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Graveyard as a Friend
(Dry-docked)

Greg G. Zaino

7:00 am
Plagued with the shakes,
slouched, expectant,

Most everyday
he waits in the service alley
at a back door
that runs behind “Billy Goodes”
a tavern on Marlborough Street
in Newport.

Grey eyes narrowed
supported by a worn,
ebony walking staff
near as long-
as he is tall.

Something like a smile
crossed his cracked lips
a familiar face.

Neck angled to the side,
peering up from below
his grubby war veteran’s cap,
he nods his greeting.

In a croaked noise,
he manages,
“Mornin’, Johnny.”

The man is enormous
“Mornin’ Hugh.”
turns- scrutinizes the ring
inserts a key,
the back door complains
a sound like relief.
both men step inside
the unlit hallway.

The smell of acrid
cigarette smoke
stale beer, and liquor
saturate the place-
familiar...
welcoming.

Johnny moves behind the bar
head tilted to the left
lights his first Parodi
cigar of the day,
his right eye squints
at the harsh smoke,
clenches it between
his front teeth in a snarl,
exposing two rows
of yellowed ivory.

Turning the old Wurlitzer on,
he follows up
by pouring a shot of Jim Beam
places it down
on the bar without a word,
moves over and pulls
on the tap to fill a 7oz glass
of Narragansett draft beer-
sets it before the old man,
picks up a yellow pencil
and starts a tab.

The juke box blazes to life
picks up where it left off
at closing time,
and fires up
with an unfinished play list
of music from the night before.

Hugh lays some crumpled bills
on the scarred mahogany
while attempting to steady
his right hand
with his left
looks down
into the amber shot glass,
not quite ready
to cross the boundary.

“I’ll be a son of a bitch...”
he whispers
eyes turn
towards the Juke,
a blast from the past-
“Swing- Swing- Swing”
was in the play list.

Jimmie Dorsey’s drums
fill the stale air,
his eyes glaze over...
Miller, The Duke, Goodman...
memory breaks in
and steals a moment.
...
Like it was a mere
few years back,
the memory rush...
that weekend on shore leave
before shipping out
in August of “42”

That was nine months after
the start of a war
he entered
just out of high school-
a seaman
on a World War II warship
the “USS Marcus Island”
the memory printed
boldly across
the beam of his veterans cap...

He recalls the first time
ever walking
into this bar,
but through the front door
at the time...

A slender, dark skinned beauty
on his arm;
one he thought looked
like Lena Horne,
went by the name
of ‘Tookie’
smelled of lavender,
teeth so white- perfect.

told her she had
the eyes
of an Egyptian goddess.

she swiveled into
Billy Goodes
ahead of him.

Hugging those curvy lines;
a summer thin,
black and white,
polka dot dress-
neck line low
exposing ebony cleavage,
winning his eyes,
prompting his imagination.

The cherry colored scarf
around her neck-
matched the shade
of her lipstick.

Man, Tookie was put together,
had his eye from moment one...

She was his first.

Happened in a rented room
on the 4th floor
at the Army- Navy, YMCA
right around the corner
at 50 Washington Square.

In this old Navy town,
his date may have been
a local whore;
plenty of them back then,
but that sweetheart
gave him- her entire weekend.
...
He smiles
Openly guffaws-
thinking out loud,
it spills out.
“And she didn’t charge me
a ‘fuckin’ cent!”

Johnny turned at the words,
scrutinized the old timer for a moment,
relit his cigar,
went back to
washing glasses.

In the dim morning light
Hugh settled down
to the business at hand.

He stared into
his shot glass of whiskey.

After coming back to Newport
at the end of the war,
he’d lived the rest of
his working life
as a fisherman- a lobsterman.

Now retired
73 summers under his belt,
he’s bent and beaten,
keeps to himself these days-
taken more to silence,
than sociability.

With both hands,
upending it
as best he could,
spilling some down the front
of his natty blue sweater
the glass made
its way to his split lips,
felt heavy,
tossed it back,
followed by an unsteady
swallow of beer.

His body,
once strong and erect,
spoke a lifetime
of working the waters
off the Atlantic
and in the Bay.

Arthritic fingers-
crippled in pain,
furrowed brow-
leathered and spotted
from over 50 years
of labor on the water
in wind, ice,
salt, and sun.
his skies now bleak;
desperate for light.

He fell inward.
working days behind him,
now just going through the motions.

Forever,
a hard drinking man-
one of rousing laughter
and back breaking labor
he now
was held in place
as depression chanted
words of finality.

Enduring their heartless sessions
for a time
he survived the folly
of doctors-
their narcotic pills,
confounding advice...

He blurts out,
“Fuck ‘em All!
again rousing
Johnny’s attention.

His incinerated music,
his hope,
resonated from
a depleted cask.

Its flavor
that of corruption.

Toxic brown bourbon,
once an ally
now his adversary
in this,
his final conflict.

Implanted deep
in disruptive memory
his indifference to life
and stubborn resistance
near concluding-
his days
now a comical irony,
akin to
his retired lobster boat-
the one he calls home,
dry docked
and on stilts;
like himself,
never to see water again,
yet, still stands...

The hours
speedily wind down.
secluded days, hours,
minutes, seconds,
... and all his dead friends
no longer sitting, standing,
drinking, and laughing
with him at this bar.

He croaks-
“The day comes soon, mates,
the bitch is steaming in fast
and hotter than the Satin’s balls!”

Hugh keeps it to himself-
sees it all as the logical conclusion
of a hard life-
long lived-
maybe too long.

Searching his memory
it fails in recall.
Armstrong’s tarnished horn,
doesn’t come around
much any more.

Johnny poured him another
shot of ‘Jim’
refilled Hugh’s beer glass-
this one on the house;
continued wiping down the bar.

Toasting old friends,
the second shot
went up and back in one motion.

Fire warmed his gullet;
the shakes
now subsided.

He journeyed back
to feeding a breakfast of trap bait,
to screeching seagulls off the pier,
before heading out from the docks
into a the new dawn.
with an eye opener
drinking whiskey
in his coffee
at 5:00 am,

But that was then-
this is now,
tomorrow not a promise
... any longer.

Like a dark companion
whispering the end
of all things,
the ominous lyrics there always;
ones he heard years ago
imprinted
in his now fuzzy brain,
written by a guy-
the last name of ‘Taupin’
...
“Do you know what it’s like
to have a graveyard as a friend-
’cause that’s where they are boy-
all of them...
Oh I know-
how it feels,
to grow old.”
...

Johnny edged
over to the ole timer.
not a word spoken,
poured another shot
pulled the tap-
filled a new glass.

Hugh thanked him
with a cockeyed smile,
like he knew something
the bartender
couldn’t fathom.

He rolled a cigarette
from a pouch
of Bugler tobacco
struck a match-
inhaled deeply,
then made his way
over to the Wurlitzer.

Hugh dug in his pocket,
came up with 4 memories-
inserted all of them...

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