Clove Cigarettes

It was my fifteenth birthday
But all my friends were about nineteen
A little girl still wearing a training bra
Thinking it was time to start dying, time to start breaking laws

You saw right through me
Straight into my glass house and knew me
I remember where we were standing
I remember how it felt
Two little kids
Testing the morning fog
Half way through the break and yearning
Half way young but learning
In the sand we discover
What we’ve got left to burn
And its half way gone away
All the way back home.

It wasn’t just a mask, maybe
Because now look at me baby
I suck those cigarettes down, like they’re sugar cane
The crinkle of wrapping paper
And air like peppermint winter
Habit is like pleasure,
A desire you can’t tame

Bernie

“Well, my ol’ friend Bernie just came back today,” he grumbled out of the working half of his Bell’s-Palsy, leather face. Extending his marbled right arm to his scotch, fingers clutching, gut wrenching, but eyes thirsty for that first five o’clock drink.

He’d just gotten back from visiting my grandma at the home, finally relaxed back in his crap-out chair, deep-sea fishing on TV, when he started the story.

Bernie was a bit of a strange fellow all along. He’d come into the bar too early, leave too late. He was one of those weirdos. He’d buy us drinks, so he became one of the boys, you know? Even still, he always kept his eyes down to the corners.

Anyways, Bernie wore a wedding ring, standard gold number just like mine. We’d never met his wife on Ladies’ Night Thursdays, I don’t think she’s ever come. We had some decent wives. Iris was a good dancer, Lena cooked some amazing potatoes, and Dotty kept to herself, being the youngest of the bunch, but damn she looked good in those tight red dresses. Sometimes one of the boys would offer up his gal for a dance at least, get the poor thing off his barstool for a little bit. But, he’d always decline. That really pisses me off when someone turns down some man-to-man hospitality.

Matter of fact, I don’t know if he ever even introduced himself to my wife. Poor thing, its not like she’d even remember.

So, we are all sitting in the main room one night, it’s a Tuesday, so we’re playing poker, and all pretty drunk. You know how the Elk’s Lodge always pours with a heavy hand. Its’ me, Bill, Bernie, Clark, Dan, and Jim, and the tables hot. Dan’s throwing down more cash than I’ve ever seen in my life, and Jim is hot to trot too. Bernie’s eyes turn to laser beams, he was looking right at Jim, and we’d never seen him look so damn nuts before. It was like he was trying to burn right through Jim’s head, each twist of his mouth from the dull tap-tap of Dan’s fingers to the music cranking the laser up more and more.

But Jim didn’t mind too much, nah, he was busy. He kept his stonewall face the whole game, you never knew if he was on the up an’ up. So we keep playing, and the bets are just soaring out the roof, not like anything I’d ever seen before. Each of them win one hand, and it just keeps going around in a circle. I don’t know what was up. But Jim’s still sitting there with his stone cold face, Dan’s just hooting up a storm as always, and Bernie just cant seem to take his gaze of damn Jim.

So I look on over across the table myself trying to figure out what the hell Bernie’s looking at so hard. Its something close to the table, waist-height. But, nope, its not his waist, that’s just big as ever. It’s not his shirt, we hadn’t eaten yet. His left arm looks normal, wearing the same gold watch his dad gave him back when he was a boy. The only new thing is this weird skin colored thin as a rubber band rope-kind of thing around his right wrist. Totally seamless, almost looked like it had a few layers too it. I didn’t know what the hell it was though. Some kind of new jewelry people wear these days.

So the heats rising in the game, steam all up in the boys faces, red in their cheeks, hunched over their cards. And BAM, Jim wins it all! Every last dollar had been in the pot and he was taking it all home. Damn that lucky son of a gun. So he pushed his chair back, right? Just standing up in celebration, you know, trying to look all tough. He slowly pulls his right hand up to the left size of his face, fingers massaging his scruff while he just looks down in a slant, down at Bernie, grinning as all hell. Just like we all do, when we win.

But Bernie, man, Bernie just snapped. Like some kind of crazy person, you know how they just snap into their loony brains sometimes over nothing? He threw back his chair, arms thrusted right in the edge of the table. And the chips flew everywhere, the cards fluttered all around all of us, the whole table even tipped up and over, almost hit Bill in his bum knee! But Bernie stood right up and glared back at Jim with as much force as he could get out of those old man eyes. Without even a huff he slowly turned, and walked right out the front door like nothing had even happened.

I thought I should go check up on the guy or something. That’s what pals do, you know? But there was something itching at the back of my gut that told me it was bad. Something was wrong. It was that look in his eye, and just how damn weird he was. He does strange stuff all the time. He must have just gotten some bad scotch or something. No big deal.

So we sat around the club for another minute or two just trying to wrap out pea-brains around what had just happened. Jim just cleared up the floor and started sorting out his cash. Bill’s an ex-cop, you know?

Yeah, he was a cop ever since he was a boy. He was a decent cop, as decent as they come. Cops, these days, now they are the real issue. But BillyBoy helped us out all the time. He’d sign off a ticket, make the trip down to the club and clear things up so no real cops would ever come, and he was good at keeping things on the hush hush. Especially the drinking.

So Clark, and Dan, And Bill, and Me, we trusted him, figured if something was wrong he’d know and figure out what to do. But Billy-boy just looked around a little bit and started helping Jim out with the rest of the clean up. Well, it was all gone soon and we were all pretty drunk, drunk enough to go home at least.

Jim goes and shakes all of our hands out in the parking lot, thanking us for a good game. Heh, its not like he ever does that bullshit when he loses. And when he shakes mine, there’s that damn thing around his wrist again, it almost looks like a teeny tiny fishing net to me. But whatever, I blow it off and drive home.

The next morning, I turn on the news from the crap-out chair, and what do I see? City all, all black and smoky. Someone had burnt it down in the middle of the night. Some crazy man stalked right into city hall, all masked up and dressed in black like the criminals on TV, and lit the Damn Christmas tree on fire with a bottle of Jack and a match. The sick-o even made a display for the cops, and draped panty hoes across what was left of the metal-framed main entrance. But the things were missing a foot. We’ll sort of. If was cut off on the end, and safety pinned back on, like someone’d cut the ankle out of ‘em.

Anyway, sorry sometimes I mess up my stories. I’m old, you know. Pretty soon I won’t be your grandpa anymore, Ill be some other sack of bones in the ground…

So, we didn’t see Bernie for a good two years. We wondered the first few months or so, and we talked about him some nights when we got drunk and thought about the past. But nobody minded much, the sucker was such a loony-toon. Then, all of a sudden, yesterday, Tuesday night, poker night, there’s Bernie!! A little more crumpled up and hunched over, sure, but still was him! He had them eyes again too.

I never got around to asking Jim what that thing on his wrist ever was, and he wasn’t there last night. Hopefully tomorrow night he’ll be back dancing away with Iris.

I still don’t think my grandpa ever questions what happened that night, or the lead up to it. He probably wouldn’t even believe it if we explained it to him. But rest assured, someone in there knew what was going on. Maybe Bill even, maybe them all. They might have all even been in on it. Poor guy, what was he supposed to do? When you’re living so close with the man that’s playing puppets with your life, what are you going to do?

I’ll tell you one thing for sure, it definitely wasn’t a coincidence they called him Burnie.