A Neighbor

A Neighbor

A neighbor that’s a real nice guy who lives four houses down the street from us, has an older panel truck with a smashed in front fender, that sits on the driveway most of the time.
He called me on a Friday around 6:00pm in the afternoon and asked if I could come down to this bar, where he and I have shot a few games of pool and had a few beers before.
He said, “if you could come down, we can get
a few games of pool going and have some fun”.
I figured it wasn’t that far, I could be there in
a few minutes and it's still pretty early.
I told him, “sure that sounds like fun,
I’ll be down in a little while”.
As I hung up the phone, my wife looked over at me and said,” is that, that boozer”?
Yes but the word is he doesn't drink like he used to, he pretty much limits himself to a beer or two. She said, “he's a drunk, a beer or two, that's a laugh”.
Well we're just going to shoot a few games of pool, I'm sure he will be ok.
As I pulled in the parking lot where the bar was I noticed his panel truck way at the far end of the lot taking up two spaces and parked at an angle.
Making a quick loop in the parking lot,
I squeezed in to a parking space near the entrance to the bar.
As I got out of my car I noticed that the
drivers door of his panel truck was partially open.
I walked across the lot to his truck and opened the door a little more and I could smell liquor in the truck.
I'm thinking this is not looking good, and
hoping that he hasn't gone off on a drinking binge, again.
I entered the bar and I saw him sitting way in the back at a small table in the corner with an ashtray filled with cigarettes, and some still smoldering. He was slumped over on the table laying on one arm. His other hand was wrapped around a partially empty whiskey bottle with an empty glass near the full ashtray.
As I sat down across from him at the table.
I stared straight at him for about a minute and thought what a waste, it looks like my wife was right, he's a drunk.
I reached over and tapped him gently on the shoulder. He raised his head up and looked at me with bloodshot eyes for a few seconds and said, “who the hell are you?”
Then grabbing the whiskey bottle with a shaking hand and drinking what was left of it, which was about three good swallows then rubbing his eyes for a moment, he said, “oh hi you finally made
it”.
Ya,it's me,it looks like you've had quite a bit to drink already. Picking up a cigarette butt from the full ashtray trying to light it, he answered in a half drunken voice, “ya too much, but what the hell I'm having fun”.
As we sat there very calmly talking back-and-forth to each other, he suddenly jumped up out of the chair and went towards the bar and yelled, “give me a beer and a glass of whiskey”.
As he placed the beer on the table it splashed over the side of the glass running onto a few cigarettes that were laying on the table.
I told him twice I didn't want a drink, seeing what kind of condition he was in, I thought it would be better not to drink.
I said, “let's get a game of pool going”.
He said with a raspy voice, “in a little while, we’ll get a game going”.
In a low sad voice he said, “would you drink that beer with me please, I need someone to drink with”. I said,“maybe later,I will”.
He sat across from me holding his glass of whiskey with both hands, then guzzling it down in one gulp.
We sat at the table for a long while,as he went on rambling about different stuff.
So I sat there slouched back with my hands crossed over my stomach. My feet sticking straight under the table as he went on and on. I told him,
“I better get going it's getting late”.
He paid no attention to what I said about leaving.
As people walked past our table he would reach out to get their attention and make some small fast jokes with them.
He started talking to these two women at the table next to us, the way he was talking I could tell he was trying to line something up with one of them for later.
Knowing he was married and with a son at home really bothered me.
As I walked away from the table, I glanced back at him rubbing on one of the girl's shoulder as the bartender delivered more drinks to their table.
Getting back home, my wife was sitting there watching TV.
She turned and looked at me as I open the front door and came in to our living room.
She put the TV Guide down on the coffee table and said, “hi” and asked how it went with the boozer.
It was terrible he was pretty drunk and only drank whisky the whole time.
My wife and I talked for a while and then went on to bed and had a good night's sleep.
The next day his wife called and asked if I
could go down to the bar where her husband and I were last night and get him.
She said the bartender called and said he was pretty intoxicated and raising hell and he didn't want him driving.
He didn’t know what vehicle in the parking lot was his, he was going to put him in the back seat to sleep it off.
So he gave in and let him sleep it off in a storage room in the back of the bar.
I told her sure, I'll go over and see what I could do.
She suddenly broke down crying so badly I could hardly understand her.
She proceeded to tell me over the phone about how bad an alcoholic he was.
She said, he would hide whiskey in different places throughout the house.
Every three to four weeks he'd wander off for a few days. When he ended up back home he would be so bloated and wiped out from a long binge of drinking and not eating that she could hardly recognize him.
The following day I had to rush him to the hospital, our doctor met us there and said to me, his body was so beat up from drinking hard liquor for so many years, he didn't think he had long to live……
I told her we were sorry to hear that about him.
I would talk to her a little more when I got him back home to her.
I drove down to the bar where he was passed out on this old beat up couch in a back room. With the help of a few of the other guys at the bar we put him in the back seat of my car.
As I was driving him home, glancing into the backseat he looked in real bad shape, nothing like he looked the day before.
He looked like a street person that's been laying in an alley somewhere for days.
He smelled awful, like whiskey, cigarettes, and body odor.
I pulled up in front of his house and saw his wife standing near the doorway waiting for our
arrival, she was crying terribly.
A next-door neighbor friend of theirs helped me get him into the house.
She and I talked for a while on the front porch and I told her, I think he'll be ok, I better get going, take care of yourself.
A week later he called to apologize for what went on and thanked me for helping his wife and getting him back home.
He said it was a rough week sobering up
and I promise you and my wife
and son that I will never drink again.....
Two months later, my wife ran into a lady friend of theirs.
The woman knew that I had helped her friends husband and got him home when he was drunk and passed out in the back of this bar one afternoon.
She said, his wife told her that he was drinking so bad and that when she went to work at her part-time day job, she would take what money they had and all the loose change with her that she could find throughout the house so he couldn't used it to go to the liquor store to buy whiskey.
She told me one day she had forgotten about her son’s small glass piggy bank in his bedroom, there was about eight or nine dollars of change in it.
He found the piggy bank and went down an bought whiskey with it at the liquor store.
A couple of days later she said the police notified her that a security guard found this black guy behind the liquor store in the front seat of his panel truck dead.
They verified it was him, and he had an empty whiskey bottle by his side and was holding his son's empty glass piggy bank on his lap with both hands tightly wrapped around it.....The End

By Norman Clifford