listened, trying to take every word in and
make it eternal. Over thirty years and he
still had something new to tell me.
Night was in full effect when he drew his
last breath. By then, I had made him a bed
on the sand with our blankets.
he was lucky. The bartender didn’t mind.
This place was sort of a dive. Bars like this
seemed to spawn personalities like the
lovestruck geezer.
“Was she wearing a red dress, old timer?“
asked the bartender. The old man laughed.
I waited a full minute. That was the rule, one
minute with no breath.
“Well, of course she did. Redder than the
reddest apple.“
I took his head and raised it. I sunk the knife
into the back of his skull and whispered,
“Good night, my love.”
The bartender, Lyle, smirked to himself.
He’d done some Google searches every
time the old guy described the woman. She
was either from a cigar ad or the fuselage
art from a World War 2 plane. Lyle hoped
he never figured out who the woman in
red with the beguiling smile was. He wasn’t
much for the supernatural or religion,
but this story seemed magical enough to
leave alone. The old man tapped his bottle
against the oak bar.
I fixed his hair back to the way he always
liked it. I covered him up with the blankets
his mother had made for us. I doused it
all with our… my last bit of gas and lit it
aflame.
I watched the pyre until I heard moans and I
slipped off into the darkness.
He was gone, but not his story. So long as I
was alive, so was he. I would never give that
up.
.......................................
ALL AGES STORIES
A Beguiling Smile
Jesse Hall
“She had the most beguiling smile. Ha,
I’d almost forgotten what it was like to be
vexed by actual beauty.”
The old man tipped the long neck bottle
backwards. The bartender shook his head.
Almost every night, the fogey would come
in with a different amount of cash and drink
until he was down to pennies or nickels if
“I’m getting dry over here, kid.“
Lyle retrieved another brew, popped the
top and slid it down to the geezer.
“Oh, I’m a kid now, huh? You’re only old
enough to be my dad.” He walked over to
the old man, people that called him by
name called him Ben, and took the empty
bottle away.
“Of course you’re a kid. You ain’t seen the
world like I have. It’s not an age thing. But
you’re getting me off topic. Can’t you see
that I’m trying to wax poetic for a love that
could never be?“
That one was new. In the five years Lyle had
worked here, Ben had never referred to the
woman in red with the beguiling smile as
anything other than that. Love? Couldn’t let
that train of thought leave the station just
yet. He tossed the empty bottle into the
trash and turned back to Ben.
October 2015
INSIGHT