Coors was my father’s beer of choice through most of my childhood. He was a “Coors-man,” as they used to say.
Cans of Coors still linger in my periphery, like signposts, monuments to my father—tucked away in some far-off corner of my brain—A cold Coors nestled between my father’s thighs. The dew of the can, wetting his jeans, as he drove us around town in his Chevy C-10.
“Never waste a good buzz indoors, Walker. A beer always tastes better with the windows down—the sun on yer’ face,” my father often said this as we drove around watching the birch trees slant themselves. I remember the smile on his face while the trees whizzed goodbye, and the six-pack between us dwindled.
Hot summer days still remind me of the smell of my father’s breath, always thick with Coors—of a time when a cop pulled us over—how the cop’s sunglasses glinted in the summer sun, and he told me that he saw my father spit his gum out onto the road. “A major driving infraction—littering on state property.” I think the cop said—my father’s hands, stiff on the wheel, doubled in the cop’s mirrored sunglasses as the cop smiled at me.
I remember how my father had pushed the Coors can behind my back as the cop approached the truck and said, “Hey, Dave, d’you know why I stopped you?”
I remember the summer sun baking me in the Chevy. The cop, and how my father held his breath when he was close—the coolness of the sweating Coors can on the crook of my back as he frisked my father—sweat streaming down the cop’s face like the can of Rocky Mountain crispness hidden behind me, and how he looked at me and asked, “Yer’ Pap’s house just up the road? You don’t mind walking, right, kid? And tell yer’ Gran-pap to come grab yer’ dad’s truck, would ya? Save ‘em the impound fees—Least I can do for an old friend.”
I wonder if the cop noticed the shadow of the Coors can, imprinted on my back, as he stuffed my father in his cruiser, if he thought about arresting me too, as I walked to my grandfather’s house alone. Guilty
I wonder if the Coors was lonely as it sat solemnly on the bench seat of the C-10, twiddling its little beer can thumbs, sweating, waiting for my grandfather to retrieve everyone.