I'm Doin' All Right: A Short Story

By D. Eric Durso

It was a large, dark room. The lights on the wall were dim; the faint glow of the sconces around the room left many shadows. Only a few people were left. Most of them were the usual old, drunk, haggard men by which The Big Barnacle stayed in business.
The Big Barnacle was a low profile bar on the ocean front, near a long wooden pier where most fishermen try their luck at catching the “big one.” Wealthier visitors looked at The Big Barnacle as a lower class, second-rate bar that served no purpose apart from getting old men drunk. That was only partially true. It was lower class, and it was second-rate, but it wasn’t only for getting people drunk.
The bar’s walls were decorated with pictures of people in cities all around the world. The founding owner painted the words, “A piece of every part of the world” in black above the bar so that it was the first thing you saw when you entered. His goal was to fill the walls with artifacts from peoples’ adventures all over the world. The sailors in the community were travelers to begin with, so whenever they went anywhere, they’d bring something back for the bar — a piece of the Great Wall of China or the nets hanging from the ceiling that were taken from a Korean fishing boat. An Australian had even left a sanitized kangaroo foot hanging from the ceiling. If travelers didn’t have an artifact, they brought a framed picture of the place they had been. Anyone stopping by the pier to fish would stop at The Big Barnacle to see the latest artifacts.
When the excitement eventually died down, all that was left were multitudes of stories, memories and pictures on the walls. There were stories of love and hate, of adventure and disaster. There were stories of discovery and failure, each of them encapsulated in an artifact that was placed on the wall. Sam, upon entering the bar, had seen the words in black: A piece of every part of the world. He had seen the nets and the pictures. Now he was looking at a picture of a man standing in front of the ruins of the Areopagus in Greece with a smile of satisfaction on his face. Sam sighed. He sat hunched over in one of the stools, not drunk, but hardly sober.
He was deep in thought when the bartender approached him. “You all right, bud? You haven’t even had a drink yet, and you look worse than the regulars.” “You want the short answer or the long one?” The bartender smiled a grisly, but friendly smile. He had the beginning traces of a black beard and wore a stained, white button-up shirt. “I’ve got all night. And I became a bartender for this very reason.” He winked, “I love love stories.” Sam looked up from the bar. “It’s hardly a love story.” “Tell,” he said. “You need to talk.”
The bartender had dealt with plenty of Sam-like people. They’d come into the bar after a heartache or a long day at work. He had been in the business so long he could tell exactly who was feeling the heartbreak and who was just bored. He could tell which ones just wanted a good time and which ones just wanted to be alone. Some needed to talk. Some people just needed silence. The bartender could tell that Sam needed to talk. Plus, he really did enjoy the stories. Sam was silent for a while, contemplating where he would begin. After all, he did need to talk, if only to sort out his thoughts about the whole situation.
“She’s gone.”
“Who’s she?”
“She was supposed to be my wife,” Sam said bitterly. “Toward the end of our relationship she started having second thoughts about it all. We started fighting about it more. She says she isn’t ready to settle down yet.” The bartender was silent, waiting to see if he would say more.
When he didn’t, the bartender said, “Go back further. Tell me about this girl.” “Well,” he began, “we met on an Alaskan cruise. My uncle — he’s a lawyer — had just won a huge case and decided he wanted to celebrate it by taking his extended family on a seven-day cruise in Alaska. Anyway, on the first day of the cruise, I decided to wake up before my family and get some breakfast. I was eating alone and reading The Royal Road to Romance. It’s a book about this guy who can’t stand college life anymore and takes off to travel the world. Good book. Anyway, while I was eating she sat down at my table and said, ‘How do you like it?’ I didn’t know what to say; I thought she was talking about my food at first. Then she said, ‘Sorry, but I love that book, and I’ve never seen anyone reading it before. What part are you at?’”
Sam paused and looked up at the bartender who was listening to every word. “No lie — she was beautiful,” he laughed. “I’ll be honest, I probably wouldn’t have talked to her if she wasn’t!” The bartender laughed, and Sam continued. “She was just naturally pretty. Blonde hair, big brown eyes, slender. Anyway, we ended up talking about the book for at least a half hour, and then we talked about ourselves for another hour or so. She was so perky, so smart yet humble, independent, but not a feminist.
“After that we kept running into each other. At dinner I’d see her three tables away and wave, and she’d smile and wave back. My family kept asking me who she was and all I’d say was,‘She’s just a girl I met.’ After that they’d all say, ‘She sure is a looker!’ or something stupid like that. You know how family is.” The bartender laughed and nodded in agreement. “That’s how it was for the first couple days at sea. I swear I ran into her at least three times a day! Every time we’d stop and talk to each other, and I’m not the most outgoing guy. She just came up and talked to me. She was so comfortable, so confident. Not to mention that she loved to travel, loved to sing (not that she was good at it!), and loved to enjoy life. Every time we talked, I felt like I was getting to know her more and more. We even went on some excursions together. Anyway, by the end of the cruise, I was spending more time with her than I was with my family.
When we were about to get off the ship, I got her number and told her I’d call her. After that, it just blossomed.” The bartender was smiling when Sam looked up at him. “What was her name?” “Mindy.” Sam was staring down at the bar again. The bartender let him be silent for a while and then spoke: “Go on.” Without hesitation, Sam went on. “We’d have so much fun together. It turned out that she only lived two hours from my house, so for the next year we got to see each other. Sometimes I’d surprise her and we’d go kayaking in the ocean; or she’d surprise me and we’d go horseback riding through the forest by my house.
One time, we sat next to each other under a pine tree — gosh it sounds like the movies — and we said that we were never going to leave each other. Sappy, I know. But everybody’s sappy sometimes, right?” The bartender solemnly nodded his head. “Of course.” This caused him to think about the love that he had lost. Now, looking back on it, it didn’t seem so painful.
At the time however, he would have claimed to be in a worse predicament than Sam. The girl that he loved had left him for another man when he was studying abroad in Spain. The whole three months he never went a week without writing her at least one letter. Some were sappy, some serious. Every single one of them ended with the words, “I love you. Please write back.” She responded twice. Neither of those letters told him that she was moving on. Coming home was not the way he expected it to be. She wasn’t waiting for him at the port, and she wouldn’t answer his calls. Finally, he got a letter explaining where she’d been and how she’d moved on. After a week of mourning, he had left his hometown and never gone back.
“Anyway, as time went on I began to tell her that I wanted to settle down eventually. Get married, start a family, you know. It just seemed natural to take that step. I mean, we could see each other, at the most, twice a week. We did that for a year! Yeah, we talked on the phone every day, but I didn’t feel like it was going anywhere. I wanted to marry her. I told her over the phone that I loved her, and she told me she loved me. Then I said we should get married. But whenever I brought that up, she would either laugh at me and pretend I was joking, or she would get mad and say, ‘Be realistic, Sam.’ Whenever I stood up for myself, she would get mad, and you know how girls get when they’re mad. They don’t want to talk, but they don’t want to hang up the phone. They say they’re fine when really they’re ticked off. Then when you try to talk to them, they’ll answer you with one word answers. Gosh, I hated that.”
The bartender laughed. “That made me never want to bring up marriage. “After a while it only became harder not to bring it up. I wanted her to marry me. After a while, I decided that I couldn’t take her indecision any longer, so I bought a ring and proposed.” The bartender looked almost shocked. “How’d you do it?” he said.
“We were on a small sailboat, kind of like the ones that are outside in this dock. It was a beautiful day, not a cloud in the sky. We were having a great time talking about where we wanted to go. We always played a game where we’d ask each other if you could go anywhere in the world, all expenses paid, where would you go? We were talking about the Great Wall of China and laughing about a Far Side cartoon we had seen about it. A breeze picked up, and she let her hair out, and while she was looking at the expanse of the ocean, I got to my knee. It was really awkward, but I didn’t care. I said something like, ‘Mindy, I love you, and I can’t stand you not being mine. Marry me.’” Sam’s whole posture changed after he said this.
The bartender knew exactly how the story would end. The same thing had happened to him. After he came home from Barcelona, he found his girl and begged her to marry him. He didn’t have a ring, he didn’t have any money, but he swore that he’d live the rest of his life making her dreams come true. There are not many men who hear the woman they love say “no” when they ask for their hand in marriage. When she told him that it was over and that they would never get married, he flew to Italy with the last of his money.
Sam continued. “Well, it’s obvious what her answer was. She said no. Gosh, that killed me. The whole trip back to the dock we argued. She said she wanted to be free; I said we could be free together. She said she wanted to see the world before she settled down; I said we’d do it together. She thought that whole idea was unrealistic. When we got back to the dock she said, ‘Sam, I can’t do this anymore. I can’t get married. I can’t see you anymore.’ When she drove away that day, I was crushed. I felt completely broken. I think I threw up at least three times.” The bartender was not satisfied. “Where’d she go?” Sam, feeling weary of the conversation, went on. “She wrote me a letter about a week ago, and I got it today.” He pulled out a folded and refolded piece of paper that looked like it had been read a hundred times. “Here, I’ll read it to you:
“Dear Sam, I am on a sailboat called Freedom sailing through the Greek Isles. Remember how we talked about the wind that blows across your face and how it makes you feel free? How it makes you feel fresh and alive and meaningful? Well, that’s how I feel right now. I’ve never felt more alive than I do right at this moment. Anyway, I just wanted you to know that I’ve got what I wanted. I hate knowing that I’ve hurt you, but maybe, if it’s any consolation to you, at least you know that I’m living my dream. I’m going to see the world, Sam! Isn’t that exciting? It’s what I’ve always wanted to do. Maybe someday I’ll come back, and you’ll be right there waiting. I know that I can’t ask that of you, but at least I can hope it. At this point, that hope is all I’ve got. I’m on my road to romance, Sam. I needed this in my life. I needed to do this. For what it’s worth Sam, I love you. Mindy.”
The bartender’s favorite picture hung in the back of the bar. It was a picture of him on a large sailboat. He wasn’t smiling; in fact, he looked tired and beaten. His brown coarse hair was sticking up from the wind, his beard unkempt. In the background, the afternoon sun was hanging low over the coast of Sicily, and every cloud was wreathed in gold. He had taken it of himself about a week after he had left his girl. Although he looked wearied, there was a glint in his eyes that said he was doing all right. On the bottom of the picture he had written, “Now I’m doing just fine.”
When Sam looked back up at him after he had finished reading the letter, the bartender looked concerned, but not sympathetic. “I’m sorry.” “It’s okay,” Sam replied, softly. “I’ll be right here waiting.”
There was a pause. The bartender was uneasy. He knew that would be a mistake, but he remembered wanting to do the same thing. He had wanted to let his girl see him in pain. Perhaps it would make her feel just a little slice of the pain he was feeling. Two sleepless nights had cured him of that diseased thought. He had realized that life goes on. Though exhausted, beaten, bruised and broken, the only way to heal was to move forward.
Finally he spoke. “It doesn’t have to be that way. Live, Sam!” the bartender said emphatically. He slammed his fist on the bar and silverware rattled. “Live!”
Sam was startled by the bartender’s reaction. He didn’t know what to think. “Sam, you need to forget about her and find your life again. Why should you wait here in misery? There is hope in this life! You just have to find it. Get out there and do something!”
Sam’s eyes widened. It was almost like he was beginning to question himself. “You should be sailing in the Greek Isles! You should be hiking through the cold Rocky Mountains. You should be on your way to Scotland! This life is your last life! Do everything you possibly can before it’s too late. What are you doing here?”
Maybe it was the bartender’s imagination, but a faint smile passed over Sam’s stone face. He recognized the glint in his eyes. He stood up from his stool and turned around to leave the bar. He paused. From behind, the bartender could tell he was looking at the pictures on the walls. He was looking at the foreign artifacts that decorated the room. When Sam looked back to see the bartender, he saw the smug contentment on his face. The kind of face that says, “Atta boy!” One week later, Sam was on his way out to sea. He didn’t care where he was in the great ocean; he had his compass and the stars at night. The boat was big enough for him to live on, and he was alone and free. The first few nights at sea were lonely. He looked at the stars and thought about Mindy. He’d spend all day tending the sails or writing. Writing always helped him vent his feelings. It wasn’t comfortable, but the freedom that he had was worth it. He had neglected to write a response to Mindy’s letter because he knew that he wasn’t ready to yet. He didn’t want to write her a letter saying that he was sad that she had left and he was lonely now. He wanted to wait it out.
He wanted freedom to run its course through him so that eventually he would forget about her. He’d forget about the dimple on her left cheek. He’d forget about the way she rubbed her eyes when she was tired. He’d forget about the way her toes curled up when they touched cold water. She would be reduced to whatever picture he had of her; whatever memory he could maintain of her. While sailing the mighty sea, he thought of her often, but more and more, he felt free of her. When he was at that point, he began to write his letter.
Dear Mindy, I have decided to take my chances out on the great sea. It’ll be hard at first, but it’s something I must do. I’ll be lonely at first. I will feel out of place. People and places will be different. But eventually everything will change. I’ll feel at home on the ocean. I’ll give up my insecurities, and I will live for the sake of life. Soon, I’ll feel at home. Now, when I’m out here on the ocean, I get a little lonely sometimes. Lord knows how much I could use a warm kiss. But still, I begin to think twice about whether or not I ever want to come back. But maybe if I did come back I could do things differently. I would make better use of my time. I’d drink less than I do out here. Without me you’ll slowly begin to see that things will change. What you left me for will eventually lose its taste. Things will change. All that will be left are the things that you hold on to. You have to hold on to something. But every once in a while the wind will blow through my hair and I’ll be reminded of you. The smell will take me away from the ocean, and I’ll be right there with you. I’ll be honest when I say that I’m okay with that. I guess I’m writing you to say I’m doing all right. I’m free like you are. So, when you turn around to find me one day, I’ll be sailing the big blue ocean with freedom blowing through my hair and chills running down my back. Freedom is a precious thing, I’ve found. Sam
After Sam wrote the letter, he got out his Polaroid and took a picture of himself. On the bottom, in the white part, he wrote, “Hey. I’m doin’ all right.” He didn’t put the picture in with the note. Instead, he saved it for the next time he would be passing through The Big Barnacle, so he could hang it on the wall.