Payner

I prowled the night alone for more than a few years, more a ghost of my prior self than an active participant. I’d arrive, slide up to the bar and engage whomever in conversation if they were open to it, moving on if they weren’t. I was rarely content doing it, preferring to hang with a crowd, but my crowd had left, my crowd was moving on, becoming couples, getting married, buying houses and cottages and beginning to pump out kids. I wandered in here and there, looking for people I might know. I rarely found anyone, no one I wanted to find, anyways. Sometimes it was.

Sometimes that person was Dave Payne. Payner.

Payner was always fun. He was loud. He had a ready laugh. He was always surrounded by a lot of people. Everyone wanted to be his friend. And he always seemed genuinely pleased to see me.

I’ve known Payner a lot of years. He was a bartender at Casey’s during its heyday. He was bartender at one or two other places too, after that. He always talked with me. He even lent me money to get home one night when I stupidly fell in love with a girl who took me for all I had on me. He began scuba diving about the same time I did, as well, although he and I never dove together.

Once or twice I spotted him in the Standard Tavern as I ducked my head in wondering what the big deal about the place was, always amused how the floor warped and twisted this way and that, making the uninitiated stagger like they were drunk when headed to and from the head. I approached him amid his friends and attendees, asking him how he was and asking if I might join him for a beer. He always said yes, gesturing to those around him to make room for me. Like I said, he always seemed genuinely pleased to see me, but he’s likely like that with everyone. Everyone loves Payner. Payner has a big and generous personality.

One weekend in the dog days of some summer, I crossed paths with Payner in the eleventh hour of the night. We shared a beer. We shared two beers. Then he declared that he was off to some party out at Kamaskotia. He asked me if I’d like to come.

“I don’t have any beer,’ I said.

“No problem,” he said, “I got shitloads of beer.” One of the Casey’s waitresses was going too—not Louise, Payner’s girlfriend, I had no idea where she was just then—but another, and she too required beer.

We piled into Payner’s van and were off. I did not have a seat, just a tumble of crushed boxes in the back to sit on. I tried crouching up near the front for a while, clutching the seats to keep stable, but I cramped up and settled back down in the back. I slid here and there when we took corners, however gently we swung through them. It was all great fun.

We arrived and made our way to the enormous bonfire that threw embers up into the stars. Led Zeppelin rose up with them, Jimmy Page’s hard driven blues rolling out across the yard and the lake. The beer was warm having sat out in the back of the van all night. I sipped at it, but I’d had enough. The ride out had spun my head and I was feeling queasy. The smoke followed me wherever I went, drawn to me like moths to a flame, hot, acrid, the embers stinging my jeans.

We mingled. Payner seemed to know everybody. I didn’t know a soul. One beer followed another and the night passed faster than I imagined. Before too long I was drunk, my head spinning with beer and smoke. My gut was unsettled. I’d begun to reject the warm beer I sipped, just wetting my lips and not actually able to swallow it. What can I say? I’ve drank, but I’ve never really been a drinker.
I should never have come. I’d had my fill even before coming across Payner, but invitations had grown few and far between.

The eastern horizon had begun to resolve into a pale grey as we made our way back to the van. I slid in the back, falling into the crushed boxes, and before long we were bouncing along back to the highway. When we burst out onto it, the van began to slide. Payner began to correct but before completing the move he began to enjoy the sensation. He howled and laughed and stepped on the gas and the van went round and round. I hung on for dear life. It was fun. It was nauseating.

“Dave,” I said, dragging myself back between the seats, “pull over.”

“What?” he said over the racing engine.

The world went round and round.

“Pull over,’ I said, in what I hoped was a calm and reasonable voice, “I got to puke.”

Our donut came to an abrupt halt. I ripped open the side door and hung my head our over the highway.
“Sorry,” I said once I had finished, still waiting for the world to slow down and my gut to settle.

“No,” he said. “I ought to be the one to say he’s sorry.” Then he laughed. “I’ll take it easy from here on. I’ll give you a smooth ride.”