ONE MORE TIME FOREVER
ONE MORE TIME FOREVER
By John Tuft
The blue neon letters spell HEAVEN over the door of the bar. It’s on a busy street full of tourists and workers as one would expect the road to HEAVEN to be. The parking lot is in the rear next to an abandoned warehouse from better days gone by. To the west is the Ohio River, straddled by the Emsworth Locks and Dam. The dam backs up the waters of the Ohio, cum Monongahela and Allegheny Rivers at the Point in Pittsburgh. The dammed waters form a lake-like pool for four miles of recreational and commercial use. The locks convey boats and barges over the dam in relatively short order. Open the door and you will see jukebox angels dancing on the tiny dance floor off to the right. Occasionally a bar fly savior goes over and buys dances for quarters and dimes. On the left is a pool table surrounded by guys whose jeans and inevitable caps have seen better days, searching for the gospel of odds as they place bets on angles paying on the next shot. And then the next.
Approaching the bar is an act of contrition as though on one’s knees at Scala Sancta. The confessor behind the bar, Johnny, bids one come without discrimination. His vestment is a kitchen towel casually slung over one shoulder and a grimy apron around his waist. The array of glistening bottles is a creche fashioned from the cradle of human desire to be other, rather than to discover an ‘other’. Or probably more accurately, to feel other; other than alone, other than pained, other than lost. Patch is a regular. He sits at the end of the bar, his one leg on the rail, the other a prosthetic he lets dangle. Patch worked the tows that constantly traffic the rivers. He was checking the ties one night between the barges of coal and slipped. The barges banged together, catching his leg between tons of steel and load. Working the rivers is not for the foolhardy.
Astra is Johnny’s bar manager and girlfriend, on the odd days of the week. She books the ‘real country’ bands that play HEAVEN on the weekends. She also does the accounting. Astra is from another planet, or perhaps she’s in charge of the stars that gleam in her eyes. It’s hard to tell as she regularly circulates through the hazy room, her teased out hair giving her a halo, greeting customers by their first names, teasing, laughing, listening to heartbreak or tired jokes or tired souls. Their son, ten-year-old Jeffry, sits in his wheelchair playing Halo and Mortal Kombat, attached by tubing to the machine that keeps him breathing. At the end of the evening, Jeffry wheels over to the shelves and meticulously turns each bottle label out. HEAVEN welcomes all except for those who feel that they know better.
Asked by a stranger, what is your hope for life, Astra answers with a gravely smoker’s chuckle, “Honey, hope is one more time forever.” She gestures broadly, taking in the tableau of a Vatican of common priests and popes of the plausible. “Folks do what they have to. Hope is enough money for a beer at the end of the day. Food on the table, a roof over their heads. Hope for Patch is someone wanting a hard worker with only one leg. Hope for my Jeffie is…” her voice breaks and she waves away the thoughts crowding in with their dread, not hope. She straightens up her shoulders even as she sighs, “One more time forever.” The seeker gently asks, “What is your own one more time forever?” In a blink she says, “That someone would see my heart.” It is a plaintive prayer.
The worship hour approaches. The band shuffles in, a processional of six string sepulchers, denim attire, and a drum set to summon the holy ghosts of all music everywhere. The worship leader breaks out in the Brothers Osborne’s incantation, Stay a Little Longer. The assembled perishables nod along as the jukebox angels sway, smote by the spirit. Yeah, something like a strong wind is coming over me/Yeah it’s got a hold of me… The guitar riff that goes on and on at the end has the whole place hopping and hoping. May we always feel this way, here in HEAVEN. May we hope for one more time forever.
Words are magic and writers are wizards.
