Blue Eyes and Cheap Whiskey

Just bring me the goddamned bottle and a glass that doesn’t leak. I ain’t here for conversation, therapy, salvation, or any of the other overpriced snake-oil comforts folks sell.

I came here for whiskey and enough of it to cauterize memory. Make it quick.

I plan to sit right here in the dark corner of this rotten little bar and get drunk in a fast and filthy riky-tiky fashion until my brains resemble cold gravy sliding down a wall. I aim to burn out every last surviving brain cell that had the misfortune to witness what happened this morning.

Because this morning I helped murder a dog’s spirit.

Not the dog itself. That would’ve been kinder.

No, I delivered him breathing and hopeful into the fluorescent-lit asshole factory people politely call “the shelter.” Which is a fine name if you also call a prison camp a summer resort.

Pop Eye trusted me. That’s the part that’s chewing holes through my guts.

The little bastard was mostly blind, completely deaf, and entirely dependent on the handful of creatures in this world who hadn’t yet proven themselves complete sons of bitches. He walked beside me, believing I was taking him somewhere safe.

Dogs are stupid that way. God bless them for it.

The workers behind the counter didn’t even look at him like he was alive. One woman slapped a number on paperwork as if she were pricing cantaloupes.

Another grabbed his leash and hauled him away while he stumbled sideways, trying to figure out why the world suddenly smelled like bleach, fear, and abandonment. He kept turning his cloudy blue eyes back toward me.

Hell, I know he couldn’t even really see me, but he knew I was there. And then I did the unforgivable thing. I let go of the leash.

That poor, confused son of a bitch dug his paws into the floor for half a second when they dragged him toward the back room. Just half a second.
That’s all it took. One tick of the clock.

One fucking heartbeat. I watched the exact instant hope packed its bags and left his body.

I’ve seen young men lose their lives and seen marriages die. Seen drunks realize the bar’s closed, and they still gotta go home to themselves.

But I never saw a soul collapse as fast as that dog’s did. And I stood there like a useless coward while some dead-eyed, dead-beat employee chained him to a wall.

A wall. Like a bicycle.

Not one of those motherfuckers bent down to comfort him. Not one scratched his ears or spoke softly or treated him like something other than a defective appliance dropped off for recycling.

And me? I signed the papers.

Congratulations. You’re looking at the grand champion son of a bitch of the western hemisphere.

Then came the final insult.

I got back in the truck afterward, hands shaking like a sinner outside judgment day, and the radio started playing Elton John singing about blue eyes.
Blue eyes.

I stabbed at the dial like I was trying to kill a rattlesnake. Another station came on; a woman warbling about missing someone’s blue eyes.

Blue fucking eyes. Pop Eye has blue eyes.

At that point, I became fully convinced that a sadistic bastard is operating the universe, sitting behind a cosmic poker table, dealing misery for laughs. And if I ever find that asshole holding the cards of fate, I’m gonna stomp a mudhole through his celestial ass and walk it dry.

So yeah. Bring the fucking bottle.

I’ll pour enough whiskey into the glass to sterilize a horse wound and knock it back hard enough to feel my ancestors cough. I have another 14 glasses of rot-gut to go.

Inside, the whiskey burns me, and that’s what I deserve, as somewhere across town, a blind, deaf dog with blue eyes is probably wondering why the only man he trusted abandoned him.