College Town: The Dead Man

So this guy walks into my bar. He obviously looked like he didn't belong there. He had made an attempt to fit in but it didn't quite work. His blue jeans looked new and stylish. They weren't worn or stained and they sure didn't look like the jeans that a man had worn the day before and might consider wearing again the next night if they passed the smell test. His shirts were black and featured the appropriate logos like nascar and Budweiser, but they were pressed and tapered to fit his body. He wore boots but there was no mud caked to the heals. His hair was long (which seems odd now that a sort of redneck standard is to have hair covering ones neck) but it was permed and the bandana he wore to hide the receding hairline was not only pressed but folded perfectly. This man had a manicure and every day I saw him he was clean shaven. He would play the same song on the juke box every night often more than once a night. It was a song on Queen - Greatest Hits the theme song from Highlander, the one where Freddy mercury is going on about who wants to live forever. He drank Tanqueray and Tonic and when he asked for a good drink he meant he wanted it to taste good and not be so strong that it would knock him on the floor. He drank to be social, not to get drunk. Everything about him said money and outsider so of course all my regulars thought he was a narc.

So this man comes from out of nowhere and while he tips well and plays music I like, I can't get past the fact that he is setting my regular clientele on edge. These people may tip poorly and watch more sports on the TV than I would like, but they are basically good people and my friends so I need to find out what the deal is. It just so happens that I run into this mystery man at a friends house one night after work and I ask em who he is where he came from and why a person who obviously has a couple bucks in his wallet is spending his time in my bar or in Macomb at all. Head North or South a few hours and you come to American cultural centers like Chicago and St. Louis a place where a man with a few dollars to spend can find a much better gin than Tanqueray (not a bad gin just definitely far from the top) in a place where women are more likely to appreciate a man whose clothes are press and has a manicure.

The man tells me that he has cancer. He is seeing a specialist in Peoria, while staying with his grand mother in a small town outside Macomb. The cancer had already spread so rather than going back to Texas where his business is he decided to spend his remaining days with his grandmother. I didn't know whether I should believe em or not. It seemed odd that one would seek a specialist in Peoria rather some larger metropolitan area. I didn't question the man further and a few weeks later he disappeared from the bar and from our minds.

And then another one of our regulars returned after an absence. He had been in treatment for a brain tumor, that had been successfully removed. He was sitting in the bar one night when I or someone else wondered aloud whatever happened to out Queen playing narc and the regular told us how he had made friends with the stranger and had been at the hospital when he passed away. The man was never a narc, but enjoyed playing pool, sipping gin and flirting with the local women. He was just enjoying his final days (though I think the queen song was really a tendency to brood a bit).

I think about this man from time to time and its never really about his dying. Mostly I remember the sort of class act the man was and how he enjoyed himself in the face of something that would leave me an anxiety crazed wreck.

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