But Not Forgotten -- Middle

Dan's overly-critical opinion of me didn't last.

Rather than running away as I have in so many other similar situations, I wanted to prove him wrong before I told him where to go.

Inside of two weeks, I was the best cook they had.
Winter and Spring came to pass, and as I became better, I noticed that Dan had very little to say to me at all. He was one of those people who often gave you no feedback unless you were malfunctioning. At my age then, I considered his lack of dialog to be a sign of disdain.

My Sophomore year had not gone according to plan. I failed two key classes and had to drop another, and rather than returning home that summer, I decided to stay on for Summer mini-mester and get myself back on track.

Two weeks into the summer, and just after my twenty-first birthday, Zottolli's Pizza had the biggest single week it had ever had. Peter decided to celebrate by giving Dan the money to take all the core crew, (myself included), out to an establishment of our choice.

Our choice turned out to be Ta-Tas, a local topless bar.

We had a blast - all except for Dan who decided that we wanted to go there in the first place.

Dan parked himself on a back bar-top with a fifth of Scotch and disregarded most of the advances from the strippers.

By two o'clock in the morning, the place was thinning out a bit. Marc and I were out of ones, so we'd chosen to shoot pool in the back rather than dump our entire checks. That's when I noticed Dan sitting at the back table by himself swaying in place and not talking.

"Is he okay?" I asked.

Marc gave me cynical look while chalking up his cue stick.

"Don't pay any attention to him. He's just a mean, old bastard who likes to beat up on people."

I looked at Dan, who was drooling on the table and then back to Marc.

"I don't like him. But I don't want him to get killed on the way home."

Marc huffed. "Oh, I wouldn't worry about that. He's been a drunk ever since he's worked at Zottolli's and that's been at least six years. He ain't dead yet."

I passed my cue stick to Dave.

"Play the rest of my game."

Marc grabbed me by the shoulder.

"Don't make an ass out of yourself."

I shook him off, staggered over to Dan's table and sat down.

Dan looked up and stared dumbly for a moment.

"You're not gonna expect me to give you money for showing me your tits, too, are you?"

It took a moment for his joke to register and I laughed. "No, I was just going to ask you if you wanted a ride home."

Dan smirked. "Don't be a fool. You're just as sloshed as I am."

"You're not gonna drive, are you?"

He rolled his eyes. "I'll call a cab."

I nodded. "Suit yourself." And I started to get up.

"How's the school thing going?"

I squinted and sat back down - never able to pass up an opportunity to talk about myself, even though it could be to my own detriment.

"Not so well. I had a rough year. I might loose my scholarship if things don't go well this summer."

"Still breaking out in female organs every time something threatens you, huh?"

I gave him a cockeyed look.

"It's the truth, accept it. You're a sensitive Mamma's boy still tugging at the apron strings every time you feel like you're under fire."

I glared at him. "How the hell could you possibly have enough information about me to make a statement like that?"

He ignored me and continued his rant. I was beginning to think that I wasn't a part of the conversation at all.

"Art, young grasshopper, is something I know a little about. You chose it because you thought you were entering something safe, but quickly found out that you'd surrounded yourself with a host of people with keen perceptions into others who tend to enjoy ruthlessly calling you out on your failings."

I shrugged. "I never really thought of it that way."

He nodded. "If you don't have a pair of balls the size of Texas and aren't viciously honest, you'll never make it in any art form."

I squinted at him. That wasn't the first time I'd heard something along those lines. The last time I heard it, it came from a professor and it was much less bitter.

"I changed my major to film," I offered.

Dan cackled bitterly. "You're such an asshole. Why would any fool in his right mind want to major in an art form let alone a bastard art? You don't go to college for that! Get a camcorder."

I stared at him in disbelief, but he didn't seem to notice.

"Anyone with emotion, drive, and thought can do it. And if you're breathing, chances are that you can come up with some kind of conflict. Don't spend your whole life trying to make yourself equal to the task. If you're alive, you're capable."

I nodded. "That all sounds good in theory, but making a film costs money. No one in the world is going to financially back a mediocre student from South Georgia without a degree."

"They will if it's good enough."

I gave him a bitter look. "That's easy for you to say, but you don't know the business."

He grinned. "You think I was always a pizza delivery manager?"

I squinted. "What did you do before?"

The grin faded from his face. He looked down at the amber liquid in his shot glass and then back up to me.

"You're right. Continue what you're doing. Waste all of Mommy's money on the right to sit in a fancy classroom and listen to some fool tell you what to think."

I shook my head. "I don't let anyone tell me what to think."

Dan picked up his shot glass, knocked it back and made a wry face and then he smirked at me.

"The problem with college students and professors is that they share the same illness. They don't get it."

I frowned, and he leaned forward. "We're all amateurs until we die. No one possesses any information that is not readily available to others, and as for their rules, nothing good has ever happened in any art form that didn't involve breaking a whole lot of conventional rules."

After that, Dan started rambling on and on about non-sense. I left him to his own devices and returned to the pool tables where Marc laughed at me.

An hour after last call, I was sobered up, and Dan was asleep at his table. I convinced Marc to give me his address and I took him home.

His house was not at all what I expected.

Dan slept all the way, and the route to his house led me through the old slums that were once part of Bridgeton's defunct Mill Village. But then the slums peeled away giving way to some older but ritzy subdivisions.

Dan's house was a three-story brick house with a front porch that ran the length of the house supported by thick, Greek pillars. The lawn was grown up; it looked as though it hadn't been tended in years, and the yellow paint on the gables was flaking off in sheets.

I roused Dan and asked him if we were in the right place. He nodded.

I got out of the car, walked around to his side, opened his door, and extended a hand to help him out.

Dan slapped my hand away.

"I'm drunk, dickhead, not cripple."

Dan pivoted clumsily in his seat and pushed down on his knees, and realized that he couldn't get up.

He glared at me. "Okay, smartass. Help me out."

I reached into the car and pulled him out. He stood rocking on his feet for a moment looking as though he was either going to pass out or throw up, and then he started for the porch. But he'd taken less than five steps before he almost stumbled over his own feet.

I grabbed him and helped him to the door. He did not object.

At the door, Dan pulled out his keys, spent twenty minutes trying to locate the correct one, and stabbed it into the wood of the door missing the brass deadbolt by at least three inches.

I took his keys away and unlocked his house.

Beyond the door stood a house that must have once been a regal dwelling that had fallen into a terrible state of disrepair. The hardwood floors, once rich and the color of maple was scratched up and dull. The chair molding was falling off the walls in places leaving the rough edge of the paneling that rose halfway up the wall from the floor exposed.

The old console television had long since bit the dust and a small Curtis Mathes sat on top of it. The brown, leather upholstery of the couch was dry-rotted and cut in places.

"This is your house?" I repeated.

Dan gave me a disgusted look. "Keep up, will you? I already said it is."

He started to step over the threshold into the house and nearly fell flat on his face. I caught him, and again he did not object. He just grunted with disapproval.

He led me through the den into a long hallway. The walls were covered halfway up with the same paneling with strips of molding missing and papered in parchment all the way to the crown molding. It was lit by evenly spaced fixtures along the walls shaped like candle sconces, and on these walls I found out who Dan Colbreth was.

The first framed case I came to contained a short fiction magazine. The front page announced a short story titled, "A Foul Wind." The author's name in small letters beneath it read "Dan Colbreth."
The next frame contained a hardcover novel titled, The Tenor of Baxter Place, and again the author's name was "Dan Colbreth." The following display held a photograph of a much younger and stronger looking Dan Colbreth standing beside Ayn Rynd. I only recognized her because Atlas Shrugged was required reading in my lit class during the spring semester. On down the hall several other hard cover books bearing Dan's name, and an assortment of photographs with various different writers.

At last, we reached his bedroom.

Dan stumbled over to his bed, plopped down and slapped his knees.

"You okay?" I said.

Dan grunted.

"If you need a ride to work tomorrow. . . ."

Dan waved me off.

"Well, take care," I said. And then I turned back toward the hallway, but I couldn't stand it. I turned back around and had to ask.

"You were a writer?"

Dan gave me a disgusted look. "I appreciate the ride, but please get the hell out of my house."

So I left.

And Dan never said a word about it again.

I found out later that he was a professor at Bridgeton University about ten years before he fell from grace. No one ever offered anything more, and I wasn't interested enough to ask.