Honky Tonk Christmas

by Carolyn Brown

  She forgot about the Honky Tonk charm when she slung open the door and yelled for Waylon. Usually he came running from the bedroom the minute he heard her but that day he must have been in a pout because she’d left him alone. She checked the bed to find the pillows mashed down where he’d taken a nap. He wasn’t under the table or behind the sofa.

  “Waylon, where are you?” she sing-songed as she held her head. “Damn cat, anyway. I’ve got a hangover and he’s in a snit. I’d trade places with him. He can have a headache and I’ll hide and pout.”

  She found him curled up behind the potty. When she called him he ignored her. When she picked him up he wasn’t breathing.

  “Waylon!” She sat down in the bathroom floor and wept, her tears dripping off her jaw and onto the dead cat’s fur.

  ***

  She held him until she got the hiccups, then laid him gently on the bed and went to find something appropriate to bury him in. She found a boot box and lined it with his favorite fluffy blanket, laid him inside, and taped the lid down with duct tape. She carried the box out to her car and gently laid it on the passenger’s seat right beside her.

  “It’s a hell of a hearse but it’s all I’ve got, old boy. At least you’ll have a proper burial,” she said. She wiped away tears several times during the two-mile drive from the place of death to the house where she intended to lay Waylon to rest at the edge of the garden plot.

  She pulled up in the driveway and removed the boot box casket from the car and carried it to the garden. Two miniature bicycles were propped against the front of the shed and toys were lined up on the back porch.

  “Crap! I forgot they were moving in over the weekend,” she said.

  She knocked on the back door to let Holt know she was there and exhaled loudly when no one answered. She dang sure wasn’t ready to face him again that day so she would get her cat buried, leave, and no one would be the wiser.

  The house had been the talk of Mingus when Larissa had painted it turquoise with hot pink trim and yellow porch posts. Then when she painted two rocking chairs bright orange and set them on the porch everyone in town had a hearty laugh at the sight. It looked like a massive hurricane had picked it up in the Bahamas and set it smack down on the edge of Mingus, Texas, without damaging a single board.

  She found the shovel in the tool shed, dug a good deep hole in the softened dirt, and laid Waylon in it. After she filled the dirt back in, she found a couple of boards and some wire in the shed. She made a small cross to set on his grave and painted his name on the crossbar in bright yellow paint.

  She tapped it into the ground with the end of the shovel and began her eulogy, “Waylon, you were a good friend. I will miss you. You’ve listened to so many stories and helped me talk my way out of many problems.”

  She wiped sweat from her brow and fanned her face with the black straw hat that she only wore when she mowed the yard. She was gearing up to preach a sermon when she felt a presence behind her. Not another soul in Mingus even knew Waylon. Not even Merle, Luther, or Tessa. He’d been a very private cat and hid under the bed when anyone came inside the apartment. So who in the world would be coming around to his graveside services?

  She heard the doors of the truck slamming before she realized it had driven up in the driveway. When she turned around, Holt stood there with a kid hanging on each of his long legs.

  “Waylon died,” she said flatly.

  A little boy poked his head out from behind the man’s leg. “I’m not dead. I’m right here. Tell her I’m not dead. Don’t let her cover me up with dirt like they did Momma. I’m scared, Uncle Holt.”

  She dropped down on one knee to be at the little boy’s eye level. “I’m sorry. Is your name Waylon too? My cat was Waylon and he died.”

  A girl about the same age with the same brown hair and big brown eyes walked past both man and boy right up to Sharlene. “Ain’t no need to be scared, Waylon. I ain’t lettin’ her put you in the ground like they did Momma.” She looked at Sharlene. “Waylon ain’t dead, so why are you havin’ a fun’ral? And what’s your name and why are you havin’ a fun’ral in a yard? You’re ’posed to have them things in one of them places what has gots lots of other dead people in it.”

  Sharlene touched her black cowboy hat and realized what a crazy picture she’d presented in her hot pink boots, a denim mini-skirt, and a bright yellow tank top. “I’m Sharlene Waverly. Your dad is going to work for me.”

  Holt held up a finger and both kids hushed. “We just got back from Palo Pinto where the kids stayed last night. We’re on our way to Stephenville to buy groceries. We’ll let you get on with burying your cat.”

  Sharlene slowly removed her hat and nodded.

  Holt stopped on his way to the truck. “I wanted to measure one more thing. All right if I stop by the bar?”

  “It’s locked. I’m finished here. I’ll follow you,” she said.

  “What about the kids?” he asked.

  “They’re not twenty-one but then the bar doesn’t open until eight so I don’t think the cops will come and take them away,” she said.

  “I don’t want to go away with the cops,” Waylon whined.

  The little girl rolled her dark brown eyes and sighed. “They don’t take you away unless you are twenty-one. Damn, Waylon, we ain’t but six.”

  “You better not say that word, Judd, or you’ll get in big trouble. We won’t get to watch television if you say bad words.”

  Judd popped a fist on her hip. “He likes cartoons in the afternoon because he don’t like to be outside when it’s hot. He’s the smart one. I’m the mean one. Uncle Holt says we’re playing at your house. Can we watch television there?”

  Sharlene laughed again. “There’s one in the bar and you can watch it all day if you want.”

  “Then let’s go see this place where my Uncle Holt is going to work. I don’t have to drink beer, do I, Uncle Holt? I can still have juice packs and peanut butter sandwiches, can’t I?” Judd snarled her nose.

  Waylon tilted his head up and looked down his nose at his sister. “I like beer.”

  “When did you drink beer?” Holt asked him.

  “Momma left some in a bottle and I tasted it. I liked it. Judd made an awful face and tried to puke when she tasted it so she ain’t so mean.”

  She shook her fist at him. “Am too!”

  “Mean girls could drink beer,” Waylon said.

  “Okay, okay, that’s enough,” Holt said.

  Sharlene touched Waylon’s tombstone one more time and walked away listening to Waylon, the boy, and Judd, the girl, argue.

  She smiled for the first time that day.

  Chapter 2

  “So who’s the new family moving into your hideous house?” Merle Avery set her custom made cue stick case on the bar and motioned for a pint of Coors.

  Merle had seen customers come and go in the Tonk for more than forty years. She and her best friend, Ruby Lee, had blown into Palo Pinto County at the same time. Ruby built a beer joint and Merle got rich designing western shirts for women. She was past seventy, still shot a mean game of pool, could hold her liquor, and spoke her mind. She wore her dyed black hair ratted and piled high; her jeans snug, and her boots were always polished. She was part of the fixtures at the Honky Tonk and anyone who could whip her at the pool table had something to go home and brag about.

  “That would be Holt Jackson and two kids,” Sharlene said.

  “The carpenter, Holt Jackson? The one you’ve been trying to hire for weeks?”

  Sharlene blushed. “Yes, that’s the one. He needed a house and no one was living in mine. Rent is his bonus if he finishes my job by his deadline. He says it’ll be a piece of cake with his crew. Tell the truth, I don’t care if he nails up every board single-handedly or if he gets a hundred people to work for him. I just want it finished in time for the holidays. Did you see all those pink strings and little yellow plastic flags? The flags mark the electric and telephone buried wires. The string is wher
e the foundation will be.”

  “I didn’t know he was married, much less had two kids,” Merle said.

  Sharlene looked down the bar to make sure no one needed anything. “It’s his niece and nephew. I thought they were his kids when he mentioned them but they call him Uncle Holt. I don’t know the story behind why he’s got them. Don’t really matter to me, long as he gets the job done.”

  “So who’s keeping them while he works?”

  Sharlene wiped the already clean bar. “He is going to bring them with him. Today they stayed with some friends up in Palo Pinto because he and his crew had to get the equipment down here. Tomorrow they start coming here.”

  Merle frowned. “He’s the best carpenter in the area and from what I hear he’s damn fine looking, but he’s not that good or that pretty.”

  “What does that mean?” Sharlene asked.

  “You will figure it out the first time two little kids wake you up before noon. There’s Tessa. Ask her what she thinks of that situation. And hot damn! There’s Amos. He’ll give me some competition tonight.” She picked up her beer and cue case and nodded at Amos. He headed in the same direction and they reached the pool table at the same time.

  “Ask me what?” Tessa asked.

  Larissa hired Tessa back when she owned the joint and Sharlene kept her on when she inherited the place. Tessa and Luther, the bouncer, lived together out on a ranch between Gordon and Mingus. Someday they’d get married and the Honky Tonk could add another notch on one of the porch posts out front.

  Sharlene pulled clean Mason jars from the dishwasher as she explained. “Holt Jackson is willing to put the addition onto the Honky Tonk. He needed a house so I threw in my Bahamas Mama house for free rent if he will get the work done by mid-December. Only thing is he’s raising a niece and nephew and they will come to work with him.”

  “So?” Tessa asked.

  “Merle thinks that’s going to be a big problem.”

  “I disagree with Merle. I used to go to work with my dad. He ran a bulldozer and dug farm ponds for folks. We played and he worked. Don’t remember it causing a problem,” Tessa said.

  A customer called from the end of the bar, “Hey lady, could we get six pints of Bud and a pitcher of tequila sunrise down here?”

  Sharlene looked at the tray where Tessa already had six pint jars and a pitcher of tequila sunrise waiting. Her eyebrows rose and she cocked her head to one side.

  “How’d you know what they’d order?”

  “I’m not blessed with ESP, believe me. I heard them talking when I was on that end of the bar a while ago. They couldn’t decide whether they wanted tequila sunrise or margaritas with their six beers. They’d made up their mind about the mixed drinks and were deciding whether they needed five or six beers. We’ll just get these filled and it’ll be ready.” Tessa laughed.

  Tessa was taller than Sharlene’s five feet three inches standing five feet eight in her stocking feet. Add boots to that and it pushed her up another two inches. Her nose was a little too big for her face and she wore black-rimmed glasses that made her green eyes look enormous. She was slightly bottom heavy with wide hips and narrow shoulders. That evening she wore a sleeveless red western shirt with pearl snaps tucked into denim shorts.

  “Love that shirt. Is it new?” Tessa drew up the beer and made change for a fifty dollar bill.

  “Thank you. I bought it yesterday in Weatherford.” Sharlene’s shirt was white with pink rhinestone buttons and the traditional Texas Longhorn symbol in pink stones across the back yoke.

  “So how did the big reunion day and night go?” Tessa asked.

  “Fun. Hangover. Never again,” Sharlene said.

  “Girl, something happened. You told me the first time I met you your biggest failing was that you talked too much. Now you tell me in four words about the reunion you’ve talked about for a month. I figured you’d be gushing and all I get is four measly words. What happened? So you got drunk. Did you dance on the bar or take a cowboy home to the hotel with you?”

  Sharlene blushed.

  “That proves it. ’Fess up. What’s his name? Please don’t tell me you did a one-nighter and don’t even know his name.”

  “Got customers. Nothing to ’fess up about. Didn’t do a one-nighter and why does everyone think all roads lead to a member of the male species?” Sharlene hurried to the other end of the bar.

  “Apple martini,” the middle-aged woman said. “Where’s all the good lookin’ cowboys? I was told they were six to every woman over here.”

  Her light brown hair sported blond highlights straight from a bottle. She wore a slinky little gold sequined top that didn’t have enough material in it to sag a clothesline and tight fitting jeans. Her boots had sharp toes and walking heels and they didn’t come cheap. Eel seldom ever got put on a sales rack. The best makeup in the world couldn’t fill in the crow’s-feet or the lines around her mouth, but the dim lights in the Honky Tonk were kind. She might pass for forty after four beers. After six she could probably convince a cowboy that she was thirty-five. It would take a bottle of Jack Daniels Black Label to make her twenty-nine.

  “Got to give ’em time to wash the dirt from behind their ears and brush the hay off their boots. This is hay season. They work until it’s all in. They’ll be along in a little while and you can take your pick. Got bikers until they get here.” Sharlene motioned toward a table of Amos’s friends. “And those Harleys they rode in on cost more than a custom ordered pickup truck, darlin’.”

  The woman rolled her eyes dramatically. “Those old geezers couldn’t keep up with me.”

  Sharlene frowned. Amos could out two-step and out drink any of the young cowboys. “Be careful. Those old fellows know more about how to treat a woman than the young bucks can learn in a decade.”

  “Maybe I got a mind to teach the cowboy, rather than them teach me. Grab ’em young and raise them up to suit me.” The woman smiled.

  Sharlene set the martini on the bar. “If you are interested in quantity rather than quality, then take a look at the door. Those three all look teachable.”

  The woman wet her lips and stood up straight. “Yum, yum!”

  Sharlene leaned on the bar and watched her paint an imaginary red laser dot on the prettiest blond cowboy’s belt buckle and head that way with an extra wiggle under her tight jeans and a smile on her face.

  Toby Keith had a song on the new jukebox called “I Love This Bar” and it described the Honky Tonk along with every other beer joint in Texas and Oklahoma. He said that it had lookers, hookers, all nighters, preppies, and bikers among other things. Well, the lookers just walked through the doors and the pseudo-hooker was marking her territory. Bikers would be Amos and his crew of retired businessmen who rode up from Dallas a couple of times a week to drink and dance. Preppies came from all four directions to listen to what they called vintage country music and learn to two-step in their loafers with tassels and pleated dress slacks.

  Since it was Monday night the new jukebox had been turned off and the old one took center stage. Three songs for a quarter just like in Ruby’s first days had become the Tonk’s trademark. When the last bar owner, Larissa Morley, came to Mingus, she’d been instrumental in putting the news out on the Internet that there was a quaint little beer joint just over the border separating Erath and Palo Pinto Counties. It didn’t take long for the word to spread and for Luther to have to count customers to make sure they stayed under the maximum quota for their space.

  “Trip to Heaven” by Freddie Hart was playing when the woman stuck her fingers through the young cowboy’s belt loops and led him to the dance floor. Freddie sang about not needing wings to fly and said that he just took a trip to heaven and he didn’t even have to die. If that greenhorn got drunk enough to let her pick him up that night, he’d think he took a trip to heaven, got rejected at the door by St. Peter, and been sent straight to hell come morning time. He’d have a hellacious hangover and a nasty taste in his mouth when he figured ou
t the sweet young thing he’d gotten lucky with was as old as his mother.

  A blushing sting crawled up Sharlene’s neck. What did Holt Jackson think when she passed out cold as a mother-in-law’s kiss in his pickup truck? And if he hadn’t been a gentleman, where would their business relationship be? Lord what a tangled mess!

  The music changed to a slow Alan Jackson song and the middle-aged woman kept her cowboy on the dance floor for another round.

  “What are you smiling about?” Tessa asked.

  “Chigger,” Sharlene said.

  “Yep,” Tessa agreed.

  “What’s a chigger?” a blonde woman asked from a bar stool right in front of them. She’d been nursing a beer for the past half hour and brushing off every man who approached her.

  Tessa leaned on the bar and explained above the noise of the jukebox and the boot heels on the floor as the dancers did different versions of a fancy two-step. “A few years ago a woman used to come into the Tonk every weekend. Her nickname was Chigger.”

  “Was she a hooker?” the girl whispered behind her hand.

  Sharlene laughed. “No. Hookers charge and Chigger said sex was too much fun to make a dollar on. She said she could put an itch on a man just like a real chigger and only a weekend in bed with her could make the itch disappear.”

  “What happened to her?” the woman asked.

  “She got married, had a baby girl, and is expecting another baby by Christmas. She’s happy as a kitten with its nose in a bowl of warm milk. You’d never guess that she used to try to put the make on every good lookin’ cowboy who walked through the doors. The Honky Tonk charm worked for her,” Sharlene said.

  “I heard about that charm. That’s why I’m here. I heard that more people have met and gotten married out of this beer joint in the last three years than on those Internet dating services,” she said. “I’m Loralou, by the way.”

  Tessa motioned toward the packed dance floor with a bar rag. “Don’t see anything you like yet, Loralou?”