Prologue: Most of these pieces won’t mean anything. I simply want to remember some of my people.

Jerry was a regular and a lawyer. The latter of which, believe it or not, was not a bad thing. He was a kind-hearted, 5’ 3” tall drink of water. Old-school, believing in buying a round for the bar for the sake of the bar, not the buzz of the recipient. Basically, he believed in the establishment and damn it if it didn’t believe in him, he would go elsewhere. Some of my staff learned that the hard way, but I kept him coming back.

Feigning knowledge of the legal system is a blessing and a curse. But in most cases, it’s inevitably a curse. Make the mistake of saying you’re a Legal Clerk —an Administrative Assistant at a law firm even— and the mosquitoes smell blood. Divorce, death, DUI: All inevitable if you hang out in bars long enough, more so if you hang out in bars too much. Suffice it to say that most of my clientele should have been charged rent, so Jerry had his hands full.

But Jerry was a different breed. Everybody was a friend of Jerry’s so long as they put money in our till. Yes, our till. He had no vested interest in the bar save the fact that it was a vacation home, a place in which he could cleanse himself of the courtrooms and the clients and the overall weight of his profession. He bought in without expecting a return, much like he did with most of his clients, and most of all, his friends. Tell him your problems and he’d give you proper council, but add rumor or bar gossip and the conversation was over, ended with a phrase like, “My name’s Wes and I ain’t in this mess.” Continue on and he’d punctuate the Wes-ism with a wink and a Marlboro Red, turning his chair politely. He’d punched out. Your billable time was over.

***

The morning Jerry died I broke. A lot of us broke, in fact. He was driving to work at an ungodly Amish hour as he was wont to do, pushing the spurs deep into his piece of shit Bronco when his chest blew a gasket. Somehow, and none of us, police included, are sure how he, but he managed to slow down and merge through five lanes of traffic, pulling over to the berm. The autopsy would show that Jerry had a Type 3 sudden cardiac death. Not a heart attack, but death. His heart, big as his glass was wide, turned over and quit. Technically, Jerry was driving dead, but his sense of responsibility pulled him over and put him in park.

As a bartender, the guilt of service weighs heavy on your hands. To put it bluntly, you’re pouring drinks for liabilities, people that could inevitably jump behind the wheel and kill someone. But you pray the whole time that they’ll play responsibly (why this legal burden rests on bartenders and not grocery store clerks is another story all together). So I play all my pours by the book and try to recognize the highs and lows, cutting off anyone that can’t push a thought or idea past the weight of their tongue. And try as I might there will always be circumstances beyond my control —Jerry was beyond my control— but it didn’t register, wouldn’t register.

Jerry, like all of my regulars, had ritual. Over the span of a night he would drink four Crown Royal/rocks and finish it all off with a bottle Budweiser. This rhythm was certain, guaranteed like his bar tab. The night before his death I had talked him into having a couple more with me. It was slow and I needed to pass the time before close and his stories were always golden, so we sat there drinking and talking about the time he and our daytime bartender drank themselves to Vegas (a bender-induced overnighter ala Swingers. Grainy steakhouse photographs were their only memories of the experience). We smiled and laughed and lied and smoked, rinsing and repeating over and over again until Jerry was out of cigarettes. Eventually, the night was over and I sent him on his way with a pack from my tip jar.

***

“He’s dead,” she cried. “He died on his way to work.” I collapsed into a ball on the concrete steps behind the bar.

“I killed him,” I said. It was all I could think. I killed him. 

I know it’s irrational to put the weight of someone else’s healthy livin’ on your shoulders, but the time, manner and place of the heart attack made it feel like I was the one that stabbed him in the chest. To this day, try as I might to put the experience to rest, I still ask myself What if I didn’t give him his last drink? or What if I didn’t light his last Marlboro? or What if I let him call it a night after the Budweiser? Had I not done that one thing that one time that one night, would it have bought him extra minutes to be in the right place around the right people?

I’d like to say that deep down I know it is not my fault, but the questions of judgment and responsibility will always echo in a bartender’s ear. What are we providing? Are we helping or hurting? Are we making more problems or providing an escape?

***

We had his wake at my bar. Hundreds of people from every rank and file showed up to remember him, many of whom had received some sort of criminal legal counsel resulting in a Goodfellas-meets-Southie kind of atmosphere, but he was celebrated, again and again, over and over and over until the final glass was clinked and the mourners poured out into the parking lot. I guess in some ways it was an honor to have served him his last drink. But I still miss him, far beyond my selfish guilt.

Posted at 1:18pm and tagged with: Friend of the local, James,.