THE OLD HOTEL AT THE END OF NIGHT, by BJ Omanson. (Monongahela Books, 2020). 20 pages. $7.50.
". . . a true American artifact, and a rare example of allegorical vision." -- Dave Mason, former Poet Laureate of Colorado.
Excerpt:
I emptied my glass and was starting to pour
a
second when I happened to notice
another
old gent in a long gray beard
sitting
alone with a half-empty bottle
in
a far-off shadowy nook of the room
and
he nodded me over. I picked up my glass
and dragged myself slowly across the floor
and
he kicked out a chair for me to sit.
“The
name’s Walt,” he said, and I told him mine.
“And
what brings you out to this god-forsaken
hotel
at this time of night,” he asked.
“You’re
a good way from home, by the looks of you.”
I
told him I really had no idea
how
I’d come to this place. I had made a
wrong turn
somewhere
back in Missouri, I thought,
and
then my old Buick had thrown a rod
and
I’d just been walking along ever since
for
what seemed like a decade or more until
I
came to this crossroads. “And doesn’t
this night
ever
end?” I asked him. Old Walt leaned back,
extended
his long legs and shoved his fists
deep
in his pockets. “It’s always the same
old
story,” he said. “They make a wrong turn
at
a junction back in Missouri, as if
Missouri
was even a place anymore.
And their Chevy or Buick always breaks down
for
there aren’t any Chevies or Buicks out here,
I
can tell you that,” and I heard a soft
chuckle
from
the gentleman at the end of the bar.
I
started to feel a peculiar unease,
the
likes of which I had never known.
“And
the night?” I asked him, “when does it end?”
He
looked out the window a good long while
before
he responded. “The night is what came
when
the Old Republic finally died---
and
now there’s only the night and myself
and
Bob over there always plunkin’ away
on
the upright piano and Henry down there
at
the end of the bar, who never says much
at
all anymore, who just stands and stares
out
the window from time to time, although
there’s
nothin’ to see out there but the night.
So there’s only the three of us now, and whoever
blows in off the highway." A thousand questions
occurred
to me then, but just as quickly
I
knew the one answer to all of them
and
so I said nothing. I noticed a blank
sheet
of paper upon the table beside
a
black fountain pen, and I wondered if Walt
had
been writing a note or perhaps a letter
or
maybe even a poem, but I knew
there
was always something that it was better
to
leave alone, and so I kept mum.
Walt
was wearing a long baggy coat,
gray-striped
trousers, a gray slouch-hat,
and
his shaggy mane and his beard were gray
and
even his eyes, if I recollect,
and
he seemed as remote and as out of time
as
everything else in that strange hotel,
and
somehow I knew I would never again
behold
a sunrise or hear a cock crow
or
a mourning dove call its plaintive call,
for the Old Republic had fallen at last
and somewhere old ghosts were gathering
for a final hurrah, but I wouldn’t be there.
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