Tomorrow We Die by Shawn Grady

air weighted with cigarette smoke. An Italian man in his fifties leaned behind the counter watching a soccer match on ESPN2.
    “Are you Steve?” I said.
    He didn’t look at me. “In the back corner.”
    My dad sat by the jukebox, propped up against the wall with his head turned toward a wastebasket.
    Jim Morrison crooned from a pair of tired speakers.
    “The clock says it’s time to close now . . .”
    A silhouetted figure appeared in a booth with the quick flame of a lighter, followed by the red glow of a cigarette.
    “Learn to forget . . . Learn to forget . . .”
    I rubbed my dad’s sternum hard with my knuckles. “C’mon, Dad. Wake up. You can’t sleep here.”
    He inhaled and cracked open his eyelids.
    “Wake up, Dad. Come on. You gotta get up.”
    He mumbled. His breath hung heavy and putrid, pungent like cognac and moldy bread.
    I took his arm around my shoulder and squatted next to him. “Dad, you gotta get up.”
    I moved to stand, but his body slid away from me. I stood and leaned on the jukebox. “Fine.”
    I put my arms around his torso and heaved him up, bracing his body against the wall. I took a breath and, in one motion, moved my shoulder under his midsection and straightened up, spreading my legs for balance .
    With my father in a fireman’s carry, I turned to face the door, his ankles hitting the jukebox. I passed the bar and fished out a twenty from my wallet one-handed. I threw it down on the counter by Steve .
    The weighted tavern door swung shut behind us.
    Trash rustled in the gutter. Night encroached. I grabbed a plastic grocery bag swirling by the wall and hooked it around my father’s ears.
    He vomited once on the way home. At the house I tied the bag shut, threw it in the trash, and pulled him inside. His shoes dragged along the hardwood hallway. I laid him against the wall in his room with his head turned to the floor.
    Across the hall in the bathroom I washed my hands, and as I did, blue ink ran onto the porcelain and down the drain. By the time I processed what was happening, it was too late.
    Naomi’s number was gone.
    A box of pent-up rage busted open. I slammed the bathroom door against the wall. The knob broke the plaster. The entire door vibrated.
    I looked for the closest thing I could throw and snatched a dove-shaped glass candleholder from the top of the toilet. I hurled it down the hallway.
    It shattered.
    My father didn’t stir.
    Shards flinted in the darkness.
    A memory came to me of my mother lighting a candle in that holder one Thanksgiving. She struck matches and wore a flower-print dress, her eyes accented by dark eyeliner that curved up at the corners. My father sat at the head of the table in a white T-shirt, his face unshaven, his cheeks rounding his jawline. He was grinning. The room smelled like stuffing and turkey. It was before . . .
    I rubbed a finger over the small scar on my forehead. I clenched my fist. My eyes felt like cast-iron boilers.
    My father hadn’t stirred.
    “See what you did.” I wanted to grab him by the shirt and yell at him until he woke up and understood.
    I thought about kicking him. Like someone would kick a dog.
    But he wouldn’t wake up.
    And he wouldn’t understand.
    And even if he heard me and saw the anguish in my face, he would only cower back with an empty slew of resigned apologies.
    I slid against the wall. My eyes blurred the only light from the bathroom. I wiped my nose with my shirt.
    “Look what you did,” I repeated, covering my head with my hands.
    Sobs shrieked forth, shaking me like a prison break.

CHAPTER 13
    The tires hit the road. I bounced in my seat.
    Bones whooped the Dukes of Hazzard theme song from behind the wheel, siren wailing. “ ‘Makin’ their way, the only way they know how!’ ”
    We rounded a corner. The tires squealed. I fished the map book off the floor.
    Our call was for a seventy-year-old female with heart palpitations. We were understaffed again and pushing nine minutes in response.
    I