Ninety-nine Bottles of Beer

                “Ninety-nine bottles of beer on the wall.  Ninety-nine bottles of beer! Take one down, pass it around!  Ninety-eight bottles of beer on the wall!”  An older fellow sitting a couple stools to my right had started up the familiar tune.  A few others joined in with poorly-tuned voices, laughing and cheering all the while.  I took a sip at my beer, not being one of the merry-makers.  It only took a few minutes for everyone to tire of the song, and the voices died down.  All the voices, that is, accept for that of the old man who had stuck up the song in the first place.  “Ninety-three bottles of beer on the wall, ninety-three bottles of beer…”

                Thinking back, I can’t remember a time I’d ever before heard someone sing past even ninety-six.

                My reason for being there in the bar that night is vague in my memory these days, being so insignificant compared to the rest of the night’s events.  I don’t figure on dwelling on it anymore.  That’s what the night was for, and that night is no more.

                A short, stocky young man sat down on the stool to my left, ordering up a draft beer.  His hair was shaved, but not as if he was on leave from military duty.  His look; his demeanor signified a guy who shaved his head by choice.  He probably did many things by choice.  More to the point, I imagined there was very little in his life that he did not have control of.  But that was just my impression.  I could have been completely wrong.  It just so happened that I wasn’t.

                “Seventy-eight bottles of beer on the wall…”

                By this point the singing had become background noise, and I hardly registered it.  It didn’t seem to grab the attention of the shaved-head man either.  Rather, his attention settled on me.  A little uneasily, I broke the silence, “Er, hi.”

                “You aren’t going to want to remain here.”

                “Say what?” I asked.

                “Tell me, what vice do you think you harbor, greater than any other?”

                I looked at him blankly, or at least, I feel like it was a blank look.  Sometimes you give people looks and you realize that the picture you have of yourself is nothing like that which the person is actually seeing.  But at the time, I think I was giving him a look of, “I think you’re crazy, but I’m going to talk to you anyway.”  What I actually said was, “Well, I drink a lot.”  And as if to reiterate my point, I asked the bartender for another beer, even though I had been about to ask for another anyway.  I guess I did reiterate my point, but what’s that matter?

                “Sixty-one bottles of beer.  Take one down, pass it around…”

                “Do you harbor any rage, Mr. Parker?”

                My name.  He knew my name.  “Who are you?” I demanded.

                “Do you?  Do you have a built up anger inside you?”

                I couldn’t help myself.  My mind flashed to her. It flashed to the previous day at work.  It flashed to three days earlier.  It flashed to my boss.  It flashed to my mother and step-father.  It flashed to the doctor at the town hospital.  It flashed to the incident earlier that very day.  And many other things.  It couldn’t stop.  It flashed to everyone in this fucked-up town.  It flashed to it all.

                “Forty-five bottles of beer on the wall!”

                Suddenly I was seething.  I was ready to blow, but experience and practice allowed me to contain it.  I finally answered the man’s question.  “Yes.”

                The man nodded, sipping at his beer.  A minute of silence.

                I asked again, more politely this time. “Sir, who are you?”  At that moment I realized the strangeness of the word.  Sir.  He had to be ten years younger than I, and I had no reason to call him by that.  Yet it had seemed natural.  Right.  Is this what had been beaten into me all these years?  Again, the anger flared.

                As if he was aware of my internal distraction, he had waited to answer.  When I looked back at him, he stated simply, “You called for me.”

                “I didn’t call for anyone,” I replied, draining the bottle in front of me.  I asked for another.

                “It’s probably time you stop drinking those.  We should be leaving soon.”

                “We?”

                “…twenty-three bottles of beer!”

                “Well yes.  After all, I have to take you with me.  Otherwise what would be the point?”

                “The point of what?”  The situation was getting stranger, but then, so too was my mind getting cloudier.

                The man looked at me and smiled.

                A couple more minutes passed.  I started on the beer that I’d been told not to drink.

                “Fourteen bottles of beer on the wall!  Nine bottles of beer!”

                “What’s his role in all of this?” asked the man, pointing at the drunk old man who had been droning on for all this time.

                “I don’t know him,” I said, shaking my head.

                “Ah yes.  I suppose you wouldn’t.  That’s right.  Anyway, it’s time to go.”

                I knew it didn’t make sense.  I knew it was foolish.  Probably even dangerous.  But I couldn’t ignore his pull.  I followed him out of the bar.  He led me to a black limousine, and opened a door for me, where I promptly climbed in.  The engine quietly came to life, and the limo left the parking lot, headed in the direction out of town.  The old man’s tune was in my head, and I felt I needed to finish it, seeing how it had come so far along.

                “Three bottles of beer on the wall. Three bottles of beer!  Take one down, pass it around!  Two bottles of beer on the wall!” I sang.  “Two bottles of beer on the wall!  Two bottles of beer!  Take one down, pass it around! One bottle of beer on the wall!”  The grand finale.  I turned to stare out the back window at the town I had lived in all my life.  The town that I hated.  “One bottle of beer on the wall!  One bottle of beer!  Take one down, pass it around!  No more bottles of beer on the wall!”  The flare temporarily blinded me and nearly simultaneously, the sound deafened me.  The limo shuddered from the shock.  A great explosion.  Knowing I shouldn’t, but feeling no remorse, I laughed aloud and stared with great joy as I watched my town burn to the ground.