My Guiding Light

The door sticks. I give it a hip and it sighs open like it’s changing its mind about me.

“Evenin’, Mike,” Ray says, already reaching for a Lone Star. “Usual?”

“Yeah.” I slide onto my stool. “Place suits me just fine.”

“Place don’t suit anybody,” he says, setting the bottle down. “It just don’t fight you.”

I tip the beer, let the cold knock around my teeth. “I came to drown my sorrow,” I say, half to the mirror, half to the sign behind him. “Try and ease my mind.”

Ray watches me make a smile I don’t believe in. “You doing that thing where you pretend it don’t hurt?”

“It’s a classic,” I say. “I do a little half-moon. Looks good in the mirror.”

“Mirror don’t buy it,” he says. “Neon does, but neon believes anything.”

I lift the bottle a couple inches. “To her.”

Ray nods at the empty air between us. “To her.”

The sign behind him hums like a refrigerator thinking hard. Lone Star Beer Served Here, it tells us, white letters steady as a heartbeat. It throws enough light to make a halo on my wet knuckles.

“She used to be the reason I went home,” I tell the sign. “Guiding light and all.”

Ray polishes a glass that won’t ever get clean. “You going home tonight?”

“Home don’t seem so nice since I’m all alone,” I say, and the truth of it makes my throat feel like it owes me something it can’t pay.

Ray taps the jukebox with the back of his hand. “You want to hurt on purpose or you want to keep freelancing?”

“Put it on my tab,” I say, digging quarters. The metal clacks like rain on a tin roof.

“Play your medicine,” he says.

I feed the jukebox. The numbered buttons are dulled by other people’s fingers. “B-12,” I say, out loud because it feels like calling a number at confession. Then I press 0-6-1-3 under my thumb, like I always do, superstition disguised as grief.

“What’s with the extra numbers?” someone two stools down asks.

She’s got a trucker cap and a denim jacket with a patch that reads LET ME DAY DRINK. She’s nursing a Shiner and watching the sign like it might go out and take her with it.

“June thirteenth,” I say. “We thought we’d make ordinary special.”

“How’d that work out?” she asks.

“Like a car that looks fine until you see the rust,” I say. “It creaks when you turn.”

The song climbs out of the tinny speakers like it remembers the way to my ribs. Someone down by the pool table groans. “Aw, hell, not that one again.”

“You want to pick the soundtrack to my sorrow, you can buy the next round,” I say.

“Buddy,” he says, “you ain’t got enough sorrow to pay for that.”

We grin without showing any teeth.

Ray leans on the bar. “Remind me what you two used to do during this song.”

“Slow dance in the kitchen,” I say. “She’d pretend she didn’t know the words. Chorus would prove her a liar.”

“Sounds like a decent lie,” the woman says. “Mine used to sing the wrong words on purpose. Drove me crazy. Miss it every day.”

We listen. It’s a little like standing in the rain and pretending you’re choosing it. I can see her, head on my shoulder, pretending to dip me, her laugh right at my ear. I put my palm flat on the jukebox like it’s a chest I could thump back to life.

“She ever call?” Ray asks, gentle as a napkin.

“No.” I swallow. “Left a note: don’t call. Not because she’s mean. Because she’s not. She knows all I got are old words lined up like soldiers.”

“Those boys ever see a war?” the woman asks.

“Only in my head,” I say.

Ray nods at the sign. “You know, that’s the only light that don’t flicker in here.”

“Only light in my life says ‘Lone Star Beer Served Here,’” I tell him. “The one behind your bar lighting up my tears.”

Ray snorts. “Transformer’s on the way out. But yeah, it holds.”

“You talk to it like it’s a priest?” the woman asks.

“Better hours,” I say. “Less judgment.”

The song fades into the little cough of the machine switching records. Silence hits like a name left hanging in a doorway.

“You want another?” Ray lifts a bottle just enough to catch the neon.

“One more to her,” I say, almost out of habit.

“You can do one more to yourself,” he says. “Different kind of drink.”

I set the quarter rolling between my fingers. “Some nights I fake a smile,” I tell him. “Like the pain has gone somewhere else. Then I catch myself in that mirror and I’m the same guy.”

“You ain’t supposed to get better at lying to yourself,” Ray says. “Supposed to get worse.”

The woman raises her bottle. “To getting worse at lying,” she says. “And better at leaving.”

“Leaving what?”

“Jukeboxes. Men. Towns,” she says. “I once played 3A until the bartender pulled the plug on me. Figured I’d either cry or fight. I did both.”

“Looks like y’all are trying to summon ghosts,” says the pool player, chalking his cue too loud.

“Ghosts don’t need summoning,” I say. “They know the address.”

Ray taps the sign with one knuckle. “You ever hear about the moths?”

I shake my head. “No, but I’m guessing they drink free.”

“In summer,” he says, “they come in late. Paper-thin things that only trust the brightest lie in the room. They throw themselves at that light like it’s the last good thing. Hit, drop, hit, drop.”

He looks at me over the glass. “By closing time, some of them figure it out. Find the door. Find the dark and the air. Not all. Some. I like those.”

“That a sermon?” I ask.

“That a suggestion,” he says.

“I got a porch bulb out,” I say, surprising myself. “Been out two months. House don’t even pretend to welcome me anymore.”

“Ladder in the shed?” Ray asks.

“Yeah.”

“Bulbs under the sink?”

“Probably.”

The woman looks at me like she’s trying to see if I’ll do it. “You change that bulb,” she says, “you’ll still be alone after. Just so you know.”

“I know,” I say. “But it’ll be a different kind of alone.”

“Better light,” Ray says. “Same dark.”

I set the quarter on the bar, stand it on its edge. It wobbles, then steadies, a little moon beside the napkin holder.

“You sure?” Ray asks. “I can pour you something that makes you forget long enough to remember why you came.”

“I remember,” I say. “She used to be what I lived for. Now the one I was living for don’t need me. That ain’t a problem beer knows how to fix.”

Ray nods once, like a man signing for a package he didn’t order. “I’ll be here tomorrow,” he says. “And the sign will, too.”

“Try not to let it lie too bright,” I tell him.

The woman tips her cap. “Change the bulb, stranger. If you fall off the ladder, come back and tell us. We’ll toast to your foolishness.”

“Deal,” I say.

I put a hand to the sign as I pass it, the way you pat a horse after it carries you further than it had to. “Night, preacher.”

The door argues with me and then gives up. Outside, the air is cold enough to feel honest. The neon paints the window with its last blessing, and for a second it catches me in its glow. Then it lets me go.

“See you, Mike,” Ray calls. “When you need to, or don’t.”

“See you,” I say, and start toward a house that hasn’t felt like home in months, thinking about ladders, glass bulbs, and how sometimes the smallest light is the bravest thing in the room.

- Julia O’Hara 2025

THANK YOU for reading my work. I am a global nomad/permanent traveler, or Coddiwombler, if you will, and I move from place to place about every three months. I am currently in Peru and heading to Chile in a few days and from there, who knows? I enjoy writing articles, stories, songs and poems about life, spirituality and my travels. You can find my songs linked below. Feel free to like and subscribe on any of the platforms. And if you are inspired to, tips are always appreciated, but not necessary. I just like sharing.

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