Maybe his lean, pocked face, camouflage cap, and plaid flannel under butterscotch Carhartt overalls didn’t suggest it, but Mason Granger sang in the Southern Grove Baptist choir. At one point in his teens, he’d had a smooth voice that poured like Irish cream—coaxing and milky, soothing with just a little kick, but back then he only sang Johnny Cash songs, maybe some George Strait, and only solo concerts in the shower. Now in his fifties, he had what Brother Everett called a “whiskey tenor,” still warm but with a rasping sandpaper edge that hinted at a hard life. Fitting, and Mason wasn’t ashamed of it, belting out hymns each Sunday morning in the choir loft. Everyone in the church knew his story.
So at choir practice Thursday night, when everyone cursed the allergy sore throat going around and irritably blew their noses between songs, someone (not Mason) half-jokingly proposed they all needed a hot toddy to break up the congestion, especially if they were going to sing on Sunday.
At the suggestion, the wide-eyed, blushing women rocked between amusement and horror, while the men chuckled uncomfortably. Mostly a teetotaler church, but not completely rigid, the majority of the congregation didn’t drink, not even on New Year’s. Their weekly communion wine was grape juice. Though no one outed it as the unforgiveable sin, Mason had the notion most of them thought abstaining should’ve been the eleventh commandment. But the Easter concert was Sunday, and they were desperate to do it justice. He found it childishly endearing, their guilty fascination with finding a recipe for a toddy that was “medicinal,” getting Brother Hiram to promise to bring his latest batch of clover honey to Saturday’s choir practice. Then they’d all looked to Mason. No one thought it a burden to ask him to help— it wasn’t as if they had a clue what to look for. They didn’t see his hand spasm around the bottle cap lodged in his jeans pocket, the always-present amulet; they didn’t hear the backward whistle of air he sucked through hemmed lips.
“Yeah, I can get it for you.” He couldn’t tell their ridiculously admiring faces no, eyeballing him with unholy interest, like he had the devil’s number on his cellphone.
“Maybe you should go to Johnson City,” Brother Everett cautiously suggested as he pulled a bill from his wallet. Johnson City was one town over. “That way no one’ll see you.” As if he cared about his reputation, Mason nodded, careful to mirror the pastor’s gravity as he pocketed the twenty, stuffing it down beside the bottlecap. Old Ms. Carver, petite widow and the choir’s unofficial manager, figured they’d each take a shot at Saturday choir practice and another Sunday morning if they needed it, before they sang. There were only fifteen people in the choir. Would that be enough whiskey for everyone?
“Yes, ma’am,” promised Mason solemnly. It wasn’t like he’d be drinking it. “My land, what would people say if they knew we was drinkin’ before service?” she laughed, and Mason left them delightfully scandalized by the homespun little sin.
Now here he stood, rain spattering his feet like spilled beer, his brown work boots freckled black. The liquor store was a lighthouse through the increasing rainstorm, while Mason waited half-in and half-out of the beckoning spotlight of the One-Stop Beer, Wine, and Tobacco. Water dribbled from the twilight sky, striping his nylon jacket with wet fingertip trails, intimately stroking the lobes of his ears. Mason barely noticed the seeping, invisible violation, held captive by the sign above his head. Raindrops like teardrops ran from the corners of his squinted brown eyes down the parentheses grooving his cheeks. No salt in these tears—a half-hearted margarita without the tang.
He’d vaulted out of his SUV like his destination was no big deal, but his feet anchored to the ground only a few steps from the sidewalk. Chin stitched to his chest and shrouded by the peak of his hood from judging eyes—if there were any—his hands fished deep in his jacket. A jagged thumbnail caught and traced the ruffled razor edge of the bottle cap in his right pocket. One, two, three, four— he ritualistically counted the sharp teeth. At twenty-two, he began again. He couldn’t tell the beginning from the end in the black cave of his pocket, but he’d counted the ridges one hopeless night under a street lamp, the circumference of a beer bottle forever ingrained in his head and fingertip. It was a talisman of sorts, a good-luck charm. He’d carried it for seven years now, a reminder of the last beer he’d had before he told himself no more.
Not that beer had ever been his drink of choice. He liked vodka, clear and straight up, as innocuous in a glass as water, at one time just as essential to Mason’s daily functioning. He’d relied on it for thirty years before doing the cold-turkey thing. Seven years later, and he was fifty-four, back where he started, against all his good judgment, trembling with the same fear most folks reserved for hospitals and public speaking.
He finally moved, feeling stupid for adding importance to what should be a trivial errand. Four people had entered and left the store while he stood outside getting spat on by God. He ducked through the sliding automatic door, sidestepped into the first aisle.
Get thee behind me, Satan, repeated in his head as he walked down the aisle, his eye drawn to the bottles reflecting mosaics of amber, burgundy, and chestnut—an alcoholic’s church window. The clear bottles weren’t as pretty. Vodka was more to-the-point, a bluntness Mason appreciated. Facing the shelves, he felt the same pull to the familiar bottles that he felt in the sanctuary when Everett made the altar call, all but falling on his knees before them, a hook caught in his insides, drawing him to an old promise of succor. Jesus had filled that need for seven years, but sometimes Mason wondered if he’d just been drowning one addiction under another.
He almost grabbed a bottle of Absolut, his preferred brand with a no- nonsense flavor and dependable buzz. But he forced himself to remember the years before, the false comfort he’d found, the very real pain of letting it go. Quitting had been excruciating, a surgery without anesthesia, a cancerous tumor excised, until the ache was finally gone, leaving only a scar he didn’t like to talk about.
His hand dropped, still bearing the pinprick dents from where he’d squeezed the bottlecap all day. He turned his back on his old condition, clutching the nearest bottle of whiskey, the color of a polished penny or an oak leaf in October. Heading to the counter, he handed the clerk the preacher-blessed twenty and had the paper bag in hand, ready to sprint back into the rain. He’d made it. He resisted temptation.
“Mason Granger, you son-of-a-bitch, how the hell are you?” The redneck behind him grinned toothily under his beard, cheeks red like twin slaps to his face, his eyes watery pink pools. Clearly, his drinking had already started tonight—this was most likely a return trip to the store. The clerk sure seemed to know him well enough, ringing him up without checking his ID.
“Hey, Harley,” Mason acknowledged his old drinking buddy, back when drinking had needed a buddy, before he’d started drinking alone so he wouldn’t be forced to converse with anyone else and could float in the foam of his own thoughts. Those thoughts had grown flatter, less buoyant over the years, until he’d finally swallowed the last dregs, overturned his glass, and called it quits, for real that time. He forced a sociable smile. “How you been, man?”
“How’ve you been?” parroted the drunk, slapping Mason’s back. “I ain’t seen you in . . . what, ten years? You just disappeared off the face a’ the earth.” His good ol’ boy drawl was indistinguishable from the slur of heavy drinking.
Mason shrugged. “Yeah, well, I don’t do much drinkin’ anymore.”
Harley eyed the purchase in Mason’s grip, the brown wrapper bunched around the bottleneck like a scarf. “Uh, huh. I can see that.” He smirked with the cheerful bounty of the effusive drunk, an easy-going, generous drinker. It was one of the reasons Mason had shared so many glasses with him back in the day. The memories of their late nights took on the rosy glow of nostalgia. Mason relaxed his tense shoulders. “You ain’t gonna believe this, Harley, but I’m buyin’ this for a church choir.”
Harley barked a laugh. “That’s a story you gotta tell me.” He lurched with lucky aim and swiped Mason’s bottle. “C’mon out to the truck and you can tell it to me.” Mason was left behind as Harley staggered in a relatively straight line out the door.
Mason caught up to the same old Chevy pickup Harley had owned when Mason knew him a decade ago, as Harley reached across the cab to pop the locks. The truck revved a friendly growl in the storm, beckoning a warm, dry harbor. He paused at the door, one hand on the handle, the other clutching the bottle cap, his brown hair plastered like a marathoner’s to his forehead. He was sweating like he’d run twenty-six miles, too, but it was the cold sweat of fear, not exertion. He didn’t want to get in. He wasn’t dumb—he recognized bad decisions, had made enough of them in his past to recognize the skunk stink of this one. It wasn’t like he needed that commandeered bottle. He could just go back into the store and buy another. For that matter, he could just go home, could call Brother Everett and explain his anxiety, and the matter would be dropped like a bad habit—prayers would be said, forgiveness would be asked for putting him in this position, praises to God for giving him the ability to resist temptation.
Ignoring all the warnings, Mason pried open the rusty door and climbed onto the ripped vinyl bench seat.
The tight cab was already heating up, steam on the windows as if he and Harley had been making out. It smelled like cigarettes, old dog, and diesel fuel, both repellant and homey. Harley shot him a grin, just as oblivious to Mason’s moral dilemma as his church family had been, and turned the blower on high. The hot breath of the truck hit Mason in the face, but he didn’t retreat, just turned to the side to let the wet heat douse the other cheek.
Harley shoved the stolen whiskey at him. “Here’s your drink, man. Crack it open, why don’t’cha?”
Mason tucked it into the inside pocket of his jacket, easier with it back in his possession. “I told you it’s not for me. It’s for the church.”
Harley slapped his knee in delight and tore into his own purchase—a bottle of vodka, just like the old days. “So you said. I gotta hear this.” He waited for Mason to start his tale, then grabbed a plastic fast-food cup from the cupholder, pouring a healthy slug over the muffled cracking of ice; he may have had orange juice already in the cup, or he may have been drinking it neat—it depended on how long he’d been at it. He tipped the bottle toward Mason politely, but Mason shook his head and continued with his story, adding some details for humor, making gentle fun of Brother Everett and Ms. Carver, then feeling disgraced for it.
“Shee–it, that’s freakin’ hilarious!” Harley could barely take a swallow for laughing. “So you’re goin’ to get ’em liquored up before they sing on Sunday morning?”
Mason scoffed. “You know that little bitty swig won’t do nothin’ to ’em.”
But Harley wasn’t listening. “What a bunch a’ hypocrites,” he said conversationally, his hands busy keeping the second serving of vodka waterfalling in a smooth stream into his cup. “Judgin’ me for a drink now and then, while they go and do it in the name of the Lord.” Mason doubted Harley’s drinking was only now and then, if he was sucking down hard liquor in the parking lot out of a McDonald’s cup. A poking finger of guilt prodded Mason to defend them. “They’re not hypocrites. None of ’em says drinkin’ is a sin.”
“All the ones I’ve met sure as hell did.” Harley didn’t seem too concerned with their accusations, but then he paused. A tangled yellow beard and bleary eyes pinned Mason. “Say, how come you ain’t drinkin’?” His tone was suspicious, trying to focus on Mason’s face in the streetlight filtering through the polka dots of rain on the windshield. He thrust the open vodka bottle at Mason again, as threatening as a carefully aimed pistol.
Mason decided to be straight. “I don’t drink anymore.” Fending off Harley’s offer, he raised his hands. “And I ain’t a hypocrite. I don’t think nothin’s wrong with drinkin’. I just couldn’t do it no more. It was killin’ me.”
That stilled Harley as he tried to understand Mason’s words. Leaning toward him with squinting eyes, he said, “You mean you got . . . like cancer, or somethin’?”
Mason laughed outright, seeing a sad but well-meaning drunk, not too bright and still locked tight in the prison that Mason had escaped years ago. “No, man, not cancer,” he assured his friend. Harley sighed and leaned back in relief, scratched his beard, sipped from his plastic cup. He didn’t ask for an explanation but Mason gave one anyway. “It just wasn’t good for me, y’know? I started drinkin’ durin’ the day, on the job, even. Robin left me.” He stumbled over the name; seven years didn’t dull its knife-edge into his heart. “Plus, I was flat broke. Drinkin’s expensive.”
Harley toasted his words. “Amen, brother.”
Thrusting his hips high off the seat, Mason dug the bent beer cap out of his pocket. He held it between his thumb and forefinger, up in the light for Harley to admire with the solemnity of a rare artifact. “See this? This is the cap off the last beer I ever drank. I been carryin’ it around with me for seven years. Helps me remember why I quit.”
“Lemme see.” Harley took the disk to look closer, barely gave it a glance, then tossed it on the dash. Mason tracked its journey into the seam between the windshield and the plastic vent, lost in the scattered trash trapped there. His heart screamed in his ears as it landed out of his reach.
“Give me that back, Harley.”
Harley nodded. “Yeah, sure, just a minute. It ain’t goin’ nowhere.” He was trying to formulate a thought. “That’s real smart a’ you to quit like that. Some people just can’t handle their liquor.”
“I didn’t say that—”
“It sounds like you gone and found religion. I guess it sorta replaces the urge, don’t it?”
“They don’t have nothin’ to do with each other.” The cab was getting hot and muggy, their humid breaths stacked in the small space. “I decided to quit and then a few years later I started goin’ to church.”
“I guess that’s okay, then. I thought you’d gone and turned into one a’ those religious nutjobs. Spoutin’ Jesus and livin’ like a monk. Is that why Robin left you?”
“What? No, ’course not! She left ’cause I was a miserable drunk.”
“Hmph.” Harley grew quiet. Mason eyed the general area where his bottle cap had disappeared, lost under the mass of receipts and candy bar wrappers carpeting the dash. “But you don’t think drinkin’ is a sin?”
“Nah.”
“Then have a drink with me now before you go. For old times.”
Mason bit back a panicked laugh at Harley’s paltry attempt at begging. He wouldn’t have figured the devil’s temptations would be so easy to spot. It might not be a sin, but drinking sure enough was a slippery slope to Mason. “Yeah, I don’t think so, Harley. I’m just gonna go.” He reached for the door handle.
“No, no, wait, I’m serious.” Harley grabbed his jacket sleeve, too aggressive in his drunken state, pinching Mason’s forearm unnecessarily. “You say it ain’t a sin, but I never heard no born-again say that before. Just take a drink so I know you ain’t lyin’.”
It was a piss-poor argument. Mason didn’t really care if Harley thought he was a liar or not. But a marble of thought rattled in his brain anyway. Drinking wasn’t a sin, but he’d fought hard against the seduction of it for seven years—a half-life of self-denial and guilt. Something whispered in a hot, stale alcoholic breath: shouldn’t he be strong enough for one drink? He grabbed the bottle and swallowed.
Cold vodka is silky, its icy numbness coats the burn. Room-temperature vodka rips the skin from your throat. Mason’s chest wheezed a crimson protest, then it was over, a dose of medicine down the hatch, then the spreading warmth like a hug from the inside, like the electric thrill of “Amazing Grace.” Harley shared a complicit grin, members of the same congregation again.
The second gulp wasn’t as hard as the first. Seven years crumbled into unimportance—tomorrow Mason could rebuild, might even be stronger for the lapse, so he allowed the forgotten pleasure to overtake him. His ears burned, his throat burned, his heart burned, but it was a beautiful ache. He didn’t know how long he drank with Harley, but they opened the whiskey bottle and drank that too. Sometime during their party, the rain stopped.
Harley checked his phone and sternly told Mason, “It’s gettin’ late, man. I gotta get up early in the mornin’. Gotta go to church, you know.” He guffawed at the idea.
Mason’s thoughts couldn’t join together, didn’t get the joke but he nodded agreeably, removed from himself. “You should come to church with me sometime. It’d do you good.”
Harley laughed harder. “No thanks. Just a’ bunch a’ hypocrites, I told ya’.”
Driving wasn’t a good idea for either of them, but Mason got out of the truck anyway. He waved a salute at his friend, glad he ran into him tonight— what were the chances?—and headed toward his own car.
“Hey, wait!” The Chevy’s window rolled down and Harley called out to Mason. “You forgot your . . . bottle cap.” It rested in his palm, shiny and heavy in the light. “You said it was your last drink.”
Mason stared at it dumbly, wondering why he’d ever put so much meaning in such a small thing. He backtracked to scoop it from Harley’s hand, then dropped it on the wet pavement. “No, it wasn’t. I just grabbed it outta the garbage one night after I decided to quit. It could’ve been any old beer.” He shrugged like it didn’t matter, his fingers already itching for the metal spokes of the inch-wide charm. He felt unbalanced, unlucky. “You never know which one’s goin’ to be your last, do you? Not your whole damned life.”
It could be a fast-food screwdriver in a parking lot. It could be a hot toddy to ease your sore throat.
Harley waved and headed out of the parking lot, his overly cautious steering a dead giveaway of his inebriation. Mason figured he wouldn’t make it two streets before the cops pulled him over. He hoped so, for Harley’s safety and everyone else’s.
Mason looked at his own car, shining under its coat of a thousand pinpoint raindrops. He didn’t have his bottle cap. He didn’t have Brother Everett’s twenty or the whiskey bottle. He didn’t have his seven years anymore.
He could call Everett to pick him up, of course. He could confess his slip-up and ask for help. He could sleep it off in the car, replace the whiskey bottle in the morning, show up at choir practice with no shame, ready to start again. He could go back into the store and buy another bottle of vodka that he wouldn’t have to share.
He stood in the parking lot, his feet anchored to the ground, his pockets empty, half-in and half-out of the beckoning spotlight of the One-Stop Beer, Wine, and Tobacco.
Penny Milam lives at the base of the Appalachian Mountains in east Tennessee, in an old farmhouse with her ridiculously supportive husband and their three teenage children. She has taught high school English for many years but has only recently ventured into the world of short stories with her own efforts. Her work has appeared in Deep South Magazine, Valparaiso Fiction Review, and Variant Literature, among others.
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