Mercy

Mercy Sometimes on a Friday night in August, all any working man wants is the small and fleeting mercy of a dark bar and a cold beer. John Dalton nodded to the woman with tired eyes, on the barstool next to him. When she didn’t reply, he shrugged and smiled. "I’m John. I work at the autobody place down on Harding." The silence swallowed his sentence then seemed to echo for a moment between them. He tried again. "I started there a few years back thinking it was just paycheck for a while. You know how that goes." She glanced at him. He was handsome in a common way, the memory of a younger man trapped in an avalanche of advancing gray. Blue collar trim but the center of himself had moved lower the way it sometimes does in a man. But Katie Dowling could see there was something else. Something damaged about him, like sea salt on a paint job. Something slightly battered that hung in his eyes. She recognized it. She saw it every night in the mirror. A dented up innocent kind of faith. Not the everything will be okay kind. The truer version beneath it. The kind of faith that believes in more than the prettiness of living. It believes in something greater. Something married to the pain which requires only that you endure, but yields something cleaner for the all it demands. Katie glanced again at Dalton. And for just a moment she thought she saw it his eyes. That truer version of hope, changed by enduring, into an unspoken faith. Dalton waved to Jimmy the bartend for a another and pointed at hers as well. He glanced into the mirror. Dalton understood life is cash and carry. You gotta pay for whatever it is you want to be. In just about everyone, he knew, living was a kind of layaway. You reach for something more and maybe you get to scrape your fingernails on it, but it always costs more than you have. More than you are. But you say yes. Yes, I’ll pay. Whatever I have. Whatever I am. So you pay with doubt, pay with longing, and maybe some nights pay with mercy to another in the hope that it might someday be returned. And maybe someday you’ll get your hands around it. That layaway kind of dream. That person you hear calling to you from beneath all the worry and the debt you owe to the better part of yourself. Trying to fill the silence, Katie said, "That’s steady work I bet. Broken parts." He nodded. "Just keep coming. Been there three years now. Never thought I’d stay this long." He leaned toward her, "But there’s a reason …why I stay." He paused, looking down at the bar and ran his hand over the imperfections in the wood. “I keep trying to fix 'em. Keep trying to make all those broken parts new." Outside, a boy in a muscle car, maybe twenty, revved his engine pointlessly and a girl ran to the passenger side and jumped in. Dalton gazed at its frame like he had fixed it or would, sometime soon. "They come in all smashed to hell. One came in over the weekend. Some kid’s wreck." He hesitated. "I try to find a way to fix it all. My part of the world. That’s what I do. Really what I am." The muscle car revved its engine hard and spun its wheels, like the boy thought happiness was just a matter of speed. Katie leaned a little closer. She was thinking of the teenager they brought into the ER. A kid that had gone joy riding on some blind curve until a tree found his future in the dead of night. All week long she had hovered, watching over him. But he was broken in ways people don’t recover from. What did this man call it? “Smashed to hell…trying to find a way to put ‘em back together.” That sounded just like her. She felt a little stronger, like maybe this man might understand the unspeakable language at the center of herself. The boy died on Thursday. There was really nothing more they could have done. "But some things just won’t be fixed," she whispered. Dalton glanced at her. Then he quietly nodded. "That don’t mean you shouldn’t try," he said. "I do," she answered. “I try, but still . . .” her voice trailed off. "That don’t mean you shouldn’t try," Dalton whispered to himself. The house band was tuning up. Mostly blues guys that were forced to work for tips, playing covers of the latest radio hits or the occasional Motown oldie. These guys could play, though. You could hear it underneath the sound, like a wail hidden inside a joke. Katie took a deep breath and stared at herself in the glass. What could this man see in her? She was bone tired. The first few wisps of gray had begun to creep into her hair and when she smiled now it was never itself alone, always like it was being chased by something sharp. Something with teeth. Dalton touched her gently on the sleeve and she felt part of herself surrender a bit. The hope stirred briefly again like a breeze sometimes can on a hot summer night. He turned to her. "I don’t really know what to say to you," he said. "But I get the feeling that there’s something I should. Like there's something in me and I can feel . . . maybe in you too. . . . But I don’t really have the words for all that anymore." Katie looked down, embarrassed and unsure. She felt the sweet tangle of worry, then want, begin to grow in her throat. She heard his voice echo again, “…something in me and maybe in you too." She looked away and blinked back a tear and tried to smile. And Dalton felt the week's jaws and the loneliness ease a bit. He felt his heart beat a little stronger. He turned and surveyed the slow drift of the Friday nighters into the place. All around them strangers began to fill the dim. They stood alone at the edge of the bar wordlessly calling out and listening hard for any answer until the unspoken echoes seemed to fill the room. Katie looked at this autobody man, this person who tried in his own way to step into the broken-ness of living and repair its damage. And for just a moment she felt part of herself recognize a place of rest. The drummer counted four, the bass kicked in, and the band stretched into an old Aretha Franklin tune. “Chain chain chain,” the singer descended into the lyric. “Chain chain chain.” The song spiraled down until the harmony began to swing between loneliness and hope. “Chain chain chain." The organ leaned into the sound and a wail rose above the bass until it began to sing. There was a comfort that poured itself out over every couple. Outside a gentle rain began to fall. The heat of the day struggled against it before finally letting go to the cool. Dalton let the darkness soak up the words. He let his hand rest between them and settled closer to her—like an offer. Like the eloquent wordless plea of an inarticulate heart. The band slowed again. The drummer using brushes now, the guitarist understating the melody, trying to reach its secret meaning. The singer’s voice rose trying in vain to tame some untamable heartache at the center of the song. “At the dark end of the street . . . Where we always meet.” Dalton leaned toward Katie and whispered in her ear and she gently nodded. All around them, mercy, broken into pieces by the week, tried to reassemble itself once more. It hung in the eyes of strangers, each trying, once again, to repair itself. Dalton touched her hand and they moved together toward the door, pausing for a moment. Then, beating down the last surviving doubt, they stepped into the darkness. At dawn John Dalton eased back into the traffic of the coming week and Katie Dowling went back to her place as the ward of the wounded. Each returned to the essential labor of living. They stepped back to the work of standing in the brokenness, to the righting of what can be righted and the culling of what can’t. To the work of the living, as pointless as it is essential. As futile as it is beautiful. Made noble by its own futility. And each felt strengthened, at least for a time, strengthened by the small and fleeting mercy of another life at work. And all week long among the pounding and smoothing of mangled door panels and fenders Dalton heard her voice. "Some things just won’t be fixed.” "Don’t mean you shouldn’t try," he whispered to himself. He looked into the lot and its vast acreage of dents. "Don’t mean you shouldn’t try." And all week long, renewed, like a reservoir from a night rain, Katie moved among the injured, pouring herself once again into their doubt and dread. Around them fenders and bones, engines and hearts were broken again and again. And each life set about the work of straightening yet another fender, yet another limb. Yet another heart. WLM