HOME | DD

Description
War, the military, bullets and tanks…none of these destroyed the life of the young man I am about to tell you about…it was returning to life that did the trick.  For when you spend your days among the dead and dying, even the most thriving home seems to be covered in the ashes of the fellow soldiers, who were lucky enough to die in service.

Rounding his thirties, but aged nearly twice over, the haggard soldier stumbled into his worn apartment, after 12 years of faithful service, liquor reeking from his pores.  His sandy hair was tousled, bangs stuck to the drying blood on his forehead from his most recent scuffle.  It was becoming harder and harder to find a bar that would let him in, because nearly all of them had witnessed how angry this lonely drunk could become.  Not to mention, in a small town of Pennsylvania, there aren’t but so many bars to come by to begin with.

“We watched him drink his pain away a little at a time…”

His friends had all but deserted him.  There’s only so much of a crying beggar that even the most loyal comrades can swallow.  How it was that each of them seemed to jump back into life, this man could never understand.

Waiting for him at home was a sadder story still-the son of the town’s drunk, who had been reared by life alone.  Again, there’s only so much of a crying beggar that even the most loving wife can bare.

The young boy was 12, and the spitting image of his father-seemingly a present left behind to haunt the mother of her husband’s face…and their foolish ways.  The thing is, the mother didn’t want to remember…

“She broke his heart…”

Falling through the screen door, the man blindly felt for the bedroom doorknob in the dark.  Turning the knob, he found his way inside, collapsing onto his bed, weary of another spent day, trying to forget each shaded memory.  Nothing seemed to work, and the man had ceased to care.  His hands fumbled under his mattress, until they finally glided across a smooth surface.  All too well, his fingers recognized the spongy wood, as he ripped off the worn cork.

Maybe if he had only seen the pair of blue eyes, identical to his own, peering through his cracked doorway…he would’ve ended the cycle for but one miserable night.  But the poison had already veiled his eyes and hardened his heart, and the end was all his glazed eyes could see.

“He never could get drunk enough…until the night…”

In a cold sweat he awoke, empty bottle tight in hand, long before the sun had planned on rising.  He didn’t even realize that someone had come by in the night, covered him with blankets, and sat a glass of water and Tylenol on his nightstand, right in front of a wedding photo-a pregnant lady, draped in black, holding the shaky hand of a very serious looking man uniform.

Grabbing for the pills, he accidentally tipped over the water, knocking into the frame.  The water glass and picture frame broke in unison, the liquid pouring over the photograph, causing all the colors to bleed.  In desperation, the man tried to stop the destruction, grabbing at the picture, glass and all.  As his hands began to bleed, tears began to flow.  He clenched the photograph to his heart, and washed away the blood with his own tears.

“Life is short but this time it was bigger, than the strength he had to get up off his knees...”

Slowly, he staggered across the bare hardwood floors, searching for an escape.  His ghostly face nearly glowed in the moonlight as he reached the porch steps.  He looked into the yard.  The grass hadn’t been cut in ages, and the air was full of a fowl stench-the vomit of many hazardous nights.

He strained his arm, grasping under the porch steps until he finally caught hold of another bottle.  He tilted his head backwards, and through distorted lens, he saw through the glass his wife.  There she was, hanging up two twin flannel shirts, one much larger than the other.  She pulled a clothespin out of her mouth, clipping the collar and sleeves to the line, hiding her face behind the cloth.  He watched her feet, and his eyes slowly trailed up her body as she came out between the two shirts…she looked to one, than the other…and smiled angelically.  Soon the smile turned to a smirk as she saw his already emptied bottle, and as her face disappeared she whispered, “The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree…”

“He spent his whole life trying to forget…”

The hallucination ended, but for him it was all too real.  He groped his way towards the line, infuriated.  All he saw was red.  Stepping through the tall, wavering grass, his feet were sliced open again and again by the broken bottles hiding in the lawn.  The line was tied up between two willow trees, very similar in stature.  As the man made his way, he stopped to rest his head on the old bark…weeping his life away…a tear for each bottle.

He started to turn inside, and halfway there he felt the chilling wind against his neck…he heard the secret within, echoing his wife’s final words.  Without a second thought or glance at the world around him, he raced back, and let the line take the life of a fallen soldier…

“And when we buried him beneath the willow, the angels sang a whiskey lullaby…”

Maybe if he had only seen the pair of blue eyes, identical to his own, peering through his cracked doorway…he would’ve ended the cycle for but one miserable night.  But the poison had already veiled his eyes and hardened his heart, and the end was all his glazed eyes could see.

“La, la la la la la la…the angels sang a whiskey lullaby…”

And the fate of the orphaned son…was mirrored in his mother’s final words, and his father’s drunken life…and death.

“We found him with his face down in the pillow…the angels sang a whiskey lullaby…”