A Parting Glass

The snow blew cold as the war waged on. Cheeks and hands turned red, and the streets turned white before turning to a sodden, muddy mass.

A particular pub never saw anything illegal yet always seemed to be at the hub of forbidden activities. In that pub was Johnny, as often as he could be. The warmth of the fire always hit him first, then the warmth of friendship, and finally, the familiar burn of whisky.

For a man who spent his life soldiering, he seemed to spend a majority on a barstool. As ever, when a young man joined the company, Johnny was the first to buy him a drink, to call off the baying of those dogs who might razz him, to lend an ear when the green hand was missing his mam or bird, or a reassuring word when the tide turned

Johnny’s current pups were two boys barely eighteen if they told the truth, and likely closer to sixteen if their birth record did. The rest of the men had already dubbed the fairer of the two Snowflake, and they might have dubbed the redhead such if they hadn’t already had a handful of Reds. He kept his own name instead.

Johnny winked at the barkeep and motioned a ‘three’ with the hand missing a pinkie.

“Three o’ what?,” she shouted back. All he gave her was a nod, and after a moment she sat down three watered-down ales. He produced a black leather-bound notebook from some inner coat pocket and withdrew just enough change to pay.

“Some time ago,” he said, giving the notebook a little shake as he lectured his captive audience, “an old friend o’ mine died in the war. Not this one, the one before. And when I jimmied up the courage to look through his things, this wee black book was there. He was no’ a rich man, so how it came to have twenty thousand tucked into, I don’ know.”

A mischievous twinkle in his eye, he smiled at their incredulous faces.

“Oi!” The unison shout of three ruddy-faced and bearded men echoed throughout the pub, dampening conversation and even the heat of the fire.

Johnny’s smile melted when he looked to the door, blood rising in his cheeks as he gathered his coat.

“My stirrup cup, lads. To your good health.” He tilted the cup in the boys’ direction, then downed it in a breath and joined the queue of dark-clothed men and women rustling through the doorway.

Sixteen in a group went through the doorway and only one came back. Johnny, as ever, occupied the stool worn to his rear when the two found him again. Exhausted from training, the two flopped onto their stools and waited for his acknowledgement. He had out the black book and was slowly lettering a page, shaking his wrapped hand every few seconds as he did.

“Stings, y’know?,” he said, when he caught sight of the two.

“What does, sir?”

“No sir to me, unless it’s sirloin, and then I’ll have my fill.” His customary smile seemed a bit forced, his dark eyes a bit more watery than the last time they had met him.

They continued to watch him and he sighed heavily. “I’ve burnt m’ hand. Makes it hard to write the names.”

After some deliberation, Snowflake, the bolder of the two, dared ask the question. “What happened? Are those…?” His voice cracked and he didn’t say any more.

“We’ll leave the dying to the dead and the living to us, lads,” Johnny said, putting his good hand on the boy’s shoulder. “There’s a few of us here. Let us do this right.”

With renewed vigor, he sat up a little straighter and called, “Mary!”

There was no answer but the sound of several glasses clinking together. Mary the barkeeper appeared, apron full of shotglasses. She sat one before every filled stool, returned with a bottle of whisky in each hand, and filled every one to the brim.

Johnny stood then, turning away from the bar and toward those at the tables.

“To those who departed, a parting glass!”

“A parting glass!”, every voice echoed, and they drank as one.

The whisky never seemed to stop flowing that night, and the two younger men drank until their heads swam and the lights of the pub formed a merry chase. After his melancholy welcome, Johnny became the life of the group, telling tales of every man and woman who had fallen. The lads somehow found themselves tucked in their beds in the morning, and wondered at who else could have been responsible but Johnny. Yet when they returned to the bar, it was empty.

For ten days and ten nights it was so, populated only by the occasional wind-reddened face. Those who stayed in scurried off to rooms; those who were off to the road told no tales and headed out straightaway. The two wondered aloud at that until another soldier that came in cuffed them both and told them to mind their mouths lest their words wander into the wrong ears.

When Johnny returned again, his mien was more sober still, his voice lower and his stories silent. The men who showed up within a day or two were fewer and younger. A gruff and restless crowd, overall.

“Jack,” he finally addressed the redhead and sighed heavily. “You’ll come with me in the morning.”

“Why can’t I come?,” protested Snowflake.

Johnny’s eyes crinkled around the edges. “A bit more seasoning, lad, and you’ll be as ready as any.”

It hadn’t escaped his notice how the pale blonde was always greener at the gills from any sort of violence. Johnny had seen the boy was slower with his weapon and likelier to help anyone, even an enemy. He’d confided to Jack that some people are just born good-hearted. War ill suits them.

Angry at Johnny, Snowflake sat at a table closer to the fire and groused with the men and women who sat there. Jack stayed near enough to notice the thinness of Johnny’s wallet, his ever-full billfold near empty and his little black book on its very last page as he finished lettering the lost and drinking to their names. The old man stared into the fire until it nearly burnt to embers, then slapped Jack on the shoulder and sent him up to bed.

Jack’s first day as a soldier was brutal. He felt constantly that he was in the way. No one told him what to do and twice he seemed to have given away his position only for someone else to take his stead. Only he and Johnny made it back to the rendezvous point.

“It seems a great disservice,” said Johnny wearily, “that I should rise from this field and those younger and fitter should not. Let us wish them good night and a good, long rest.” Jack said nothing but followed numbly back to the pub, constantly checking to see that they had not been followed. Doubt and fear shadowed his every step.

It only occurred to him once Johnny had painstakingly written every name of those they had lost on the field, that Snowflake had not reappeared at his side. He scanned the warm little pub, cold creeping into him in a way it had not during his duties. It was as if his heart had fallen from his chest when he saw the dark stain on the floor below one of the stools.

Quietly, he moved around Johnny and caught the eye of the barkeeper. Her tight expression said it all, but when he asked, she shook her head and pointed him back to Jack’s side. No sooner than he had sat, she poured four large pints of the house beer in front of them.

“What’s all this, Mary?”, Johnny asked with shadowed eyes.

“For the one you called Snowflake. A traveler called him aside, and when he spat on the lad for being an unblooded soldier, he spat back. The lad he…", she threw her hands in the air and turned her face to the ceiling. "Johnny, he didn’t know. And he don’t know nothing no more.”

For every bit of blood staining the floor, the rest drained from Johnny’s face as he sat, blinking, uncomprehending. Tears he hadn’t cried for hundreds of mates poured down as he sat, shaking as he put his hands back on his pen and notebook. Carefully, he wrote out the final name, the ink blurring with spots as he wrote.

At the worst possible moment, the door swung open yet again. “Needs you now!,” was all Jack could hear over the wind and sudden roar of the fire. Johnny put a hand on his shoulder and shook his head, but the man said, “We’ll have y’ both or have your heads. It’s nowt to me either way.”

Gravely, Johnny held the pint to Jack. “A stirrup cup for us both. A parting glass!” He held his cup up to the empty tavern. Jack echoed as best he could through his tight throat, and Mary the barmaid did as well, her eyes misty.

Johnny took the last notes from his wallet and laid them on the bar, then trooped out with Jack on his heels.

When at last the fighting was over, Jack looked everywhere for his mentor. At last he found him, his back against an abandoned building, its door hinges squeaking as it swung. The mud was deeper there, the dusk and clouds leaching the color from everything until he couldn’t be sure what color it once was.

Jack was relieved when Johnny turned to look at him, and decidedly less so when he realized the old man was holding his chest, his breath strained.

“For you,” Jack said, his bloodied hands holding out the black notebook.

“I don’t know what to do!,” Jack said, overwhelmed for the second time in so few hours.

“Jus' write my name and pour me a glass. There’s a good lad.”

Jack took the notebook, and through the haze of tears it seemed that the wallet he held was full as well.

Johnny smiled a ghostly smile, his skin pale. “Ere long you pour a parting glass, you’ll never find it empty.”

Jack wasn’t sure, later, if he’d imagined it or simply had too much whisky. But he could have sworn that Johnny had sat beside him in the pub, then risen one last time and tipped a glass in his direction.