Whiskey Lullaby

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It was June when they married. The sun was out, the grass smelled warm and the air was thick with the scent of honeysuckle. He wore his father’s suit and she wore white, but not the long kind, just something plain. She carried a small bouquet of pink roses. It had rained the day before and everything was clean and shining in the light. It was the kind of day that made people believe in forever.

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They kissed at the end of the ceremony. Her fingers trembled in his. She smiled with her eyes, and he didn’t let go for a long time. They walked barefoot into the creek that ran behind the chapel and sat on the rocks and laughed. He said he would love her until he died. She said not to talk like that.

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They moved into a small house near the edge of town. He worked at the mill. She worked part-time at the grocer’s and kept the house—windows clean, bread rising on Sundays, curtains that caught the wind like sails. She would sit on the porch in the late afternoons, humming. He’d come home dusty and tired and kiss her forehead. There was peace there, like the quiet that settles just before sleep.

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She would sometimes wake in the night to find him already up, staring out the window. He said he was just thinking. But there were things behind his eyes. Things he didn’t say.

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One winter morning, they found a lump in her breast. It wasn’t large, and the doctor said it would be fine, but it was enough to shake them. He took her hand in the waiting room and said, “We’ll get through this together.”

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And they did. The lump was removed, the wound healed, and for a while it seemed like they had outrun the dark. They held each other closer at night, tighter than before, like people learning what it meant to be afraid of losing.

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Then came the war. The letter came folded in three parts. It had the President’s seal and words that didn’t say anything good. She cried when she read it. He packed a bag and kissed her like he was trying to remember the shape of her mouth. She gave him a photograph to keep in his breast pocket. He didn’t cry. He never did. But his hand stayed on her stomach for a long time. She wasn’t pregnant. He just loved to touch her and he was going to miss it badly.

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He wrote letters every week, sometimes more. Short ones. Simple. He told her about the men he bunked with. About the terrible food. He didn’t say what he saw. He never did. But his handwriting changed over time. The letters got fewer. Then stopped.

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He came back two years later. Different. That’s how they said it in town. Different.

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He didn’t talk much after. He had seen too much. His eyes looked older than his father’s. He had a limp. Some nights he’d wake up sweating and emotional. She’d hold him. He’d fall asleep eventually. The nightmares didn’t go away. They just got quieter.

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He drank. At first, just a beer after work. Then two. Then the harder stuff. He said it helped with the pain in his leg, but she knew better. He’d stare out the window and drink until the light changed. Sometimes he didn’t come home. She waited.

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One night she found him on the back porch, drunk, his shirt soaked with rain, staring at nothing. She knelt beside him and said, “You’re still here. I’m still here.”

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He looked at her, and there was a moment—just a moment—where something flickered behind his eyes. But he didn’t say anything.

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It wasn’t sudden, the leaving. It was like watching a ship drift from the dock—slow, inevitable. One morning, she sat across from him at the table and said sadly, “I don’t know who you are anymore.”

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He didn’t answer.

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That night, he didn’t come home. The next morning when she woke, his things were gone.

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She didn’t chase after him. Maybe she should’ve. But she was tired. Tired in her bones. She sat on the porch and smoked one of his cigarettes. The sun went down slow. She didn’t cry.

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They said he moved into a room above the bar on 8th Street. He worked odd jobs and drank most of his pay. Some nights he would sit outside and watch the moon rise over the hills and hum an old song she used to sing. He carried her photograph in his wallet still. It was creased and worn and the edges had curled in.

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He tried to forget her. They saw him less and less. He came into town for bottles and cigarettes, and sometimes to sit by the willow tree at the edge of the cemetery. That was where her mother had been buried, and he used to bring flowers there when they were young. Now he just brought himself.

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One night he came into the bar and said to no one in particular, “You can’t drink memories away. You can’t drown them.” Nobody answered.

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That next day, the grocer’s boy found him. Upstairs, in his room. Face down in the pillow. A bottle of whiskey empty on the floor, her tattered photo on the bed.

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They buried him beneath the willow. The preacher said a few words, and the sun didn’t come out that day. She wore black. She didn’t say a word. But when everyone had gone, she knelt by the grave and put her hand on the dirt and whispered something no one heard. Then she left.

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Years passed. Her hair grayed. She still lived in the house they once shared. The curtains were yellow now and the garden was overgrown. She didn’t sing anymore. Sometimes people would see her walking near the willow at the cemetery. Sometimes a bottle in her hand. She didn’t speak much. They said she looked hollowed out, like something had burned out inside and taken the light with it.

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There were rumors. That she blamed herself. That she’d just let him go when he needed her most. But no one ever asked her, and she never offered.

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Sometimes she would sit in their bedroom with his photograph and talk to him. She would say things like, “You should’ve stayed. You didn’t have to go like that.” Or “Do you remember the creek? How the water was so cold it made us scream?”

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Then she would laugh, just once, and cry after.

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She drank more. At first, it was just to sleep. Then to wake. Then to forget. But it never worked.

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One evening, in the spring, she lay on the bed and took out his photograph again. His sad eyes still looked the same. She held it to her chest and closed her eyes. Two whiskey bottles were on the nightstand.

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They found her the next morning, face down in the pillow, her hand wrapped around the picture. There was no note.

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They buried her next to him beneath the willow. The breeze was soft that day. The tree swayed and the leaves whispered like voices from long ago. The preacher said less this time. Maybe he had run out of words.

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The townsfolk stood for a while and then went home. But the birds kept singing. The branches kept swaying. And if you listened really closely, you might have heard something like a whiskey lullaby.

 

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Written by Mark Gammill

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Author's Note: Whiskey and drinking are obviously not the answer to life's problems. They do not offer hope, solutions, or recovery. God and love do offer hope, assurance, answers, and healing.

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This story was inspired by the sad and tragic Brad Paisley song "Whiskey Lullaby."​​​​​