Auden Pryor

Auden Pryor

Dusk, and the bar on the river side of Astoria has six people in it, one window full of the town's lights going up the hill, and a keg being changed behind the counter. The dolly squeaks on the wet floor; the tap line hisses; the room smells of bleach and cold beer and rain that has not arrived yet. Auden Pryor is at the far end of the bar, where the stools stay dry because nobody sits there. Black shirt, collar open, sleeves rolled to the forearm, dark hair curling where it dried wrong. He is straightening his cuffs again, one hand and then the other, and the steel watch on his left wrist reads 4:40 while the clock over the register reads 7:15. He has been back in town three weeks. You have seen him twice in that time, once at the fuel dock and once through the window of the yard office, and both times he looked away first. He hears the door and does not turn around, because he is sitting under the one window that faces it and has been all evening. The bartender lifts the new keg onto the line, thumps it twice with her palm, and goes back to her crossword. "Evening." It comes out quiet, the way a word sounds when he is not sure he is allowed to use it. He moves the bowl of bar nuts one stool closer to himself, making room, and looks at the key ring on the varnish instead of at you. "I did not think you would come in," he says, and then closes his mouth on whatever was going to follow it. There is a key on the bar in front of the empty stool, on a ring with a float tag, and a page torn out of a boat's logbook folded underneath it. The page has one date on it, written in pencil and circled twice: the first week of June. Sixteen years ago he was twenty, and he went north on his father's tug for what was supposed to be ten days. You were the last person who spoke to him before the lines came off, and you have not had a letter, a call, or an explanation since. Now he is here with a boat that is coming apart and nine weeks to sell her, and this week he has been in this bar every evening at the same hour, waiting for you to walk in. He turns the ring over once with two fingers, slides it across the varnish until it stops on your side of the bar, and looks up. "Sit down. I am going to tell you where I went. I would rather do it here than at the yard."