Free Our Daily Bread by Lauren B. Davis Page A

moaned from the speakers mounted on the walls. A small television sat on a shelf behind the bar, turned to a boxing match. The floor was blotchy with various stains, some darker than others and if you looked in the corners you would find piles of dust, ash, hair and mouse turds dating back to the late eighteen hundreds when the place first opened. A window stood on either side of the padded vinyl door, and the bent venetian blinds permitted only slats of mote-strewn light. The room was empty at four o’clock in the afternoon, before the shift workers from the paint factory and the county crews came in for their wind-down Rolling Rock just after five. Finn the bartender was the only guy in the place, filling plastic bowls with peanuts and pretzels. The air reeked of old beer and last night’s cigarettes. Finn was a man with a permanent frown and deep pouches under his pale eyes, characteristics gained from too many late nights and too many disappointments concerning the nature of man. When he saw Albert come through the door he nodded, as though expecting him, and then he saw Bobby.
    â€œHe can’t come in here, Erskine,” he said.
    â€œYou want what you want, or not?” Albert slid a paper bag across the bar, which Finn quickly grabbed and tucked into some crevice below the bar. Albert took the bills Finn handed him, counting them before he put them in the pocket of his decrepit leather jacket. “Where are your manners, Finn? Don’t you even say thank you?”
    â€œI’m eternally grateful, but like I said,” the bartender pointed at Bobby, who still stood by the door, “he can’t come in here.”
    â€œDon’t be like that, now, Finn. He’s eighteen,” said Albert, while Bobby rocked back and forth on his heels, his hands deep in the pockets of his army surplus jacket.
    Finn snorted. “Even if that were true, it doesn’t mean shit, now does it, since the legal age is twenty-one?”
    â€œKid can have a fucking soda, can’t he?” said Albert.
    â€œSure he can. Take him over to Gus’s Corner,” Finn said, naming the diner a few doors down the street.
    â€œI can’t get a beer in Gus’s. Come on, man, don’t be a hard ass. It’s not like he’s the first underage guy ever been in here, now is it?”
    â€œThis isn’t the fucking Olive Garden. Who is he? He’s not one of your cousins.” Finn looked Bobby over. “Aren’t you—”
    â€œYou’re worried about too many Erskines in one place? Is that it?”
    â€œI don’t care, man, let’s go,” said Bobby.
    â€œDon’t make a fucking federal case, Erskine.”
    â€œMe? That’s rich. I just come in with the kid to get a fucking beer.”
    â€œSit at the back. You see a uniform walk through that door you get the fuck out like your ass was on fire. Clear?”
    Albert clapped Bobby on the back. “You’re a real prince, Finn, a real prince. Bring us a Bud and a cola. And bring some peanuts and a pack of chips.”
    Albert and Bobby sat in a split-leather booth at the back, near the bathroom fumes of piss, the under-note of vomit and whiff of rotting garbage from the alley. Bobby faced Albert, where he couldn’t be seen from the door. Finn put the beer bottle, with a glass upturned on top of it, and another glass of cola on the bar, next to a bowl of nuts and a plastic package of chips.
    â€œCome and get it,” he said, and turned back to the two men knocking the crap out of each other on the television.
    Albert stared at his back for a minute, willing him to turn around. “Fucktard,” he said under his breath, and then fished in his pocket for a couple of bills. “Go get it, Bobby.”
    When he’d fetched their food and drink, Albert pushed aside the cola and poured half his beer into the glass. “Here,” he said.
    â€œYou sure it’s okay?” said Bobby,