It was easy to track Coonie by the trail of half drunk mugs of coffee he abandoned around the neighborhood, one here on the picnic table in his backyard, another next door on Old Man Fountain’s fence, out behind his garage. There was always one left on the steps of our back porch, two houses down from Coonie’s. You could divine his mood by mapping his deserted mugs and how much coffee was left in each one. He worked nights and liked it. Twenty years at Carbide, down on the Ohio River, halfway to Parkersburg. That gave Coonie run of the neighborhood during the day, gardening, working his bluetick, washing his Harley, planning his next hunt.
The other dads worked regular hours and found Coonie’s mugs in the early evenings as they enjoyed a cigarette or occasional beer in their backyards. It was hard to know how long those mugs had been there. Fresh ones generally had a light film coating the surface of the remaining coffee. Old ones had a ring of crust on the edges of the cold liquid, even older ones might have a dead bug stuck in the crust. No one was ever surprised to find a half-smoked Camel in one of Coonie’s mugs. He’d likely wrapped up a conversation with someone, right there, dropped his smoke in his mug, and headed home. The calendar didn’t phase Coonie. He’d rap the knuckle of his right index finger on a neighbor’s back door in the bitter cold of December just as frequently as he would early on a cool morning in July. He’d crack the door open and let you know he was there: “Pot on?!?!?” Generally, it was and Coonie’s day was made.