Horrible Harvest

Didn’t nobody leave.

An hour in at the diner, and the liquor was poured higher by an inch or two and the pots of coffee grew cold on the tables. It was consumed in drips and drops, whereas the whisky was drunk by bellyfulls. I was the only one who didn’t take to it. I give up on drinking and drugging years prior, mostly because it didn’t quiet my mind. It muddled things up and give rise to not just the bad I’d done in the past, but it made me miss it.

I tell you true, I kilt a lot of folks. Some didn’t deserve it. Some did. I didn’t put thought to which was which at the time, but as years rolled into decades, I begun to wonder about such things. That’s when I started wrestling with the regrets for this poor fella and that who died at my hands. As an old man sitting in a diner with a bunch of mourners drinking away their goodbyes to Felix, I was alone in a sea of memories that shouldn’t haunt no less than ten men let alone one. I’d have a lot to pay for one when my time come, but if I ever do get an audience with the almighty, Ima ask that sumbitch one thing. Why the fuck did you make so many men who deserved to die and not give me the wisdom to pick’em out before it was too late?

It didn’t escape me that there was one more out there who I’d vowed to kill and my time was running out. I’d find my way to him. I would. He’d ruined any chance I had at finding peace in this world, and I was bound to take his. I’d done it sooner, but I give promise that I’d let his life marinate and become worth something before a bullet would come his way. I wanted folks to feel his loss like this here diner full of mourners felt Felix’s.

A big laugh come from the far corner of the room, and I turnt toward it. Irked me, it did. It weren’t proper. Not in this place. Not on this occasion. It come again, and I realized it irked me for another reason. It had a familiar ring to it. I’d heard a man laugh like that once before just before I kilt him.

I poured a finger of liquor in my coffee.