For as long as almost anyone at Stillwinter could remember, Friday nights had always begun at Walter’s pub.

The “pub” was a 20×20 potting shed in Walter’s backyard. Inside looked no better than the weather beaten exterior but, was the scene of a lot of laughter over the years and some decent music. A beer fridge, a few chairs and a warm potbelly stove completed the setting.

Anyone could come as long as they followed Walter’s rules. No fighting, no shop talk, the beer in the fridge was yours at cost, you could settle up on pay day on your honour and everybody sang, if you brought an instrument, even better. Oh and one last rule, nobody but Walter touched Walter’s guitar. His beloved Martin spruce top. Annie had given it to him on their tenth anniversary and there were moments when she wondered if Walter’s love for that guitar rivalled his love for her. She called it his second wife. She said that he held that thing like a mistress. He’d chop the damn thing to kindling in exchange for one more chance to hold Annie.

In the two years since her death Walter couldn’t remember ten minutes he could string together that he didn’t think of her. Everything he did, everything he ate, every movie he saw, he measured in terms of how much Annie would have loved it. Last month he had attended Owens’s graduation from military college. He sat in the audience with the rest of the beaming parents, tears streaming down his face as Owen delivered the valedictory speech. He could as much as feel Annie’s presence beside him.

Tonight at the pub would be special. Owen was home from Kingston and was already out in the shed with a couple of buddies working the frets of his Takemine six string and belting out a few songs.

Walter was a decent player with a love of classic blues and folk music. He’d usually start the evening off with a little John Prine, Johnny Cash or Ramblin’ Jack Elliott. One of the younger bucks would kick in with some Pearl Jam or Ben Harper. They’d go back and forth and the beer fridge door would swing as lively as the tunes.

Ever since Owen was old enough to say the word beer, he had been part of the Friday night ritual. It was there that he developed a love of music and picked up the guitar as if he had been born with calluses on his finger tips.

By the time Owen was twelve, he was playing better than the old man and there weren’t too many who showed up who could carry his guitar case.

It didn’t matter who brought what guitar. Owen could finger pick a steel string, play classical or give you a wicked slide version of almost any popular tune. He didn’t pick a career in music. Walter had done a good job of talking him out of that. The ranks of the wealthy were not heavily populated by musicians but, the unemployment lines saw more than a few of them.

Walter stood at the kitchen window absently washing the lunch dishes, watching Owen’s head in the dingy shed window bobbing to the beat of some unheard tune. Engineering, now there was a vocation to which you could pin a future. The money just wasn’t there for higher education but he would be god dammed if he was going to let Owen go into corrections. The military seemed like the ticket. Owen had the brains, the marks and excellent health. After finishing his degree, he would owe them five years and if he liked it, there was a ready made career for him. Afghanistan had not been part of Walter’s grand plan for Owen but, tomorrow, he would drive him to the base, put him on a plane and send his only son, his sole reason for living, to some God forsaken shit hole halfway around the world.

Walter hadn’t realized he had been crying until he saw the tears dripping onto the just dried bread plate in his hand. With his other hand he wiped his eyes on the corner of his apron. He started laughing. Crying and laughing at the same time. How Annie had howled the first time she saw her hulking husband prattling around the kitchen in an apron.

He untied the bow at his back, pulled off the apron, gave his eyes another swipe with it then turning for the back door, grabbed his guitar case and headed out to the pub.