He stiff arms the wooden door, pushing it open into the wet summer air, breath and anger mixing in his throat. Both upset at what’s happened and at himself for letting it affect him so.

He knows the hardest hits never come when you’re ready for them. That’s what killed Houdini, after all. Felled by a sucker punch to the gut when he wasn’t expecting it.

Just like how the scent of juniper in the in the fall coolness still reminds him of the lotion used by the first girl he ever made love to under an open sky. And how it completely disarms him to this day.

Or how a certain type of wood will glow in just a particular way when warmed to exactly the right temperature by the sun, leaving him utterly decimated in remembrance of a house that no longer exists, the special bed that was built for him there, and how good sleep was then.

As he stalks down the street, dodging the tourists, the barkers and the peddlers, he remembers all of those things, and more, now that he knows that kind of unprecedented heartache that comes from A. Schwab’s being up for sale.

Memphis Note
It’s true. After a hundred plus years of voodoo-tinged service, the building and business that A. Schwab occupies is up for sale. But, along with that comes a stark change to the voodoo corner and the cluttered attic-cum-museum of the half story landing. Change has finally come to the unchangeable.

He held up the unopened can of beer and glowered at it.

“You’re the reason everything’s gone to hell.”

It was late, and he was the last one in the brewery’s offices. By all rights, he should’ve gone home hours ago. He couldn’t face his family, not when everything was falling apart.

“No one wants bottles any more. They want something they can crush, then hurriedly toss away like trash before it gets a smell. They want something to make them happy now but not remind them of how many they had come morning.”

He set the beer down on his desk, pulled open a drawer, and started rooting around in it.

“We were set up for bottling. But, everyone wants cans now. So, we retooled the whole assembly line to make you. God, was that a disaster. No one cares about you anywhere else, you just sit on shelves gathering dust. Ah, there it is.”

The metal of the flat top can opener glinted in the lamplight, like a murderer’s knife. He closed the drawer and looked back at the can.

“You’re ruined me, you see. And now I’m going to take my revenge.

“I’m going to drink you.”

Memphis Note
The Tennessee Brewing Company was one of the largest breweries of its time when it was opened in the late 1800s. It prospered up until Prohibition, when it was shut down. Its doors were reopened after The Great Experiment ended, the brewery re-opened, and for a time business was good. Unfortunately, the transition to metal cans and a narrowing regional market proved to be too much for the company to handle. The company and its magnificent building were shuttered in 1954.

The overwhelming beigeness of the subdivision going up down the street made Elsa Mae spit. She could see the huge trucks moving through the tree line, like some kind of horrible metal monsters that sent her rabbits scattering.

Elsa’s property was the largest in the area. Her grandfather had purchased it as a homestead a century ago. She still lived in the house that her grandfather and father had built. Her parents married on the front porch. Elsa was born here, and wed Henry under the oak tree you could see just out the parlor window.

Her Henry had succumbed to the cancer three years past. They’d never been blessed with children. Instead they raised rabbits. Acres of them, with plenty of runs, slopes and tree roots to hide and play amongst. Jacks, lops, hares, and a pair of Flemmish giants that she wished would get off their duff and make some kits.

Elsa spit again, and went to wrangle her children into their hutches for the night.

It was just her and the rabbits now, holding off the metastasizing growth of the suburbs. A last bastion of what was, standing firm against what is. It was a good fight.

Memphis Note
There are still places like this, out on the edges of Memphis. Where people lived before the city grew out to meet them. It always breaks my heart a little bit when I see one of them sold to a developer to be sliced up into a dozen less interesting homes.