remembered he wasn't really all alone in this, he thought of his sister who expected him for dinner in three days, Sunday at five, and acid in his stomach seemed to burn through his belly and his skin and out onto his white undershirt as he remembered her legendary southern-accented bus driver impression, her "Next stop, y'all!" calls that still made him laugh every time, made everyone laugh, even decades after she did it first. She would say it, holler it really, with her eyes aimed high up toward an imaginary rearview mirror, her hands out in front of her eighteen inches apart, looking almost like she was carrying and shaking an invisible tray, to simulate a huge bus steering wheel. The acid felt like it leaked out all the way to his jacket. She would be furious with him. More angry than sad, because she made people laugh, made everyone she ever met a little bit happier, so he would kill himself and she would be insulted.

Ain't about you Sherry, he thought, any more than it's about these pretty women or that bus driver with the heavy brakes boot on him. Ain't about any you. About me and this bent up old brain. Crooked-ass thoughts. And this sour old gin stink.

The trees, what was left of them, bent in the wind and blocked street lights as the bus, now almost empty save the old man and the conductor, moved down the last hill, no stops, toward the lake, down the last slanted street before the water.

. . .