The Drowned Life by Jeffrey Ford Read Free Book Online Page A

slapped them on the back, hugged them, shoved drinks into their hands. I wasoverwhelmed by the moment, caught up in it and grinning, until I looked over at Witzer and saw him jotting the names down in a little notebook he’d refer to tomorrow as we made our rounds. Only then did it come to me that one of the names was none other than Henry Grass, and I felt my stomach tighten in a knot.
    Each of the winners eventually sat down at the center table. Jolle stood and gave his seat to Reed Bocean, who brought with him from behind the bar the bottle of Night Whiskey and a tray of eight shot glasses. Like the true barman he was, he poured all eight without lifting the bottle once, all to the exact same level. One by one they were handed around the table. When each of the winners had one before him or her, the barkeep smiled and said, “Drink up.” Some went for it like it was a draft from the fountain of youth, some snuck up on it with trembling hands. Berta Hull, a middle-aged mother of five with horse teeth and short red hair, took a sip and declared, “Oh my, it’s so lovely.” Ronald White, the brother of one of the men I worked with at the gas station, grabbed his and dashed it off in one shot. He wiped his mouth on his sleeve and laughed like a maniac, drunk already. Reed returned to the bar. The band started up again and the celebration came back to life like a wild animal in too small a cage.
    I wandered around the Blind Ghost, nodding to the folks I knew, half taken by my new celebrity as a participant in the Drunk Harvest and half preoccupied with watching Henry Grass still sitting at the table, his glass in front of him. He was a young guy, only twenty-five, with a crew cut and a square jaw, dressed in the camouflage sleeveless T-shirt he wore in my recurring dream. By the way he stared at the shot glass in front of him through his little circular glasses, you’d have thought he was staring into the eyes of a king cobra. He had a reputation as a gentle, studious soul, although he was most likely the strongest man in town—the rare instance of an outsider who’d made a place for himself in Gatchfield.The books he read were all about UFOs and the Bermuda Triangle, the Chariots of the Gods; stuff my father proclaimed to be “dyed-in-the-wool-hooey.” He worked with the horses over at the Haber family farm and lived in a trailer out by the old Civil War shot tower, across the meadow and through the woods. I stopped for a moment to talk to Lester II, who mumbled to me around the hard-boiled eggs he was shoving into his mouth one after another, and when I looked back at Henry, he’d finished off the shot glass and left the table.
    I overheard snatches of conversation, and much of it was commentary on why it was a lucky thing that so-and-so had won the lottery this year. Someone mentioned the fact that poor Pete Hesiant’s beautiful young wife, Lonette, had passed away from leukemia just a few months earlier, and another mentioned that Moses had always wanted a shot at the Night Whiskey but had never gotten the chance, and how he’d soon be too old to participate as his arthritis had recently given him the devil of a time. Everybody was pulling for Berta Hull, who was raising those five children on her own, and Becca was a favorite because she was the town midwife. Similar stuff was said about Ron White and Stan Joss and Henry.
    I stood for a long time next to a table where Sheriff Jolle and my father and mother sat with Dr. Kvench, and listened to the doctor, a spry little man with a gray goatee, who was by then fairly well along in his cups, as were his listeners, myself included, spout his theory as to why the drinkers took to the trees. He explained it, amid a barrage of hiccups, as a product of evolution. His theory was that the deathberry plant had at one time grown everywhere on earth, and that early man partook of some form of the Night Whiskey at the dawn of time.