by M. O. Walsh
Yeah, man. Yes indeed! Pete liked this idea a lot.
It felt to him like proof.
So, he was glad to be walking, as it had led him to this nice memory, and he was glad he didn’t protest when Lanny said he could really use his truck, maybe just for a day or two, because his own had gone missing. Pete didn’t care that he was being baldly manipulated. He simply gathered his wallet and house key, looked around the cab for any school papers or other correspondence he might need, and got out of the car. Why should Pete have a truck anyway, when other people could use it?
“No rush,” he told Lanny. “Just give me a call when I can pick her back up.”
“Let’s maybe give it a week, then,” Lanny said. “I have several items on my shit list that I’d like to scratch off.”
“Deal,” Pete said, and felt good about the situation.
It wasn’t as if Lanny had threatened him. The gun had just kind of been there, like one of Lanny’s appendages, and when Pete asked him about it Lanny looked as though he didn’t even realize he was still holding it. He said he kept it around in case any “unsavories” came by but had mainly just been out back of the house shooting squirrels, he said, and had “popped off sixty-five of the little fuckers” since February, all in the same exact spot of his yard.
“Sixty-five?” Pete said. “Wow.”
“All in the same damn tree,” Lanny said. He then looked past Pete, as if to the horizon, and said, “Oh, to be a realtor in the land of the squirrels.”
Lanny was high. Pete knew that. His skin was pasty and slick on his bare chest. His eyes weren’t right, either, as if he’d been playing with his eyelids for a while, and Pete imagined pills, as that’s what most people in Deerfield’s Confessional seemed to be dealing with. However, the way Trina had asked him if he thought she looked safe worried Pete that it could be something more. The fact that Lanny’s car was gone. The fact that there was a woman living with him that Pete had never heard of. These were troublesome signs.
But Pete also knew that confronting Lanny about his lifestyle choices at that particular moment was not going to lead to anything fruitful. So, instead he asked a few simpler questions, like:
“Does Trina seem all right?” to which Lanny replied, “You’d know better than me.”
And, “Any word from her mom?” to which Lanny replied, “Last I heard, she was in Natchez with a midget.”
“In Natchez with a midget?” Pete asked, to which Lanny replied, “Is there gas in this thing?”
“Should be,” Pete told him, and that was it.
Lanny sat in the truck, put it in gear, and drove it about fifteen more yards up the driveway. He then parked and got out and walked back in the house without saying a word. Pete stood there until Lanny’s dog appeared from under the camper top and took to growling. “Okay, okay,” Pete said. “I’m going.”
Once he hit the highway, it didn’t take long for Pete to be recognized. People pulled over and offered him rides but he kindly refused them. He wanted his walk to look intentional, he supposed, or else he just didn’t want to get into specifics. He was feeling good about himself, after all, so good, in fact, that he regretted his decision not to walk over to Clessy’s for that bottle of Sobieski before he made the trek home. He really would have appreciated that about now. A little personal charity, if you will. A little tip of the cap to Father Pete.
It was near six o’clock by this point, and the sun was heading down. It took him an hour and a half to do what he could have done in ten minutes in his truck and, rather than making him rueful, this thought made him feel appreciative of trucks. Miracle machines. Such engineering. Such a blessing! Yes, Pete was on a thankful roll today, and so was also thankful when he saw Getwell’s Bar right there on the corner.
Pete lived on the opposite side of town, another twenty minutes’ walk. And since he wasn’t in a rush to get home, since he’d left Mayfly outside with plenty of water, Pete figured Getwell’s was as good a place as any to stop. So, he took off his collar and put it in his pants pocket, unloosed the top two buttons of his black shirt, and stepped inside.
13
They Ought to Name a Drink After You
Although it was rarely what one might call busy, a person didn’t go to Getwell’s to hide. You knew you might see a former student or employer or friend and have to stay and chat awhile, else you come off as rude. But it was also not a place people went to “be seen,” either. It was, at its wood-paneled heart, whatever bar you wished it to be, a place where people generally let you do whatever type of drinking you came there to do. Getwell’s could feel the people that walked in there, it seemed, could somehow sense the pulse of the whole town, and adapted its environment to suit that mood.
In winter, for instance, the dusty Christmas lights strung over the bar seemed festive and, in summer, whimsical. The Mardi Gras beads hung on the antlers of Ronnie, the mounted deer by the entrance, could look either carefully placed for regal effect or, if you were feeling spontaneous yourself, just kind of flung there. Whichever way you preferred Mardi Gras beads hung on the antlers of dead animals to look, that’s what you got. It was a magical place, in that way, as only some bars ever are.
What Father Pete first noticed when he walked in was not the décor, however, but the temperature. The A/C enveloped him completely, and here was yet another thing to be thankful for. He sat at the bar and took a wad of paper napkins and dabbed at his head. He pulled at the front of his shirt and let some of the heat escape his chest. He spent a good minute cooling himself down, not looking at anybody, not saying anything, just sort of regulating his body temperature.
When he felt ready for human interaction, he looked up to see Cauley Thomas, the woman who owned the place. She was sitting on top of a barstool behind the bar and doing a crossword, resting the paper on top of her legs. She was young, in comparison to Pete, probably thirty-five, and had some of the more interesting tattoos in town. Pete didn’t know her well but liked her, had spoken to her at a few funerals over the last year, seen her at the grocery store like everyone else. He’d had only one meaningful conversation with her, though, when he once noticed that the tattoo spread across her shoulders like wings was that of an angel and asked, “Is that Gabriel? I had no idea you were religious, Ms. Cauley.”
“I’ve read the Bible, Father,” she’d told him. “That’s probably why you don’t see me in church.”
Pete appreciated the honesty. Give him that over bullshit sanctimony any day. He had no doubt she would recognize him in the bar and, when he looked up at her, she shifted her weight to the side a bit, as if her bartending skills had become so acute that she could physically sense a person needing a drink without even having to look. She wrote down one more answer and stood up from the stool. She placed the crossword by the cash register, laid the pen across it, and lifted her eyeglasses on top of her head.
“Well,” she said. “This is unexpected. What can I get you, Father?”
“Hello, Ms. Cauley,” he said. “I am wondering if you have any glasses here, like real drinking glasses, you know, not just plastic cups.”
Cauley smiled. “Just wait until you hear this,” she said, and reached under the bar. She pulled up two cocktail glasses. “Not only do we have glasses, but they even come in different varieties.” She lifted each individually to make her point. “We have, what we like to call, tall ones and short ones.”
“Incredible,” Pete said. “Thank you. Now that we’ve established that, I’m wondering if you could take that short one and put some ice and fresh soda water in it. Make sure it’s fresh, though, please. Lots of bubbles.”
“I can do that,” she said.
“Wonderful. Could you possibly squeeze a lime in there for me, as well? Right on top,” he said. “Just a short piece of lime, though, not one of those big wedges.”
“I could also do that,” she said.
“I have been trained in the art of mixology, after all.”
“Perfect,” Pete said. He then leaned forward in his stool to look behind the bar.
He saw plenty of bottles he recognized; Taaka and Smirnoff, mainly, which wouldn’t do. He might as well go home if those were his choices. He wasn’t a desperate man, after all, he just wanted some refreshment. And what is the point of refreshment if you aren’t going to enjoy it? He saw one bottle with a gold top that he liked pretty well. It wasn’t his Sobieski, but it would do just fine. So, as Cauley went to grab the soda gun, Pete said, “One more thing, if you don’t mind, Ms. Cauley. Could you maybe pour a little bit of that vodka in there for me, too?”
Cauley looked at him. “This isn’t going to get me in trouble with the big guy, is it?” she said. “I’ve only got one strike left, you know.”
“No, ma’am,” Pete said. “This is a fair ball. Perhaps even a home run.”
Cauley made his drink and set down the glass and Pete lifted it to the Christmas lights. It was not a bad glass at all. He could see the bubbles making their playful way to the top, could see the delicate spray above the rim of the glass, and turned it around in the light. “One day closer to you,” he said, and took his sip. He felt the patter on his lips and nose, just as he’d hoped, and the cold drink around his tongue and down his throat in a way that cooled him completely. It had the perfect burn when he swallowed, the perfect hint of lime. It was as if he had made it himself and, oh, man, he knew he’d made the right choice by stopping here. He closed his eyes. Trina. His truck. Lanny. All of these things could wait until tomorrow. He set down his glass and let out a deep exhale.
“I might need me one of those,” Cauley said. “If that’s the effect.”
Pete smiled. “I’ve been walking a long time, is all. And not in the metaphorical sense.”
He reached for his wallet and pulled out a ten. He’d no idea what the drink might cost him, so infrequently did he drink on the town, and so infrequently did he pick up the tab when he did. He couldn’t go down to Dot’s Diner without somebody buying his pancakes, and this was okay with Pete. As he reached in to pull out another five, just in case, he looked down the bar and saw someone familiar.
It was Douglas Hubbard, sitting by himself and wearing a beret.
Pete knew Hubbard from work, had chatted with him a few times at school functions, but nothing much past the surface. Still, he liked him. This may have been on account of his generally good disposition and, what used to be, a wonderfully thick mustache, but it could also be on account of Pete’s experience with Douglas on the third Friday of every month, when the faculty took their turn in his confessional booth. The effect this session had on Pete was always the same.
“Forgive me, Father, for I think I might have sinned,” Douglas would say, in textbook fashion.
But this generic opening would be followed by some minor transgression that only a decent man like Douglas Hubbard could be disappointed in. Things like, “I know my wife likes me to stack my clothes on my own side of the closet but last week I was in a rush and I just sort of threw my T-shirt up there and I saw it fall down on her stack of clothes but I didn’t do anything about it. I meant to straighten it up later, Father, but I forgot. She didn’t say anything to me about it but, still, I know she appreciates having her personal space. I should have apologized.”
Pete therefore spent much of his time in the Confessional with Douglas smiling and, he realized now, building a secret fondness for him. This, of course, wasn’t always the case in Confessional. And why do men like Pete like the minds of men like Douglas, anyway? This was something to consider. This usually, it seemed to Pete, happened when there was a fundamental aspect about the other man to admire, when they had some clearly uncommon trait. The enormous and vulnerable love for a woman, which Douglas displayed so blatantly, was nice to witness, and definitely qualified as uncommon in Pete’s Confessional. Maybe that was it.
In the bar, however, Pete was surprised by the focused manner of Hubbard’s drinking. He hadn’t lifted his chin at all, unless it was to take a sip. Otherwise he stared down at his hands, where he seemed to be flipping something over. It could have been a wallet-sized photo, a Post-it note, a credit card, Pete couldn’t see. He did notice the two empty martini glasses in front of him, though, one of which still had an olive in it.
Pete scanned the rest of the place. It was quiet. He could hear a few other people in the back, where the bar opened up to a couple of booths and a dartboard, but he couldn’t make out what they were saying. So, he took another drink. When Cauley had settled back to her crossword, Pete figured he might as well be friendly, say hello to Hubbard, see if maybe he needed some counsel, and so he walked over. He remembered seeing him with Principal Pat that afternoon and also remembered how Pat had told him she was retiring.
“Did you know,” Pete said, “I hear you and I might be getting a new boss?”
Douglas looked up. It took a moment for him to refocus his eyes, and he reached out to shake Pete’s hand. “I did know that,” Douglas said. “That might account for this second martini, now that you mention it.”
“And what was the occasion for the first?” Pete asked.
Douglas folded up whatever was in his hand and stuck it in his pocket. He raised his martini glass. “The human condition,” he said.
“Understood,” Pete said. He raised his own glass. “And let us also celebrate,” he said, “The Air Condition.”
“Hallelujah,” Douglas said. “And amen.”
They sat for a minute as Douglas ate his lonely-looking olive.
Behind them, the bar door opened and the light that came with it was purple and surprising. Still some sun left on the horizon somewhere, which was easy to forget in Getwell’s. Through the door walked a man neither Douglas nor Pete immediately recognized. He looked to be from a different era. He had on a cowboy getup, with a big brimmed hat, and his boots clicked the concrete floor as he strutted up to the bar. It was an unnatural walk, there was no doubt about it. His legs were parted in an odd manner, spread a bit too far, as if maybe he was trying to scratch an itch without his hands. He sidled up to the end of the bar and hooked his thumb through his belt loop, did a little scan of the place, and tipped his hat to Cauley, who stood up to greet him.
“Miss Cauley,” he said.
“Mayor,” she said.
“It’s just Hank tonight,” Hank told her. “The working day is done.”
“That must be nice,” she said.
When the bar door closed and the dimness returned, both Douglas and Pete recognized that the man was Hank Richieu and Pete waved him over. Hank obliged.
“Hank,” Pete said. “You sure do look festive.”
Hank shook his hand. “Father,” he said.
“It’s just Pete tonight,” Pete said. “But, I have to admit, you’re making me feel a bit self-conscious. I’m the only guy in here not wearing a hat.”
The three men appraised themselves and this was true. Hank in his Stetson, Douglas in his beret, and Pete there in the middle. They made a little landscape of possibility lined up like that, as if, as a unit, the picture of them could exist nearly anywhere and at any time in history. Had Deerfield ever held such promise? Who could know?
“You know Doug Hubbard?” Pete asked. “He teaches History at the school. One of the actual geniuses in this town, from what I hear.”
Douglas leaned over to shake Hank’s hand. He was becoming outwardly drunk, this was obvious, and looked a bit put out at this unexpected amount of social interaction.
“I know Hubbard,” Hank said. “Sure as shootin’.”
“I forget that everybody knows everybody here,” Pete said.
“Or,” Douglas said, as if making a profound statement, “they like to think they do.”
Hank pulled a coin out of his pocket and tapped it on t
he bar. “So, what are you fellers drinkin’ tonight?” he said. “I need a suggestion.”
“I, for one, recommend alcohol,” Douglas said.
From her stool, without looking up, Cauley said, “I second that.”
“Hubbard,” Hank said. “You teach History, right? I have a question for you. How about you tell me what kind of drink would be historically accurate for a cowboy to order?”
Douglas felt his teacher mode coming on again. Was even the mayor a witless victim of that stupid DNA machine, which Douglas had been privately stewing about the past hour? Could that account for his ridiculous new accent? His asinine hat?
“Why do you ask, Hank?” Douglas said. “Are you suddenly under the insane impression that you’re meant to be a cowboy?”
“Naaah,” Hank said, although the way he said this made it obvious that this was perhaps the exact impression he was under. “I’ve just taken an interest, is all. Call it historical curiosity.”
“Well,” Douglas said. “I don’t know how to answer your question, since the term cowboy isn’t really a historical reference. I mean, it’s not a time period, Hank. It’s a person’s occupation.”