Willy Burton Decides to Start Drinking

Liz and I stopped talking and started watching him as soon as we saw him cross through the front door. I was actually getting ready to leave pretty soon, since I have to give some time to sober up on Thursdays before I go into work later that night. Liz was talking about this job she got offered out in Chicago, writing for some sports magazine. She turned it down. Originally, she just said she didn’t think it was going to work out, which I thought was pretty stupid. She would’ve done fine. Anyways, she was talking when I heard the door open behind me, and she just stopped and her brow creased up. I turned around and there’s Willy Burton, heading on in like he’s a regular or something, like he drinks there as often as someone like Liz or I does. He just strode along like there’s no reason anyone would be confused by him being there.

You could tell Carrie Patterson, who owns the place, thought it was weird too, because she made a face like she thought it was a sting operation. Willy slid onto one of the stools in front of her and said, “Whiskey, please, without ice.” She gave him a look, maybe concern would be the best way to describe it, or sympathy, and then nodded and poured.

Willy grimaced at the taste, which was to be expected, since he’d never had it before, but he didn’t seem surprised at all. He scrunched up his face and all that, then it passed and he just nodded and said, “Could I have another?” I swear, my jaw literally dropped. Like a cartoon. I didn’t even know people’s jaw dropping like that even happened in real life, but I was just blown away. I guess I didn’t know how else to show it.

The whole thing was even weirder because the three of us – Liz, Carrie, and I – were the only ones there to see it. Normally, Liz and I wouldn’t even be there. Half Moon Bar on Elm has the best drink deals on Thursdays, and so everyone heads there instead of Carrie’s place – all the regular people, those older guys that drink together. This time, though, Liz and I had barely walked in when two of the older guys got into a fight. I don’t really make an effort to remember their names, but I know these two hate each other, some neighbor shit about where to put trash cans that spiraled into this crazy feud. All those old regulars are kind of a mess. They were arguing at the bar counter when Liz and I walked in, and one of them stood up and swung at the other. So Liz and I just turned right around and went to Carrie’s instead. Personally, I know I don’t want anything to do with that.

Liz nudged me. “You hear me?”

“Sorry, what?”

“Why’s he here?”

“You think I know?”

“What’s he doing? I mean, I know he’s drinking, but… what’s he doing? He’s never… he’s always going on about alcohol and...”

Liz was just staring at him. Normally, you try and hide it when you’re staring at someone, but this is something else. This is like staring at a pig flying or something. Anyone who’s around is going to stare. Plus, we’re in the far back corner closest to the door, and he’s up at the bar counter, so he probably won’t notice. Liz kept her eyes on Willy and asked me, “He ever say why he hates booze so much?”

“Lauren Hammond said it’s because his dad drank and hit his mom or something.”

“Lauren doesn’t know anything though. She says she got abducted by aliens.”

Liz can be an asshole sometimes – she and I are only really friends because we drink together. We weren’t friends in high school or anything. We’d be at the same parties a lot of the time but we never talked much. I guess some of her friends were close with some of mine, but we were in completely different groups back then. And then after she came back from college, we just sort of kept seeing one another at the bars over and over again – we’d head to the same ones depending on the deals for each day of the week. And we sort of knew each other, so it seemed kind of dumb to just sit in silence. Plus, of the people that you normally see in the bars, she’s the only one that’s my age, so I’d rather talk to her than any of the others even if she is an asshole. Most of the people I’d rather hang out with left after high school, but she’s good to drink with. Anyways, I said, “Well, her and Willy dated in high school, right? Lauren said she saw it.”

“I don’t know about that. I just know it must be the terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day or some shit for Willy, for him of all people, to be drinking.”

“You think he’s okay?”

She gave this kind of spit of a laugh. “What, you think he’s celebrating or something?”

“What do you think happened? Maybe something with his family?”

“I don’t think so. I passed Margot and their kids on the way here. I waved, they didn’t, same as usual.”

“Sure.”

“I’m really not sure what I did to her, like why she hates me now. You hear anything?”

“No. I figured it’s just because Willy hates drinking so much. Kind of rubbed off on her.”

“What’s that got to do with me?”

I just gave her a look, you know, since she basically lives at the bar. She knows it too.

“I was kidding, Seth. Also fuck you, don’t judge. You’re here just as much as I am.”

“Not saying I’m not. You asked, and I answered.”

Liz shook her head. “Whatever.”

“What about the rest of his family? Are his parents okay?”

“I mean his dad sure as shit isn’t okay, but it’s not like that’s news. I haven’t heard much else about them. Actually, wait. I think I heard his kid got into trouble at school, for hitting another kid?”

“That was Gavin Swaley’s kid.”

Liz makes a face. “Smirnov Swaley?” Gavin’s drinking record in high school was an entire handle of Smirnov. Some other people say they saw it. I think he works for the sheriff’s office now, which is pretty funny.

“Yeah,” I say to Liz. “Willy’s kid was the one that got hit. Willy had to go into school to figure it all out with Gavin and the principal, though, so that’s probably what you’re thinking of.”

“Oh. Could be. So it’s not something with family… did anybody else around town die recently? Maybe one of his friends? One of the pastors? Or, ooh — it could be somebody he looked up to when he was younger?”

“I haven’t heard of anything like that.” I paused. “Does Lauren Hammond really say she got abducted by aliens?”

“She told people at parties. We went to State together, she used it like an ice breaker. I think she said it for classes too, if they ask for a fun fact.”

“I mean, I bet people were curious.”

“Yeah, and then they realized pretty quick she was full of shit.”

“Mm. Maybe it’s money troubles? Why he’s drinking, I mean?”

She grunted at that and shook her head. “I don’t… there’s no way he’d come and waste more money on booze, right?”

“That’s what we’re doing.”

“But it’s Willy Burton.”

Which is a valid point. Willy’s one of the most… what’s the word… frugal people I’ve ever met. Back in high school we worked together for a little while at this burger place – Pat’s, it used to be on Third but they closed it down maybe seven years ago, maybe eight… it was around when Liz got back from college. After our shifts on Fridays all the waiters and bartenders would all head out to catch a movie or go to Liz’s basketball games. She was a huge deal then. The basketball games were her basketball games until, well, she’s probably never mentioned it but she got hit by a drunk driver senior year and lost a scholarship, it’s kind of a sore subject to her. She took it really hard. But before that, she was like a local celebrity, so we’d go watch her games after work. But if it cost any money at all Willy would just reject the invitation there. He saved every dollar he got from working at that burger place. And the thing is, Willy’s family did okay money-wise, they never dealt with, like, poverty or anything like that. It wasn’t like the Munson kids where saving was a total necessity, he was just strict with himself all the time. We never really asked him why, we just knew that’s what he wanted to do and left it at that.

“So it’s not money, or family, or somebody dying,” Liz said. “I really don’t know then, those… those are the main things I can think of. It could be that one of those still is happening and nobody knows about it yet, right? Maybe… maybe Margot’s cheating on him? Oh, that’d be just like her, wouldn’t it?”

Then, as I kept staring at him, I noticed the really weird part of the whole ordeal, which is that Willy looked like he always does – his hair’s slicked back, he’s not clean shaven but he’s never someone you could look at and call unkempt or disheveled or anything, he just looks like he shaved a couple days ago and it’s starting to grow back. He was wearing the same clothes he normally does when he’s not at work: khaki pants, a white flannel shirt buttoned all the way up. He didn’t look like he’s been put through the ringer by life or anything, he looked like how he does when he goes to the farmer’s market. If you switched out his shirt for a nicer one, he would’ve looked like he does when he goes to church.

I explained all this to Liz, and she nodded and went, “You’re right. Shit, you’re totally right! Oh, man, that’s creepy.”

“I know! It’s like ‘who are you and what’ve you done with Willy?’ You know?”

“He… he’s got to be hiding some dark shit.”

And that’s the moment Willy turned to us, and I’m pretty sure Liz realized at the same time I did that we’d been gawking at this poor guy the whole time. You know when you’re talking about someone behind their back and then they walk in the room, and every cell in your body feels like it just freezes in place and then shatters?

See though, if Willy had been all “What the hell business is it of yours why I’m here….” Well, that sounds nothing like him, but if he’d called us out for it at all, it still would’ve been so unlike Willy that we would’ve basically had our answer. Willy doesn’t yell at anyone, even about alcohol. So if he’d started railing into us, we would’ve known something was off with him, that something had happened that made him change that demeanor. Probably the same thing that made him decide to drink.

But he goes, “Seth. Elizabeth. How are you two?”

You don’t know Willy, but that’s how he greets everyone, no matter where or when. Except normally, it’s a really, like, wholesome greeting, because Willy’s one of the few people you’ll ever meet out there that, when he starts a conversation with you, he genuinely wants to know what you’ve been up to. It’s not bullshit, even a little bit. Real Mr. Rogers shit. This time though… it’s like when you go in haunted houses, and you walk into a room where you know the worst scare of the night is coming because everything there is just too normal, and your stomach gets all warm. Like that, because this is just same old Willy, doing the last thing in the world you would expect same old Willy to be doing. He’s saying this from the stool of a bar counter, with a double whiskey in front of him.

Anyways, I answered him. “We’re good… how are you?”

“I can’t complain.”

Liz sort of moved forward in her seat went, “Sorry to hear about your kid, about that fight that happened. At school.” She looked like she was studying him, Sherlock Holmes style. Trying to pick up on a reaction or something that wouldn’t have been like him.

He just nodded. “Little kids can be reckless sometimes, I guess. It all wound up okay, though. Gavin and I talked it over with our boys, and I think… well, I hope it’ll be a learning experience for them.”

“Yeah,” Liz said. “So everything’s going good for you?”

He shrugged. “I suppose so. Things have been a little slow at work. I guess not too many people need financial advice right now. Other than that, everything’s okay that I’m aware of.”

She squinted, and I’m pretty sure she was thinking about what she said earlier, about Margot cheating on him. Personally, I couldn’t see it, but I figured I’d go ahead and check, all stealthy. I went, “How’s Margot?”

“She’s well,” he said. “How are things with Eileen?”

“Uh, we’re still going strong. Planning to move in together in a couple months.”

“That sounds wonderful,” he smiled. “Any idea where?”

“I think somewhere near the library,” I told him. “Easy for her to get to work.”

“Long drive for you though. But you probably like that. How are things at work?”

“You know, same old. They still let me practice on the speedway some nights, whenever they’re sure I’m sober, so that’s fun. In the meantime it’s a lot of just, what’s the word, mundanity. There’s only the one right way to tune up those cars, so…. Oh, and I’ve met a lot of the drivers. You know, building connections and all that.”

He turned a little more on his stool to face us more directly. “How long do you have to practice before they’ll let you drive in a race?”

“Oh, you know, it’s different for everybody. Hopefully soon though, for me. I think they’ve seen my times going down, and the other day one of my bosses said he saw my run the night before and he was impressed. There’s really nothing like it, just that feeling of really, really moving, you know? And that’s just when it’s only me out there – in a real race, I can’t even imagine, you got the competition factor too and… there’s really nothing like it.”

He nodded and gave me a smile. “Elizabeth, what about you? Are you planning to coach another year? The basketball team is doing real well with you around.”

“Yeah. Yeah, well, I got a job offer at this sports magazine in Chicago, but I don’t… think it’d work out. I’d have to move away, so the basketball team might start losing.” Listening to her talk made me think that a lot of the time, you only realize how little is going on in your life when someone like Willy asks you something, someone who’s married with a career and a six-year-old. They ask you a question and your brain just kind of stops whatever it was doing and goes, shit, how are things going?

He chuckled. “You should take it. The basketball team… they’ll do fine. But the magazine sounds interesting… why would it not work out for you?”

“I don’t… it’s definitely a big step up from the kind of sports writing I used to do. That was high school stuff, this… it’d be professional leagues. Not like NBA or anything, but still it’s a bigger deal.”

“I’m sure they wouldn’t have offered you the job if they didn’t trust you with it.”

“I’m still thinking about it.” That was a lie. Like I said, just before Willy came in she was telling me about how she turned it down.

“Well, I’ll look forward to the grapevine telling me what happens with it.” And then, this is the crazy part, he smiled at us, raised the whiskey in a toast, downed the rest of it, then turned back to Carrie Patterson behind the bar and went, “I don’t think I like this very much by itself. Could I try it with Pepsi?”

Liz’s eyes got bigger than I’ve ever seen, and her hands went straight up to her forehead in a way that didn’t really seem voluntary, more like she didn’t know what else to do with them. Carrie made the drink, Willy took it and drank it, spent probably five more minutes in the bar, and then stood from his stool. He paid Carrie and started walking out, and as he got to the door and got his coat on, he stopped and went, “Oh! Elizabeth, I almost forgot, but happy belated birthday! Margot mentioned you turned thirty, that’s a big one.”

Liz was still frozen in place, but she managed to go, “Thanks.”

Willy nudged the door open and looked back around at the bar, then said, “Have a nice afternoon, everyone.”

As soon as the door closed behind him, Liz snapped. She was up out of the chair in a heartbeat and moving toward the bar. “Carrie, what the fuck… what’d he say to you, anything?”

Carrie shook her head. We probably would’ve heard him if he had, so it was kind of a dumb question. Carrie said, “Just whiskey, whiskey, and whiskey with Pepsi. Also, if it helps, I’m pretty sure he could hear you guys, ‘cause I could hear you, so I was watching his face to see if he’d react that whole time and nothing seemed off.”

“Nothing? Not like, a twitch of the eye? Nothing?”

Carrie shook her head.

“Fuck!” Liz spun around on a heel and started back toward our table. She stopped in the middle and her eyes just started doing this panic-dance along the ground, like when you’re looking over notes before a final exam and you’re just trying to absorb as much as you can without your head exploding.

Liz turned to me next and said, “Seth, what the fuck?” I just shrugged. Not much I could add. It was honestly hard to have any other reaction to it.

“That was just…” she said. “That was just him. Just Willy. Nothing… nothing fucking different except the drinking. People don’t just… do that, right? I’m not crazy about this, right?”

I started thinking about it a little bit, and so I eventually said, “I don’t know, I guess there’s no reason people don’t do that.”

“Seth, people don’t just do things without a reason. I’m right about this. People don’t just start drinking on a whim.”

“I did,” I said to her.

“Bullshit, you started drinking because you wanted friends.”

“I did not. That’s not true, I had friends, Liz. They’re the ones that got me into drinking, remember? Junior year? Jake Watson and I went shot for shot at Halloween.”

“Whatever.” She sat back down at the table. “Either way, there’s a reason! You wanted to… I don’t know, we’ll say you wanted to have fun at parties, or you wanted to fit in or whatever. That’s a reason for you doing that, for changing.”

“Yeah, but people could just do things all of a sudden. There’s a reason, sure. But people can just start drinking if they want.”

“Not him! He can’t!”

“Why not?”

“That’s his whole thing! He’s never drank! Not once, and he suddenly he just wakes up and decides he wants to start? That’s bullshit, people don’t just, like, wake up one morning and decide they want to… like, if you were a good person, and you just woke up and decided you wanted to be a bad person. That doesn’t happen! There has to be a reason behind it. So if Willy Burton wakes up and decides he wants to drink, that doesn’t make any fucking sense, not without a reason behind it. And if it does happen, and Willy Burton can start drinking for no reason, why doesn’t everybody do it? Why do you never hear about it? Right? Everyone’s got parts of themselves that they don’t like. Like us – why are you and I still here? There’s no reason we should be, so why are we here still if we can just wake up and decide we want to not be here anymore?”

“Here, like… the bar? I like it here, don’t you?”

“Yeah like the bar, or the fucking town, or just this place in our lives, or whatever!”

“I don’t know. I guess… well, you could’ve, right?”

“I could’ve?”

“You could’ve left town. You had that magazine thing and you didn’t think it’d work.”

“Yeah, because it wouldn’t have!”

“But how do you know?”

“Because that’s not how it works! At least that’s not how I thought it works. I can’t just decide I’m gonna leave town and start over all of a sudden.”

“But why not? If you wanted the job—”

“Of course I fucking wanted the job!”

“What, then? Are you scared to leave or something?”

“I’m not scared.” She looked me in the eyes when she said that, and I don’t know. It seemed like she was. You know that face, where a person’s eyes are all steely and they look like they’re trying to be intimidating, but their eyebrows are just messing up the whole look? Angled upward or something? And the more I looked at it the more unconvincing it was. She must’ve seen in my face that I was thinking that though, because her face just contorted out of nowhere.

“You know what?” she said. “Fuck you, Seth. See you never. Have fun drinking alone.” She stood up and threw some cash, I think it was maybe a twenty dollar bill, on the table we were sitting at, and grabbed her jacket. She yelled at Carrie, “If that doesn’t cover it, he’s paying for me.” And then she walked out.

Turns out we’d been at the bar for a couple hours because the sun was super low when I got outside. Not what I’d call sunset, but that part of the day where the street is mostly shadow. Reason I mention that is because we’d been at the bar long enough to where twenty dollars wasn’t nearly enough to pay her tab. But I got lucky, because Carrie’s pretty cool about stuff like that. She said she’d ask Liz next time she came in. I thanked her and headed out not too long after Liz. Drinking isn’t much fun without anyone around to talk to, you know? And I know what you’re probably thinking, after I told you what Liz said about me drinking just to have friends, but that’s not what I mean.

Anyways, as I was walking back to my car, I heard way off to the north this whine of the cars moving on the speedway, and my heart just sank through my feet, like into the ground. I’d completely forgotten about work. You lose track of time in a bar. Even with the time I had before I got there, I’d have to go in tipsy, so… thanks a lot, Willy. I looked around for Liz on the street, but I didn’t see her. The only person I saw that I knew was Jake Watson and a pregnant woman about our age crossing the street – he must be back in town to visit his parents. We waved to each other, you know, but we didn’t stop to talk. Seemed like we both had places we had to be.

Most people don’t really believe me that the whole thing even happened. I haven’t seen Liz in a while and she’s not taking my calls either, so she can’t back me up or anything. Carrie told me afterwards that Willy came to her house that night and asked her not to tell anyone about it, and that she’s sorry to make me look crazy but she’s not going to say a word. It’s fine. After she told me that, I was thinking about Willy on the drive home, and I’m thinking if he doesn’t want Carrie to tell anyone that means he isn’t going to do it again, so he must have just wanted to try it once. I’m still not sure why, maybe he just woke up and realized he didn’t want to die without having done it.

I’ve been practicing at the speedway more often. I still don’t know if I’ll get to race there soon, but more practice is nice. I think they trusted me more when they heard I stopped going to the bar as much. I still go every once in a while, with Eileen usually, but she doesn’t like to drink too often. Hurts her stomach. Plus, it’s not as fun without Liz there, and like I said there’s not many other friends around to drink with anymore. And sure, I could’ve made friends with the other regulars, because most of them already know me anyways, but it wouldn’t have been the same. I can’t really explain it. I guess if I had to, the best I can do is that drinking without someone like Liz there… it sucks a little bit. But I guess that’s just how it goes. I asked around and nobody in town has seen Liz lately, so she might have just left, but I have no idea where. I want to say Chicago, but she said she turned down the job already. I suppose she could’ve been lying about it just to see how I’d react, trying to get people’s opinions on it beforehand.

This is kind of funny. Just the other day, I paid the rest of her tab from that afternoon. It seemed wrong to stiff Carrie on that, and I didn’t think Liz was coming back soon. I don’t know. I know she told me I have no friends or whatever and to go fuck myself, but I guess I hope that somehow, she’s in Chicago.