Dean Poling
He’s out there somewhere.
Maybe catching a few hours sleep between the bars and the job. Maybe a few winks more between the job and the bars, living a life that squeaks somewhere between sitting on a bar stool and sitting behind bars.
Or he may be sober as waking in the dew of a chill country morning, sitting on a crag, just watching the stars twinkle, watching the stars die either through a cosmic passing of time or vanishing in that cold sun of dawn.
But he’s out there somewhere. Man, he’s got to be out there somewhere.
Years ago, we all ran together, howling at the moon like young wolves freed from our traps. Strong and proud, mean and lean, hungry and unstoppable.
We were free.
We sailed the seas one bottle at a time, when the nights seemed to last forever, and youth spanned the eons.
We lived hard during the tender years. We drank eye to eye. We fought back to back. We were the musketeers. We were desperadoes, comrades in arms, rogues in the house, rascals, and young. Man, we were all so young, thinking we’d lived forever with forever still to go.
Time took its toll. Some passed. Most married. One by one, as we settled into our 20s, then 30s, we settled down or just plain settled. Some hold-outs outlasted the others, but by the late 30s, most had gone over to the settled side.
But not him. No, not him. He remained true. The last of the outlaws.
He’s out there, living and dying, breathing and cursing, running old and ragged, but running all the same, ahead of the pack, or in the midst of it, maybe behind but not by far, not him.
He is the song indomitable, and it is a song he sings alone.
The rest of us think of him at times, in those late night hours, as we climb into our clean sheets and sleep the long sleep, or watch the night pass in front of the TV, or reach out to others through the long pull of the Internet.
He’s out there, sitting at a bar stool, watching the moon, breathing the night air, or maybe he’s quietly settled down, too, staring from a front porch of a little family home, wondering whatever happened to his old gang, wondering and waiting, wondering whatever happened to that breathless whirlwind of youth.
Dean Poling is The Valdosta Daily Times assistant managing editor. His book, “Waiting for Willie,” a novel, is available from The Valdosta Daily Times’ 201 N. Troup St. offices.
