Last Call At Murphy's

By six o'clock each evening, Thomas Murphy could have unlocked the front door with his eyes closed.

After sixty-two years behind the same bar, there wasn't much he had to think about anymore. His body remembered the routine better than his mind ever could. The old brass key disappeared into the lock with a familiar click, the front door groaned against the warped hardwood floor, and the faint scent of stale beer, pine cleaner, and old cedar drifted out to greet him like an old friend who had been waiting all day.

Some people claimed bars smelled the same. Tom always thought that was because they had never loved one. Murphy's smelled like spilled stories. The oak bar had been worn smooth by generations of elbows, and the brass foot rail polished by thousands of boots.

The neon signs buzzed awake one by one, washing the room in familiar shades of blue and red. The old jukebox answered with its familiar hum. It skipped every third Sinatra record and occasionally swallowed a quarter, but nobody in Murphy's ever seemed to mind.

Tom reached beneath the counter and retrieved the same bar towel he had folded over his shoulder nearly every evening since Richard Nixon was president. Some habits became so deeply woven into a person's life that they stopped feeling like routines and simply became part of who they were.

It had survived droughts, recessions, smoking bans, and the slow march of chain restaurants along the interstate. At eighty-four years old, Tom had simply decided that every story, no matter how good, deserved an ending.

His eyes drifted toward the liquor license framed behind the register.

1964.

He had been twenty-two years old when he hung it on the wall, convinced that hard work could outlast anything. Looking back, he realized it almost had. Smiling to himself, he straightened the frame with the edge of his hand just as the bell above the front door chimed.

The first to arrive was Earl Whitaker, who had claimed the third stool from the end every Thursday, Friday, and Saturday for longer than either man cared to remember. Tom had stopped asking what he wanted sometime around the first Bush administration. Tom poured Earl's bourbon before he'd even taken off his cap.

"You trying to get rid of inventory?" Earl asked with a grin.

Tom slid the glass across the polished oak. "Figured I'd better start somewhere."

He had watched first dates become marriages. He had watched sons celebrate their twenty-first birthdays beneath the same tin ceiling where their fathers had once ordered their first legal beer. He had poured whiskey for celebrations and black coffee for men who weren't ready to go home to an empty house after burying the love of their life. Somewhere along the way, the lines between bartender, counselor, referee, and friend had quietly blurred.

No one mentioned that this would be the last night. They didn't have to. It was there anyway, hanging quietly in the air between every laugh, every raised glass, and every familiar song drifting from the jukebox.

He caught himself smiling more than he expected.

Around ten, Earl wandered behind the bar carrying two empty glasses.

"You know... folks have been talking."

"I figured as much."

"They're wondering what you're gonna do tomorrow."

Tom looked around the room before answering. "I honestly don't know." The words surprised him as much as they did Earl.

For sixty-two years, tomorrow had always begun by unlocking Murphy's. He wasn't sure who he was without it. Tomorrow...there wouldn't be a bar to open. He wasn't sure who he was without it.

Earl rested a hand on the worn oak countertop.

"This place was never really about the beer."

Tom smiled.

"No?"

"No. It was about knowing someone would be here."

For the first time that evening, Tom didn't have a smart remark waiting. Instead, his eyes drifted toward the dusty bottle of bourbon that sat hidden on the top shelf. He'd been saving it for a wedding or an impossible reunion. Neither had ever come.

"What's that look for?" Earl asked.

"Just thinking maybe tonight's finally special enough."

Tom glanced at the clock, set the glass he was drying beneath the counter, and rested both hands on the worn oak.

"Well, gentlemen," he said, his voice carrying just enough to reach the back corner. "Last call."

For a moment, no one moved.

Then Earl lifted his empty glass.

"Suppose you've been waiting sixty-two years to say that."

Tom grinned. "Longer than that, if you ask my back."

A few chuckles drifted through the room as the regulars wandered toward the bar one last time. No one ordered anything different. They asked for the same drinks they'd been ordering for years, and Tom poured every one from memory. When Earl reached into his back pocket for his wallet, Tom shook his head.

"Not tonight."

Earl frowned.

"Tom..."

"I mean it."

"You've got a retirement to enjoy."

Tom smiled as he slid the bourbon across the bar.

"I've spent sixty-two years making a living off you boys. I figure I've earned the right to buy the last round."

Earl stared at him for a second before slowly returning his wallet to his pocket.

"Well..." he said with a crooked smile. "Would've been rude to argue with the bartender."

One by one, the regulars drifted toward the front door, each offering a quiet wave or a handshake before stepping into the cool Kansas night.

Earl was the last. He paused with one hand on the doorknob and looked back across the room.

"Take care of yourself, Tommy."

Tom smiled.

"I'll do my best."

The bell above the door gave one last cheerful jingle before the door eased shut behind him. Tom stood there for a long moment, listening as the rumble of Earl's pickup faded into the distance. Then he crossed the room, flipped the lock, and rested his hand against the worn wood of the door.

The click echoed through the empty bar. For the first time in sixty-two years, Murphy's Tap had no customers, no conversation, and no reason to stay open.

Tom turned toward the darkened room, letting out a slow breath. "Well," he murmured to himself, "I guess that's that."

Then the bell above the front door rang.

Tom frowned. He was certain he had locked the door. For a moment he simply stood there, the bar towel still draped over his shoulder, waiting for Earl to poke his head back inside and mutter something about forgetting his truck keys or leaving his reading glasses on the counter.

Instead, the man who stepped through the doorway hadn't needed a key in nearly thirty years.

Jack Donnelly paused just inside the entrance and removed his cap, just as he always had.

"You still open?" he asked.

Tom stared.

Except... Jack had died of a heart attack during harvest in the fall of 1997. Tom had stood in the front row at his funeral. He had carried the casket.

Jack smiled.

"Well? You gonna make me stand here all night?"

Tom blinked hard.

His first thought wasn't that he was seeing a ghost. His first thought was that he was tired. Maybe his age had finally caught up to him. He rubbed at his eyes with the heel of his hand and looked again.

Jack was still there.

"You look like you've seen a ghost," Jack said with a grin.

Something about that made Tom laugh. It escaped him before he could stop it.

"I suppose I have."

"Good," Jack replied. "Would've hated to think I made the trip for nothing."

He crossed the room with the easy confidence of someone who had spent half his life doing exactly that and settled onto the fourth stool from the end. Not the third. The fourth. His stool.

Tom's feet carried him behind the bar before his mind could catch up. His hands found a glass. Reached for the bottle and poured two fingers of rye without asking.

Jack picked up the drink and nodded approvingly.

"You still remember."

"I remember everybody's."

"I know."

Jack looked around the room and smiled.

"Haven't changed much."

Tom glanced toward the front windows.

Outside, Main Street sat empty beneath the glow of a lone streetlamp. Inside, the bar felt strangely warm. Almost... alive.

He looked back at Jack.

"I buried you."

Jack took a slow sip of whiskey.

"I know."

Before he could ask another question, the bell above the door rang again. Then again. Tom turned toward the entrance. Another familiar face stepped inside. Then another. And another.

Within minutes, Murphy's felt exactly as it had thirty years earlier.

The room was alive with people Tom had buried. He remembered standing beside hospital beds, sitting through funerals in crowded church pews, shaking the hands of grieving sons and daughters, and carrying more than one old friend to his final resting place. He had delivered casseroles to widows, poured coffee for broken hearts, and wondered more than once why he had been the one left behind. And yet here they all were, laughing as though they had simply stepped outside for a breath of fresh air.

Tom waited for fear to arrive, but it never did. Instead, an unexpected sense of peace settled over him.

His hands slipped back into familiar routines almost without thinking. A bottle came off the shelf before a man asked for it. A mug was set beneath the tap before anyone spoke. Someone reached for a bowl of peanuts, and Tom slid it across the counter before the request had left his lips.

"You always did know what folks needed," one of the men said with a smile.

Tom looked up.

"I've had enough practice."

The room laughed.

It sounded exactly the way he remembered. For the next hour, he stopped trying to understand what was happening. He simply tended bar. He listened to stories he already knew by heart. It wasn't until he paused to wipe down the counter that he finally noticed what was missing. His eyes drifted slowly around the room. Every face was familiar. Every voice belonged. Every person who had helped build the life he'd lived was there. Everyone...except her.

The room had grown comfortably loud again when the jukebox fell silent. Not with a pop or a crackle. It simply stopped.

The conversations continued for another heartbeat before they, too, began to fade. One by one, glasses were lowered to the bar. The game of pool was abandoned mid-shot. Even the laughter drifted away until the only sound left in the room was the soft hum of the neon signs.

Tom looked up. Every face in the bar had turned toward the front door. The bell chimed. For just a moment, no one entered. Then the door swung open. She stepped inside as though she'd only been gone a few minutes.

She looked exactly as Tom remembered her. Her dark hair rested against her shoulders, and she wore the same blue dress she'd worn the first night he'd found the courage to ask her to dance.

Tom forgot how to breathe. She smiled. It was the same smile that had undone him all those years ago.

"You're late," he said, his voice barely above a whisper.

She tilted her head.

"I know."

Without taking his eyes off her, Tom reached for the dusty bottle he'd been saving for decades. He poured two glasses of bourbon.

"I've been saving this."

She looked at the bottle and smiled.

"I was beginning to wonder."

Tom laughed, shaking his head.

"So was I."

She lifted her glass but never drank from it. Instead, she set it back on the bar untouched. From somewhere behind them, the jukebox crackled back to life. The first notes of Fly Me to the Moon drifted through the room. Tom looked toward the old machine and smiled to himself.

"It always knew when to play the right song," she replied.

She stepped closer until only the bar separated them.

Then, just as naturally as if she had asked him yesterday instead of a lifetime ago, she held out her hand.

"Dance with me."

Tom looked around the room. No one seemed surprised. It was as though every person in the bar had been waiting for this moment. He untied the faded apron from around his waist and folded it neatly on the counter. For the first time in sixty-two years, someone else could tend the bar.

He reached across the polished oak and took her hand. Sinatra's voice drifted softly through Murphy's, the melody settling over the room like it had been waiting years for this very dance. For a moment, neither of them moved.

"You still dance?" she asked.

He laughed quietly.

"Not unless you count trying not to fall when I put my pants on."

For a moment, he was twenty-two again, standing outside a dance hall wondering if he had the courage to ask the prettiest girl in the room for a dance.

"I suppose I'm a little rusty."

"You'll remember."

She rested one hand on his shoulder while he carefully placed the other at her waist. The first few steps were cautious, almost uncertain, as though his body was trying to recall something his heart had never forgotten. They moved slowly across the old hardwood floor, weaving between tables that had witnessed more stories than either of them could count.

The rest of Murphy's disappeared until only the music and the woman in his arms remained.

"You always let me lead," he said.

"I trusted you, she whispered."

As they passed the mirror behind the bar, Tom stopped. The man staring back at him was thirty-five again. For the first time in decades, he and Margaret looked the same age.

"I'd forgotten what we looked like together," he whispered.

She reached up and gently brushed a tear from his cheek.

"I never did."

The song carried them through another slow turn. Tom didn't look at the mirror again. He didn't need to. For one perfect song, time had returned everything it had ever taken.

She looked into his eyes and gave the smallest nod.

"They've been waiting a long time."

Tom looked around Murphy's one last time. Every scratch in the oak and every photograph on the wall had become part of his life.

"Ready?" she asked softly.

Tom glanced toward the front door and grinned at his love in front of him.

"I've kept you waiting long enough."

Tom smiled gently.

"I never did like saying goodbye."

"You don't have to," she replied, slipping her hand into his. "Just close up."

He laughed under his breath.

"That, I know how to do."

Together they walked toward the well used exit. Tom rested his hand against the old brass doorknob, worn smooth by more than sixty years of opening and closing the bar.

He tipped the brim of his cap.

"Goodnight, folks."

A chorus of quiet goodnights answered him.

Then, for the final time, Thomas Murphy locked the front door.

The following morning, Earl pulled into the gravel parking lot just after sunrise. He had driven nearly halfway home before realizing he'd left his old canvas coat hanging on the rack beside the front door. Tom would probably have a good laugh at his expense before handing it back, same as he always had.

The front door was locked. That wasn't unusual. Tom had never gone home without locking up.

Earl knocked twice before cupping his hands against the glass and peering inside. The lights behind the bar still glowed, but the room was still. The stools had been pushed beneath the bar, the pool cues returned to their rack, and every table sat exactly as Tom would have left it.

Something wasn't right. The sheriff arrived a short time later with the spare key.

They found Tom lying on the worn hardwood floor behind the bar, one hand resting against the edge of the old oak counter as though, even in his final moments, he hadn't been ready to let go. His cap lay beside him where it had fallen, and there was a faint smile on his face that neither Earl nor the sheriff could explain. It didn't look as though he had suffered. It looked as though he'd simply finished a long night's work and, for the first time in sixty-two years, had finally gone home.

While the sheriff stepped outside to make the necessary phone calls, Earl remained inside Murphy's. The silence felt different now. Not empty, just unfamiliar.

His eyes drifted across the wall of photographs and faded keepsakes until they settled on an old newspaper clipping tucked into the corner of a bulletin board. Time had yellowed the paper and curled its edges, but Tom had never taken it down.

Woman Killed in Highway 40 Collision
Friends remember Margaret Ellis, 35, for her kindness and unwavering smile.

Earl let out a quiet sigh. "So that's why." His gaze dropped to the bar. Two whiskey glasses sat side by side near the register. One was empty. The other still held a finger of bourbon. He reached for the untouched glass, intending to clear it away, but stopped when the morning sun caught something faint along the rim. A lipstick mark.

Earl stood perfectly still. Then, ever so carefully, he placed the glass back exactly where he had found it.

He picked up his coat, turned off the lights behind the bar, and quietly closed the door behind him.

For years afterward, whenever someone asked about Murphy's, the old-timers would smile and tell the story of the night Tom Murphy poured one final round. Around town, they all agreed on one thing. No one ever really knew what happened after last call at Murphy's.