A U.P. Story – Hello Again: Part Three

Here’s the end of the story. It won’t make much sense unless you read Part 1 and Part 2. It still might not make sense, but I think there are some interesting thoughts about friendship, regret, grievance, reconciliation and U.P. bar life. Thanks for coming along this far.

Hello Again, Part 3

            “Okay, well, we’ve been thinkin’ about this for a while now and we think the first thing that needs to be done is that you have to apologize.” Harold tapped his finger on #1 on the list: Smokey must apologize.

            “What? What am I apologizing for? What are you talking about?” Smokey pushed his chair back from the table like a pot of hot soup had tipped over and he was trying to keep it off his shoes. He looked, first at Harold and then at Brenda but they looked back with big, fixed stares like they’d been practicing looking hard and mad for years.

            “Well, first off, how you treated Brenda at the wedding. And then there’s other things.”

            “Oh, so there’s a sub-list? You’ve broken down the big item into specific things I did wrong? Shit. This is wild. You came all this way for this? What the fuck?”

            The story was tangled and nearly indecipherable. It had to do with Smokey being best man but not doing his duties right, for example, he left Brenda’s little brother, who was about fifteen at the time, out of the bachelor party, such as it was, just an overnight at an old deer camp outside of town that everybody used for ‘debauchery’ as they called it. And then rolling his eyes when Brenda came down the aisle. He didn’t remember doing this, but Brenda replayed the scene.

            “You were standing there with your hands in your pockets all cool like and then I came walking in to the music and you rolled your eyes and looked like you were laughing in your head. It was insulting and you need to apologize.” Brenda had found her footing now and was ready for the next thing on the list.

            “And how come when we left, you didn’t come find us?” This was the big one, this right here, and Smokey knew it.

            “I gotta go pee. Try not to leave until I get back.” Smokey said this halfway hoping they would actually leave before he got back. There was never going to be a good end to the conversation. That was already clear.

            The bar’s bathroom had old knotty pine paneling where people had spent their sitting time carving their initials in the wood. Little hearts, cat ears, various representations of body parts, if you get my drift, the bar’s bathroom was a little museum all its own. Smokey wished he could stay there and reflect, figure out a way out of being with this weird, backcountry grudge-holding people. He washed his hands and went back to the table.

            Brenda was gnawing at a hangnail on her thumb while Harold flipped the index card over and over in his right hand, a bar trick with the ace of spades. Anticipation made the soggy bar air even wetter.

            Smokey sat down but this time in a different chair, the one at the head of the table. He gave off the air of calling the meeting to order.

            “So, what you’re saying is basically you’re mad because I didn’t come find you when you left town without telling anybody where you were going. And you’ve been mad, been thinking about this the whole ten years. Stewing on it. Thinking about what a crummy guy I am. Ten years’ worth. That’s pretty fucking crazy.”

            Harold and Brenda started a babbling that included things like how they’d prayed every night to be found and how their baby died because nobody came for them and how life would have been completely different if only Smokey hadn’t just been thinking of himself the entire time and done what friends ought to do, look for each other, look out for each other, but no, here he was in his fancy bar with all the beer and the pizza and his kids playing soccer and fishing and their fox had run away, that’s how cold and miserable their lives were.

            “It’s not right,” Brenda said. “Not right, not right, not right.”

            Smokey spread his hands out on the table in front of him. Like the bar’s bathroom, the tables had carved messages, initials, little hearts. People had lived their lives here and he could feel the evidence with his fingertips. He’d given folks a place to be, to claim, he didn’t know the right word. The townspeople, heck, they had weddings and funerals in this bar.

            “You’re saying I should have tried harder to find you. I don’t know about that but I think you’re saying that because you’ve been so lonely all this time. And I am sorry for that. I don’t know if that’s an apology but I am sorry. Truly. I’m sad you felt so alone for all that time.”

            “That’s not all. We thought of some other things while you were in the bathroom.” Brenda seared her stare at Harold’s forehead. Look up, dammit, look up, you dumb motherfucker. And then Harold looked up, put his head back and closed his eyes.

            “We don’t need to go there, Brenda. Him saying he’s sorry is enough for me.”

            “It’s not enough for me! Doesn’t even start being enough for me. Tell him the next demand. He’s your friend. You have to tell him.”

            Harold put his hand to his head like people do, trying to crack their necks, like how some people crack their knuckles, a way to pass the time. It filled what seemed like a very long minute.

            “Okay, well, while you were in the bathroom, we just looked at all this that you’ve got. The bar and all and we think you should give us half of it. For compensation.” Harold seemed to become emboldened as he spoke, his little ember fanned by Brenda smiling in just the smallest way.

            Brenda picked up the ball. She talked about how the “arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice,” which Smokey had never heard applied to two friends having a falling out. And then she talked about how Harold told her that when he and Smokey went bear hunting, they made plans to open a bar, to buy the abandoned bar in town and make it over, like how it looked right now, all homey and warm, and then they’d make all kinds of beer. But Harold was cheated out of that because Smokey didn’t come looking for him when he left and so he owed them. Owed them.

            “You owe us. Big time.” That was Brenda’s closing, and then she folded her arms across her chest and waited for Smokey’s response.

            “That is nuts. Yeah. We were friends. We talked about having a bar. But I’m the one who actually did it. Anytime you wanted to, you could’ve come back to town. But to show up now and make a claim on my business? No way. Not happening.”

            With that, Brenda nodded to Harold. “We’re leaving.” She stood up waiting for Harold to do the same.

            But Harold sat still. Smokey rubbed his face and ran his fingers through his hair. “Look, here’s the deal. You want to stay in town, come back to civilization, I’ll give you both jobs. You can work here. We’ll find you a place. Get you set up.”

            “I wouldn’t work for you on a bet. That’s insulting.” Brenda began retrieving her coats and scarves and mittens and hats from all the places they’d been hung to dry. “Come on Harold, we’re leaving.”

            “No.” Harold moved not a single muscle. “I’m not going back.” The look he gave Brenda said he meant it. After all these years gone, he wouldn’t be gone again. Brenda grabbed the last of her heavy wool scarves and tore out the door.

The screeching and screaming was immediate. The slamming of something into something else. Smokey figured it was one of the town’s night snowmobilers, the group of them acted like a patrol, not for safety really just to be men, protect stuff that would’ve been fine without them. One of them must of run into a pole or a picnic table. It didn’t sound like that, though. It sounded worse.

Both Smokey and Harold leaped to the door where they ran headlong into a bearded guy in red snowmobile garb.

“Jesus! Some woman ran right in front of my machine. I ran her down! I killed her. She’s out there right now. Dead in the street.”

            It took almost a full hour for the sheriff to come from the county seat. By then, the townspeople had erected barriers around Brenda’s body, orange cones and whatnot, to keep other snowmobilers from running her over again. The ambulance took her away with no flashing lights or siren. Too late for that.

            Smokey set a mug of coffee in front of Harold who’d come in from standing next to Brenda and gone back to the table where they’d had all their momentous discussion and where he’d said farewell to Brenda in a very sad way.

“I’m sorry, man. So sorry. You must feel terrible.” Smokey didn’t know what else to say.

Harold cupped his hands around the mug, brought it up to his lips. What he really wanted was a shot of something, but coffee was what he had.

            “Terrible? I don’t if I feel terrible. I do feel free, though. Real free. I forgot what that feels like. Been a long time.” He sipped and then set the mug down.

“Well, you’re back now. And that’s a good thing.”

“Yeah. Yeah, it is.”

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