The cold night surrounded me as I stood in the Park, nothing close by except dark shadows and the whisper of my friends' conversation.  I was on the top of Militia Hill, a bottle of gin in my hand, looking south toward Philadelphia, the city lights glowing all along the southern horizon, almost as bright as the moon, the closer lights of Flourtown standing out in individual clumps.  I shivered in the breeze, took a shot of gin from the bottle.  "Nothing like it," I thought.  "Cold winter night and the smell of gin."

My friends' conversation was getting louder, and I turned to see what was going on.  A.J. was packing a bowl with some herb from a plastic bag.  Turk was saying something to Ed, I couldn't quite hear, but he sounded really pissed.  Ed was shaking his head, then drinking out of a vodka bottle.  Erich was standing near Ed and Turk, listening, looking judicial.  Michelle and Dan had disappeared down the hill awhile ago, and nobody wanted to know.  I think I was almost bored.

"Time for the real stuff," I thought.  I handed the gin to Erich, who took a drink, and continued listening, now to Ed, who was calling Turk an intellectual mouse.  I reached into my inside coat pocket and felt for the small plastic bottle.  It was an aspirin bottle, 150 count when holding aspirin.  I had replaced the tablets with my own form of pain killer; I even called it liquid aspirin, but in actuality it was Clearspring grain alcohol, 190 proof.  I snapped the child-proof cap off with one hand and took a shot.  It was always like fire in my mouth, burning my tongue, enflaming my throat, so I tried to swallow it fast.  Down it went, could always feel it the whole way down.

Erich was looking at me quizically.  I smiled, putting the aspirin bottle back in my coat pocket.

"You're not drinking that shit again, are you," he said.  Ed and Turk stopped talking and looked first at Erich, then at me.

"Yes."  I didn't feel like elaborating.

"You're an asshole, man.  That stuff can make you go blind and shit.  It's just gonna screw you up."  For Erich, it wasn't one of his more memorable speeches, but he had been drinking.

"What's he drinking?" Turk asked.  Ed walked over to A.J., who was lighting the bowl.

"190 proof grain alcohol," Erich answered.  "The 190 stands for how stupid you have to be on a scale of 1 to 100 to drink that shit straight."

Turk frowned.  "Wow, Steve, you should be careful with that.  Why not mix it with something?  I think Dan brought some Hawaiian Punch."  He sounded genuinely concerned, and I laughed.  "It's not funny."

"Sorry," I said, "I didn't mean to laugh.  I just, uh, think I'm drunk."  I sat down on the cold asphalt of the Park road.  They looked at me, and I could vaguely hear them talking, but I don't know.  After a couple minutes, they started talking to Ed and A.J., and all of them passed the bowl around.  I waited, then got up and wandered down the hill toward the train tracks that ran along the bottom.
 
It was a big hill, and the tracks were on an artificial embankment on the other side of some growth at the bottom of the hill.  I trudged down, enjoying the crisp snap of the frosted grass under my feet, the conversation behind me dwindling to an inaudible level.  Soon all I could hear was the dried oak leaves rustling in the wind and the omnipotent faint roar of distant traffic.  My feet crunched on leaves at the base of the hill, and then I was in the growth.  It wasn't thick enough to block my passage, just enough to be bothersome.  The tiny needles of some plant caught my bare hand, and I swore softly.  Then I was walking up the train embankment, and standing on the tracks.

Woods lined the other side of the tracks, and behind me loomed the hill.  Looking back, I could see three dark shapes moving down the side of the hill the way I had come.  I took out the aspirin bottle, finished the grain, and tossed the empty bottle into the woods.  It was like a resolution, no more, heed my peers demands, whatever.  If they thought I as an ass for drinking the stuff like I did, then I wouldn't.  But I had to take that last shot of it; wouldn't want to throw away good alcohol.

They were in the growth now, cursing the needles that were causing my hand to sting.  I watched their slow progress.  Then I heard a noise, behind me, in the woods.  I turned around and looked at the black silhouette of the trees against the orange of the south sky.  The others came up behind me.

"What's up, Daly?" Ed said when he reached me.  His voice sounded particularly loud in the still night.

"Shush," I responded.  I waited a minute, the others shuffling around me.  "I think I heard something in the woods."

"Probably just some animal," Erich said, "or Michelle and Dan."  I hadn't thought of that, didn't want to think of that, but now it was out there, and I had to think about it.

"I thought they were heading for the cars," Turk said.  "Anyway, what would they be doing in the woods.  Why not go under the pine trees on the other side of the hill?"  His unspoken suggestion of what they were doing at the cars or under the pines locked itself into my brain, put a thick lump in my stomach.  I hated this.

"Fuck 'em; who cares anyway," said Ed.  "Let's drink."  He took a swig of the vodka and handed it to me.  I drank while Erich and Turk shared the gin.  The cold air bit my hands.

"Where's A.J.," I asked, but my brain was screaming, I don't know what for, but it screamed.  Was it betrayal?  Was it insensitivity?  Was I just plain stupid?  I drank a large mouthful of vodka and handed it back to Ed.

"He's baked," said Erich.  "Baked and sitting in the road up there.  Said he wanted to commune or something."

"Thought he wanted to commute," said Ed.

It was never her I hated, it was always the guy.  When it was Mike, I hated Mike.  Mike the drive up on the motorcycle and whisk her away Mike.  Mike the come over and be there if Steve ever dropped by Mike; the "I'm kind of busy Mike's over" Mike.  I hated Mike.  Then it was Jeff.  Jeff the 26 year old lawyer whom I never met Jeff.  Jeff the "She's not home she's out with Jeff" Jeff.  I guess I couldn't really hate a guy I had never even seen, but I tried anyway.  Then there was a black guy named Tony.  I never did hate him, in fact I kind of liked him when I met him, but I think that was due to the fact that he gave me the impression that whatever was going on wouldn't last.  He was into the Reggae seen, and I was on the fringe, and she was a one-week-wannabe.  When her week was over, we went to Penn State.  I had driven, she came with me, and a friend of hers came along, too.  We got there, she was going to spend the weekend with some friends, but the first person I saw was Dan, and she was still with me, and we all made plans, and that night I slept on the floor of some girl's dorm room in Turk's coed building while she and Dan shared the futon.  I don't know who was in the bunk beds, her friend maybe in one, I don't care; all night long I could hear them, on the futon, making liquid noises.  I had had a lot to drink and woke up freezing cold next to the door.

"Steve, get off the tracks; a train's coming!"  Turk's voice sounded far away, there was a deepening roar and the tracks were vibrating.  Train, get out of the way.  I moved off the tracks and down the embankment on the wooded side.  The others had gone back toward the hill.  The train rushed out of the dark, a gust of cold air and diesel smell moving along side it.  I watched the freight cars pass, box cars, coal cars, flatbeds, and finally a last boxcar with the red flasher on its rear coupler.

I was standing on concrete, the opening of an underground pipe, and turned to see a huge concrete drain, moonlight tracing its course deep into the woods.  I stepped onto the concrete above the pipe opening and looked down, expecting only to see the large, dark mouth of the pipe.

Instead I saw Dan and Michelle.  Their mouths were locked together, his hands were somewhere inside her open jacket.  Her hand was moving back and forth on his pants, near his waist.  I could see the white lace of a bra lying in the leaves near the concrete.

I turned and walked quietly back to the tracks.  Ed, Erich and Turk were waiting for me.

"Steve, are you ok?" Turk asked.  "We were afraid the train got you."

"No such luck.  Let's go find A.J."  I started down the other side of the embankment into the growth.  They followed me, discussing how far the train would have carried my body.

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© 1997 Stephen M. Daly