The Last of the Smoking Bartenders

by C. J. Howell

  Tom lay prostrate on the concrete.

  The man held up his arm in greeting like he was waiting to be noticed or called on.

  Tom raised his arm and kept it perpendicular for a few seconds before letting it fall flatly outstretched at his side.

  The man asked if he wanted some water. Tom’s eyes lolled in their drawn sockets in the general direction of where the man was sitting. He rolled onto his shoulder and propped himself up and crawled slowly toward the man. The man tossed him a waterskin and they both drank, passing the skin back and forth.

  Where you headed?

  Right now?

  Is there any other time?

  Yeah, could be.

  Okay then, right now.

  North. Making my way north.

  Got business to attend to?

  Something like that.

  People waiting on you?

  I hope not.

  The man nodded thoughtfully. He spit over his lower lip and wiped his mouth with a handkerchief.

  Where are you heading?

  The man flicked his wrist like he was shooing away a mosquito and looked absently across the aquifer.

  I’m already there.

  This is where you want to be?

  Yup. Well, that’s not entirely true. I’d like to go back to the spot under the 51 right by the church kitchen, but Eduardo told everyone I shorted him and now he wants to cut me. Got everyone pissed off at me or else I’d probably stay in the city.

  Isn’t this the city?

  This isn’t the city, this is just where the people live.

  I’m trying to get through the city. Been walking for miles.

  Many miles to go.

  I’ve never seen a city like this.

  Aren’t they all like this?

  I don’t know, maybe they are nowadays.

  They sat silent for a while, outstretched on the concrete slope, propped up on their elbows. A hot breeze funneled through the culvert. The migrants had a small fire going heating up coffee and a clay pot of something. The sound of the traffic overhead gradually increased to rush hour intensity without their noticing it.

  Tom rested and surveyed the dry manmade concrete basin, a once natural arroyo cemented over for predictability.

  Hell of a place, Tom said.

  Hell of a place, the man said.

  How’d we end up here?

  In this place or in this life?

  In this life.

  It’s not so bad this life. It’s real. The other one is an illusion. This flask of water is real. The heat, this cement, that cockroach. Those Mexicans, they’re fucking real. Up there it’s just an illusion. Temporary. Imaginary. You know you don’t own land. You rent it. You may have a deed, but it’s not yours. You’ll die, or sell it, or lose it, and then someone else will have it. For a while. But you can’t keep it. There’s a neighborhood called Venado Ranch less then two hundred yards from here. Look.

  The man pointed to the other side of the canal where above the retaining wall there was another wall, taller and ringed with razor wire.

  If you cut a straight line through that wall two hundred yards from here there’s a guy sitting on a couch in a million dollar house with a patio and a pool and he doesn’t even know that it’s just a blip in time. He thinks that life is a series of decisions. But he’s wrong. I haven’t made one goddamn decision in my life.

  What do you mean? You decided to stay here under the bridge, didn’t you?

  Yes, yes. I did decide to do that didn’t I? I do get to make decisions here. You sir, are in a good place, maybe the right place.

  Tom feigned a laugh. I’m fucking nowhere. I need to be four hundred miles from here.

  No, no, you don’t listen to what I’m saying. It’s all an illusion. You’re still living in that other life. You think you’re up there. The man pointed with his thumb.

  There’s only one world.

  Yes, there is only one world.

  I thought you were going to tell me there are many.

  No, there is only one. That is what I am saying.

  So why are we separate from them?

  We are because we see it for what it is.

  And what is it?

  It’s right here. This.

  And that’s it.

  Yes.

  Don’t you think some things need doing?

  Is it about a woman?

  No, nothing like that.

  Then no.

  Let’s say you could do something that would help thousands, maybe millions of people. Now that’s real, not some make believe alternative reality, actual people’s lives. I know what you are getting at, they’re all automatons up there living in ignorant bliss, pay no attention to the man behind the curtain and all that. Lab rats in a maze or hamsters spinning the wheel. Pick your metaphor. But if you had the power to save them, that wouldn’t be worth doing?

  The man shook his head. Can’t be done. They get what they deserve and they deserve what they get. Let’s be honest, mankind is destined to eat itself. If you save them this time they’ll just find a way to destroy themselves a year or two from now. They’ll never see the forest for the trees. It’s in the nature of people to take something and run with it until either it gives up or they do. They’ll use the water until it runs out and then scream and cry like the world ended and they couldn’t see it coming. Like it just up and stopped raining. They’ll grow so much food the land can’t grow anything anymore and then fight over what’s left. Trying to save mankind is an exercise in futility. It ends the same way every time.

  Again, how can you say it’s not worth trying?

  People who try to change the world are the last people who should try and change the world. Who knows what’s best for everyone? I mean, take those Mexicans. How are you going to help them? They’ve got food, they’ve got each other, hell, they probably have jobs. Look, they even built a little fire. They’re cooking food on it.

  They live under a bridge.

  You’re not listening. Let’s say someone gave them a house. Then they forget how to live under a bridge, or feel they’re too good for it. Then they lose the house and have to go back to living under a bridge. Are they better or worse?

  Tom squinted at them. The concrete had shaded fuchsia in the evening sun. The air hung hot, laced with downcurrents of exhaust from a thousand idling cars.

  Why do they have to lose the house?

  The house is always lost.

  Tom digested this. He felt his skin prickle at the heat, the muffled roar of traffic, the rhythmic squeaking of brakes, the drone of cicadas deep beneath.

  They have the memory of the house.

  But they live much longer without the house.

  Only God knows if it’s worth it to them then.

  The man looked toward him but not at him. He shifted his field of vision to refocus on something closer in the middle ground.

  Do you believe in God?

  No, I guess I don’t.

  But you believe in something.

  Yes.

  Or you wouldn’t be going north.

  Yes.

  He shared the sardines and the crackers with the man. The man was well stocked with canned goods, not just green beans, creamed corn, and canned yams which always flooded the food banks at Thanksgiving and remained on the shelves most of the year, but with Spaghetti O’s and Dinty Moore beef stew. But the man accepted the oily fish and salty crackers out of courtesy.

  When Tom had fully rested, he shook hands with the man and climbed back up to the road. He would have preferred to spend the night under the bridge with someone he trusted to watch his back while he slept, but the mission was his priority and it was better to travel at night.

  Freshly hydrated and fed, it was easier to travel, to live, to be alive. His sight was actually clearer. The tunnel vision was gone. In this way he stopped when what would have been lost on the periphery as some fuzzy colored blob came into focus as a real object with defined edges, a bus stop it
appeared, although he couldn’t recall having seen any actual buses in his time here. A bench and a post with a cryptic sign. Preposterous in the day time under the blow torch sun, it now seemed plausible to sit on an exposed bench and wait to see it a bus would come. He didn’t know the time. It could have been too late for buses to run, but in any event the sitting was nice with the sun safely behind the earth’s crust. After what could have been an hour or a day, a bus did come. The door swung open and something akin to cool air rushed out. It felt like luxury, how the rich travel.

  The bus was empty. An empty vessel floating upon the asphalt. The driver insisted that Tom have some sort of swipeable card. He had no such card. He only had nickels and dimes. The machine did not accept change. He was directed to a card dispenser that might as well have been on the moon for how he would get to it. If he could walk to the card dispenser he could walk to his destination. After some negotiation in which Tom proffered a dollar in change in what amounted an attempt to bribe the bus driver with what would have been close to the standard fare, the bus driver refused his offer but let him ride anyway. Perhaps for the company. Perhaps so there would be a point to driving the bus at all. Tom was the only passenger.

  It felt good to be moving, but he was nervous; one turn and the bus could undo days of walking and take him back where he started. Or worse. The bus appeared to be moving in the right direction, north with the distant skyscrapers almost parallel.

  Gradually a few passengers got on. Sad people, burnt and tired. The movement created an optical effect like an open shutter, lights blending together into beams of light and color. The black night outside the window was a clear, deep blank slate, something so touchable you could stick your finger in if you tried.

  Party people started getting on the bus. He could tell by the look in their eyes, the night with possibilities, expectations. Their legs bounced with casual energy. The girls wore skirts that left their thighs bare. Thin thighs, smooth and white. Latinas, tan and muscular. The men wore long pants and black leather shoes in spite of the heat. A girl tattooed on her back and down one arm like a sleeve, the new sign of demarcation. Tattoos on skinny arms. The non-party people mostly ignored these newcomers. Tom stared. Transfixed. He didn’t know why. When the party people got off the bus he followed. This must be the city.

  People were out on the street. Lights were everywhere. Neon emblazoned the night with reds and greens. Ringlets of white light outlined the buildings and spiraled up the traffic lights. Of the group of them that got off the bus, he followed one girl in particular. She was like a lion, or more like a maned deer, with her mantle of warm hair. She moved slowly, slovenly, an affected indifference that made him wonder what she wondered, if her mind wandered. She must be thinking about sex. She is sex. Lips parted in slack jawed boredom, an act, a dumb look that was practiced, just absent minded enough to leave possibilities. What filled up that mind and those thoughts now infiltrated his mind.

  He didn’t know what was happening to him. He walked too closely behind her, following the hem of her skirt against the back of her legs, and then he realized what he was doing and backed off. He needed a drink. There were lines outside the bars. Women with shiny handbags and tight sequined dresses milling in rows, accompanied by gangs of heavily cologned men in long pleatless pants and collared shirts open to the nipples. He got in line. The red velvet rope ended outside the club doorway, but the line went down the street. A boy turned to him, taking a step back to steady himself.

  Hey man, who are you?

  The boy wore a knit skullcap and a short sleeve shirt. Who wears a wool ski hat when it’s a hundred and five at night? The boy had around him a cluster of boys that might have been girls and girls that were definitely girls.

  I’m Tom.

  Hey Tom, you partying tonight?

  I just need a drink.

  Hey motherfuckers, this is Tom. He said it to the line. The line turned to look back.

  He needs a drink.

  A contagious roar verberated through the crowd from one ear to the next. A chorus of ‘me toos’ roiled up the front door of the club and rippled back.

  Tom understood being made fun of. Let’s make fun of the bum. It felt good in a perverse way. A guilty good. What had he become? People appeared to shake his hand, or fist bump, or back hand slap, and someone pressed a flask into his hand and he drank heavily from it, bourbon, probably Beam. People cheered him who he’d never seen and would never see again. The line moved forward. When he got to the front the line two doormen in headsets turned him away without saying a word. They just crossed their arms. No one said anything as Tom peeled off the line and kept on the sidewalk.

  He walked down the block to a Circle K at the corner and bought two Budweiser tall boys for two fifty plus tax. He went into the alley between the Circle K and what appeared to be a frat house and sat next to a thick plastic recycling bin and popped open the first tall boy. He watched the street traffic from the alley coming and going from the bars, the party people, the stumbling teens, the trained predators. At one point he thought he saw the girl from the bus with the pouty lips and the bored stare. She was clinging to an older man, watching her footsteps, indifferent. He felt like puking. But he finished the second tall boy and laughed to himself. The night was miraculous.

  Chapter 12

  The trailer’s hollow plywood front door opened sending in a blast of cold mountain air.

  Honey, I’m home!

  Frank smiled, making his neck balloon like a pelican swallowing a carp.

  The girl made no move to get up.

  He stepped inside resembling an oozing mass. His body moved one way and the goiter shifted the other, his huge frame filling the room. He slammed the door behind him with a flick of his wrist. Everyone turned to watch him. With deceptive speed, Frank laid a giant paw on Lorne’s shoulder and wrenched him to his bosom.

  Didn’t think I’d see you again after last time, buddy.

  Frank said it as he hugged Lorne uncomfortably tight to his bulbous pectorals. Lorne struggled to keep his balance on his one good foot. Lorne started to say something but stopped, catching something in Frank’s jaundiced eyes, blue in a sea of murky yellow. What had happened the last time he was in Alpine?

  So, what did you boys bring me?

  He turned to the others, still holding Lorne to his breast in a sort of headlock, Lorne’s head sandwiched by a bicep the size and consistency of a Christmas ham. Chevis was jittery, sweat beading on his shaved head. Pammy and Jimmy backed away instinctively; everyone was too close. The room seemed small, like a cage.

  Two hundred for two thousand.Double your money at least. Chevis straightened up and took his hands out of his pockets.

  Frank smiled again, the same jack lantern grin.

  Well, let’s see it.

  Chevis reached inside his jacket pocket and took out a plastic ziplock bag filled with little plastic ziplock bags. Two hundred of them. Just holding it made his palms moist and his nose run.

  Eight hundred bucks.

  What?

  Eight hundred.

  Come on, man. You gotta at least come back at a thousand.

  I don’t have to do shit.

  Chevis shook his head. Sweat flickered down onto the carpet. Ashley looked at Frank for the first time. Junior uncrossed his legs and stood up.

  I don’t know. You’re not even gonna try it?

  Don’t need to.

  Why?

  Not for eight hundred. Don’t need to.

  Chevis squinted at him. Too much meth. Meth meth meth, Meth meth Meth meth Meth meth Meth.

  You hunt?

  Frank turned to face Junior.

  Junior turned toward Frank, flicking his newly braided braids.

  Sometimes.

  Whacha you use, 30-30, 30 ought 6?

  Bow.

  Bow and arrow?

  Yeah.

  Well that’s fucking ironic.

  I got my first last winter. Jimmy’s got many.
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br />   He nodded blankly at Jimmy. Jimmy was watching Frank’s eyes.

  What do you hunt with?

  Let me show you something.

  Frank spun quickly and slid back a defunct Lazy-Boy which hid a dented footlocker with a padlock flopping by a steel fob. Frank deftly slid off the lock without ever producing a key and spun back around holding a crossbow. The polished wood and steel bolts gleamed in the florescent overhead light. The handle was nickel plated and engraved with the initials BFF.

  You ever get a deer with one of these?

  Nice.

  Junior said it almost involuntarily, stepping forward and petting the shiny titanium shaft of the loaded crossbow bolt with his fingers.

  This can’t be good at distance.

  Frank gently brushed the boy’s hand away.

  No. It’s not. But in close quarters it’s okay.

  Frank leveled the crossbow at Chevis and fired a bolt into his chest, pinning him against the aluminum trailer wall just above the fake fireplace.

  Chevis didn’t exactly scream, he just spat out chunks of what could have been lung. The blood flicked out into the living room and splayed across the crusted lamp shades and makeshift curtains and the vinyl siding.

  The crossbow had a chrome cylindric cartridge loading mechanism that reloaded fresh bolts like a semi-automatic. Frank calmly swiveled half a click and had a primed three-pronged bolt aimed directly at Pammy’s forehead, but before he could pull the trigger a tremendous boom stunned the cramped room, and Frank went flying into the far wall, denting it before he collapsed, a six foot smear of blood arching up the vinyl siding and onto and across the ceiling. Jimmy had been quick, smoothly pulling his .44 from his back waistband and firing by reflex. The black barrel smoked, filling the room with the smell.

  Ashley’s big blue eyes grew even bigger. She held onto Junior’s arm. Junior stepped away from the couch. She let his arm drop. Junior looked at Frank, who lay motionless, legs propped up on an overturned TV table, back to the floor, and then he went to Chevis.

  It will be okay.

  Chevis swore and swung his arms wildly, trying to pry himself free from the wall. He screamed in pain and rage and kicked his legs against the plaster fireplace. The bolt wiggled in his chest just below his shoulder and in his back just above his shoulder blade, the tip firmly punctured through the trailer wall.