Gusty McClellan looked up from the paper to see his future standing in the door. Honcho Stickie stood taller than his height beaming with a bottle in his hand. A man in all respects average but the twinkle in his eye, Honcho was always up to something. Without breaking eye contact he crossed the room holding the bottle out in front as if he wanted it to arrive first wherever he went. “This is it, Judge. Taste it and tell me if it’s not. I believe it is.”
A mountain moves easier than Gusty’s hand to that bottle. Honcho’s schemes were forever complicating his purposely predictable life. But a friendship longer than memory has a power men don’t question.
The eye contact intensified as Gusty tilted the bottle to his lips. A blink now would let his friend down and break the mood. He aimed to play along, but the beer in that bottle had different plans. Like a cloud burst on a hot July day and the blue sky afterward, the taste moved with a sweeping rhythm of its own. Gusty’s eyes closed and his imagination opened. After a few moments, he said, “It’s wetter than water.” Honcho replied, “That’s what I thought.”
Honcho had brewed a batch of sunshine in a bottle. He’d always thought that plans were made for breaking. So, he’d never made any that lasted long. That’s where Judge McClellan came in. He seemed to know what tomorrow would bring.
Well, not anymore. “Honcho, if you kept this to yourself, I would consider it stealing.”
Follow the continuing beer-ventures of Gusty McClellan and Honcho Stickie at: http://brewingfrontier.blogspot.com/
