“Picture this: Twelve little eight and nine-year-old boys chasing after a soccer ball on well-manicured green grass. The coach is a middle-aged dude, a little pooch of a gut from drinking a few Coors Lite’s every night after working on an assembly line for General Motors. He decided to start coaching soccer because he loved it as a kid, before, you know. It got serious.”

“What’s this got to do with the kids?” Greg asked Scott. Greg had little patience for anything unless it had something to do with fishing or hunting. Or camping. Camping was an okay topic. But those were subjects where Greg’s expertise shone, at least to those with little or no knowledge. Sports like soccer? Greg had no exposure, so he hated it. “Get to the kids, dang it.” Greg finished his Bud Lite, waving his empty bottle toward the bartender. “Susan? How about another one?”

“That’s your fifth tonight, Greg,” Susan answered, wiping her fingers on the towel slung over her shoulder. “Don’t you think you should slow down? It’s only,” Susan glanced at her Apple watch, “holy cow, Greg! It’s barely 6:00! You got here twenty minutes ago.”

“Yeah. And this loser,” Greg pointed a thick finger at Scott, “can’t tell a story to save his life. Get on with it already.”

“What’s that got to do with you drinking five beers in twenty minutes? I know Scott can be long-winded, but that’s ridiculous. Even for you, Greg. Four minutes per beer. Turning into your Daddy, ya know?”

“Don’t you start with me, Susan!”

Susan stuck a Pall Mall light between her lips and lit it. Her bar was one of the last in Washington County where you could smoke in public. “Greg, we go way back. I’ll call Bud in here if you don’t cool it.” Bud Twainheart was the sheriff in the township of Geralt. He kept to himself most of the time. But if you blatantly broke the law, such as disturbing the peace (namely his), you would spend several hours in a holding cell until he cut you some slack. More often than not, he let everyone off with a warning unless someone was insistent on pressing charges. Susan was one of the few who did press charges. And those who drank at Rain Drop knew she wasn’t messing around. Susan blew her smoke over Greg’s head.

“Just give me another Bud Light, Susan.” He folded his hands together, praying to her. “Please?”

Susan dropped the smoke into the amber-colored glass ashtray, letting it smolder. “Bud’s gonna get ya for a DUI if you ain’t careful.” Reaching under the bar into the minifridge, she pulled a Bud Lite out, popped the bottle cap off it, and handed it to him. “Ginger doesn’t like it when you drink, does she.”

Greg didn’t reply, instead tipping the bottle toward her, the universal sign of appreciating your bartender. Like a much-obliged gesture, it was a way to say thanks without opening your mouth. That was good enough, especially for a dive bar like the Rain Drop.  

Susan grabbed her smoke and took another drag. “You gonna finish that story of yours, Scott? Or do we gotta wait all night to find out what happened to the kids?”

Scott was still laughing. He hadn’t stopped, even though the story stopped with Susan and Greg bickering at each other about the number of Greg’s ingested beer. Scott wiped fresh tears from his eyes, crying because he laughed so hard. “Sheesh. Man. That dude must’ve been out of it when he bought that Gatorade.”

Stuart, one of Susan’s regulars who always needed a ride home, spoke up. “I knows that there, Gatteradd. It gots all them electro-electro-electrolights added to them, ain’t that right, Scotty?”

“One and the same, Stu. But that’s not the best part,” Scott smiled.

“I’ve had it with you, Scott! What, in-the-good-name-of-foobar-central, happened?”

“He bought the WRONG Gatorade, that’s what! He bought the kind that’s like an energy drink! Chock full of caffeine. 200 milligrams of caffeine! In each bottle! And the moronic coach passed it out like it was regular Gatorade. Only this stuff? For these twelve boys? Jacked them up like hookers full of cocaine! Each boy bounced around like they were hyped up on a ton of sugar! Which is what their moms thought when they got home.”

Susan scowled at Scott. “That’s not very funny, Scott. How would you feel if one of those boys was Evan or Shawn?”

“That’s the thing, Susan. Shawn WAS one of them! He was so wired his Mom stayed up with him until almost 11:30 two nights ago. Had a killer headache the next day. So did a lot of the other boys.”

“What happened to the poor coach?” Susan stubbed out her smoke at the same time as Greg asked. Finishing his beer and waving it at Susan. Susan, after rolling her eyes, got Greg another Bud Lite. “One of these days, Ginger’s gonna bite you ‘cause o’ your drunk ass. You do know that, right? German Sheppard’s got a way of sensing these things.”

“Piss off, Susan,” Greg tipped his beer to her anyway.

“You know,” Scott stopped laughing. “I don’t know. I guess he got fired.”

“It’s a volunteer league. Can’t get fired from that,” a stranger at the end of the bar said.

“Howdya know that?” Susan asked.

“Because. I’m that coach.”

Scott burst into laughter. Greg shook his head. Susan handed the stranger a cold Coors Lite. “Here ya go, mister. On the house.”

He tipped it up to Susan like Greg did and took a swig. He chuckled, whispering, “It was kinda funny.”