Fiction

Whiskey House

Nathan Weinstein

Death is far more an anathema to happiness for immortals, than for mortals. The immortals pine over death, and her meaning, and dote forever on her mystery until in time it becomes their all- consuming obsession. Mortals, more ignorant, temporary, and illusory have only to wait for a moment’s pause before the shroud is lifted and the mystery no longer grants concern.

He sat down in the old wooden chair by the window, in front of the piano. The piano was black, and each press of the key knocked a hammer to a string far too old. Next to his chair was a small table. On the table sat a bottle of whiskey and a glass. He filled the glass a third the way up. The sound of the whiskey pouring was the only sound in the room. He put the bottle down, and the room was silent again. He drank one large gulp, and then pressed two keys on the piano. The room filled with the two notes, and then everything was silent again. He looked out the window.

The house was more of a shanty. Like so many of those little abodes one sees in disrepair by the roadsides of upstate New York. It was owned by a farmer who had no crops. The farmer put the house for rent, and it sat without a tenant for two years.

He opened his closet and in the back found his small travel duffel. In this he stuffed the essentials – socks, shirts, alcohol, and paper. He paused to cough into a handkerchief; a blotch of red spread across the white fabric. He locked up his condo, and took a bus out of the city. The gray facades and hazy air fell behind him; in front loomed fields and mountains, gurgling brooks and evergreens. The ‘for rent’ sign caught his eye.

“Well?” inquired the farmer, eyeing him head to toe.

“It’ll do.”

He looked out the window. There through the old dingy pane lay a snowy field adjacent to a winding brook. Shrubs and weeds poked through the white covering in odd spots. A worn wooden fence ran around the field. Half a dozen black crows sat evenly spaced along the fence. The man watched the crows as they gawked, turned their heads sideways to eye their surroundings, and opened their black beaks to call out.

He turned away from the early winter scene. The piano keys beckoned his fingers. He struck keys, one after the other. All along the spectrum of sound he produced notes. Always he held down the foot petal to make each note reverberate long after his fingers had moved on.

Four years. For four years he lived in a shack by a field. He paid $200 a month for rent. During each spring, water ran down through the roof into his bathroom. In the winter he huddled by a small fire, and crouched beneath three blankets. He had no computer, no cell phone, and no watch. He finished his whiskey, looked out the window, coughed and sighed.

Before death, the whiskey had all run out. And the crows had cackled humorously, and taken off across the snowy plain to disappear at the far end of the winding brook. The last key was struck. The note lasted almost for infinity, and then the room fell silent.