I said nothing and the turn came a ten. If he had ace/king, he had just hit his straight and I was beat.
Before he could reach for his chips I said, “I wouldn’t bet much on that straight until you see the river.”
His hand froze over his chips, letting me know I had figured his hand perfectly. And by speaking up, I had told him exactly what I had as well. His straight was the best hand, but I had to get any one of one ace, three queens, three jacks, or three tens to win the hand and two kings to tie him with a straight of my own. Twelve outs were a lot of outs.
At that moment, a shimmering went through the air and I had the sense that a bunch of hours suddenly passed. The door to the room opened and two large, gold-colored, snake-like men walked through, followed by Laverne and Stan and Patty.
In a hissing language I had no desire to learn, the two golden-snake men moved over behind Snake and made him stand, sending dandruff everywhere like a faint snowstorm.
Snake glanced at the cards and then up at me. “Nicely played, Poker Boy. A match I will always remember.”
“As will I,” I said. But not because of the poker, but I didn’t say that.
“Any chance we can see that river card?” Snake asked.
I nodded to the dealer and he flipped the last card over. Another ten.
I rolled over my aces full.
“I guess it wasn’t meant to be,” Snake said.
A moment later the three aliens vanished.
“Nice job, again, Poker Boy,” Laverne said, smiling at me. Then she, too, vanished.
I can’t begin to say, as a poker player, how much I liked having Lady Luck smile at me.
Stan smiled as well. “We owe you one for that.” Then he was gone.
Patty kissed me, and for a second I forgot all about snakes, poker, and Lady Luck as I enjoyed the feel of Front Desk Girl welcoming me back to the real world.
“Have I ever told you,” Patty said as we turned and headed for the door, “how much I hate snakes.”
“Oh, after about five hours of playing poker with one, you get used to them.”
She laughed. “You up for a wonderful dinner, on me?”
“I think I need a shower first,” I said as we walked arm-in-arm down the hallway.
“Oh, I like that idea, too,” Patty said, hugging me even closer. “I’ll scrub.”
“Only if you use a lot of shampoo,” I said. “Dandruff shampoo.”
Sometimes the special jukebox in the Garden Lounge does more than take a person back to a memory. Sometimes it brings a memory to the bar.
And when that memory shows a murder, Stout and the rest must risk their lives to do the right thing.
OUR SLAYING SONG TONIGHT
A Jukebox Story
ONE
The Garden Lounge functioned like a big family room for a lot of people. Comfortable described it. Earth-tone brown carpet, old-fashioned tables and booths, and no windows to let in the troubles of the outside world. The only way in and out for the people who came for friendship and relaxation was the wooden front door.
And, on Christmas Eve, the old Wurlitzer.
The jukebox sat against the wall beside the long oak bar like a king in a place of honor. Four special crystal drinking glasses with names etched on them over the Garden Lounge logo were in a handmade glass case above the old music machine. A large fern hung from the ceiling beside the jukebox, almost seeming to protect it from the stares of the customers.
The jukebox always sat unplugged and dark. The room’s music came from a stereo hidden behind the oak bar. The jukebox was decoration only, except for Christmas Eve. And even on Christmas Eve I was the only one allowed to plug it in. It was just too dangerous any other way. On this particular Christmas Eve there were only four customers to witness the third annual playing of the jukebox.
“Well, Stout?” Carl said. “Is it time?”
I glanced over at Carl. At six-two, two hundred and fifty pounds, Carl had more muscle than two other normal men. And his hands were so huge that his friends figured that women were afraid to get near him. He had never married, never had children. He spent his interest and his energy on a thriving construction business.
The other two there at the moment were David and his wife, Elaine. David was a pilot for a major airline and only allowed himself to drink on Christmas Eve. He had been my best friend before the jukebox had taken him away two years ago and changed his life. Since he came back with his wife, Elaine, we had again become close friends.
Elaine was a beautiful woman in her early forties, with long brown hair that streamed straight down her back and bright green eyes that caused everyone to ask if she wore contacts. She loved David with every part of her soul.
“All right,” I said. I guess it’s time.”
I moved around the end of the bar and unlocked the glass case above the jukebox, then pulled out a glass with David’s name on it and another one with Carl’s name. I gazed at the other two glasses and the names of Jess and Fred before closing back up the case. Jess and Fred were old friends I missed seeing. I just hoped that when they left the Garden two years ago on Christmas Eve, they found good new homes. Every year I wished they would drop in to say hi. But they didn’t know I was here, or remember the Garden and the time they spent here. So far only David and Carl had found their way back.
I moved around behind the bar, washed out the glasses, and filled them with their owner’s regular drinks. Bourbon and water for Carl. Rum and eggnog for David. Vodka tonic in a normal glass for Elaine. And then for me I poured myself a mug of warm eggnog without any booze and held the mug up in a toast.
“To friends,” I said, “both here and apart.”
“I’ll drink to that,” Carl said and we all raised our glasses and drank.
“Now, I said, putting my mug down on the bar and pulling out a package from beside the cooler, “for the traditional playing of the jukebox this year I have something special.”
Everyone laughed. I supposed that playing a time-traveling jukebox would be considered special enough for most. But I had a hunch that I had something even more special.
I unwrapped the package and held up the record.
“So what’s so unique about this?” David asked as I handed the record to him and he turned it over to read the title. “It’s just Jingle Bells.” He shrugged and handed the record to Elaine.
“Before I tell you, I need to know if any of you have any strong memories tied to this song.” I first glanced at Carl.
He shook his head. “Just feelings of being a kid and having fun. Nothing strong.”
“Good. How about you, Elaine?”
“Same thing as Carl. For me this song has sort of always just been there.”
I looked at David and he shook his head no.
“You sure?” I asked.
“Nothing that comes to mind,” he said. “Which means we aren’t going anywhere. Right?”
“That’s what I was hoping for,” I said. “This song has just always been there for me, too. With no distinct memories attached to it.”
“So what makes it so special?” Carl asked, looking at the record and then handing it back across the bar to me.
“Well, with a jukebox that can physically take a person back in time to the memory that the song brings up, wouldn’t you think that the only record in the jukebox when I found it was special?”
“You’re kidding?” Elaine said.
I shook my head. “Not kidding. Remember I told you I found the old jukebox covered in a back hall of the first bar I tried to run. Well, when I went broke and took the old jukebox out just before the bank padlocked the doors on me, this was the only record in it at the time. It was hidden in a small folder inside the back door. The record and the insides of the jukebox were so covered with dust that when I started fixing the thing up, I missed seeing this record and instead put in one of my own. That was how I discovered that the jukebox sent people back to their memories. I ended up sitting staring at Jenny, my old
girlfriend.
I held up the old record and looked at it. “I have never played this record.”
“Which is why you asked us about our memories with this song. You’re going to play it. Right?”
I raised my mug in another toast. “That’s right. And tonight, unlike some Christmas Eves in the past, I’d like my best friends to walk out the front door at the end of the night, not through a memory and a jukebox.”
Everyone laughed and drank to my toast. Then I went around, opened up the jukebox, and dropped in the record.
“Ready?” I asked as I shut the top and reached to plug in the jukebox.
“Fire away,” Carl said.
“You’re not really expecting anything, are you?” David asked.
I shrugged. “Not really sure what to expect. I have a feeling there is something special about this record. And combined with that jukebox, your guess is as good as mine. It is curious that this was the only record in there. I assume that the jukebox’s previous owner knew what it could do. This may be nothing more than the song that had memories attached to it for him or her.”
“And that owner went back, changed the past, and never got to the point where he owned the jukebox in his new future. Right?”
I shrugged. “One theory. Shall I punch it up and see?”
“Why not?” David said.
So I punched E-34, the slot I had put the record in, and stepped away from the jukebox and back around behind the bar.
What did happen was something I never would have guessed.
TWO
As the song started, two men shimmered into being in front of the jukebox. The jukebox had never brought anyone to the Garden before. Only took them away, into their past memories.
One of men was an elderly gentleman wearing an apron and carrying a towel. He had thick silver hair and a worried expression on his face. I knew immediately from the way he was dressed that he was a bartender somewhere in the late fifties or early sixties.
The other man was almost a boy, with red hair, ragged overalls that hung loose on his thin frame, and a red plaid work shirt with stained elbows. With both hands he clutched a large revolver pointed at the old bartender.
We all instantly jumped and Elaine said something about the Holy Mother. Carl started toward the scene.
“No,” I said. “I don’t think they’re really here.”
Carl stopped and we all stared.
I was right. Our movements and the sound of our voices didn’t alter the scene we were watching in the slightest. It was as if we were watching them through a one-way window.
“Money!” the boy demanded, waving the gun in the direction to the right of the bartender. His voice seemed distant, almost from down a long tunnel. Yet it was clear. “Just reach into that cash box and pull out a handful.”
“Nope,” the bartender said, wiping his hands on the towel. “You’re going to have to take it yourself if you want it. That money is my money and I ain’t giving it away to no child with a gun.”
“I could shoot you,” the kid said, poking the gun forward at the bartender’s stomach.
“But you won’t,” the bartender said. “will you Billy? In fact, if you give me that gun right now I might not even...”
Just then the kid...Billy...seemed to be startled by something behind him that none of us could hear. He turned and as he did the old man reached out and took hold of the gun.
“It’s my daddy’s gun,” Billy said, fighting to pull the gun back away from the bartender. “You can’t...”
The explosion seemed almost too loud for one gun.
Too loud for a vision.
Way too loud for the song playing on the jukebox.
The explosion echoed around and around the bar as we watched the bartender grab his stomach and stagger back against the jukebox. His hitting it didn’t disturb the record playing Jingle Bells.
Billy just stood there, holding the gun in both hands, staring as the old bartender slid down the jukebox into a sitting position on the floor, his back against the machine. Blood flooded out from the hole in his apron, turning the white cloth dark.
As the record ended, the old bartender took a deep breath and died.
THREE
The last notes of Jingle Bells echoed around above the empty booths and tables as the two figures faded from the Garden Lounge.
After the sound of the struggle and the shot, the complete silence of the empty bar seemed the loudest of all.
“Holy shit,” Carl said as he sat back down on his stool and took a long drink from his glass.
“I feel like I want to be sick,” David said as he too sat down heavily on his stool. Elaine’s face was pure white and she just stood there staring at the jukebox as if it might explode at any moment.
I knew how David felt. My stomach was clamped up into a tight knot and my hands were shaking as I tried to get my mug to my lips to get some of the eggnog to my completely dry mouth.
I had no idea what I had expected, but it certainly wasn’t a murder.
“You sure know how to throw a Christmas Eve party,” Carl said.
David tried to laugh and Elaine just hiccupped and climbed back up on her stool and put her head down on the bar.
“Christmas Eves tend to be that way around here,” I said. “Maybe we’ll just skip it next year.”
“I’ll drink to that,” Carl said. And did.
David also took a long swallow from his glass and looked across the bar at me, then over at the jukebox. “So now what are we going to do?”
“I know what I’m going to do.” I moved quickly around the bar, pulled the plug on the jukebox and then took the record out. It felt odd touching the record, as if I was holding some person’s casket. Carefully I put the record back in the bag I had kept it in all these years. I stood the bag on the back bar and went back to my friends who had been watching.
“You think it was the murder that gave the jukebox its powers?” Elaine asked, sitting up and shaking her head slightly as if it might help put away what she had just seen.
I shrugged. “I don’t think so, but I really have no idea. There are electronic parts in that thing that are not in any regular jukebox. I have always thought that what that thing could do was just mechanical. Besides that record hasn’t been anywhere near that jukebox since I fixed it.”
“So maybe,” David said, “those two...ghosts, I guess you could call them, are attached to the song. Or more likely, that record.” He pointed at the bag. “And obviously the jukebox.”
“But why?” Carl asked. “And how? Makes no sense.”
“Maybe we should play it again,” Elaine said, “even though I don’t want to. Maybe we could try to stop the murder.”
“I doubt we could,” I said. “It looks like it happened a long time ago. I think Carl is right. This makes no sense. But does a jukebox-time-machine make sense either? Yet there it sits. I think the best thing we can do is just let the record and the machine alone until we get more information.”
“I’ll drink to that,” Carl said and raised his glass.
“That’s what you said before the floor show started,” David said. “Remember?”
Carl shuddered. “I got to stop saying that.”
FOUR
It took me most of the next year to dig out all the information about what we had seen that night. The murder had occurred in 1959, in a bar called Danny’s in a little town in the northern part of the state. The bartender was the owner of the place, Danny Kline, and his murderer was nineteen year-old Billy Webster. Two witnesses had come in just in time to see Billy grab some money from the cash box and run out the back. They found him two days later on a bus headed south, and the trial was quick and without much doubt as to the outcome.
Initially Billy was sentenced to the gas chamber, but after four years on death row, his sentence was commuted to life in prison. It wasn’t until I was reading the account in the old newspaper file about his new sentence that I decided what I wo
uld do. Maybe Elaine had been right. Maybe we should try to stop it.
Christmas Eve this year was going to be interesting again.
FIVE
For a change, I had strung Christmas lights around the bar to make it feel more festive. And I had even put up a tree in one corner so that now the bar not only smelled of smoke and stale beer, but it had a faint pine scent. I sort of enjoyed that.
“So what’s the big surprise you have been hinting at this year?” Carl asked as I opened the glass case above the jukebox and pulled down two of the special glasses. “Because if it’s anything like last year, I think I’m going to just head for home.”
“I’ll go with Carl,” Elaine said. “My stomach didn’t settle down for a week last year. And I’ve got a turkey to cook tomorrow that I’d like to taste.”
I laughed and moved back to the well to make everyone their drink. “Nothing to worry about, I hope.”
“Sounds threatening to me,” Carl said.
I just laughed, but I think David could tell by the way he looked at me that I really was worried. Not so much worried about what I had planned working. But more about the final results. What I was going to do might give away the Garden and everything else, including our lives.
I finished making the drinks and raised my mug of eggnog in a toast. “To friends – and doing the right thing.”
“I’ll drink to that,” Carl said, and this year everyone laughed.
I took a drink and set my mug back on the bar. “We have a special guest this Christmas Eve. He’s in my office right now waiting for us to finish our toast. You’ve all seen him before, but none of you have met him.” I smiled at their puzzled frowns and went down the bar to my office door.
“Bill, come on out.”
Elaine gasped at the name and Carl said, “I’ll be a son-of-a-bitch.” as the balding, gray-haired Billy Webster opened the office door and walked over to my side. Twenty-eight years in prison had been hard on him. He had obvious scars and he limped slightly off his left leg. He had a beer-gut stomach and deep, sad eyes. In the two years since his parole he had worked as a janitor for the Elk’s Lodge. He nodded to everyone as I did introductions.
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