I, Timber

Timber is the kind of small Pennsylvania town where the people still believe in democracy, and it’s that kind of wild individual democracy that people smile at when they turn the stiff, glossy pages of Gold Rush coffee table books.

The main streets converge downtown in a triangle, and a four-foot granite obelisk caps the point facing the mayor’s office.  Lime encrusts two dates carved in an old blocky banknote script.  One date commemorates the inauguration of the 1955 city council.  The other date marks the fiftieth anniversary of the council’s inauguration.

For two months, a regional newspaper, The Valley Heights, has been running a quarter page ad in the local section, publicizing the anniversary.  The ad encourages people to bring blankets and chairs and invites the more industrious and unengaged to cook or bake their favorite recipes.  Next to the faschnacht and funnel cake tents, the anniversary committee has planned for a section of unreserved booths intended for the culinarily inclined.  In case of rain, the finer print in the ad reads, the Sparrow’s Club and Leonardo’s Pizzeria will open their reception halls to attendees.

He stops reading aloud from the newspaper ad and looks at me, seated to his left.

My elbow is on the bar and my arm standing straight up, ending in a fist.  My chin rests on my fist, and because I am tired, I can’t keep my head balanced.  My half-conscious attempts to hold up my head, which wobbles like the broken front wheel of a shopping cart, amuse the man who was reading aloud.

He rolls up his paper and rests it on the bar.  As my teetering cranium is about to slip off its perch, he raises the newspaper and swats me on the shoulder.

“What the hell?” I snap, disoriented with sleep.

“You damn near fell over there,” says the other.

“Fell over?” I ask, looking around the diner trying to reorient myself.

“Yep, almost fell right off-a the stool.”  My assailant-savior swats the bar with the rolled up newspaper.  “Woulda been just like that too, if I ‘adn’t-a woke you up.”

“In that case, thanks.”  At last mindful of where I am and embarrassed that I had fallen asleep in public, I rub my face roughly, especially around my mouth.  There’s a small mirror between the dual burner coffee pot and the milkshake mixer.  I stretch my neck to check myself in the reflection for the fist-shaped red marks that run up my cheek.

“Don’t thank me.  I’d have soon of seen you fall.”  The man stirs his lukewarm coffee to unsettle the sugar from the bottom of the mug.  He unsettles me too.  My face flushes, and in the nearly obscured mirror I notice that my blush is revealing four pale lines in the shape of a fist.

“I didn’t let you fall, though,” the man continues.  “Rum does that to me, makes me a better person.  If I ‘ad-a drank whiskey tonight, you’d-a fell.”

“Then, I’m glad you drank rum.”

“You would be.”