ED'S LAST SIX PACK
-Bart Solarczyk
Ed's last six pack got drunk by his son & two sons-in-law. They were cleaning out the old man's apartment, comforting their wives & sisters, talking slow motion dream talk about heaven & far better places. It was 97 degrees in Chicopee, Massachusetts. One son-in-law had vomited his cinnamon roll breakfast & his stomach was queasy. He & his wife had travelled the farthest to be there. It was a toss up between which sister was taking it the worst. One had walked through yesterday's funeral in a quasi-catonic fog, an etherized marionette, her husband dutifully pulling the strings, hoping he was tugging the right ones, cautious of entanglements. The other had wept & bowed & clung prolongedly at the casket. So much finality. So many regrets. In any case, out of deference to the son-in-law-who-had-travelled-the-farthest's sour stomach, the brother & brother-in-law allowed him the two Budweisers. They graciously chose the Knickerbockers, domestic beer's domestic beer, all from the same horse. He was grateful. The Buds soothed his gut. They divided Ed's things. They left some stuff for a homeless guy who had just moved in across the hall. They gave food & plates & pots & pans to old ladies who lived in the building. They all liked Ed, crazy old fuck that he was. If only they could have known him when. They'd have liked him even more. Truly. But they liked him now anyway, despite his crotchety attitude & paranoia, his stubbornness & nose blowing & occasional outbursts. It comforted the sisters to know that people had still liked Ed. He had driven so many away & been driven away by so many. His son, his wives, his grandsons, his daughter-in-law. Some had understood him better than others. Some could forgive him. They knew the strokes & glaucoma & emphysema & bad back & the many gray dusty years at the printing press had beaten him into a shape not wholly of his own making. There were those who remembered him in a far brighter light. Sometimes, even in these last dark years, a sliver of that light had still shone. But Ed laid down to die one night, he knew it. He'd watched his TV mass & read his nightly prayer card & slept stubbornly beneath the light meant to hang above the dining area table in his L-shaped room. He'd rearranged it to suit his own needs despite his daughter's protests: the table at the window so he could watch the world while he ate & smoked, mostly smoked; his bed beneath the light, sleeping with it on, a child's charm, a guardian angel, his small world's sun. Ed said his prayers & laid down to die. He'd seen his favorite daughter the week before. The one who lived 600 miles away. The one who'd stuck by him through the many hard times. The divorces, the remarriages, the cold plate suppers, the ostracism. The daughter he was proudest of, married to a son-in-law he loved & trusted. He regretted not seeing their chubby, undisciplined dog one last time. He loved that simple animal more than most things. But the time seemed right & the world had grown so very, very heavy. He was ready to shed that load. The sons-in-law, the son, the daughters, they told themselves this as they squatted in the last room he'd called home. Sweat & tears & memories. The brothers-in-law popped the tops on the second round. A toast, quipped a son-in-law. Our last drink on Ed. They clinked cans, drank fast & carried the final load to the elevator, out into the sticky heat & the son's waiting pickup. Later they would drink more beer, smoke a few joints, take a swim. The sisters were not eager to leave. They came to embrace where his bed had stood, flesh of his flesh,sobbing into one another's necks. They talked about a time long ago & rocked like little girls who'd lost their daddy.
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