Persona Non Grata

Al sat in his car, parked

in front of your house, waiting

for you to discover the restrained

animal biding its time in the wilderness

of clothes that hung from his bones

like Spanish moss. I'm not saying

he loved you, just that he drove

by your house two, three times a night

and more on Saturdays, when you

and Sammybaby were steaming the windows in a '57

high-finned boat out on Limberlost Road.

Nor do I think he ever looked in the bay

window hoping to catch you. One night,

I sat with him for hours. It was Friday,

crickets were rubbing their legs together,

I was gabbing a mile a minute, and he asked

if I wouldn't mind sitting back and listening

to the night. He never put two words together.

He had to work at laughing, always

driving me or another guy out for a hamburger

or to crash a party, not to be friendly

but out of a code of obligation

that dictated his navigational chart.

We burned Marlboros down to their filters,

passed a bottle of wine and Kool Aid

back and forth. Sam's hi-beams swept the windshield,

the lawn, and the driveway into daylight.

They died. I turned to the blank stare and smoke

I'm going to marry her with all the trimmings.

He opened the door for Sam, sucker-punched

his lights out, then came around the car

and marched you up the driveway, his hand

moving from shoulder to shoulder like a metronome,

into the open garage. Now

you're divorced, your kids out of school

helping Al run a stamping plant, where Sammy

puts in his hours on a metal lathe. Last week,

when I was in town for my father's funeral,

Al and I went for a ride, two forty-year-old

misfires trying to find

something in common, something to do.

After I passed the open coffin, his eyes mortared shut

saying as much to me as they ever did, Al whispered

that if I wanted to see the lake or old friends,

he had his car. We pulled up

in front of your house, and while we passed

the evening and a joint between us, I remembered

asking you out once, in the early days

of Sam the man, for corned beef

and a coffee. Busy then; another time,

you said, smiling while walking

out of the cafeteria. I guessed that Al had somehow

gotten wind of it before the night of the punch

that sent Sam to the minor ieagues, and I knew

that parking space would always be reserved,

like a table with a view at a lakefront

restaurant or a front row pew in the mortuary

chapel for smoky Al, Sam and lucky me.