The Last of the Smoking Bartenders

by C. J. Howell

  A sign read:

  Luna N.M. 30

  Albuquerque 256

  Well, where to?

  Oh, it’s back that way, a roadhouse off 191.

  So why didn’t you say something earlier?

  I thought you’d want to see the town.

  Shit.

  All right, turn around. It’s just down there. Let’s get some beers.

  Just past the intersection of 191 South and 180 East, a dirt road led down into the meadow and opened into a large dirt parking lot next to a pinewood box with a short chimney belching greasy smoke that must have been the place. Three pickups were parked randomly in the lot. Chevis pulled the Malibu up to a wooden fence in front of the building, the kind you tie your horse to. A Coors sign glowed red behind a half-pulled shade and a dark smoked window. A sign on the front door read ‘NRA Parking Only.’

  Chevis paused to read the sign on the door and gave Lorne a crooked look. The wooden door creaked open, and they filed inside. A half-dozen locals were perched at the wrap-around bar in the center of the room. They all turned to look at the newcomers. All conversation stopped. Two men in jeans and pressed checkered shirts and a woman with stringy white hair stopped drinking in mid-sip. The woman, grandmotherly, round puffy face behind thick glasses above a flowered blouse, jean jacket, and lime-green stretch pants, smiled ironically and slowly shook her head like now she’d seen everything. Two men with their backs to the door lowered the brims of their cowboy hats down over their eyes.

  Bullfrog Frank was unmistakable. He stood behind the bar with thick arms crossed and a disbelieving grin on his face. He looked different to Lorne, worse than before, but instantly recognizable. What had started as a baseball-sized goiter on the right side of his neck had either evened out or spread across his entire neck, giving him a second, enormous chin that was best described as a bullfrog’s. The name was not creative, but it was certainly descriptive. At least six foot two and 250 pounds, Bullfrog Frank leaned against the back of the bar, his huge chest and various necks settling in a loosely formed pile on top of unnaturally skinny legs in unnaturally skinny black jeans. The whole ensemble appeared to be held together by a giant oval silver belt buckle, as if without the tightly strung leather belt his torso would melt over his waist and run down to the wooden pine floor. Long thinning red hair was braided in a single ponytail that leaked from the back of a black Harley Davidson baseball cap. He smirked at them with cloudy blue eyes.

  Hey, Lorne… He let the words surf on a plume of exhaled cigarette smoke. Who are your friends?

  The old woman now positively beamed. She fingered a Marlboro Light One Hundred out of a crumpled pack on the bar with white painted plastic fingernails and tightened her grip on her beer mug and scooted up closer to the bar for a better view.

  Lorne, Pammy, Chevis, Junior, and Jimmy spread out in the small barroom, edging around tables and looking for a place where they could gather.

  How’s everyone doing? Pammy announced, all three hundred pounds of her jiggling to LynyrdSkynyrd emanating from a set of speakers just above the register.

  The locals lingered their gaze and mumbled an ‘okay’ or a ‘just fine’ before turning back to their beers. The old woman said something to Frank that they didn’t catch, but Frank didn’t hear her; he was smiling ruefully as Lorne jitterbugged up to the bar.

  Frank, good to see ya.

  Lorne extended his hand. Frank slowly grabbed Lorne’s hand, squeezed noticeably, and pulled him toward him until he was halfway across the bar so they were face to face.

  Didn’t think I’d see you again. What are you doing here? Frank twisted his face and got even closer.

  Business, Lorne croaked, his hand starting to throb.

  Paying me back what you owe?

  Lorne’s damaged mind turned this over and came to a startling realization. He did owe Frank money. He knew there was a reason he hadn’t been to Alpine in a while.

  Better.

  Better than paying me back?

  Better than money.

  Frank relaxed his grip, and Lorne hunched down over a barstool.

  Okay, Lorne. You can live a little longer.

  Lorne belly-laughed, slapping his knee, overdoing it, and looked over his shoulder.

  Frank stared at him with dead eyes.

  Hey, can we get a couple of pitchers of beer over here? Chevis said.

  Frank stiffened his neck, smoothing the folds of his chins into one gigantic bulbous sheath of flesh.

  No minors in the bar, Chief.

  I’ll wait in the car, Junior said.

  Chief? Chevis repeated, squaring up.

  Pammy squinted distastefully.

  The old woman let out an audible ‘Ha’.

  Lorne, why don’t you and the tribe go wait at my place, Frank said, never taking his eyes off Chevis.

  Help yourselves to the beer in the fridge.

  Okay, Frank. Come on guys, Lorne said, overanxious to get out before someone did something stupid.

  They shuffled out of the bar making an inordinate amount of noise moving chairs out of the way, boots on the hardwood floor.

  Y’all come back now, someone said as they were halfway out the door, followed by laughter.

  They got in the car.

  Rednecks.

  Yup.

  You got a purty mouth.

  Squeal like a pig boy, Lorne joined in, and they all slapped hands and hooted and hollered as Chevis floored it, and the Malibu tore out of the parking lot leaving behind a hail of dirt and stones and a plume of dust that billowed over the shotgun shack and filled the valley.

  Lorne guided them a few miles down 191 South to a narrow jeep trail that lead to a doublewide trailer deep in the woods. They unpiled from the car to the smell of dew and pine trees. The woods were quiet except for the sound of a generator running in a small pre-fab shed next to a rusted propane tank. A crow cawed from nearby. They stood and stretched.

  Should we go in?

  Frank said to.

  Lorne tried the door expecting it to be locked, but it wasn’t. The door was light, and he pulled too hard. Like all trailer doors, it bent flimsily; he didn’t know why this one would be any different. They wiped their feet on the Astroturf doormat and went inside. The trailer was cluttered and dark, lit by a television and a florescent light in the kitchen. It was so dark that they had found the fridge and passed around beers before they noticed the girl stretched out on a couch, maybe sixteen, bare legs, boy shorts and a wife-beater tank top, her head resting on her elbow, watching them with faint amusement.

  Can I help you?

  Spread out around the island of the couch were piles of fashion magazines, video game disks for the X-Box, potato chip wrappers, used Kleenex, and empty diet Pepsi cans.

  Bullfrog Frank, I mean, Frank…told us to wait here for him.

  Said we could drink his beer, Chevis said, holding an open beer.

  By all means. Mi casa es su casa.

  Chestnut bangs falling just above green eyes. Lorne stared open-mouthed.

  I’m Ashley. She shook Lorne’s hand, then Chevis’s, then Jimmy’s, and finally Junior’s.

  Well, aren’t you a treat. Pammy cooed and brought her hands up to her cheek like she was ogling a newborn baby. Are you the Keeper of the Glass in this shithole?

  Why, you got any? Ashley arched an eyebrow with practiced expertise.

  Well, why else would we be here sweetie? Pammy passed her the glass bowl. Ashley took a hit, held it in, exhaled deeply and searched for her pack of Newports resting on a Us Weekly magazine with Jessica Alba on the cover. She lit a smoke and ashed into an overflowing ceramic ashtray clearly made by a child.

  You’re Lorne aren’t you?

  How’d you know?

  Well, you’re the only white dude here.

  Gotcha.

  He’s going to kill you, you know.

  Lorne took a hit off the pipe and just shook his head as if he hadn’t heard a thing. The others looked at
each other.

  We got business.

  You look like quite the accomplished businessman.

  What, are you and Frank together or something?

  Oh yeah, we’re a happy couple, she deadpanned.

  What’s on TV? Junior said.

  Nothing, static, sometimes git the Tucson channels, but that’s it.

  Junior sat on the floor next to the couch in front of the TV and took off his sneakers, revealing the holes in his socks.

  Salud.

  Lorne held up his can of beer. The others shuffled over and touched their beer cans to his.

  Hey, Ashley said, gimme a beer. I want in.

  Chevis, who was closest to the fridge, handed her a beer. She got up on her knees on a brown plaid couch cushion and pushed her can into all of theirs.

  Cheers.

  Lorne bent over to take a look at her ass perched up on heels of her feet. She shot him a look which shook her hair into her eyes. Lorne didn’t know if she meant it or not.

  Chevis rambled into the kitchen, opining fake oak cabinets and letting them slam shut.

  You got any food?

  The girl appeared to be watching her fingers closely.

  There’s venison in the ice box. Frank got a deer last season, but it’s frozen solid. Want me to take some steaks out to thaw?

  Umm, Chevis grunted non-committal.

  We won’t be here long enough, right Chevis? Pammy panted, her black T-shirt betraying black circles of sweat.

  Umm…Chevis grunted again. We’ll be here as long as it takes.

  Or until the beer runs out, Lorne snorted.

  Chevis, drawn tight as a trip wire, leaped over a vinyl footrest, poorly upholstered, and grabbed Lorne under the armpits, pinning all two hundred plus pounds of him to the buckling aluminum wall.

  You’re a bad Soldier. Don’t forget The Mission.

  Pammy and Jimmy watched without seeing. Junior didn’t look up from the television.

  Ashley sucked in her cheeks and whooshed out a low whistle.

  Cuckoo…she said under her breath, rolling her eyes with a sardonic smile.

  But Chevis dropped Lorne into a crumpled heap on the floor and the incident was forgotten as soon as it began. Two days without sleep, the string that held them together frayed into fuzz. They unglued and then stuck back together, their inner spheres revolving around each other and occasionally collided in the narrow trailer. The living room grew warm with body heat and the glowing coils of a space heater. Their cheeks took on a rosy hue, eyes glassy and blood red. The night sky blackened outside, far removed from city lights and hemmed in by tall pine trees and mountain silhouettes.

  The beer was a benefit. It washed over them, filling in the cracks and smoothing down the rough edges. The stereo came alive, ricocheting double bass metal down the fake wood-sided narrow tube. The adults, as it were, huddled over future plans and talked in low voices. Ashley sat cross-legged behind Junior on the couch and absently braided his long black hair into cornrows as he flipped between the two grainy channels on the television. Between the black and white static was the remnants of an Arizona Diamondbacks game fighting its way across the airwaves.

  Outside the wind picked up, rushing through the tall pines with a dull roar and whistling though the cracks and creases in the trailer, but nobody noticed. The pipe passed and the beer dwindled. Hours passed by like minutes. A pair of headlights illuminated the dirt streaked white aluminum trailer, stainless steel trim refracting yellow into the woods.

  Chapter 11

  Nothing fit. Tom turned it over in his mind. He sipped his second Sierra Nevada. He was sure he was being lulled, buttered up for the stuffing, led out to pasture. His own complicity irked him, an accomplice in his own murder, or worse. He could be in for a week of torture; a sodium amobarbital cocktail and he’d give up everything and everyone he knew. It could be in his beer already begun, or maybe it would be a quick bullet to the temple. One or two more beers at the most he’d be dulled enough to let it happen without so much as a twitch.

  Through the windshield the rain varied between a frantic downpour and a misting drizzle. Adrenaline saturated his blood but it didn’t show. This man hadn’t been two weeks in the bush. His clean nails, floor mats vacuumed, the frame pack with zippers shiny like the day it was bought, his stubble easily planned, the trail maps and campground passes easily purchased and conveniently left in view on the dashboard. Nothing fit. The man not noticing Tom’s vagrant stench which he himself found nearly unbearable. The freely offered beer. Believing in random generosity or coincidences could get you killed.

  The man hit the brakes and angled the Tundra onto a dirt pullout. Tom tensed as the truck shuddered sideways on washboard ruts to a stop, wishing he had a gun, wondering why he didn’t. The man turned to face him with a grin.

  Gotta see a man about a horse.

  Tom paused, froze.

  Yeah, me too.

  They exited the truck at the same time. Tom took half a dozen cautious steps. The man jogged to the edge of the pullout to take a leak where the ground ended abruptly in a few feet of grassy ravine and then a steep canyon with sandstone walls smoothly curving to an unseen bottom. The man untucked his shirt and unbuckled his belt, not even a backward glance at Tom. He was a cool customer. A pro.

  Time elongated. Fractions of seconds seemed like minutes. Tom weighed his options. He could start running now down the highway in the opposite direction and hope to flag someone down. But the man would simply flip a u-turn and gun him down. The man was at enough distance that he could dash to the driver’s side of the truck and speed away. It was an automatic, so no chance for a nervous stall that would seal his death. But the man would call 911 and he’d run into a roadblock ten miles down the road. Nowhere to run out in the desert.

  No, this man had to die. He had to die quietly and unnoticed, without time to call for help.

  The sun momentarily peeked under the blanket of gray cloud cover and turned the sandstone red, the cliffs worn sheer as a millstone by eons of rain and winds. The man’s long arch of piss free fell into the canyon. Tom had to act fast. Now. Push him into the canyon. One shove and his was safe, and with the truck to boot. Innocent lives counted on it, and this man was not innocent.

  He broke into a run but his mind was working faster than his body. He put too much weight on his front foot and slipped in the dirt, which had turned to paste in the rain. His knee hit first and then his hands. He rose with both palms full of mud, and as he did he froze for two reasons. One, his fall had caught the man’s attention, who seemed to be suppressing a belly laugh, and two, an unmarked cruiser rounded the bend in the road and seemed to be barreling straight toward him. Through the tinted windows he was sure the woman driving was staring right at him.

  The man loped back to the truck.

  Easy old-timer. Beer getting to you? Not your first sip of the day?

  It wasn’t until Tom was back in the Range Rover, wiping the mud from between his fingers onto his pant legs that he thought, Old-timer? He was thirty-six years old. He must really look like shit. What happened to me? Tom kept his head down until the first intersection with another road, Route 7, running south just shy of Tonalea, and he abruptly asked to be let out.

  Suit yourself, the man said, holding out his hand and then thinking better of it.

  Tom opened the door, conscious that he would be vulnerable exiting the truck, willing himself to expect a bullet to the back of the head, but he wasn’t sure anymore. He almost wanted it to happen. He stepped onto the soft muddy shoulder. The red clay sticking to his boots. He watched the Tundra disappear down the two-lane road until it was out of sight. He’d almost killed a civilian, and in a horrible way. The look of terror and confusion as the man free fell three hundred feet to a gruesome death. The image of the murder that hadn’t happened burned into his brain. He physically slapped himself in the side of the face, but it wouldn’t go away. And then he had seen the unmarked cruiser. Coincidence or timing?
He walked down the pavement on the painted white line, gravel crunching under his boots. The wind blew in the chaparral. A strange feeling grew. The man had been an operative. They let him live because it was more useful to watch him, flush out other agents. Maybe that’s what they did. The woman in the cruiser. She could have been his backup. They wouldn’t tell him of course, how could they? Jesus, she was probably already dead. The thought sent an involuntary shiver up his spine. He found the sensation disturbingly exhilarating.

  A time passed before he realized that a red Honda Accord had pulled onto the shoulder ahead of him. A woman took him to Leupp, a reservation town, a hundred or so tightly circled government built houses braced against windswept desert. The chaff from an abandoned strip mine dusting over the town. Since there were no gas stations, or businesses of any kind, she left him at the chapter house standing next to a forty foot yellow backlit road sign that read nothing. The wind rushed long and low across the empty expanse. San Francisco peaks to the East, yellow sand cut by sporadic dirt tracks leading into the far reaches of all the other directions.

  The first vehicle he saw, a rancher in an eighties era F-150, took him an hour south to Winslow. Rather than trying to hitch on I-40, traffic moving at 85 miles per hour, he walked through town to 87 South, back to two-lane blacktop. To his surprise rides came fast, faster than they had since he started out. He realized it was because he was still wearing the poncho even though the rain had all but stopped, and it masked his disheveled appearance. The smell, however, couldn’t be masked, at least not for long, and the rides were generally short.