Wobbly Headed Kid

“Don’t believe their lies,” the man next to me said. He was young, maybe forty… forty-five.

“Don’t what?” I asked, though I had heard him fine.

“Don’t believe their lies,” he said again. His voice was calm.

The bartender put my drink down softly on a white napkin.

I looked up to say thank you, but he was already gone.

The man next to me leaned in, “Think I’m jokin’?”

I felt his breath on the side of my face. I took a sip of my drink and was pleasantly surprised that it was strong.

I looked at the man next to me. He was staring at himself in the long mirror behind the bar.

I turned and stared at my own self. I looked old and thin. I had bags under my eyes and sunken cheeks. I didn't look like I would last much longer..

“Don’t believe 'em!” the man to the right of me said.

My wife had a tattoo high on her arm. It said; Theodore which was my name. She got it in 1949. Not many women had tattoos back then. I felt like telling the kid about her, but changed my mind. I lifted my glass in a toast to her and to me in the mirror.

“Don’t believe their lies!” The wobbly headed kid said.

“What lies?” I asked.

“Anybody’s lies!” He said, his eyes wide.

“Well, the person that argues with that statement is an idiot,” I said and tossed a double saw-buck onto the bar.

The bartender looked at the twenty and then at me. I nodded at him and at the kid and the kid nodded back.

I walked home singing an old song I couldn't quite remember.

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