Tag: sirens shanty

She carefully shines the bottom of a tall thin Collins glass. She has the time. The bar is dead. The creak of the door breaks the silence. She looks up. Unhurried.

“Has Mr. Williams been by yet?” he asks, sitting down. She picks up another glass.

“Didn’t he die two weeks ago?”

“Two weeks,” he agrees. “I buried him a week ago and he still hasn’t found his way here?”

“Nope, no sign. But this fellow here,” she gestures to an empty stool, “just washed in. He fought in the Vietnam war.

“How’d he end up here?” he asks
She gestures to the rolling waves from the west-facing window.

Spirts dwell not only in the places they die, but more often in the places they lived, the places they loved. Some spirits, however, get lost trying to find their way from the first place to the second. Like the sailors lost at sea, or the fishermen who have fallen in, or even a spirit stranded many miles from home across a strange insurmountable ocean. These spirits spend weeks, years, centuries tumbled in the unfeeling waves, but eventually, they all wash up here, shake themselves off, and step in for a pint.