High on a four-day binge at the Windsor Tap, Joshua grabs Duncan by his jacket sleeve and pulls him close, tells him that he loves him and Maggie. His gaunt face is bruised. Swollen flesh and broken blood vessels pool darkly beneath his skin.
Your face, Duncan says, but Joshua shakes his head and takes Duncan’s hands in his and tells him that there isn’t another woman in the world like Maggie Bright and he’s going to ask her to marry him. His eyes blaze with passion; his forehead gleams with sweat. Duncan looks down and sees the raw pink, blood-encrusted skin upon Joshua’s knuckles.
Do you believe it, my man? he asks, and Duncan nods, does his best bug eyes, stretching them as wide and as incredulously as Joshua’s, even though he is on the verge of crying—What has Joshua done to himself? Who has done this to him? Duncan fights against the tears and the fear that threatens to overwhelm him, and Joshua looks at the clock over the bar, puts back his beer, and slams the empty upon the table. Goddamn it! I’ve got to get to work, he says. I’ve got to get to work.
And then he is gone, stumbling out the back door of the bar and into the dark alley, as if Duncan were not there, and Duncan supposes that now he will not see him for a week or more. On the table before Duncan sit two empty tequila glasses, lime rinds folded in their centers, a glass of frothy beer and a bottle of Oakland Depot, the gin that Clay sold to the down-and-outs, mostly homeless vets who moved from one shelter or hospice to another.
When Duncan looks up, Clay has placed a cheeseburger before him and is taking the glasses from the table. You all right, Duncan? You want me to call Maggie?
Duncan shakes his head, wipes at his eyes with the back of his jacket, and begins to shovel the burger into his mouth so that he will not have to talk.
Clay looks at the bottle of Oakland Depot in his hand and grunts. No one else will buy this stuff, he says. I’ve got crates and crates of it in the basement stacked against the wall of the old coal chute bunker. It came with the place when I bought it after the war. Must’ve been there for at least a decade before that, because the distillery from across the bay closed in the early sixties, when I was fourteen. Something else.
What’s wrong with Joshua? Duncan finally manages through a mouthful of bun.
I don’t know, Duncan. I wish I did, but even if I did, I doubt I could make it right.
Clay’s words trouble Duncan. Was Joshua so damaged that he was incapable of being saved? And if he couldn’t be saved, redeemed, what did that mean for Mother and him?
But what about my mom? Duncan says. What about Joshua saying he’s going to marry her?
Clay purses his lips, wrings the bar towel in his hands. Color seeps into his thick, benevolent face, and he swallows. Son, that’s just what it takes with these guys. A good woman, and your mother is the best. He nods as if he can convince the both of them. If anyone can turn Joshua around, it’s your mother. Don’t you worry about that.
Clay looks about the room, at the brick walls, the greasy, smoke-stained wallpaper and paneling, the few grizzled men in the booths and on stools, a drunk stumbling, sliding from his stool at the far end of the bar where two men are loudly swearing at each other, and another tottering to the toilets.
The bar is no fucking place for a kid, he says softly. I should call goddamn social services.
He blinks as if taking it all in—the sight and the stink of it, and pushes out his lips as if to rid himself of something foul-tasting. He wipes at his eyes and sighs. I’ll call Maggie, he says. It’s time you were home.