The Old Man and the Bottle, a short story by Austin Mitchell

The Old Man and the Bottle

by

Austin Mitchell

 

The old man was grizzled. I remembered him now, he was Jake Burnett! He used to teach me at Mc Cauley High School. That was thirty years ago. Jake would be in his late sixties, I thought. 

"Juicy promised to rent me a room. When we went there, the woman was still in the room. But as soon as she comes out he says I can have it."

"How much are you paying for it?" Boyd asked.

"Twenty thousand dollars."

Boyd whistled.

"That's a lot of money," he opined.

I don't think Jake would recognize me since he had only taught me for three months.

I looked at Jake again. He was sitting under a tamarind tree in front of the playfield at Mc Cauley High. His clothes were worn and his shoes just about to give way.  He took a quart bottle of out of his bag. White rum! It was half full. Boyd and another man, Justin, were soon helping themselves to some of the rum and boom. Justin had gotten some ice from a woman next door. I took some of the rum and boom too.

I introduced myself to Jake.

“Can’t say I remember you now. I’m retired and all that.”

I was living in the nearby village of Darnley, but I worked in Kingston. It was a Saturday evening and I had come out for a walk on the playfield.

We soon finished Jake’s rum. Me, Boyd and Justin put together some money to buy two flasks at a nearby bar. I went to buy it. When I returned there was no sign of Jake.

“Where is Jake?” I asked.

“He went somewhere, said he was feeling sleepy,” Justin replied.

He was probably drunk, I thought as I threw out the rum and boom.

We started drinking again.

“So where does he live?” I asked.

“He sleeps up at Kenny’s bar, on one of the bar stools,” Boyd informed me.

“What the hell are you telling me, Boyd.”

“It’s the truth, he’s telling you, Buster,” Justin said.

“Didn’t he live over in Nelson?”

Nelson was a nearby community, a kilometer away.

“Because of his drunkedness, his wife left him for the States. He and the daughter and son who live at the house can’t get along,”Boyd informed me.

“He should be the one getting rid of them,” I opined.

“They both have children living there,”Justin informed me.

“Whenever Jake gets his pension, he gets drunk and spends it out on some young girl. He then turns around on his children and wants money from them,” Justin stated.

We drank off the rest of the rum. They also told me that Jake’s wife, although ten years younger than him was afraid of returning to Jamaica.

A month later, Jake got the room to rent from Juicy. Within two months he was evicted for failing to pay his rent. I saw him under the tree with a quart bottle of rum the next day. Several men, including Boyd and Justin were helping themselves to generous amounts of Jake’s rum. They called me over, but I ignored them and drove off.

A month later I heard that he was back home. It appeared that when he was drunk he slept on Kenny’s bar stool. When he was sober, which was probably once a week, he was at his house. Up to the date of his death, I always passed Jake and men like Boyd and Justin soaking up themselves in rum down at the playfield. The End.

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