Where I Go When I Drink

The bar was there like it always had been. Black Door Tavern. Inside, you could hear the sound of pool balls breaking and the slow twang of a guitar drifting through the smoke and the noise.

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I parked across the street, sat with the truck running. A couple of kids in baseball caps stumbled out of the door laughing. One dropped his hat and the other picked it up for him. They shouted something I couldn’t hear.

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I thought about going in.

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I had gone in a thousand times before. Nights when the house was just too quiet. Nights when it was easier to try to drown that terrible feeling of losing her at the bar than to sit at home with it.

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​There was a barstool inside with my name on it. Third from the end. Worn leather from my butt sitting on it too often. Still had the scar where I'd jabbed my pocketknife into it after the Cubs lost in '19. I have a lot of memories of a lot of wasted nights there. ​

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I pulled my flask from the glove box and looked at it. It was empty. Had been for two months now.

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A man has to have a little dignity, I thought. A man can't keep killing himself and calling it living.

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I looked out at the dark, wet road. The rain had come hard earlier, made everything slick and black. I remembered standing at the end of the driveway that fateful night. Watching the taillights of your car blur away into the rain. Screaming your name even though I knew you probably weren't going to stop. Screaming even though it was already over.

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I put the flask back.

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I leaned back against the seat and closed my eyes.

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It used to be easy. A couple of shots and the bad thoughts softened a little around the edges. Another few, and sometimes they floated away altogether. But it doesn’t work like that anymore. Now one drink led to two, two led to four, and before I could help it, I was back there, standing in that driveway with my heart torn out of my chest, bleeding on the gravel.

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It’s funny, how a man can lose everything and still keep breathing.

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The light turned green and the truck behind me honked. I pulled away slow, giving the tavern one last look. I didn’t belong there anymore.

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I drove the back roads for a while. Past the gas station, past the old hardware store boarded up since the spring floods, past the cotton fields lying bare under the cold stars. The radio was playing a sad George Jones song full of steel guitar. I turned it off.

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The farm road wound out into nowhere. There was a split rail fence, and the trees bent over the ditch like lonely old men. I pulled over there.

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I stepped out and leaned against the hood. It was cold enough to hurt a little. Above me, the stars spread out like a thousand silver nails hammered into the black.

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I thought about calling you. I even pulled the phone out and held it in my hand. But I didn’t. You don’t call a woman who made up her mind to leave you standing out in the rain. You don’t call her months later just because you’re drunk on memories. A man has to have a little dignity.

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I lit a cigarette instead and watched the smoke trail away.

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There was a whiskey bottle in the truck under the seat. Still sealed. I had bought it a week after you left, thinking maybe I’d need it. I hadn’t touched it yet. I thought about it now. I could open it easy. Make everything soften and farther away.

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But I knew where that road went.

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One drop and I’d flood the banks. One drop and the river would come rushing through again, and I’d be back in the driveway, soaked and screaming, and you’d still be leaving, and you’d still be gone.

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A coyote cried somewhere out in the fields. Lonely sound. Maybe he was looking for something too.

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I flicked the cigarette away.

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It’s funny, in a way. Almost everyone thinks drinking is about forgetting. But the real truth is, drinking makes you remember. You remember everything. You see it sharper. Whiskey doesn't bury the pain — it exhumes it, dresses it in its Sunday best, and makes you dance with it, all over again until morning.

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That’s where I go when I drink.

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For me it’s not the bar. It’s not the bottle.
It’s the driveway. It’s the rain.
It’s your red tail lights bleeding into the dark.
It’s your name burning the back of my throat.

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I got back in the truck. Sat there a little while longer.

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I didn’t open the bottle.

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I didn’t call you.

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I just sat there while the cold seeped in and the sky spun slowly overhead.

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It’s a strange kind of survival — choosing to stay with the pain, letting it live inside you instead of trying to drown it. But it’s better than the alternative. Better than breaking yourself over and over again.

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I started the truck and headed home. It was very late. The road was empty. The fields silent. Somewhere behind me, the lights of the Black Door Tavern went dark, and I’ll never go back there again.

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WHERE I GO WHEN I DRINK (PART 2)

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It had been five years.

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He was in the produce aisle at Mitchell’s Market on a cold Sunday morning in November, holding a bruised avocado in one hand and a shopping basket in the other when he heard her laugh. It was a sound he hadn’t heard in a very long time, but he had never unlearned it. He turned, and there she was.

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The same blue eyes. Her hair was a little shorter now, darker maybe. But it was her, laughing with the cashier near the fruit stand, holding a bag of green apples.

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She saw him before he could turn away.

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“Danny?” she said, her voice soft and stunned, like his name had been sleeping in her heart and just woke up.

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He smiled before he could stop himself. “Hey, Laura.”

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They walked toward each other, slow and a little unsure, like ghosts crossing a familiar room.

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“Oh my goodness, I can’t believe it’s really you,” she said, smiling. “You still live around here?”

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“Yeah,” he said. “Guess I never left.”

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She laughed, a little breathless. “Well, I guess I did.”

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“Yeah,” he said. “I remember that well.”

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The silence that followed wasn’t uncomfortable — it was soft, like the kind that settles between two people who still know each other underneath everything.

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“You look good,” she said.

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“You too,” he said. “Different, but good. Happy.”

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“I am,” she said. “Or I’m trying to be. You still at the hardware store?”

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“No. Got out of that. I’m doing restoration work now. Old barns, porches, that kind of thing. Quiet jobs, but I like it.”

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She nodded slowly. “That sounds like you.”

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He looked at the green apples in her hand. “Still don’t like the red ones?”

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“Never did,” she said, smiling. “You remembered that?”

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“I remember a lot about you and us.”

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She shifted her weight from one leg to the other. “Do you have somewhere to be right now?”

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He looked at his basket. A loaf of bread, peanut butter, one avocado.

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“No, not really,” he said.

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“I was gonna grab a six-pack of beer and maybe head to Miller’s Hill. Just to sit a while. Would you want to come?”

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He hesitated. Not because he didn’t want to — but because it had been five years since he’d even let himself think of something like this.

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“I don’t really drink anymore,” he said, quietly.

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Her smile didn’t falter. “That’s okay. I’ll still have one for both of us.”

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He laughed. It came out easier than he expected. “Yeah. Alright. Let me check out.”

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They parked beneath the big oak tree that crowned Miller’s Hill, where the grass bent over in the cold wind. The sun sank low, and the town below stretched out in soft, fading colors — like something once loved and never quite let go.

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She handed him a bottle of ginger ale.

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“You remembered,” he said.

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“I always liked how you drank this stuff when you were trying to drink less and made it almost look cool.”

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He unscrewed the cap and took a sip.

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“So,” she said, looking out the windshield, “did you ever end up with someone?”

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“No,” he said. “Not really.”

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“Why not?”

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He looked at his hands.

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“I think maybe I needed to learn how to be alone for a while and be OK. After you left, I stopped going out. I stopped drinking. Took a lot of long drives. Thought of you too much. But I made peace with some things.”

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She looked at him, really looked at him. “I thought about you too much too.”

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“Yeah?”

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“I didn’t leave because I stopped loving you,” she said. “I left because I didn’t know how to stay or really what to do. You were drinking a lot. And I think I was trying to outrun things in myself too. I thought maybe if I started over somewhere else, it’d be better.”

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“Was it?”

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She smiled, but her eyes saddened. “Some parts were. But I missed home. I missed this hill. Honestly, mostly I missed you.”

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He didn’t know what to say. The wind outside ticked lightly at the windows.

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“I saw your name in the paper once,” she said. “That piece they did on the barn restoration. You looked good in that photo. A little older, but... still you.”

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He chuckled. “I had paint in my hair in that photo. I remember thinking, ‘God, if Laura ever sees this I’ll look like a fool.’”

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She laughed and leaned her head against the window. “I did see it. And I smiled for the first time in a long time.”

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They sat for a while, drinking quietly.

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She looked over at him. “You’re not mad I left?”

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“I was,” he said. “But not really anymore. I’ve done a lot of thinking since then. And you were right. I wasn’t in a good place.”

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“I should’ve said more. I should’ve stayed and helped.”

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“You needed to go. I can see that now.”

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Silence settled again, but it was warm.

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He looked over. “You with anyone now?”

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She shook her head. “Dated a guy for a while. Nice. But not the kind of love that fills the silence.”

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“Yeah,” he said. “I know that kind.”

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She reached for the radio and turned the dial until a soft country song drifted in. Something about old letters and lost time. She turned it down low.

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“So, you do still think about us?” she asked.

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“Every day.”

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She didn’t respond. Just smiled and looked away, blinking slow like the words meant a lot to her.

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“I used to stand in that driveway,” he said, his voice very emotional. “Even years after you left. When the weather was bad and raining, I’d still walk out and stand where I last saw you.”

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She reached across the console and took his hand.

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“I used to have dreams where I’d drive back and find you still there,” she said.

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The sun fell below the ridge. Everything turned soft and gray.

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“I don’t know what this is,” he said, “but I’m glad to see you, more than I can say.”

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She squeezed his hand. “Me too... and I understand.”

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They sat like that, side by side, holding hands, watching the dark come down slow over the town.

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And as the stars blinked on, one by one, they didn’t talk about what would come next. But the silence between them said enough.

 

 

-Mark Gammill 

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