In with a lion

He sat in the corner, window to his left, an awfully painted mural to his right. Eight-fifteen in the pm in late may, so it was still light, but not much. The neon beer advertisement, then, was beginning to glow, and so affected his face in red. He was drunk by eight-fifteen almost every night and so neither of his sons, on either sides of him, were surprised that he talked now, like he would.
“Do you know the story of Daniel in the lion’s den?” he asked them, massaging his beard, pushing whiskers aside from his lips, and also the foam left by the beer.
They looked at each other, the brothers did, and that familiar grin passed over them.
“Back in old times, biblical times, the kings would throw these guys to the lions.”
“Slaves—“ the older son interrupted.
“—Slaves, yeah. They would be fed to the lions for sport. Well Daniel, he was tossed into the arena—“
“Coliseum—“ the older son interrupted again.
“Yeah, the coliseum. He was let in there, and he was not afraid to admit, then, his closeness with God. He said, ‘I am close with God.’ And he fought the lions and he wasn’t afraid. When I lost everything,”
And now he was talking about himself, “I was Daniel. I lost my land, you know when I got caught smoking pot, and then this thing with the neighbors happened.”
He gulped his beer. “Slow Bill Lucky, he kept a mason jar full of pot in his kitchen, in the cupboard. Everybody from Chuckanut Drive on out to Highway 2 knew it. Slow Bill was everybody’s favorite pickup smoke. And every time, with open arms, that guy would let you in, tug a few off. But one day, somebody took a handful and left a couple bucks in there. This wasn’t a community stash or anything, his private thing. So I’m walking up there, stop by his house; find a bunch of folks there. Laura, his wife, you know, Ruby’s mom, crazy bitch, and then Amy and Lyle were there, and Mitch and Ricky Stones. I walk in, and they’re thinking I did it. Laura was the only one who directly confronted me or anything, said, ‘Jim, did you take it?’
“They told me, somebody, who ever did it, left a couple bucks in the mason jar. ‘No,’ I said, ‘I don’t even have two or three dollars to leave in that mason jar.’ Well they didn’t believe me, no way. And so I lost all my friends. Just that simple. They were my only friends in the world, and they just shut me out.”
He finished his beer, pointed at his pitcher and addressed the younger of the two sons.
“Do what you’re good at,” he said. The boy poured him a beer.
“So I haven’t got any friends, so I had to look to myself. And if you close your eyes, do you ever close your eyes? What do you see? Black right, but it’s not really black, but grey, and there’s all these points of light, all these stars. Well what I learned this one time from a marriage counselor—your mother and I went, ‘we have to say we tried’ I said and when we got there, she said, ‘no, wont do it’—this marriage counselor told me, you close your eyes. Put together all these points of light, into one. So I did it. She had me lay down and she got on top of me,”
The boys laughed. The older one said, “The marriage counselor?”
“This is the marriage counselor. She gets on top of me, pins my arms, tells me to close my eyes—“
“This is a therapist?”
“A marriage counselor in training. Then she says, ‘sigh really heavy four or five or seven times,’ and I did. She was really helping me.”
“Yeah she was.” Said the older boy.
“But she told me to close my eyes, to put those lights together like that. And you look really close, you know what you see?” The man leaned forward on the table, looked from one son to the other.
“You see a man. A human, standing there. Call it Jesus, call it what you want. This was myself, though, this was my friend. When all my other friends kicked me to the curb because they thought I took a handful of pot, left a couple bucks.”
“You know it’s somebody on the inside, one of those people in the room, when they just take a little, just a handful and leave—“
“—Like an insult”
“Yeah, like an insult, just a couple bucks.”
The father drank his beer again. “But I found myself. My friend there, when I focused like that, on those lights.”
The older boy looked at the younger one, pointed at the father’s empty pint. “Do what you’re good at,” he said.