There is a man with yellow fingers crossing the river Jordan to purchase a pack of cigarettes. His feet traverse the tiles on the floor of the grocery, shuffling from aisle five to the check out. His breath is a heady mix of listerine and Highland Mist whiskey. .. the latter bought in by the gallon at Pete’s Cut Rate Liquor. His hair is orange, naturally so and slicked back with bryll cream or a perhaps Murrays pomade. Actually… it is brylcream. I see it in his basket next to the fish sticks and tomato soup. His glasses are standard Army issue black horn-rimmed plastic. His skin is white with a winding blue highway of veins just beneath the surface, encasing a body that is pickled in Highland Mist.
There is a wife who at one time bought the cigarettes that sat between held the yellow fingers. She’s in a box covered in dirt at the cemetery. It’s a rich black dirt, made rubbery at times by the clay contents of the Coastal Prairies. He met her in a dance hall, after he returned from Korea. She kept house and warmed his bed for 32 years, until the spring of her 73th year, when she would do both for the last time. The dance hall still stands.
An enlisted man, he did one tour in Korea, and later two more in Vietnam. He never speaks of this. Despite the decades that have passed, years of military service and combat are seared into his brain and struggle to stay neatly contained there.
There was a time when he wasn’t allowed in the store. He seemed incapable to purchase groceries without a confrontation taking place. Simple human exchanges eluded his ability. After his wife passed, one of the neighbors came in and negotiated on his behalf such that they let him return. He’s come close-- twice to being banned again. Both times narrowly averted with expedited check out. Praise to the Lord. He does fine walking along the aisles with his basket, but the parlay of commercial transaction at the register can be provocative. .. not in a soft near-nudie magazine pictorial provocative, but in an angry rattle and hum.
The angry waiting and the clink of the coins dropped into the drawer. the thick, ribbed, fingernails that bejewel the yellow fingers. tap tap tap on the check writing station. He’s in front of me at the checkout. He calls for the smokes - a carton of Newports. He pays without incident and we are all relieved.
He sits for a spell outside the store, opening a fresh pack from the carton. I see him tapping the pack against the upright palm of his hand. He’ll smoke one before he walks home. I know his route. I’ve seem walk it a thousand times.
Tonight, he passes a merry go round and an ice cream truck. The whirl of an engine and the sound of a bass beat blasting out of a lowered Impala. Tonight, he’ll sit at a TV tray propped up to serve a plate of fish sticks. A clicker in one hand. A glass of scotch in another. One to Four Newports for dessert.
We will all in due time cross over, intent to run a final errand … a necessity of our own making. A carton of Newports, a package of fish sticks, and a can of soup. But tonight is not ours, it belongs to one man. .. A man with yellow fingers crossing the river Jordan to purchase a pack of cigarettes.