Just Before Noon on Sunday (April 9, 2009. New Pink Moon. Issue 3)

I’m reading the obituaries in Sunday’s paper and waiting on the clerk to make my ham and cheese sandwich when Brian Riley slings the double doors open and limps into the store yelling so loud that one of the kids looking at a display of gummi road-kill candy grabs hold of his mother’s leg.

I don’t gawk at him, but I can still tell that something is wrong.  His hair is all over his head and he looks like he hasn’t seen a good night’s sleep in a month.  His pants are ripped on the left knee and covered in paint and dirt. 

“I need a case of Old Milwaukee,” he yells for the second time.  “And some mixed nuts.  I really need some mixed nuts.”

They’re not supposed to sell alcohol around here on Sunday.  It’s not like that in the whole state, just this little corner of Kentucky. The Latching Post Market, though, they don’t pay attention to that law.  You come in on the holy day of rest wanting beer, by God, you’ll get it.  Darvin Langley, the owner, just makes sure that it’s in a brown bag with the top folded down tight.  That, and he has to know you before he’ll sell it.  He learned his lesson selling to strangers when his wallet got busted flat from paying fines for selling on the Sabbath.

Langley would normally head to the back and get the beer, but he knows something’s wrong with Riley just like I did.

“You all right, Riley?” he asks.

“None of us are all right,” Riley says.  “I just need some twelve ounce tranquilizers and some mixed nuts.  That’ll fix me up just fine.”

Riley lives just three houses up from me on Ribeye Road.  He moved here with his girlfriend a little over a year ago and took a job teaching art at the local community college. He used to be some big-time painter out in Oregon, but I reckon he got run out of town when he set a gallery on fire because he didn’t like the way his paintings were displayed.  My wife said he has family around here, so I guess that accounts for his showing up in these hills.

“Calm down, Riley,” Langley says.  “Mary, soon as you’re finished fixing that ham sandwich, head in the back at get Riley’s beer.”

“I’ll get it myself,” Riley says.  “Don’t have time to wait on your second-rate sandwiches to be fashioned for some dullard.  I have real creating to do.”

The mother takes the gummi-wanting kid and leaves without buying anything. 

I’m sure that don’t set well with Langley.

“Get the hell out of here, Riley,” he says.  “I told you to calm down, but you have to make a show out of everything.”

My wife told me that Riley was some kind of tortured genius.  I just think he’s a damn drunk jackass, but I don’t know much about art or geniuses.  I’m just an old retired sheriff’s deputy.  Lived my entire life in this town.  Most of the art I’ve seen is from people who care rattlesnake heads on the end of canes or make drink coasters out of coal.  The kind of work you can grab hold of, turn it over in your hand.  I don’t understand squiggly lines that look like a busted bottle of Tabasco sauce.  That’s what Riley’s stuff looks like to me.

“This is not an exit,” Riley says.  “I’m not leaving until you provide me with cans of hops, yeast and inspiration.”

Langley eyes are focused in my direction like he expects me to grab Riley’s arm and twist it behind his back and throw him out of here like I would’ve done back in the day.  But I’m not wearing my tan uniform anymore.  I retired before the job got me killed.  I didn’t want to end up like my father, shot three times in the chest and once in the neck while he was sitting in his patrol car writing a ticket.  That was forty years ago.  I remember seeing the car, glass all over the seat, some of it stained red.  My old man never got to see me graduate high school.  I followed in his footsteps before I even knew what I was doing.  Worked for twenty-five years burning pot patches and catching drunk driver’s in the place I call home.  Then I got out.  I’ve seen both my boys in cap and gowns twice, once for high school, and then for college.  Now Brian Riley is making a scene when all I want is a ham sandwich and a bottle of orange soda.

“You want pickles on your sandwich?” Mary asks, looking over the meat display case.

“No,” I say.

“Fuck his sandwich!” Riley yells.  “What has he given the world?  I deserve my beer.  Christ, I deserve something.”

He punches the display case and the glass shatters.  His arm goes in up to the elbow and he jerks it back out.  I know he’s cut bad.  The glass is everywhere and the blood runs down the shards that still hang in place.. Some of it drips on the ham, turkey and bologna.  My stomach goes sour.  Riley staggers over beside me.  He’s crying.

"Look,” Riley says, and grabs my shoulder with his good arm.  “That, my friend, that’s real life.  That’s art.”

I start to shake his arm free and get out of there, but I don’t.  I look at the glass, the blood, the meat, and for the first time I think I come close to understanding Riley’s world.

“That’s art,” I say.