Lyle opened the truck
door again so he could pull the back of the bench seat forward. He needed to grab his coveralls and to find
his flashlight, which he hoped still had working batteries in it. Exposed to the weather again, the wind immediately
began pelting him in the side of his face and tried to rip the door from its
hinge. Before he reached behind the seat
he took off one of his gloves so he could more easily feel for the
flashlight. His bare hand had a subtle,
yet steady tremor to it. He found his
tan canvas winter coveralls, which were insulated, but had holes forming at
nearly every seam. He’d had them for maybe six or seven years, and they
were even older than that; he’d found them left behind by the previous tenant of
one of the dozen or so trailer houses he’d bunked in back in Oklahoma or
Texas. He grabbed
the stocking cap out of the pocket and put it on, before pulling his boots off and shimmying into the coveralls. After stuffing his feet back into his boots, he stretched himself behind the seat again
as best he could, searching for the flashlight.
With his hand contorted
behind the seat and then under it, he found an old red bandanna, and a long
expired gas station beef stick. It took all his will power not to open it in
that instant; he could almost taste the savory beef grease, but fought the
temptation, which is something he had grown accustomed to over the past few
months. Still desperate to find the
flashlight he reached under one more time.
“Got it!” he yelled out, as his fingers touched something the right
size. What his hand was holding onto was cool,
thick, dust covered, and wedged tightly beneath the seat. The spiraling ridges of his fingerprints
realized it before his brain did, but it didn’t take long before every cell in
his body, every aching, trembling cell, recognized that familiar surface in his
hand, a surface that for years was as much a part of his palm as the creases in his skin. Although he had thought about it thousands of times a day, for the first time in more than ninety days,
his hand, still jammed beneath the seat, was unmistakably holding onto a
bottle.
After being frozen for a moment from the shock more than the cold, Lyle pulled his hand away slowly as though he was trying to sneak away without the bottle noticing. He stumbled back away from the truck, tripping on the growing drift and falling
down into the snow. Questions began to race through his mind. "When did I stuff that under there?" It had to have been during one of his payday blackouts, usually the only time he had enough money to buy a full bottle. It had to have been during a blackout because if any part of him had remembered the bottle was there he would have downed it a long time ago. "How long had it been there?" Truthfully it could have been there for years. "What exactly was it?" Was it Jack Daniels? Jim Beam? Old Crow? Crown Royal? Southern Comfort? Memories began to flood his mind, reminscences of parties at lake houses, skinny dipping, poker games, cook outs, and two-stepping with tight-jeaned cowgirls at every honky tonk this side of Tulsa. He could almost hear the laughter carried across the years. That's what he remembered most from those years, hours and hours of laughter. He yearned for the calm, the peace, that used come over him within seconds of his first sip of the day. What he needed more than anything in that moment, though, was the warmth in that bottle.
