Do You Have Any Root Beer Schnapps?
I loved walking along train tracks. As a drunk, I’d ridden four-wheelers in the snow on the train tracks in Ohio. After tossing myself out of detox, I’d stood close enough to a train to nearly lose my life. And now, in Meadville, Pennsylvania, only a few weeks later, I was strolling on the tracks again.
My entire goal: find a liquor store and keep drinking.
I expected to buy a bottle and sip shots by the tracks, staring at the freights as they rumbled by and making my way back to the hotel when the bottle was gone. I’d drink the whole bottle myself, I reasoned, since Marvin was asleep, and then I’d go straight to rehab when he woke up.
But my plans rarely worked out when I was drinking.
I walked and walked in the hot summer sun. And while I was enjoying my stroll, it felt like the end of my life. I’d been dragging out my last drunk for … how long had it been? What day was it? What time was it? I’d left home to go to a bar and find someone to drive me to rehab … on Monday, I think. Or was it Sunday? I couldn’t recall. And it didn’t matter.
I just needed more. And as I walked and walked and walked, I wondered if the desk clerk had been confused, or if he’d lied to me. And just as I was wondering if there was actually a liquor store close enough to the tracks to see it, I saw a shopping plaza in the distance. I felt hopeful.
It was still a long walk to the plaza.
As I walked, I considered the most important question: What will I get for my last drink? I thought about buying rum and drinking rum and cokes, since that had been my first drink. I’d come full circle. But then I would have to buy coke, and mix drinks, and I just wanted to drink out of the bottle. I didn’t want beer because it would get warm. Finally I settled on root beer schnapps. I loved root beer schnapps. It would be the perfect thing.
I finally reached the plaza, found the store, and felt hopeful. I walked inside. Unaccustomed to buying hard liquor after drinking beer for most of my drunken years, I felt a bit let down that the store was so small. Sure, there were plenty of options – but wine? Yuk. Too much wine. Too much vodka. Where was the schnapps?
Finally I found it: a whole section of schnapps: apple, peach, and peppermint. Yuk! Who wants fruity schnapps? And peppermint schnapps reminded me of drinking that minty mouthwash at Ronnie’s house.
These will not do, I thought.
Then to the bored guy behind the counter I called, “Do you have any root beer schnapps?”
“Root beer? No.” He didn’t move from his spot.
I stood there for a long time. Finally I picked up a bottle of peach schnapps, which seemed like the least awful choice, and bought it with my credit card.
Is this even enough?
It would never be enough.
Somewhat desperate for the perfect last drink, I asked: “Is there a bar anywhere around here?”
“I think there’s a place about six blocks that way,” he waved. “But it might have closed down.”
That sounded like my kinda place. “How do I get there?”
He waved haphazardly, “Six blocks that way.”
So I discarded the last-drink-on-the-tracks idea and started walking “that way.”
The sun disappeared as I walked. My bottle was half-gone when I stepped inside.