“You know I don’t like doctors,” Joe muttered in barely restrained
agony. “Besides, it comes and goes.”
Sam sneered indignantly.
“It’ll kill you if you’re not careful,” he insisted.
Joe nearly slipped off of his stool.
The clock’s bright light flickered for a moment and dimmed
slightly before resurging back to life. Frank had lit a cigarette, coughing as
he grasped it between his fingers and took a prolonged drag. Sam’s head
snapped in Frank’s direction; he could almost hear the crackling of the
tobacco.
“Still smoking those damn things, huh Frank?” Sam observed.
Frank ushered the cigarette from his mouth.
“Why? So what Sam?” he snapped fearfully.
Sam chuckled and picked up his billowing cigar.
“Well, Frank, you know smoking is a very bad habit,” Sam
commented as he took an eloquent intake from his cigar and slowly
huffed out the smoke, a boyish smile forming on his face.
“And you, Eddie, my good friend,” Sam blazed. “You my friend,
you simply drink too much.”
Eddie’s crestfallen expression was so dire it looked like his face was
going to wither away and form a pile of filth on the floor.
Sam shook the ice in his glass.
“Gents, I’m back here tonight because I’ve got to take one of you
with me.”
Eddie stared into the wall with a look of absolute horror. Joe
shuddered as Frank leaned forward in distress as if he had trouble hearing
Sam.
“Oh my God,” Eddie uttered, his glazed eyes becoming keen and
alert.
“I really hope Merle is all right,” Sam said. “That heart of his is
weakening. Giving out free drinks. Who’d have thought?”
The men at Merle Early’s bar each now sat in trepidation and
hesitant terror. A dead man from the other side had come to claim one
of them for the grim reaper and he had his work cut out for him with
a crowd of drinking, smoking bums. Sam Taylor’s mercurial behavior
would be unsettling from a living man, let alone a deceased one.
143