Brad Kester

He stood up in a small crowd and walked out of the room. No one noticed him when he left. He was thinking about everyone, what they were thinking about him standing up, leaving like that. But no one noticed him. They were listening to the speaker in the middle of the circle.

When he left he went outside into the snow, the crispy air, and watched his breath expand and disappear. The cold air on his lungs felt clean, he was glad to get out of the room full of second-hand smoke, and away from all the loathing alcoholics who were lighting up. Bellowing on about their problems. He was one of them, he had to admit. But every man has a snapping off, where he can’t stand to listen to another man’s problems. Every man has to fend for himself.

He was a little bit drunk when he showed up for the meeting that night. When he left he got into his car and turned on the engine to warm up. For a while he sat there with the radio on listening to classical music. Any noise to drown out the vibrations going on all around him. He needed to get some thinking done. He was waiting for the meeting to get out because he wanted to talk to Barbara. She was the only reason he came to these things anyway. He liked her and thought that coming to the group was a good way to make it seem like he was a decent fellow. As good as any.

When the meeting was done and all the alcoholics came outside and got into their cars, he opened the door for Barbara and she got into the passenger seat. He drove out of the parking lot to take her home. When they were halfway home she started to ask him why he had left in the middle of the meeting. He said he couldn’t stand listening to winos trying to sort out their problems any longer. She was offended by this and didn’t talk to him for the rest of the ride.

When he got to her house, she said goodnight cordially. He said he was sorry about what he had said, and that he respected her for trying to turn her life into something worthwhile. And then he kissed her on the cheek, like he had done the night before, and she put her hand on his forehead, brushing back his hair, and got out of the car. He watched her go inside, saw her son watching television in the living room with the light on. Saw her kiss her little boy on the forehead with the same lips she had used just a moment earlier. He thought about his own mother right then, thought about how she used to run her nails over his neck gently and how good it used to feel. He wanted this woman to be his wife, he wanted her fingernails on his neck, gently and motherly. He wanted to cook dinner for her, but he knew it was a long shot. He could have a short romance with this woman if he wanted, but he knew it would never last. She was an alcoholic after all, a wino just like the rest of them. The classical music was still playing on the radio, but he didn’t notice, just like no one had noticed him when he got up and left the group. They were all too busy thinking about their own problems.

He left her house and stopped at the bank to deposit a pay check he had gotten earlier that day. It wasn’t much, but it was something, and as he thought about Barbara, he knew it was the only thing he really had going for himself.

He skipped a stone across the stream and was surprised that it only skipped once before sinking into the deep. He tried another, a flatter one with smooth edges. Much better, he thought, this one will skip better.

At the campsite he broke some twigs to get the fire started. After the twigs would come the big logs, he had already chopped some up with his hatchet, they’d been waiting there all day to shed their molecules in a blaze of fire. The man would use it to cook the fish he had caught.

It was all the same. Hunting and eating, sleeping, waking up, cleaning and sharpening knives, boiling the water from the stream to make it drinkable. Even the hikes he took every once in a while to the summit were a thing of routine, a mundane god-awful waste of time.

When the kindling had caught, he placed a couple of the big ones in the fire pit, leaning them against one another to make a tipi. That way air could flow beneath them and keep the fire healthy, a fire needs oxygen to stay alive. He could see part of the tipi starting to slide out of place and instinctively he reached out. “Ah, stupid,” he growled when his hand was burned. He knew he’d have a blister in the morning, but it wasn’t anything serious, just some minor pain he’d have to deal with until it healed. It was stupid, though, he should not have reached out his hand like that, he knew better.

He put the fish out on a big flat rock and let it sizzle there until the fire worked into it, making it dry, making it change color. While it cooked he went to the bushes and took a leak and then the stream to rinse his hands. He thought he had some salt and pepper left somewhere in a little shaker.

The fish tasted good. Not the best he’d ever caught, and certainly not the biggest, but it was satisfying to him. He picked his teeth and burned the fish skin until it became anonymous ash among the embers and coal. Somehow, strangely, the eye of the fish and part of its face around the mouth refused to burn up in the flame. It stayed there intact, clinging to the side of the log, no longer a functioning organ, no longer capable of sight. The man was tempted several times to poke it with a stick and move it to a hotter place in the fire, to put it out of its misery. But he never did. He didn’t move at all. He just sat there. Was it the fish’s misery or his own misery that he felt when he looked into that mutilated body, the eye?

Waste of time.

He put another log into the pit and let the fire blaze on. The stars were out now, and the moon was a million miles away. He moved closer to the flames to keep his chest warm and rubbed his shoulders back and forth with his hands to make friction. But he kept staring at the eye that wouldn’t burn up, somehow feeling sick to his stomach about it all. He thought about death a lot in those days and wasn’t quite sure why, or how, or when it would come to him. When the fire had flickered out he got into his tent, zipped into his sleeping bag, and tried to go to sleep.

Until late hours: Grown men discussing common perplexities.