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June '04 
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ANDREW BOMBACK 20 Stories About My Dead Brother, Ollie |
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The Girl at the End of the Bar Elizabeth Ellen
The backseat of the ’57 Volvo sedan was still cold, the aged heater unable to provide enough warmth to prevent the girl from seeing her own breath. It was the winter of the great blizzard, though only hints of its imminent arrival were yet visible through the frosted windows. On the other side of the glass the snow was falling in a leisurely manner, pacing itself for the accelerated speed to come. In the closed mouth of the girl seated in back, the tongue was drawn to the new void, filling the space left from the tooth that had been spat out earlier in the day between mouthfuls of Cream of Wheat. As the car bumped along the dirt road under a canopy of trees planted long ago in the days of Johnny Appleseed, the girl’s mind was on the tooth, fallen and lone, there in a tissue on the table beside her bed, waiting for her to return and place it under her pillow. Upfront the grown ups sat, the mother and the Wolfman, silent in their own thoughts that did not involve lost teeth or the taste of blood. The Wolfman had entered their lives two years prior, on the eve of the country’s bicentennial. He came dressed in denim, beneath a beard that was allowed to grow at will, the same as the hair that flowed over his suede collar. He brought with him, into their living room, the Loyalists, the men they knew only as Smoke and Squirrel, Goofy and Sweet, Hog and Red. These were the men who took the girl upon their knees, who brought her forbidden sweets and told the girl that their hearts were reserved for her. These were the men who told her jokes and made her giggle until the hour was late, the smoke in the wood-heated living room thick, and the mother made her climb the stairs, feet dragging, to bed. Before the Wolfman there had been two other men. One, the father, had come and gone, staying only long enough for the girl’s conception, leaving a single photograph and a mere hint of a memory. The second man, the only one the girl ever called Daddy, had remained longer, long enough to see her walk and talk, to teach her to ride a bike and wave goodbye. In fact, it had been the mother who had left him, in a newly constructed house meant to be their home, in a state they had moved to together, for a fresh start. She had packed their bags and taken the girl with her, though the girl hadn’t wished to go, had wanted only to stay and play Go Fish, to eat cold hot dogs and watch basketball with her Daddy, though he wasn’t, the mother now reminded her, really her dad. But the mother’s will was strong and the girl but a girl. She had taken hold the mother’s hand and not looked back. In the backseat of the car that kept chugging along, the girl might have been thinking of the left behind man, of showing him her tooth with its bit of dried blood at the root. Then again, she might not have been thinking of him at all. The mother had turned on the F.M. and the girl was concentrating on the fifty ways to leave a lover. She wondered how many of these ways the mother had already used, of how many more she might use in the future. She wondered if the Wolfman were wondering the same thing. The parking lot was already full when they pulled into a space between familiar trucks and cars. The sky was darkening and the snow was falling with increased velocity and greater weight than before. The girl opened her mouth and stuck out her tongue, tasting the coolness as they made their way to the door. She had to run to catch up. The mother and the Wolfman were already half inside, waiting for her to enter into the smoky warmth of the bar
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