How Beer Saved the World

Of Hops, Malt, and Pee ^{Bruce Taylor}

Looking at Maxwell (“Mac”) Horace (didn’t like to be called Maxwell or Max) you’d never, ever guess this six-foot-six, 250 pound bear of a guy with ruddy face, full head of black hair, and the greenest eyes that would make even plants blush, could ever have anything—anything wrong with him. Boisterous laugh, loved blue jeans and pearl buttoned monochrome shirts of vivid color—looked like he would not only be the life of a party, but the life of life itself. And you’d think him the happiest, healthiest person you’d ever met.

However, if you went out to the Lumber Jack Tavern, out there in Darrington, this little town huddled near the base of the vertical, 6000 foot vertical, jagged wall of brooding, ice-capped Whitehorse Mountain just an hour northeast of Seattle, it became obvious—he had a problem. Especially noticeable after he had a beer or two. I didn’t pay much attention to it at first.

I met him in the evening at the opening of the coffeehouse, The Mountain Loop. Beautiful place with blond, wood floors, walls painted magenta; one section a book store, the other, for snacks and coffee with round, glass-topped tables and behind the counter with low open cooler next to it, a big, black board with menu written in bright, orange chalk, the prices in white.

Anyway, I got there later than planned and found it unexpectedly crowded for a Sunday evening. I looked about and finally saw an empty seat at the table where this fellow sat. And as I sat, I plopped on the table a long-sought copy of Bradbury’s Martian Chronicles and then proceeded to wrestle off my coat. The book caught this fellow’s attention. “Oh, hey, you a Bradbury fan?” His eyes got big as he drank in the cover art of Thee Bradbury.

“God,” I laughed, “who isn’t? Fantasist superb and one of those folks who I think wrote magic realism. He wrote everything—even wrote for The Twilight Zone.”

“Magic realism?” He leaned back, plopped hands on the table, then picked up his latte. “Heard about that. Fantasy, right?” He sipped his drink then slowly put it down on the table.

I smiled. “Actually, it’s not a lot different than lucid dreaming where the strange and real co-exist. You don’t think anything about how strange the dream may be, except when you wake up and remember it.” I then added as an afterthought, “Been thinking recently that maybe ‘magic realism’ is code for ‘lucid dreaming’.”

“Oh, okay—” and so, after introductions, there began a most spirited and earnest conversation that revealed Mac to be a voracious reader of everything. From romance (“Hey! Guys like love too!”) to folks like Allende, Marques, Kafka and the paranormal (had all the episodes of The X-Files on DVD) and science fiction (had all the episodes of Star Trek) and everything else in between.

So we sat at a table at the opening of this new coffee shop and it soon became very obvious that we had a lot to talk about. And as the evening began to move into the night and, to the closing of the coffee shop, Mac said, “Lumber Jack Tavern just down the street. Beer? We can talk more. But first—”

“Oh, yeah—”

He trotted off to use the facilities.

Then, to the tavern, local dive with bright red planking up the front. To the right and left of the door, big windows with neon art for Skagit Porter and Coors in the right window. The left side held a flashing “open” sign in red letters in a circle of bright, vision-numbing blue neon.

For a Sunday night, it was crowded, but after a minute, a table against the wall opened up. Sturdy, high-backed wood chairs, Formica tabletops of interlocking, green triangles over white background.

“Used to be a café,” said Mac. “They just kept the décor when it became a tavern.”

Smiling waitress came over, long chocolate hair, dark eyes, and business-like. “Beer for you guys?” she slapped down a coaster for me and then Mac. “Somethin’ ta eat?”

She then stood straight. I surmised that beneath that oversized plaid shirt she wore, she was, as they say, weight and height proportional. But had that look of someone who was used to dealing with just about anything when it comes to customers.

“No,” I said, “for now, a Cascade Stout would be fine.”

“Skagit Porter,” said Mac and the conversation continued on, punctuated by frequent trips to the bathroom for Mac. At one point when he came back he sighed, “Curse of the Horace family—small bladders though I notice it more when I drink beer. Don’t know why unless it’s something about beer. But—” He grinned, sitting back and taking a big gulp of brew, “not about to stop. That’s for sure.”

I laughed, held my glass up. “A toast to beer. One can only guess how many relationships cemented and wars averted by sitting down and having a glass of beer.”

Mac grinned. We clinked glasses. “Amen. To beer.”

And before long and several more beers later, and feeling pretty tipsy, we both had to go but, after some minutes and polite knocking on the door to the one bathroom—

“Fuck,” said Mac. “Fuck me but I gotta pee.”

“You and me both. Whoever’s in there must have passed out. Well—”

Mac motioned with his head. “Patch of woods out back beyond the parking lot.”

We made our way through the Lumber Jack. Once outside, wove through parked cars and to some tall trees just beyond the parking lot. The moon was out, making our task a bit more in need of cover. After finding convenient trees, we, as they say, let fly.

Funny what things you notice during such times; especially when feeling the effects of fine beer, the coolness of the air, Whitehorse, shining like a ragged, icy ghost just a ways away, and, just finishing my task, I pointed skyward. “Shooting star! You see that?”

The shooting star abruptly slowed but kept coming and then—stopped shooting. It just sat there as if suspended in mid-air.

Mac, still zipping his fly, began stepping back out of the trees, looked up, kept stepping back. “I don’t think that’s a shooting—”

A blaze of light. And a smell like a burned clutch.

Next thing I knew, we were lying flat on a yielding surface in a small room suffused with a faintly golden light. Along one side, a shelf or counter. I stood, then went over to get a better look but each step sent me a bit airborne. “Shit, Mac—gravity—”

“Lack of it.”

I pointed to the counter. He came over. “Probes,” he said, as we gazed at what appeared to be highly-polished medical-looking instruments.

We both looked at each other. I am sure we both shared the mutual look of abrupt understanding: alien abduction.

I don’t know how someone’s face can turn so white, but Mac’s face was certainly white. “Oh, God!” he whispered. “What do we—”

“Don’t know. Never put any stock into alien abduction stuff,” I whispered, “but this sure looks like—”

He ran a hand through his hair. “Shit. We gotta do something before someone or something wants to get friendly with us and wonder how we tick. What’s worse—”

I looked at him a long moment. “You gotta pee.”

He nodded his head vigorously. “I gotta pee.”

“Well—” Exasperated, I looked around as if looking for a place to do that and came to my senses. “I’m sure whoever has abducted us has probably had all sorts of stuff spilled on the floor from their examinations. Go ahead and piss.”

He turned, went to the nearest wall and began to let go—and stopped. “My God!” He pointed, “my God—”

I came over to look. Where he had pissed on the wall, that part of the wall—had melted. Eagerly, I tried. Not as much came of my effort but certainly part of the wall where I had done my duty had obviously softened.

“Yeah,” I said, “whatever that beer does to your piss sure doesn’t work for this place.”

I saw Mac relax and I smiled. A weapon?

Dong in hand, Mac went over to the counter with all the formidable and weird medical-looking paraphernalia and said, “No, no, not tonight, dear. I don’t want an examination.”

And he promptly aimed a forceful yellow stream all over the equipment and the shelf.

Wow! I don’t know what beer did to Mac’s pee—maybe it was coincidental, I dunno, but the instruments acted like they’d been hit by a laser; everything just— melted, shriveled up and gave off a God-awful acrid odor of piss as if mixed with sulfur and garlic. The metal shrieked, squealed as if they were living entitles that had somehow taken on static forms of instruments.

At that point, part of the wall yanked back, revealing our captors who looked like somehow feminized lizards: big dark, soulful eyes, more or less set as if to give binocular vision, no nose, grayish-green skin and dressed in some sort of body-hugging, synthetic wrap, almost as if sprayed on. They looked around, pointed and squealed, I assume in shock.

We turned and faced our abductors directly. Mac still had his “weapon” in his hand. I pulled down my zipper and found my own, guessing that our friends had seen the damage Mac had done, I could only assume I could do the same. We approached. Then stopped, raised our formidable weapons and made like we were going to fire.

Our friends screeched. Blam! The wall slammed shut. Golden light.

And we found ourselves flat on our backs on the parking lot outside the Lumber Jack. We looked up in time to see the star streak away at high speed eastward. Suddenly, I imagined a vast armada of glowing ships heading toward Earth, then abruptly stopping as if hitting a wall—then suddenly retreating. For a few minutes I guess, we both conked out, maybe from shock or relief combined with the effects of the beer. Anyway, when I came to, Mac was trying to sit up.

“You get a picture in your head before we zoned out of a bunch of ships in retreat?” I asked. “A mass-mind telepathic command to am-scray?”

Smiling hugely, Mac slowly got to his feet and gave me a hand.

“Yup,” he laughed. “Maybe having a small bladder ain’t so bad. Maybe what beer does to me ain’t so bad either. Certainly saved the world from alien invasion tonight.”

“That it did,” I said, “that it did. Suggest we celebrate and have another round.”

“Sounds great,” said Mac, “but first,” he turned his back discreetly.

“I know,” I laughed. “I know. But first—you gotta pee.”