Mr. Megrim

Being a bartender was a good gig for me, at least until my anticipated sheepskin buys me a better job. Career!

I came in that afternoon with some low mein Chinese take-out and a few textbooks for tomorrow morning's classes. I planned to catch up on my reading during the slow time. You meet a lot of people behind the bar. I could cliché it up with the happy drunks, the sad ones crying in their brew, or the tough punks whose testosterone level matches their breathalyser score. There were amateurs and there were professionals. Mr. Megrim was a pro.

Smiling, he walked into the bar. Mr. Megrim was somewhere between sixty and dead. Longish white hair covered his aged head, and a close cropped beard graced his face. Crisp blue eyes stared out at you. A glib tongue spoke most of his words. He was not a big man, maybe even slightly under the average.

"I'll take a pint, my good man." The old man wagged a finger at me. "And none of that steamed out malt beverage you pour me ofttimes. I quaffed my quota in '28." I should explain that last comment. You see, Mr. Megrim lived in the retirement home around the block. It had been converted from the old Hummel Hotel in the city, a local landmark. Mr. Megrim would leave the establishment sometimes signing out and sometimes not through an unlocked door. He had a knack for finding them. My boss set a policy to give him a non-alcoholic beer, then check to see if he was AWOL. Only if he was legit, could we get him a real beer. I poured him a Kaliber instead of an O'Doul's into a clean wide-mouthed glass mug, hoping the more hoppy taste would fool him.

"Two bits, four bits, pieces of eight." He spread out a varied collection of coins onto the bar top. I picked out a Thomas Jefferson dollar. And a few other presidents. I did not recognize a lot of the money. Must be some far-fling foreign places they came from. Many were not even round, just a rough blunt edged sorta-circle. "I'm as legal as a two dollar bill," he said. "Or is that three? There was a three dollar coin if memory serves me correct." He slammed his fist upon the bar. "And a three cent piece, by gum."

I had to serve a business-suited man with a narrow tie a gin and tonic. When I came back, Mr. Megrim had untwisted the cap from the salt shaker we keep to sprinkle on the pub grub at Happy Hour. He had the salt spread all over the counter. Oh well, I've had to clean up worse! He was dredging his finger in the pile, shifting the white powder into swirls and curlicues.

"What'a doing Mr. Megrim?"

"These were the signs of the road on the Linclon Highway. No, on the rails. This was the sign for a 'Nice Woman' - she'd give you food - and this was a 'mean man'. Skip that house."

"That one looks like the crossed-out 'P' Fr. Kawiecki wears on his Sunday getup."

"Vestments," the old man corrected.

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"The Chi Ro. The first two letters in the Greek word for Christ. And this one…" He started with a large five-pointed star and then made lines that must have been taught only in a non-Euclidean geometry class. "Cannot draw that one!" Mr. Megrim cried, and wiped the symbol away with his palm.

"Always make friends with the Snake. He ran the rail switches; he was a family man. You just avoided the Bulls."

One ear was trained on Mr. Megrim, but I heard a commotion at the other end of the bar, by the front door and the register. It was the one thing I feared more than a bar-fight. A robbery was going on. Two men stood, guns in hands, wearing hockey jerseys: N.Y. Rangers and Carolina Hurricane. Good move. Just dump the big garments and no one could identify the rest of your clothes.

Mr. Megrim patted down his pants pockets. "Missing. Not here. Lost." He grabbed my arm. "Have you a length of wood? A pencil, perhaps."

"Mister, calm down. You don't want to upset these guys," I chastised him. "Pencil? No, only a pen."

"No, it must be wood grown in the Earth's green soil." He looked about, then his sharp eyes settled on my lunch in its white carton. "Your chopsticks! Give them to me," he commanded. I handed him the utensils. He stood up immediately and turned to face the robbers. I tried to stop him, to settle him down, to give him a brief time-out on his barstool. The gunmen swung about, raising their automatics.

"I am no fey changeling to fear iron or its stepson steel. Your bullets are hoary even to Atlas." The old man muttered. He rubbed one chopstick along the rim of the glass.

I can only say my eyes lied because what I saw could not have happened. The beer mug seemed to grow out like a Rudy Valley megaphone. Waves of glass spun out before Megrim. The robbers fired. Their .38 slugs flew through the air. The bullets spun into the glass funnel. The bullets slowed so anyone could see. The lead slugs stopped dead in the air, hung in the glass trapped. Then they dropped to the ground loudly.

"I am the snarling wolf in the night. I am the bad shadows in the dark. I am the grey wizard in the moonlight. Dare you stand before me?"

The gunmen stood there, their guns smoking a wispy white fog. They turned their heads to each other. Then they fled through the front door.

"Now a drink, my good fellow," Mr. Megrim said, reclaiming his seat in the manner I imagine Lancelot sat at the Round Table.

I poured him a Guinness.

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