by Chris Offutt
The opening door flashed a line of light across the floor as an old man entered. He walked in a peculiar flat-footed way, exerting motion from the hips down, while his face and shoulders remained still Joe wondered if his gait was the result of hours on horseback or a lifetime of walking in high-heeled boots.
The man sat at the other end of the bar.
“Ugliest bartender in the West,” he said.
“Red beer, Coop?” she said.
He swiveled to look at Joe. “One for him, too.”
The bartender half-filled two glasses with tomato juice and poured beer on that. She brought one to Joe. The man lifted his glass in a toast and Joe sipped the drink. It tasted like watered tomato juice with beer’s tang behind it. He joined the old man.
“Hate to drink alone,” Coop said. “Even if I can’t really drink.”
“No?”
“Red beer’s like sending a boy to do a man’s job.”
“How come you can’t drink?”
“Had me a heart attack. Blew the bottom tip right spang off. Doc said it was like an engine threw a rod from running out of oil.”
“That’s rough.”
“Not so bad. They tell me if I eat an egg, not to eat the yolk. About like having a screw without a kiss. Now that’s what you call rough.”
He was wearing a baseball cap with a Buffalo Bills emblem.
“From the East?” Joe said.
“Hell, no. Never been there.”
“Reckon you just like football,” Joe said.
“Professional sports is the fourth worst thing ever happened to this country.”
“It is.”
“Television’s third.”
“I don’t have one.”
“Maybe there’s hope for you yet.”
“What’s the others?” Joe said.
“The second’s both parents having to work just to get by.”
“How about number one?”
“You’re not ready for that yet.”
A fine network of lines crossed Coop’s hands like cracks in an old plate. Each heavy finger held a large gold ring.
“That’s not for show, partner,” Coop said. “And not for fighting either. That’s gold. This hand is worth more than a credit card. Paper money used to be good for gold, but not since the thirties. Now plastic stands for cash. You know most of the money in the world don’t exist?”
“I didn’t know that.”
“Don’t exist at all. All money is blood money, but only gold is real. That’s why there’s sawdust on the floor.”
“I don’t get you.”
“In the old days, people bought drinks with gold dust. At the end of the night, the owner swept the sawdust and sifted it for gold dust. Gold’s not much count. Bends too easy and won’t hold an edge. But you can trust it for value.”
He tilted on the stool to pull a gold coin from his pocket and passed it to Joe. It was very heavy.
“Fifty years ago,” Coop said, “twenty of those would buy a new car. It’s the same now. Twenty still gets a car. That don’t work with cash.”
Joe placed the coin on the bar, wishing he had one. He’d never owned a new car and couldn’t recall anyone who had. He’d always heard that two years old was the best buy. He wondered how many gold coins that would take.
The two pool players joined them from the back. One was a wiry kid who moved in reckless jerks as if attacking the air that surrounded his body. The other man looked a few years older than Joe and also wore a Bills cap.
“Found a friend. Coop?” he said.
“just a beer buddy.”
“Coop don’t get a chance to talk much,” the man said.
“He was doing all right,” Joe said.
“Usually does. Was he going on about gold?”
Coop’s chin rose and his eyes closed down as if they had flaps.
“Damn straight,” he said. “There’s a trillion dollars on paper in the world, but only a billion cash. That’s a tiny percent. It’s not money anymore, it’s data.”
“I know it,” the man said.
“This kid don’t. I’m just trying to educate him. Doing a damn fine job until we got interrupted.”
“Aw now, Coop,” the man said. “Let’s all have a beer.” He made a gesture to the bartender, then offered his hand to Joe. “I’m Owen. Coop here is my granddaddy. This is my little brother Johnny. You don’t live around here, do you.”
“Got a cabin up Rock Creek.”
“You rent it off Ty Skinner?”
Joe nodded.
“Is it warm enough?”
Joe shrugged. He didn’t want to complain about the cold, or the cabin, especially since the men knew Ty. No one spoke. Joe had the feeling he’d stepped into a brier patch. He thought of Boyd’s ability to make conversation with anyone, by continuing to talk until someone responded. He’d heard men discuss sports for hours, a habit he’d never understood.
“I guess you all must be big Bills fans,” he said.
The men didn’t answer, which confused him because of the hats.
“I like baseball, myself,” Joe said. “It’s the only sport left where anybody can play. Size don’t matter.”
“It ain’t about football,” Johnny said.
Owen gave his brother a hard-eyed stare, then turned back to Joe. Owen was a big man and Joe didn’t want a problem. He sipped the red beer.
“You must like it private up there,” Owen said.
“I do,” Joe said. “Usually I go to town when I get jumpy, but tonight I came in here,”
“Town?” Coop’s voice held a tone of disgust.
“Yeah. Plenty to see.” Joe glanced at Owen. “Less trouble, too.”
“There’s no trouble,” Owen said. “We just don’t want anybody taking advantage of Coop. Don’t take much for that coin to disappear.”
Joe stood.
“Thanks for the beer,” he said to Coop.
“Don’t let Owen run you off,” Coop said. “It’s just his way.”
“Maybe so. But it ain’t mine.”
Joe left, and as the door swung closed behind him, he heard Owen’s voice quiet the old man’s complaint. Silence hung like a weight in the clear night sky. The Big Dipper aimed its bottom lip north while Orion struggled over the mountain. The parking lot spread into the dusk beneath a marble moon.
Joe’s eyes in the Jeep’s mirror seemed sad. He inspected his new license in the dim shine of the dome light. The eyes were too small to see. He drove to the door of the tavern and rolled his window down.
“I’m Joe Tiller,” he yelled. “I live here, too.”
He drove to town very fast, overtaking every vehicle on the road. Snowflakes the size of quarters vanished against the windshield. He passed through Hellgate Canyon, a narrow entrance to the flat basin of town. Missoula was brightly lit, thick with Friday night traffic. Ranch kids in pickups cruised down Higgins, circled the 4-X sculpture, and drove back through town. The snow was gone and the air was warm. Bare mountains surrounded the town, dark hulks that blocked the sky and held in weather. The gritty air clung to his face.
He entered a bar with no sign. The front half was crowded with old hippies and bikers, Indians, cowboys, and Vietnam veterans. Regulars received every third drink free, signaled by the bartender rapping her knuckles against the wooden bar. On the walls hung framed photographs.
The rear of the tavern held a throng of university students. Many of them carried backpacks with plastic mugs fastened to them by a mountain climber’s carabiner. Some wore shorts with long johns that ran into heavy boots. Hair was either very long or very short.
Joe’s rough appearance made people think he was a local, but the crowd only increased his sense of isolation. He wasn’t sure how to act. Men at home usually drank outside, separate from women. In Montana bars, it seemed as if everyone yelled to be heard above everyone yelling. He ordered a red beer, a drink no one at home would touch, but holding it made him feel as if he belonged.
“I’m from California but I’ve been here six years.”
“I’m a native of right here,” she said.
“All your life?”
“Not yet.”
“How long you lived here?”
“Till now.”
“Yeah, right,” the Californian said. “More power to you.” He turned to Joe. “I’m from California but I been here six years. Where you from?”
“Mississippi,” Joe said.
“The river or the state?”
“What?”
“You know, like how people always say about New York. The city or the state?”
“Yeah,” Joe said. “Sure, I know.”
A woman at the bar laughed, spit flying from her mouth. She wore a leather vest and held a cigarette beside her mouth. Her eye was freshly blacked and swollen. Two men squared off by the cigarette machine and backed up like roosters. One shouted “Happy birthday,” and they ran toward each other, heads bent low, arms at their sides. Their heads butted and they bounced apart, grinning madly.
A short, broad man carried a tumbler of Scotch with no ice. He was battered as an old ship, still intact and making headway, people trailing behind him as if drawn by his wake. His voice was a rapid growling rasp. “The shit you see when you don’t have an automatic weapon.”
Joe turned back to the Californian, but he was gone and another man had filled the space.
“Order me a tequila if she looks at you,” he said.
“Okay,” Joe said, “Where’re you from?”
“Albania, but I been here twelve years.”
Everyone tried to compete for a Montana pedigree. It began with old families and worked its way down to the recent arrivals. The longer you’d been in the state, the more deserving you were of living there. Each group of newcomers resented the next and everyone conveniently left the Indians out of the equation. It seemed to Joe that people forgot Americans were allowed to live anywhere in the country, including Montana.
Two men pushed past him and ordered shots of whisky.
“Did you see her eye?” one said.
“I’ve seen better heads on beer.”
The woman with the black eye lurched off her stool. She grabbed the man’s left hand and pointed to his wedding ring.
“I call that a no-pest strip,” she said. “So you can shut your goddam, hole.”
She dropped his hand and veered toward Joe.
“I’m from the South,” he said, “but I been here a month.”
“Anaconda,” the woman said, “but don’t hold that against me.”
A young woman with long brown hair walked through the bar. She was tall, and attractive, and held a basket of roses for sale. A man in a crumpled western hat bought three and handed them at random to nearby women. The seller continued to stand there, and someone nudged the man and told him she was waiting for a tip.
“I’ll give you a tip,” he said. “Stay out of Butte.”
Everyone laughed and he bought more flowers. The wide-shouldered man Joe had seen earlier ordered a round of drinks for a dozen people. He handed Joe a full shot glass.
“Thanks,” Joe said. He pointed to the photographs on the walls, several of which had gold stars affixed to a corner. “Who’re they?”
“Patrons,” the man said.
“What’s the stars for?”
“They died,”
The man lifted his glass in a silent toast to the dead. Joe drained the small glass, wincing at the taste.
“You from here?”
“El Paso,” the man said, “How about you?”
“Ken—” Joe began, then stopped. He forced himself to shrug. “Around,” he said.
The man nodded as if the answer was common, Joe pushed his way to the door, stepping over the legs of a man sitting on the floor. He was furious with himself. Outside a dog was chained to a rack of bicycles. Two pickups raced down the street, driven by teenagers in western hats, and Joe thought of Boyd drag-racing his big Chevelle on the straight stretch of road below their hill. He stopped and looked into the shadowy reflection of a store window. Fuck you, Boyd, he thought.
He walked until he felt calmer, passing new stores with pastel awnings and coffee places that didn’t serve a straight cup of coffee. A shiny shop was devoted to upscale bathroom gear. Coming toward him at a rapid pace was an Indian man wearing an army jacket. Beneath his arm was a stuffed teddy bear. His eyes looked as lost as Joe felt.
The bright orange sign of the Wolf protruded at an angle from the building’s corner, but Joe continued past the front door and down an alley. Like a porno shop or a speakeasy, the Wolf had a side entrance for the poker players. A seat was open and the dealer gave Joe a hand before he sat down. Joe raised without looking at his cards, and the dealer held the flop until Joe threw money on the table. Someone bet. Joe raised as he removed his coat. The dealer burned a card and turned one face up and Joe raised the bet again. He made the final bet before the river card, and three players called. Joe flipped his cards. He had a pair of tens and there was one on the board.
“Three tens,” the dealer said. “Takes the pot.”
He pulled the chips in a heap and used one arm to sweep them to Joe.
“You should cash out,” a player said. “Quit while you’re ahead.”
Joe laughed. At the table’s end was a man dozing between hands, his shirt risen high to expose his belly. One of the dancers played cards while waiting to go onstage in the next room. A young kid sat at the mini-bar, asking people to lend him a gambling stake. The green felt of the low table was smooth, and the chair molded to Joe’s body. He felt good.
He settled into the intricate web of the game. Players came and left, tapping out, buying in, complaining about the dealer, demanding a new deck, filling the air with smoke, and covering the table with fine ash. Joe’s stack of chips continued to grow. He played as if under a hypnotic spell, adding chips to the pot with a flick of his wrist, playing as Boyd had taught him. He was hitting overpairs and big kickers on every flop. His good hands received callers. If a flush bet out, he’d last-card a boat. When facing a full house, he’d hit quads on the river. He flopped sets again and again, slow-playing until the turn, then hammering the bet. The cards were running over him and he was running over the game.
At one in the morning the game broke. They were down to three players and the dealer’s rake was pounding them with chip removal. Joe cashed out with seven hundred dollars. He was tense and hungry but didn’t know what to eat.
He stepped into the dim confines of the strip club and was blasted by the sound of music, the smell of sweat and beer. Two bikers shot pool. A woman in boots strolled a small stage with a slick floor and a mirrored wall Off-duty dancers carried drinks on small trays. He’d never been in a strip club before.
The dancer squatted before a cowboy who held a rolled dollar bill between his teeth. She removed his hat, leaned close to his face, pressed her breasts together and used them, to take the dollar. She backstepped quickly, her face angry. “Fucking asshole,” she said. “Don’t lick.”
She moved down the line like a nurse ministering to patients. No one touched her. She laughed with a few men, and gave the older ones special attention. Joe pulled a five-dollar bill from his pocket. When she squatted before him, he wanted to ask her name and how she wound up with, the occupation. Perfume surrounded her like a cocoon. He looked in her eyes and gave her the five.
“Here you go,” he said. “Thanks.”
“Back at you,” she said.
She leaned to kiss his cheek and he smelled her hair and lipstick. Sweat glistened on her breasts as they pressed against him. He reached for her without thinking, but she was gone, had pulled back as if anticipating his movement. Joe watched her walk away. He felt as if she were twitching her hips for him alone.
The man on the stool beside him elbowed Joe. “Wish I had that swing on my back porch.”
The light
s were dim, the music loud. The woman prowled the tiny stage until a man waved a dollar and she leaned over him, bending from the waist with her back to Joe. He had never seen a woman stand in such a way and he felt a tingling below his belly, the first desire in months. Her legs were strong, the muscles of her thighs taut. Joe imagined standing behind her. He wondered when she got off work, and if she had a boyfriend.
A woman tapped him on the shoulder. She was wearing a halter top and denim shorts cut high above each hip. She asked if he wanted a drink. He nodded, unable to speak. He felt like he had as a child when he came off a ride at the county fair, overwhelmed by sensation, wanting more.
“What can I get you?” the waitress said.
He continued to nod and she turned away. The dancer was kicking crumpled dollar bills toward the rear of the stage. The music ended. Another dancer stood in the wings, holding a cassette tape, waiting her turn. She removed gum from her mouth and pressed it against the rung of a chair.
Joe waited for the dancer to come out of the dressing room, and after a few minutes she joined the bikers playing pool. Joe watched, feeling as rejected and ignored as he had in high school. He left the bar and hurried through the diner to the street.
just outside the door, two men struggled on the pavement. A short guy clung to the other man’s long hair, beating at his face. The tall man rolled on his back to pin the short one beneath him. A city patrol car arrived and two cops approached the fighters.
“Get him off me,” the tall guy said.
“It looks like you’re on him,” the cop said. He bent over the men. “Come on, Jim Buck, turn loose of his hair.”
The two men rose and stared at each other while the cops stood between them. The car’s toplights flashed red and blue across the concrete.
“Jim Buck, you start walking south,” the cop said. “And you, what’s your name?”
“Nick.”
“He come up and grab your hair from behind?”
“How’d you know?”
The cop shrugged. “He’s from Bozeman. Got a car?”
“Around back.”
“Go on home.”
“I Just got here.”
“You got an ear problem?”
“I’m going, I’m going. It just don’t seem right.”