Putting the Cock Back in Cocktail: Have You Heard the Story of the Hot Rod Lincoln?
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    The Sudsbuster

    He was one of the mellow, the soft-spoken, the tawny-haired — one who preferred to be alone.
    His name was Mark, a dishwasher at age 45.

    He was a drifter, a loner. He valued his freedom above all. Dishwashing jobs he could always find.

    Our paths crossed and re-crossed at the Café Claire, where I was tending bar. The Café Claire stood on the outskirts of an industrial town, near the railroad tracks, beside his temporary home. Sometimes he’d sit at the end of the bar, before his shift or after, and drink black coffee. Sometimes he’d speak to me, and sometimes he would not.

    He was a tidy man, and orderly. He organized things in an oddly geometrical way. He did not drink, he did not smoke, he did not use drugs. He was clean-living and in good shape, neither depressed nor its opposite.
    He was single, without children.

    And he was free.

    He read a lot – novels and non-fiction – to endure, perhaps, the knives of lust that so frequently strike. He had the quietude of one who has gone a long time without sex.

    His home was an efficiency apartment – a “hutch,” he called it – with good plumbing. (This mattered to him.) He dealt only in cash and he was good with his money. He saved, he moved on. Sometimes he worked on farms, sometimes he loaded and unloaded freight, sometimes he carried hod. But when I first met him and asked him what he did, he said “I’m a sudsbuster.”

    So in the way of things, he would come behind my bar at times, when I was busy, and, without asking me, he’d wash my dishes. I loved him for that. He was fast on his feet and knew how to work around people, so that nobody was in anybody’s way. Buried in bloody marys and martinis, I’d glance over and see him plunged to his elbows in suds, his gold-rim spectacles, which somehow endeared him to me, filled with the burning bar light, his neat goatee damp with perspiration and pied with skeins of gray. Working with somebody in this way creates a deep and ineradicable bond.

    Two or three times, I saw him outside work while I was in my car. Each time, he was walking alone along the railroad tracks, at dusk like some solitary figure carved from the coming dark. This was a grizzled landscape, a prairie desert of Euclidian perfection, full of rings and radii, vast yet traversed by a single road: an isolate highway humming day or night with Mack truck tires. The wind ferried tumbleweeds across the lion’s pelt land. Deadwood everywhere stood silvery-gray, like the moon above, and invariably whenever I saw him, a feeling of melancholy came over me, a melancholy for him, I am not sure why.

    This, though, is not about pity or pathos, and Mark was not a person to be pitied.

    This, rather, is about one man out of many millions making his way
    in the land of the free, the USA.


    (Video for Mark, from the Café Claire)


    December 19th, 2016 | journalpulp | 2 Comments | Tags: , , ,

About The Author

Ray Harvey

I was born and raised in the San Juan Mountains of southwestern Colorado. I've worked as a short-order cook, construction laborer, crab fisherman, janitor, bartender, pedi-cab driver, copyeditor, and more. I've written and ghostwritten several published books and articles, but no matter where I've gone or what I've done to earn my living, there's always been literature and learning at the core of my life.

2 Responses and Counting...

  • “This was a grizzled landscape, a prairie desert of Euclidian perfection, full of rings and radii, vast yet traversed by a single road: an isolate highway humming day or night with Mack truck tires. The wind ferried tumbleweeds across the lion’s pelt land.”

    My dear, this made me swoon. An elegant treatment of everywhere I didn’t want to be, but was in any case.

    I’m glad curiosity got the better of me today and anchored me to this treasure trove for the better part of my evening.

  • You, my dear, whoever you are, must be some sort of saint sent to confound me with your eloquence, your sweetness, and your shit whiskey.

    Damn you!

    Thank you very much indeed for dropping by.

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