Static
“I’ve been tooled and misshapen and then shaped back up again.
“I’ve been a bricklayer.
“I’ve been an instrumentalist.
“I’ve been a talker.
“I’ve been a listener.
“I baptized a leopard in the Euphrates River at sundown.
“I’ve been a secret agent for the Lords of Peace.
“A very long time ago I was a circus clown.
“I’ve been a Mercedes Benz.
“I’ve worked on railroads and spaceships and once I even managed to maneuver through a mine-field in the Pacific Ocean.
“I was born the King of Ireland, but I relinquished the post shortly thereafter.
“I’ve been in food fights and late-night panty-raid affairs.
“I’ve dated the Queen of Monaco (she was nothing to write home about).
“I’ve been a painter.
“I’ve been a framer.
“I’ve been a curator.
“I’ve been an investor.
“I’ve bound books.
“I’ve weathered storms.
“I’ve sailed around the world in seventy-nine days.
“I almost died of thirst once and I nearly die of hunger every other day.
“When I was sixteen I brought a wounded milkman back to life after an accident on a gravel road.
“I’ve been to all fifty states and six-out-of-seven of the great oceans.
“Once I was nearly flat-broke.
“Another time I was penniless, but it didn’t bother me one way or the other.
“I can play the harmonica, the tuba and the tambourine, and I’ve conducted most of the great symphony orchestras in the world.
“I’ve been to hell and back and will tell you about it some other time.
“For awhile I was the Anti-Christ, but I won’t get into that right now.”
The Colonel paused, nearly out of breath.
“I’ve been so many, many, many things,” he said, seemingly exhausted. And then that half-smile again
The overhead lights at Pierre’s flooded the room, breaking the spell of the evening.
“THAT’S IT, EVERYBODY!” the bartender hollered, waving his washrag in the air like a sign of surrender. “I WANNA GO HOME!”
Our waitress came by the table and collected the nearly full pitcher of beer. Behind her, a busboy with a Tupperware bin collected the half-drunk and untouched last rounds from each table.
“MERRY CHRISTMAS, JERRY!” Luke ran over and shook my hand again. “MAYBE I’LL SEE YA BEFORE SPRING BREAK! HA!”
The Colonel didn’t seem to be fazed by closing time. “Wait!” he said excitedly. “One last thing!” He squatted down over his duffle bag again—no shadows now, no dimly-lit stages—and produced a cracked boom-box, the kind we had when we were kids. “Let me play you a song!”
A familiar din rang in the room as everybody left, slowly, rooster following hen. The Colonel turned on his radio and fiddled with the antenna. A bottle clanked behind the bar and somewhere somebody stumbled out of a bathroom, wiping their mouth on the back of their hand.
“There it is!” the Colonel said with a harsh whisper. “Can you hear it?!”
Jan and Jenny were buttoning up their heavy winter coats. The Colonel closed his eyes and smiled—not the strained half-smile this time, but a genuine, relaxed grin. He started humming softly to himself, something slow and familiar:
Hum-hum-hummm-mmm-mmm.
Static buzzed from the Colonel’s speakers, almost inaudible at first, growing with intensity as he adjusted the dial.
“Listen,” he said quietly, eyes still closed. And as the static picked up, crackling and popping, he said it again:
“Listen. Can you hear it? Can you hear it?! God, I love this song.”
Jonathan Twiwngley
Jonathan Twingley’s work appears regularly in many publications, including The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, The Atlantic Monthly and The New Republic, among others. His first illustrated novel, The Badlands Saloon, was published by Scribner in 2009. More stories are available at twingleystories.blogspot.com. He lives and works in New York City.