lounge; his nimble fingers were in constant motion — straightening various bottles of rum so that the labels showed, wiping the counter at the same time — seemingly oblivious to the only patron in the establishment, but finally speaking when Hollis took a seat at the bar, saying with his back turned, “Can't serve you anything good until six, unless you're wanting java or a cup of water. If it's something stronger, you'll have to wait about ten minutes. So what'll it be then?”
“Not sure,” Hollis said, setting the cane on an adjacent stool. “What do you recommend?”
The old man dropped from sight, stooping below the bar. “I'll tell you in ten minutes,” he said, his voice mingling with the clanking of silverware. “Sit tight.”
At six o'clock sharp the cocktails began to materialize as if borne of liquid alchemy, strange and beautiful concoctions Hollis had never previously tasted, one coming right after the other — measured, shaken, poured, and conjured by the cordial barkeeper — landing in front of him in tiki-shaped glasses, garnished with tiny blue or orange Japanese parasols, presented to him with names as unique as the drinks themselves: Pagan Love, South Sea Cooler, Planter's Punch, Dead Man's Delight. Once the alcohol had kicked in, making Hollis more effusive than he had been in ages, it was another name which rolled proudly out of the old man's mouth, revealing himself to be Skipper Ken, the Zombie Cantina's owner, explaining, too, that he was also a foremost authority on rum drinks and had visited practically all the islands of the West Indies. Everything which adorned the bar, he told Hollis, had been collected on his many travels — except, of course, the jukebox and much of the furniture.
“It's a pleasure to meet you, Skipper Ken,” Hollis said, reaching over the bar to grasp the old man's hand.
“The pleasure is mine, son. Now, what should you try next?” Skipper Ken pivoted, facing the shelves of backlit bottles, hands placed on hips while contemplating the next selection. “Let's see — ”
One day, Hollis thought, I'll have me a joint like this — make my own little private cantina somewhere, won't leave it for a minute. One day I'll be Captain Hollis, old and dignified and happy, sailing my very own landlocked ship.
“I'm figuring a Hunchback's Nipple might do the trick. Or maybe a Rusty Hook is what you're needing.”
And soon the final round was poured, and, shortly thereafter, Hollis managed to find his way back to the depot, pouring himself onto a Greyhound bus bound for Minnesota. But he wouldn't remember exiting the Zombie Cantina that morning — forgetting the cane at the bar, staggering along sidewalks which had gained foot traffic since dawn — nor would he recall buying a ticket or taking up two seats as he slumbered for hours on a Silversides coach. Well before noon he was snoring gently with the vibrations of the bus, consumed by a liberating sleep which carried him from the West Coast and far across the desert. Outside the flat midday light dimmed to darker hues, and in the distance storm clouds canvassed mesas, producing sheets of black rain which appeared like vertical streaks of lead rubbed upon paper.
Debra sat in silence, keeping perfectly still while Hollis talked. It was the first she had heard of the Zombie Cantina, although the story didn't surprise her. In the past, he had mentioned his intense need to get drunk after being discharged, yet he mostly avoided the specifics, hardly addressing the consequences of his brief drinking spree even when she had asked him to elaborate. He had, in fact, always shrugged off the alcohol abuse as simply a transitional bump on the return road to civilian life, a fleeting misstep of his youth which wasn't worth dissection. But sitting there beside her at the kitchen table, his voice trembled as he spoke of those days, recounting what she already knew while, without actually elaborating, also shedding some light on the confusion and lack of understanding he maintained for the actions of his younger incarnation; then that which he had always told her was trivial or no longer relevant began, instead, hinting at a man who couldn't help but look back on his life with apprehension, often discovering a stranger occupying the pockets of his memory where fragments of his previous self should have resided.
“That Halloween,” Hollis said, staring at the table, “pretty much set me on a course for a five-week bender, as you well know. The odd thing is, I'd barely touched a drop prior to then, but when I got started I didn't want to stop. Can't say why for sure, I just can't. I guess I was having a difficult readjustment, or likely it was an ill- conceived attempt to stabilize my frazzled nervous system. Don't know why, I don't. I mean, it's sort of like I fell asleep on that bus home and didn't wake up for a month or more. So you can imagine very little is clear in my head about those weeks — very little really, almost nothing at all — until the moment I met you. That's when I woke up, that's how I think of it.”
Hollis paused for a moment, thoughtfully biting at his bottom lip, tugging the skin with his front teeth. The moon shined through the kitchen windows, illuminating the countertops and the no-wax vinyl flooring. Debra shut her eyes, breathing deeply. Then he, too, inhaled deeply, exhaling like a prolonged sigh before continuing. Everything was like a dream, he went on to explain. The minute he carefully maneuvered down the steps of the Greyhound bus — having arrived in Critchfield three days later, bringing himself to the asphalt of his hometown on a cold, overcast November morning — everything felt unreal to him. “I suppose I didn't realize I was big news in ol’ Critchfield, probably only because nothing much of note happened there anyway.” But the trombone-heavy C.S.D. high-school marching band and a crowd of about fifty locals had come to greet him with applause and cheers, at first encircling him with a cacophony of music and hard slaps to his shoulders, then fanning out to give him enough space in which to limp self-consciously toward the weeping, hand-wringing figure of his mother — while a discordant, halting version of “When the Saints Go Marching In” accompanied his lurching, Frankenstein-like gait.
“She had on a pale print dress,” Hollis said, when thinking of his mother, “and her hair had been done up nice, and she was crying. I'd never seen that woman cry for anyone — Eden wasn't a crier — but there she was, crying at the sight of me. She wore face powder and dry rouge, except the tears were making a mess of it. Next thing I know she ‘s hugging me in those big arms of hers, and she's holding me so close I could feel her corset pressing against my uniform. And after that — well, you know — they paraded me straight home, I guess. I got properly paraded after that. That's what they decided to do, for some idiotic reason.”
Led by the town's single fire engine, the mayor of Critchfield drove a chariot-red Olds 98 convertible along the downtown stretch of Ripley Avenue, chauffeuring Hollis and Eden at a top speed of ten miles per hour. “Local hero Hollis,” the mayor shouted, repeatedly honking the horn. From the convertible's backseat, a bewildered Hollis smiled uncomfortably next to his beaming mother, responding in kind to the enthusiastic waves of the people who had braved the chilly weather to stand outside to welcome him — an array of pale, flushed faces he had seen throughout his life but who hadn't much acknowledged him until that morning. Even so, his contentious, tactless stepfather, Rich, was nowhere to be seen — nowhere among the townsfolk who had greeted his bus, nor glimpsed with those who were waving at the passing convertible. But soon enough the well-wishers thinned into empty sidewalks, and then, as if transporting him back in time, the convertible accelerated, parting ways with the fire engine when turning onto a residential street — speeding past Hollis's elementary school, and the First Methodist Church he had attended since childhood, and the familiar yards and brick homes which had always been there — rolling to a complete stop in front of the two-story Craftsman-style house he had previously vowed never to revisit, the property looking no different than the day he had left it, or, indeed, than the day he was born: front window boxes filled with withered flowers, mature trees providing a canopy over the shed-roof dormer.
There was no question, he now told Debra, that his memory had become unreliable over the years, and as a result certain events likely didn't occur in the same manner in which he was relating them to her. Although he recalled with some clarity the oppressive atmosphere which consumed him when he entered the house right behind his mother, seeping into him from all sides within the foyer; and like the swift drumming of a hammer against a nail, whatever fleeting happiness and relief he had felt was immediately leveled, supplanted by an interminable weight in his gut which made him want to twist around and quickly hobble to somewhere else, anywhere else.
“Who knows for sure what I was expecting. I mean, as long as I wasn't fighting North Koreans, I should've been fine and dandy. As long as I was alive and standing on my own two feet and wasn't in the hospital anymore, nothing on earth should've gotten under my skin, especially anything inside that old house, and especially a petty, mean-spirited little guy like Rich. I suppose in my head I'd thought I was going to be someone else when I got back there, a full-grown man and not just a kid anymore, and so I'd react to things maybe differently — except it wasn't quite like that, unfortunately.”
His stepfather — jowly and overweight, a short man with a smattering of gray hair combed neatly on his balding scalp — emerged from the living room folding a newspaper, dressed in his normal attire of black suspenders, black slacks, and a pale blue button-up shirt. Staring at Hollis while avoiding eye contact, Rich spoke in
