It’s not on their records.
A major brewer, owned by a business, owned by another business, they all have no records of it.
A filing cabinet, tucked in behind the dust trap of a forgotten archive holds something resembling a receipt but nothing that mentions where it had come from, what it was sold for. Every year this small tide seems to trickle in, one often too small to notice; never a loss, never any outstanding costs, just a few dollars here and there that appear like a ripple on the bank’s edge, bobbing up to the surface as if it was the fragment of a lost dinghy, one almost swallowed by an endless ocean.
Not brewed here, the factory hands would shrug, yeah not sure where that one’s made.
It’s production, if here, is either accidental or simply because no one had bothered to say stop. Even looking around the sprawling kettles and kegs of the factory finds no hint of its creation, no trail markers showing that it exists.
The bottles claim to be made here but looking around finds only absence. If not here, then where? An offsite brewery of which there’s no record? Where do they print the labels, blow the glass; what well does this enigma of history still draw itself from?
It’s often hard to find, tiny bottle shops displaced across the state still sell it alongside the other beers; the yellow and tan label never standing out too boldly upon the shelf: the bottle appearing to be flecked with dust or even the freshly milled hops of a brewery just down the road.
No cartons, no slabs, just ten or so longnecks at a time, all brought in by the same delivery driver whenever the shop gets close to running out.
I don’t usually order it, the owner reveals, it comes with the bulk order sometimes and other times is dropped off in a milk crate. It sells ok, they say struggling to remember which brewer it comes from, mostly the same people buying it every so often, but never more than that: ‘a few people’.
A chef that uses it in her cooking, an old carpenter who drinks once a week, these people appear and then leave, the jingle of the shop bell signaling their departure.
It’s a dark stout of a timeless era.
It clings to the glass and will sit upon the table with the solemness of a paperweight or lump of iron.
A denseness that seems to push light away from itself, coiling and black, until held up to the sun and hidden colours blossom iridescenct.
Burgundy, as rich as the heavens, trapped within a cradle of deep walnut brown, a heart beating amongst the darkness, an opal hidden within clay.
A noble air stirs around this bottle, not one with intent to stand out while puffing its chest forward and demanding to be noticed. The bottle just quietly sits, it is confident, it is patient. Many bottles alongside it need advertising or a sense of nostalgia from those who have since moved on, but this bottle just waits; it will be found by the right person.
—
A man walks out to his small truck, his stout beard roughly shorn and his greyed eyes hidden behind the lines of a tired face; this man squints against the yellow of the embering sun and sighs with a slow breath. He looks to his hands, two hands calloused by the effort of two lifetimes of work, he sees the history of the life within them; the building of a home, the inheritance of his father’s business, the inheritance of his son’s business, two remnants now living only through his hands.
The sun dips behind the horizon and twilight brings a cool wind to the city street, the world around him seems to turn quiet.
Clapping the dust of this day off his faded shirt, the man closes his eyes and breathes in the last light. He sees comfort in knowing that this day will end and so too the next one, he knows that everything shall pass no matter the pride or the pain of those who remain and that history will soon forget us all. But now, in the present, he knows that his memories will become vivid than anything that could be possible, so boldly outlined is this moment that it is often hard to remember that we still are here, that we still are alive.
Closing the door of his van, he starts the engine and looks at the remaining deliveries for the day, not too many, he should be finished soon.
—
A coil wrapped around several stalks of wheat and a memory that refuses to die, a blessing it is that we still have our sheaf.
For as with all that has come, it shall one day pass, but in its trail we shall lay the roads of our future.
To Sheaf Stout, may you remain forever bold.
With a fair amount of poetic licence
J.McCray
2021
Sunday Short Stories 