Silver Creek, 1969
Andrew Milward

Do you remember? Do you remember that barn, Colton? Silver Creek. And that man, the big one, who got me. We’d hid inside his drafty old barn for three days, cheeks pressed hard to the slats, hoping he wouldn’t find us. Damn, those years. The tortures of a long memory are the endless hours to think back on it all, wondering where you are now. Remember how we started out? Two old souls with no jobs, telling tales, saucing it up in the cheapest bar in Kansas City, Kansas. You said hey to me that first night and we talked for the entire evening. Colton Bunce, you said, extending your hand and me mine. Where’d you get a name like that? I asked and, like you’d answered it a million times already, you said, Southeast Missouri, which made us both laugh. But when we saw each other the next day, at bar’s open, our eyes met with mutual embarrassment and shame. The things we told each other the night before about jobs, successful careers, and loving wives were lies and it was clear that all we really were was two drunks, sick for the drink. But instead of turning around to leave, pretending you didn’t see me, and hoping we never saw each other again, you came in and slapped me on the back, How’s work going, buddy? And I said, Step into my office. Got a meeting with the boss here in a few minutes. Not looking forward to it—asshole’s tighter ‘n a snare drum. You laughed and then me too, and you said, Screw your boss. Have a drink with me. We spent all afternoon in the bourbon, talking or not talking, so it went.

So, no family then? you said later after a stretch of silence, and I nodded. Was married once years ago, until she up and left. When she actually got to know me, I winked. Know what I mean? Right then you exhaled in that way you used to—two quick snorts through the nostrils, like an antsy horse. And you, I smiled, tell me when you lost yours. You let one half of your face grin and said, No lies. Got a wife, sad to say. She don’t speak to me none, but… And a boy, you added, nodding. But soon he’ll be leaving to go off and fight. You set down your glass and nodded at the bartender. The war, I said and you said, Yeah, the war.

It wasn’t until your boy shipped out, two months later, that we did, too. Left the city in my beaten old Ford. Your wife had had it, kicked you clean out. You said California, that that was where your boy would be coming back in two years, but I figured we’d be lucky if the jalopy saw us to Denver. We made it maybe 200 miles out before she gave up on us, somewhere we’d never heard of, the kind of place that didn’t seem to exist until you were stuck there. Do you remember? You spent a good while under the shade of the propped hood, huffing, pretending like you knew what the hell you were doing. I sat on the trunk and watched the cars speed past, listening to you mumble about the engine. Let’s leave her, I finally said, walking up to the front of the car. We’ll walk—catch a ride. Hitch. Hell, we’ve got two years to get there, I laughed. Your head was hovering over the steamy insides, hands smudged black with grease. We can at least scrap it and make a few bucks, you said, and you were right. We found a man who ran a garage and wrecker service a couple miles down who said it was undrivable but gave us twenty dollars for parts—some kind of kindness, I suppose. And that moment, after getting the money from that man, we both had the same kind of notion, that is, the kind to get stinking drunk. The man with his hard, little eyes pointed us in the direction of a place. I still remember the name—The Den. It made our old place in the city look classy. It was the sort of place we might have fit in well if you could have kept your mouth shut. It was only the early afternoon but we faced several backsides lining bar stools as we walked through the door. I later gathered that they’d all been let off from the tire factory that had all but closed. We strode up and sat on two seats in the corner. Two Millers, you said in a snappy city way and the stubbly fat man just looked at the television—more on about the moon—scratching once at his neck. This moon business is fascinating, Chubbs, but we got a new ball team in Kansas City. How ‘bout putting on their game. The fat man’s fingers slowed their scratching and he finally looked over at us, as did the row of eyes to our left. I know you must remember this part, though, because they were smart and waited until we were liquored up before beating the stuffing out of us. The fat man and his friends stood over us, and after everyone had gotten in their licks, he searched our pockets and took the last of our money.

I swear we must have walked for thirty hours before finding Silver Creek, feeling our bodies expand with bruise. In the early fall our jackets grew holes that siphoned the cool air into our arms and chests, filling them with sickness and hurt, the crushing silence. Do you remember you said, Just for the night when we arrived at dusk that first evening, unaware how things’d shake out. How relieved we were then as we watched the house and farm from a ditch for a good half hour, seeing the man and woman sit down for dinner, to make sure we knew everyone was inside the house before slipping into the barn. It was cool in there. A stable barn smelling of stool, we moved past the itchy horses and blank-faced cows, through the stink and mess, to the back where there were sacks of feed and bales of hay. There we shoved a couple together and slid behind them, pulling our coats over us, and slept for hours that seemed days.

I woke sometime in the predawn and watched you sleep for a while, the way your chest lowered and raised, lowered and raised, like you were running somewhere mighty fierce. Then I heard something. The door began to open and you startled. I set my hand on your chest and a finger before my nose, telling you to hush quiet. A man entered the barn, moving amongst the stables. He was heavy and breathing hard, his mind set on something alright. He came over by us and grabbed a sack of feed. I swear my heart nearly leapt out my throat, but the big man must not have seen the tips of our shoes poking out from behind the bales. When he left, you were all worked up, ready to head on. Can’t go to jail, you panicked, but I said we should stay for a while, rest up for a few days, that we could live off what we could scavenge and sleep in the barn. I told you we could watch the big man’s routine and learn how to avoid him so he wouldn’t catch us. He’d never know. What about drink? you said. This place is called Silver Creek, I said pointing to the door, where it was painted in black letters, there’s bound to be a creek around here where we can get water. But that had been your liver talking I realized when you repeated, a little lower, But what are we going to do about the drink?

You nearly shook yourself to death that first night, less from the night chill than the horrible ache. I was feeling the pains, too, but not near as bad. After our close call with the big man I decided on a new place in the barn behind some bins in the loft. I watched you shiver and mumble, placing my coat over you, and leaned back against a crate. The next morning by the time the man had come and gone, sacks of feed in each hand, herding the animals out, you were nearly out of your head. You said the damnedest things, stranger than if you were lost in the sauce. Stuff I imagine you wanted nobody to ever hear—about your wife and your boy. Always your boy. That’s how I learned his name, Robert. That’s how I learned the truth about him. I never got that bad, though my fingers ached so much I wished they’d just go on and fall off already. I took care of us for a while when you were lowly in that way. You slept and shook for another day and after watching the big man’s movements, I ran out one night looking for the creek but never found it, so I was bold enough to sneak up close to the house and use the hose to fill a pale I borrowed from an old dray horse, who just looked at me, snorted. Stole some feed, too. Bone meal though, same as you’d use for fertilizer, which is my way of saying it tasted of shit. Quarry-hard as it was, it nearly broke my teeth. I tried to get you to nibble on it once or twice, but you spit out the bits I put in your mouth. That’s not what I need, you said, shaking still, teeth like hooves on cobblestone. You know what I need. So I knew what you were asking of me when you said, Just enough to get us out of here, back to a main road. We’ll catch a ride from there. Your eyes were small and desperate, trying to hold on, like dying embers of a gone fire. To California, you said before falling back into that other world, mumbling.

I cupped some water in my hand and dripped a little in your mouth, running the coolness over your gums before slipping out into the dark. I’d seen the previous night that the lights in the house had shut off right near full dark. The knob on the doorway to the kitchen eased with only the slightest squeak, and then I was inside, moving across the floor not much quicker than a snail’s fastest. I was sure any second the man was gonna appear or call the cops on us, on me. I stopped after every step, listening for anything. The house buzzed loudly with its own kind of silence. When I finally found what must have been the only bottle of liquor in the house, a liter of no-name bourbon in a cabinet above the stove, I couldn’t resist taking a sniff right there. Nothing in that life ever tasted so good, I swear. I knew this is what you’d need to be yourself again. I was too eager, though, and bumped the leg of a chair that knocked against the table, groaning a bit. I froze, hearing a creak upstairs. But then there was nothing, so I moved on out quickly. The dry splintery grass crackled with each step and I hurried, imagining your expression when you saw the bottle. Damned if I wasn’t almost there when the big man caught me in the shoulder from the doorway. First, only like a horsefly stinging, but then my arm was powerless and I watched the bottle fall from my hand, thudding into a patch of dirt where the grass had been kicked up. And then I was there on the ground, reaching out for it. I didn’t even realize, feeling the warmth soak my shirt, thinking the bottle must have broke and run onto me, and how much you would have hated that, but it was still in one piece a yard ahead of me. Cheek on the ground, I turned my head enough to make out the stars above me, looking down like a million sad eyes. Then I felt it again, this time in my neck, and that’s when I knew. I was thinking of you inside the barn shivering as it all ran out of me, but then I saw you a few minutes later stealing out past a spinney of cottonwoods.

Afterwards, the police arrived and they were looking down at what a mess I was, nudging my sides with their boots. He ain’t the first bum to’ve come round here. They arrive with the seasons, regular-like. Do you remember him saying that? I guess you wouldn’t have heard, would you, gone by then. I like to think you did, though, because I know you would have been tickled and snorted in that horse manner of yours. Do you remember? Do you remember anything, Colton? A bar where we had our stomachs punched out. A car that broke down before we could even leave Kansas. A barn where cold wind passed from my skin to yours. The memory your trembling mouth betrayed to me of your son Robert, who’d taken his own life years before, nowhere near Vietnam. A dark sky thinned, like our jackets, by small holes of bright stars—that saw everything we did. Do you?

© 2007 Andrew Milward