I Love This Tavern

…

As stated before, Sail Tavern was a haven for the crew of the Grand Sails. The service was friendly, everyone had a good time, and the owner, Leeta, liked to let the airmen try out new drinks on the house. It was probably the one place Link ever felt truly safe. Sure, the Grand Sails was a home away from home, but even his crewmates tended to do horrible things to him when he had been ordered to do things they had not liked. Any time he tried to tell himself that the ship was safe, he would remind himself of his third year as an airman when some of the crew had shown their spite for relaying the captain's unfavorable orders by trying to stuff him into a loaded cannon. The office was not much safer, as irate customers and former employees liked to rough him up before anyone would come to his rescue.

Of course, despite being a tavern, Link and Line were still not allowed to drink alcohol. This could only ever disappoint Line, who expressed a number of times his impending pleasure once he was old enough to take his first mug of beer and pour it down his throat. Link could care less. In fact, he figured that he would never take up drinking. He had been involved in too many bar fights on other islands, and he had only ever entered those bars to find a crewmate that the captain had been looking for. Not to mention the incident where an irate airman had dunked him in a barrel of raw grog. But Leeta was not without her appeal to the young members of the Grand Sails' crew. She liked keeping a small stock of fruit juices and non-alcoholic concoctions which she would let them try.

Today's drink was some kind of fruit juice (neither of which the boys could ever pronounce) which, just to make drinking it interesting, Leeta added a bubble tablet to it. The boys watched in their usual fascination as the tablet dissolved at the bottom of their mugs, causing the juice to form a layer of foam on the top.

"Link?" Line asked.

"Yeah," Link replied.

"We're too easily amused."

"I won't complain if you won't."

The boys sat at the end of the bar on a pair of stools which allowed them to sit up high enough to flag down Leeta and Gale, one of Leeta's regular bartenders, when needed. Where they sat, no one could really see them unless they were looking for them. Airmen from the Grand Sails occupied the tables around the room. No one wanted to sit at the bar due to Gale's tendency to elbow people he was trying to get past, which was a given due to how much room there was not in between the barstools and the tables behind them. The air was scented with alcohol and ponga flower, an unusual perfume cross between floral and dirty laundry which the boys could smell from Gale whenever he walked by.

Naturally, airmen were not the only patrons. In the far corner from the bar, two of the tables were occupied by a group of card players. Two of them raised their voices in victory while the rest of them moaned and cussed their luck. These winners hustled to the bar a few minutes later and ordered beer for the whole group. Sitting in front of the window was a table designated for the people who liked to partake in tobacco. These were relatively few, as tobacco use tended to restrict the amount of jobs available on Skyrider Port. One man, an elderly gentleman wearing a docker's outfit, sat there with a lit cigarette in his hand, occasionally taking a drag and then flicking the ashes into a tray piled under used butts. Another man in a table near him was sporting a dumb look after finishing what Link was sure was his tenth mug.

A commotion rose towards the middle of the room. One man, dressed in a button-down shirt and tan slacks, was griping to himself while looking over and writing on a stack of papers. Link recognized him as one of the regular secretaries at the Skyriders' home office. The man liked to dress in a business style which annoyed everyone else in the office and, more or less, everyone that had to deal with him. Behind him was a group of junkers, men who made a profession of sailing some of the small junks around the port. Link could tell who they were by the leather jackets they wore, sporting embroidery unique to them. Two of the four were staring at the secretary, and Link could tell that they were getting fed up with his high-pitched voice.

One man, which Link happened to notice staring at the well-dressed, female shopkeepers trying to enjoy their break, sat at a table under the stairs opposite the bar. He was scraggily-looking and dirty (and likely the reason all the flies had migrated to his side of the room), leading Link to believe he was a vagrant. Although, now that he thought about it, not many vagrants who would stow away on passenger ships had their own drinks sitting on the table with them.

Because Skyrider Port was one of the larger islands, it had its fair share of ranches. So Sail Tavern had a healthy-looking group of livestock handlers enjoying lunch at the tables in front of the door. Link could tell they were from the ranches because of their raw leather clothes. Occupying the tables near the bar were professional wagon drivers. Link never really thought that anyone could be a "professional" driver, but these men managed to pull off a decent living from it. Not that they really showed it; their woolen jackets, when left open, often revealed shirts stained with sweat and, from what Link could tell, sauce. Among them was a man holding a picture of a woman, which Link could only make out because he was sitting closest. He appeared to have been crying for a while. The man seated at the table to his left did not appear to hold the same sentiment, purposely using a picture of a different woman as an object to set his drink on. And his purpose was indicated by speaking to the picture with a spiteful face before setting the mug down.

Voices attracted attention back to the card players. One of the men was standing and accusing another of something which Link could not make out due to another argument closer to the bar. The second man stood up, and, before anyone else could see it coming, they attacked each other. Gale was on them instantly, vaulting cleanly over the bar and landing on his feet hard enough that the foam on top of Link's and Line's drinks shook. The sound was usually enough to deter fighting; Gale was a very large man, sporting both muscles and a gut. The second warning was Gale stomping across the floor. No one liked seeing a wall of a man approaching like Gale would, and the dirty, pink apron he wore made the situation funnier and scarier at the same time. But the men continued their brawl, so Gale grabbed both men by the back of their collars and hauled the first guy across the table. Both were out the door, and everyone simply returned to their drinks without a second thought.

The argument occurring near the bar was two airmen at a table. One of them was Airman Jason from the Grand Sails. From what little Link heard, an argument had broken out between the two in regards to the pirate attacks both had endured, provoking Jason to pull aside the collar of his blue tunic to show the scar that had formed when a piece of shrapnel from cannon fire embedded itself near his collarbone. But Link knew his opponent, Airman Victor from the Moon's Shadow. An aged, skinny cannoneer who had probably seen the most pirate attacks of anyone in the company, he took a bullet directly from an enemy pistol in one engagement. Even as Link remembered, Victor was standing and undoing his belt so that he could show Jason the ugly scar on his left buttock.

"Hey, Link," Line spoke up, elbowing Link in the ribs. "They're done." Link turned his attention back to his drink, which was now half juice and half pink foam. Line took his in hand and held it up as a toast. "To sobriety, and the fact we'll never get a grog ration until we're sixteen." Line then tried to chug the drink, which he frequently justified as training to take a whole mug in one gulp.

Link was about to pick his up when Line suddenly start coughing in the mug. He dropped the mug on the floor and grabbed Link's arm as his coughing worsened. Link could see Line's face turn green and tried to pull himself out of Line's grip before he vomited. Instead, Line slid off his stool and rounded Link, bound for the door under the stairs which led to the water closet.

He did not make it beyond the first table. In his rush, he did not see the chair blatantly sitting in his path. He fell over it and hit the floor hard. Link waited for him to start throwing up, but he remained silent long enough for Link to conclude that he had passed out.

The commotion had attracted Leeta's attention. After giving his drink a dubious look, he slowly pushed it toward her.

"I think I'll pass."