FRANK BURNS,
FORT WAYNE, INDIANA
Joe Cragbury had owned Joe's Bar and Grill for the past fifteen years. In the past fifteen years, he had seen many men get drunk for various assortments of reasons. Their wives had left them, their girlfriends dumped them, one guy's truck had backed into a dried out, but still muddy, creek bed. You name it; Joe had seen it happen to someone at sometime. But, also in the past fifteen years he hadn't seen anyone looking quite as bad off as the man sitting in the vary corner of the room at the end of the bar table. Their weren't many customers, it was near closing times and most of his regulars had the sense to get home to their wives for dinner before they started to suspect something. Joe had begun to take an interest in the man after his fifth beer, and was now watching him intently, looking for some sign of life.
"Hey buddy, what's wrong with you?" Joe approached the man cautiously, he was far too aware of what an angry drunk man was capable of.
"It's no. none of your," the man in the corner lifted his face from his folded elbow for the first time since his last drink, "your bees-waxed buster."
"Oh, ok." Joe picked up a damp rag and began wiping crumbs off of the counter top.
"Well, now that you've bent my arm," Joe smiled to himself, everyone told him something, "I might as well, hic, explaining. It's a long story. hic" The man sat up and, in vain, attempted to straighten his stained shirt.
"If you want to, fella. I've got time," Joe leaned back against the counter facing the man.
"My wife left me because I was fooling around," his voice grew quiet and he leaned toward Joe, his eyes roaming the empty bar, "with other women." Joe just nodded, figuring that if he had a face like that guy's he would be lucky to get married in the first place. "She left me, all because of two or three or four, no five hic well it wasn't that many of times. She left me and do you hic know who am I?"
"Well, no I can't say that I do," Joe wasn't exactly sure where the man was going with the conversation, but I funny story from work always meant a laugh from the missus.
"I'm Lt. Colonel Francis Marion Burns, hic, M, hic, Doctor, hic, is was in Ko. Kor. the war." The man flopped satisfactorily back into his seat, smiling as best he could without lips. Before Joe could say anything else, the bell above the door rang, signaling the arrival of a new customer. A girl looking to be around 17 or 18 years old walked in, looked around the bar, and walked toward the man in the corner.
"Come on, Frank," she said pulling the man from his chair, "He's my father," she said to Joe, he wasn't used to his customers being "kidnapped' by teenagers.
"Oh, your Dad huh?"
"If you use the term lightly," the girl replied, dragging Frank from his chair and toward the door. As Frank was being ushered by his oldest daughter out the door, two images floated through his drunken mind, Louise in sweatpants and an oversized T-shirt sitting at the dining room table balancing the check book, and Margaret in the nightie he bought her,
"Oh, Louise Why did you kick me out?" he moaned, "I can't afford an ex-wife!" Joe Cragbury chuckled to himself and once again began wiping the counter.