Burt lived alone in a basement apartment. Every morning he would light his last cigarette as he pulled on jogging shorts and comfortable shoes. He’d ash his cigarette and wash it down with a quick splash of gin to ease the ache in his knees before climbing the stairs to the morning. Then, half-heartedly stretching as he went, he would begin his daily walk.
Passing his car, he would note the layer of dust, a bit more each day. Turning out to the neighborhood, he began a slow walk in the cold Autumn air. He carried a light bag with some papers inside. In his pockets were only his wallet, black leather and nearly empty, and a pedometer. When his morning ritual changed from a quick drive to the 7-11 to a long walk to the 7-11, he figured he might as well get something out of the situation. Seeing the numbers slowly increase as they logged his steps for the day was little comfort to his aching everything, but the expired driver’s license in his wallet reminded him not to give in to the temptation to turn back and take the ease of a car.
It was that time of morning where the joggers were out, and Burt was periodically passed. Joggers, folks walking their dogs, even strollers pushed by. Mothers passed him. He was becoming a regular sight in the community, the fat man with the mutton chops.
Twice a day, he trudged two miles through the winding neighborhood. Mostly he passed houses; there were no apartments, even his place was converted from a larger home. Most of the faces he passed were indifferent. Only the dogs noticed him for more than a moment, they strained against leashes to sniff his leg as their owners pulled them on. At least dogs always liked him; beneath the waft of gin and smoke he smelled like salami.
At the end of his plodding pilgrimage he was panting and sweating, but he had his prize. He walked out of the 7-11 triumphant with a carton of Marlboros, a small black coffee, and an empty wallet. He sat down on a bench at the nearby park to enjoy his victory. All too soon he would have to get up, or risk missing his bus. By the time his coffee is done and another ten cigarettes ashed, Burt will walk through the park to reach the bus stop on the other side; he never goes to the closer stop one block up from the 7-11.
Today Burt paused to rest against a tree near where some old-timers played chess on one of the stone tables. The one facing him nodded when Burt accidentally caught his eye. Burt wasn’t paying attention. He was badly chafed. But he pushed on, rushing to meet the bus with pack thrown over his shoulder bouncing lightly against his back; one more boulder, one more hill.
~~~
Having caught his breath on the bus, Burt was able to slink through the side entrance to the University library. He tried using the main entrance the first time he returned as an old fat man, but he could feel eyes on him. Burt had paused beside a grand marble pillar and glanced down at the dark crescents of sweat forming over older stains on his t-shirt. He raised one hand to the mutton chops he had never attempted to comb.
Burt had immediately looked for a back entrance where no eyes would remind him that he did not belong. He wasn’t used to the contempt back then. In the third-floor stacks, back near where they kept the rare books, Jeremy and his friends were waiting for him.
“Finally. Some of us actually have a schedule to keep, Burt. We have class in ten,” Jeremy said, gesturing to an undoubtedly expensive watch. He was tall enough that Burt had to look up to meet his haughty gaze. Four young men, each one freshly stepped off the page of a high end catalogue. The followers eyed Burt in his sweat stained jogging wear with restrained humor, but Jeremy watched him carefully.
“Unforeseeable circumstances. My apologies.” Burt grumbled. He reached into the bag he had carried from his basement apartment and started distributing stapled packets of paper to the four young men. They each looked through briefly, except for Jeremy, who slid the paper directly into a brown leather bag.
“You know Burt; you could always email the papers to us.” Jeremy smirked.
“You’ll thank me for the lack of digital trail someday.” Burt said. Burt was lying. Internet was expensive, and he couldn’t carry his desktop to a Starbucks. Jeremy pulled an envelope from his pocket and handed it to Burt, who did a quick count.
“You’re short fifty.” Jeremy raised an eyebrow at the gruff admonition.
“My last paper was given a B. If I can’t expect quality, why should I pay you at all?” Jeremy responded.
“You may not be smart enough to write your own papers, but you can imagine what would happen if you didn’t keep me around to carry you through law school,” Burt said, matching Jeremy’s mocking gaze with a withering stare. At Jeremy’s left, one of the trust fund flunkies stepped forward with face flushed.
“Woah, Micah. It’s alright, we’re good. Burt here was just kidding. We’re old friends, after all. Burt used to work for my father.” Jeremy calmed his friend, pulling another fifty out of his pocket. Burt silently fumed. With. He had worked with Jeremy’s father. He did that sometimes, poke at Burt to see what he could get away with. Burt knew how to handle him.
“The assignment for next week.” Jeremy handed him a sheet. “Do you need the textbook?’ Burt grunted a negative. He knew damn near every word of the text by heart. He left without ceremony, mentally making a list of the bills this four hundred would cover. Rent and utilities, with just enough left over for a few days’ worth of coffee and cigarettes, rations for his days in the foxhole.~~~
Burt closed his phone, and slipped the cheap prepaid cell into the breast pocket of his suit. It was the last suit he owned, the only survivor of a once illustrious wardrobe. It strained uncomfortably at his neck and over his gut, and the jacket could no longer be buttoned; this was the suit of a much younger man. And the smell made Burt sneeze, the smell of mothballs.
He was sitting on a bench waiting for his bus. The bus stop was one block past where he usually stopped at the park, and the extra distance had left him winded and chafing in his too-small suit. He never came to this bus stop because of where it was located, but this was the only bus that stopped at the court house.
His phone buzzed again, a jolt straight to his heart. He checked it, a message from Leon: “We got Cindy.” That was all the confirmation Burt needed for the dread to really kick in. That was Leon’s brilliant plan to land Burt probation, a character witness from the person who hated him more than anyone. Burt had tried to argue, to bitch his way out of seeing Cindy for the first time since the divorce, but Leon wouldn’t hear it. Burt couldn’t argue, Leon only took his case as a favor.
So here Burt sat, huffing for breath on a city bench. It wasn’t nearly the worst day of his life, but the court hearing of a DUI is no one’s best day, never mind the ex-wife-character-witness plan that was sure to blow up. Burt checked the time on a watch worth more than his dust-covered beater of a car, another remnant of a past wardrobe. He really wanted the bus to be here.Because this stop was directly across from a liquor store. A liquor store with which he was slowly losing a staring contest. His hand shook, but it always did now days. He slowly lit a cigarette. Burt told himself that he had exactly enough time to get to the court house for his hearing. Leon was already there waiting. Hell, Cindy was probably waiting too. Thinking of her did not help the tremor. He checked his watch again. Then looked at the store. He checked his wallet. Barely any cash, he always had barely anything. But enough. At a court house down town Burt’s ex-wife and once-best-friend waited for his arrival. But when the bus finally arrived Burt wasn’t there. He was entering the liquor store like a soldier coming home to the embrace of a lover.
~~~
Hours later when Burt wakes up in his hole of an apartment covered in his own sick, he would remember all too clearly the night things turned. He tries to turn away from it, reaches for the bottle he knows must be nearby, but alas, the bottle is empty.
A much younger Burt, not yet accustomed to the millstone which he would come to feel around his neck, woke coughing in the dead of night. Throat burning, he reached for the flask in his night stand. A dull orange glow suffused the room, the faint radiance enough to batter his eyelids. He shouldn’t be awake at all, it was the middle of the night and he was in a hellish swamp of haze, hung-over but also still drunk. He rolled over and vomited, mostly onto the floor. Rising part way, he tried to find where the light was coming from. It was too diffuse to see right away, and his functions were at a record low. When his gin-and-pill-soaked brain finally deduced that his bedroom was on fire, he failed to muster any feeling of concern or urgency. Burt simply pushed to his feet and, slipping briefly in his own sick, shuffled towards the hall door. He reasoned that it was still mostly smoke at this point, and it got better the further away from his bedroom that he moved. He was scared, and he was getting out, but he did feel that he could spare a brief second. A quick moment, barely anytime at all. He pushed open the door to his study. Burt didn’t spare a glance to the first edition books which would eventually be engulfed, or the law degree and commendations on his wall which wouldn’t be replaced. Grabbing the half-empty pack of Marlboros from the top drawer of his desk, he held one out to the heat of the wall beside him. He could feel the warmth edge into pain, and knew that once his buzz and high faded he would feel quite a bit more. But his cigarette was lit, and he was out of the burning house in a jiffy. He stood on the front grass and watched flames grow as the distant sirens drew nearer, the dew of night chilling his bare feet.
“You!” She stomped towards him from the house, clutching a robe around her trembling frame.
“Cindy? You- You were supposed to be back tomorrow?”
“Yesterday! I got in yesterday! You were collapsed in your own filth like usual!” She was yelling, screaming into his face. He briefly wished to be back in the fire.
“I was in there! Looking for you! Did you stop to think about where I was before you got your ass out? Did you care that I could have died?” Cindy screeched as she pounded her fists on Burt’s chest. Seeing the cigarette in his mouth and the pack in his hand sent her into a new level of fury. Her screaming was soon drowned out by the sirens of the arriving fire engines. Burt silently finished his smoke, and then the pack.~~~
Burt sat on a bench in the park. He was smoking a cigarette which was not his brand, because the 7-11 was out and this was the best he could do. Beside him was a loaf of bread which he planned to break up and throw to the ducks in the pond before him, as was his new habit. He could hear at his back the two old men playing chess and talking about their wives the way old men do. He had no coffee, weeks without will break one of most habits, though of course the smoking held him a bit tighter. Burt reached down to scratch the pale spot on his ankle where the tracking bracelet had been taken off several days prior. It still itched. Sighing, he began to throw to the ducks which had arrived in anticipation. Burt was wondering what his last real conversation with another human being had been. Every memory he had was tainted with disgust. Leon had barely been able to talk to him for a minute. Without Burt, the hearing had gone quickly. He was found in contempt and sentenced. Cindy never had to testify. Burt never had to hear what she would have said if asked before the court to say what she thought of Burton J Williams as a person.
At least the ducks enjoyed Burt’s company, though he knew that was the bribery of a loaf of bread. He fed them every day, and named the ones he recognized. There was Horatio and Elizabeth, who Burt imagined were a couple, and Zephyr and Jedidiah and Reginald. Reginald was the only one who was always there, every single day. As Burt was nearing the end of the bread, someone stepped up behind the bench, blocking the early morning light. Burt turned to see a man with a gun. He couldn’t see the gun, but when a man walks up with a hand in a coat pocket held out before him, it was either a gun or a bluff.
“Wallet. Now.” The man growled. Burt thought. He wasn’t drunk or high, but just like that night so many years ago, he couldn’t seem to muster up any genuine concern. Maybe the guy was bluffing, maybe he wasn’t. Burt just couldn’t seem to really care about whether he lived or died. Yet when the man’s fist cracked into Burt’s face, he felt that. Falling to the ground, Burt clutched his jaw, one more hurt in a tapestry of pain. He distinctly heard a click.
“I’m serious. Your wallet, quick.” Now Burt was sure this wasn’t a bluff. Before he could reach for his empty wallet however, the unwavering aim jerked away.
“What the f-ahh!” The men fell over. Burt scrambled backwards as fast as he could. Others had come to see what was happening, the two old men at the head of the crowd. In a moment of surprising clarity someone quickly swept the gun away from the attacker where he dropped it as he fell. He was trying to protect his head, shouting under the onslaught of a hard bill. Reginald had come to Burt’s rescue. Most likely the mallard was simply responding to the sudden motion in its territory, or perhaps had enough capacity for reason to defend its food source. But maybe the duck was defending a friend. Joining the crowd watching a would-be mugger get attacked by a vicious duck, Burt began to chuckle. Laughter rolled up from deep in his belly, boiling over with no end in sight. Burt’s laughter boomed out from a place of true joy for the first time in years. It wouldn’t last, soon the boulder would come crashing down upon his shoulders once more, but for this moment Burt stood tall.
