It’s been a long day, and I just don’t want to think about anything. I sit at the bar in Tipsy’s. Nursing on my usual rum and coke that Tip, the bartender, hands me as soon as I sit down.

Tipsy’s, a bar where the neon beer sign buzzing faintly in the window had more life than the rest of the place combined. Rust had bled from the metal roof onto the faded siding, and the screen door whined on its hinges with every slow entry, catching on the bowed-out floorboards before a final, grating scrape.

Inside, the air was thick with the ghost of stale cigarette smoke and decades of spilled beer. The long bar top, worn smooth by countless elbows, was scarred with nicks and water rings, and behind it was Tip, a solitary bartender wiping down glasses with a towel that was less clean than the glasses themselves. A couple of lonely-looking longhorns, their luster long gone, watched over the scene from above the bar, their dust-caked eyes missing nothing.

The smell of herbicide clung to me like a second skin, a chemical musk that all the bar's stale cigarette smoke and spilled beer couldn't hide. I sat at the far end of the bar, a silent anchor in a sea of Friday night noise, and let the ice clink gently in my glass. Each cube was a small, cold monument to the countless trees I’d condemned today—each a miniature guillotine for something that had been alive only this morning.

The specifics of the work, the sharp, sickly scent, the way the trunk’s sap wept with a viscous finality, were details my mind was determined to ignore. The rum and coke was a numbing balm, a slow-acting poison of my own, and all I wanted was for the dark brown liquid to wash away the memory of the trees' dying rustle. I wasn't looking for a story or a conversation; I’m just a weary man with dirt under his nails and the ghost of a thousand leaves on his conscience, seeking a quiet void where the day's long work couldn't follow him.

Blind George was sitting beside me like always. His knuckles, pale against the dark wood of the bar, were a silent testament to the tension coiled within him. A cacophony of clinking glasses, boisterous laughter, and the steady thrum of music surrounded him, each sound a separate, disorienting island.

Leaning closer to the spot beside him, where he knew I was, he spoke in a low, almost imperceptible voice. "Hey, you still there?" he asked, not out of doubt, but out of a need for confirmation, a mooring in the sea of noise.

I didn’t answer right away. Taking a long drag from my cigarette, then taping the ash into a small saucer. Looking at George, a flicker of something—pity, kinship—crossed my face. “Yeah,” I sigh, my voice a low gruff, “I’m here.”

“Good.” George seems to take a breath of relief, “Some folks just get up and walk away. Don't say a word. I appreciate you sayin' somethin'.”

Apparently, just knowing that there was something or someone familiar by his side made him feel safe I guess. I don’t know. I was probably the anchor that made the chaos of the bar melt away into a familiar, safe backdrop for him.

I nod, forgetting that George can't see the gesture. Before taking a long look at the old man's weathered face. “I ain't gonna just walk away.” I say after a moment, my voice softer.

A faint, knowing smile plays on George’s lips. “Didn't think so.” He whispers back, almost conspicuously before he drinks the amber liquid from his glass. Bourbon, if I had to guess.

Glancing back out the window, My expression returns to its usual hard blankness. But I don’t leave. I just sit and smoke, a silent presence, keeping the promise I didn't realize I’d made.