Drinking iced coffee from a pilsner glass, the old man sits. Unsteady are his mottled hands. Deeply fallen eyes, kindled by the dim afterglow of too many years of drunkenness, focus on newsprint. A moist breeze blows in and up off the river; the old man’s newspaper bends against it. The sun is bright, but the day is tolerable. The old man is not at this cafe to be fashionable. He sits here because he likes the sounds of a river.
From Juan, the old man does not expect much. Afternoon customers, the old man knows, are in the way. He has heard the waiters talking about the nuisance of the slothful patrons––sitting all afternoon in the sun, preventing the waiters from setting up for the dinner crowd. The old man has never tipped. If he is a sloth, he does not care. It is the cafe, absent costumers, that the river can permeate; empty, sounds of riffles pour onto the patio.
“Another,” the old man says to Juan. Juan takes the empty glass and soon returns with a full one. On the table, Juan places it. “Will that be all?” The old man takes a sip. “This is good.”
“Will that be all?”
At the folded newspaper in his left hand, the old man points. “I used to read every word of the paper, even the obituaries, but now I only read the box scores.” Juan pulls a pencil from behind his ear and writes out the check. As a weight, Juan places the salt shaker on top of the bill. The old man looks at Juan. “How old are you? I’ll bet you’re twenty-three.” Juan turns and walks away. Removing his cap, the old man wipes his forehead with a white handkerchief and resets the cap down lower on his brow.
Unfolding the newspaper, the old man deciphers the box score of the previous afternoon’s Cubs game. A left-hander for the Cubs had thrown a no-hitter through seven and a third before allowing a utility outfielder to reach base on a single. So as to tell him about the game, the old man lowers the paper and looks for Juan, but the waiter is not at his station. Juan is standing with Mark, by the patio rail, smoking cigarettes and looking down at the river. Mark is wearing an cheap black tuxedo jacket and pointing: Juan is grinning. The old man turns his chair, but he can not see anything unusual until he walks to the rail.
The cafe patio is a deck protruding twenty feet over the river and standing thirty feet high. The rocky shore climbs steeply from the water up to the main section of the cafe which is set as close to the edge as possible. From the patio rail, the old man sees that Juan and Mark are looking at three teenagers who have climbed down the rocks and are wading into the muddy water a few hundred yards upriver. The old man watches as the shortest of the three takes off his jeans and walks out into the river until he stands thigh-deep. The boy turns and looks at his friends. The other two follow his lead. When all three stand thigh-deep in the river, the shortest boy walks farther out until his waist is submerged. Again he turns and motions his friends to join him. As one of the boys stumbles and falls, the two waiters laugh. The boy’s white T-shirt turns muddy gray from the water and clings to his frail frame. Then all three boys stand chest-deep in the river. As they venture farther from shore and their voices carry across the water, the old man hears them gibing one another. The boys begin to wrestle and horseplay and shout profanities.
Finished with their cigarettes, Mark and Juan return to their duties. Alone at the rail, the old man stands. He yells down, “How’s the water?” The boys look, and the shortest one raises his right fist, extends his middle finger, and yells something that the old man cannot make out. The other boys laugh. The shortest kid then climbs onto the back of one of his friends and twists around him until he forces his friend’s head under. The other boy pulls the shortest one off and catches him in a full nelson. He dunks the shortest boy several times before releasing him. Their play carries them out farther into the current. When he reaches for one of his friends, the shortest teen is well over his head. The friend pushes the short one farther out into the current that catches him and drags him along with it. The old man watches. The two taller boys call for their friend to stop kidding around and then realizing, begin yelling for help. As they yell, they look at the old man who stares back motionlessly.
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