Back From The Dead (pubtalk)

BACK FROM THE DEAD

It was once so certain Don was going to die, judging by what the doctors told him, that when he actually didn't die, he felt as if he had come back from the dead.

"What was it like then, Don?" asked his drinking pal Richard.

"What was what like, Rich?"

Don was getting on, his hair balding, his nose flattened from the punches he had suffered throughout his life, his eyes still with a sparkle even if his mouth had no sparkle at all. Either dull teeth or no teeth at all.

"Dying? You thought you were dying, didn't you?" said Richard.

However unimaginative Don was about life and death, and however straightforward and careless with his instinctive thoughts that he was, he did realise that living and dying had a grey overlapping area between them, that living didn't end when dying started, that they were not synchronised with any degree of exactness but had a devil-may-care attitude towards each other. For some people, dying went on for ages, even as long as living did. With other people, they never lived at all. For the rare few, dying never seemed even to begin. Don, until recently, had been one of those rare few.

Don looked at Richard and sighed, realising that Richard was dead. Or as good as. Nothing behind the eyes. And what was in his head was probably a brain that had given up the ghost when he was still at school. Younger than Don in physical years, Richard was older in spirit. And old spirits were just ghosts of their former selves.

Still, pubtalk spoke more than the person who spoke it. It was almost as if such talk in a pub spoke for itself, coming from the mouth that spoke it but really speaking itself. That was because the man called Richard behind the mouth was not only dying but already half dead. Sometimes more than half.

Don stared at Richard, wondering whether it was worth replying to his question about his own dying. Don's answer would probably go in one of Richard's ears and out the other.

Having come back from the dead, Don now found himself talking to the dead themselves, those like Richard he thought he had left behind and to whom he had now returned. Part of him knew that most people supposed to be living were not living at all. They just went through the motions.

Don had been sitting in this pub with Richard for so many years, supping bitter, chewing the fat, that he had forgotten why or how their drinking together had first started. Not to get away from the wives, evidently, as their respective wives had never come back from the dead. Dying had meant dying for them. Vanished angels. But they remained fixtures in old photographs. The two men had their respective wives in their wallets, glimpsed each time they bought a round of drinks.

"Dying was a bit like sitting here, Rich," eventually replied Don.

Richard looked quizzical. A disarming expression that spoke volumes.

"Sitting here was like dying, Don?"

"Yes, I felt like that when I was dying. It felt like sitting here with you, Rich."

"Want another drink, Don?"

Such an enquiry was like punctuation in a long sentence of pubtalk.

"Wouldn't mind."

It seemed pointless for one to ask the question and then the other to answer it. They always had the same number of drinks each evening, anyway, whoever asked, and whoever answered, the order not mattering at all. It was all in slow motion like moonwalking, neither of them knowing who led the other. Until they went their separate ways, two roads apart, in twouptwodowns where they each lived alone.

Rich opened his wallet to draw out a note for his round. And suddenly he gasped and took a deep breath as he pulled out a photograph instead. It was Don's wife, not his own. But it didn't seem to matter, other than the fact Don would be buying the next round, not him, this being Don's wallet.

He looked across the pub table and thought he saw Don was slumped over the remains of his bitter, the top half of his body shaped and stiffened with an inner curve to leave room for the glass to remain standing between him and the table.

They had only ever bought each other halves, you see. Mean to the end.

The barman came over to collect as many glasses as he could in one go from the various tables, a tea towel over his shoulder.

"Is that dead?" He pointed at the glass.

Richard shook his head, picked up the glass, drained it and left. A drink that he had brought back from the dead.