The Big Door Prize

by M. O. Walsh

  “That’s true,” Pete said, and tried to get Cauley’s attention by clinking around the ice in his glass.

  “You know what I mean, though,” Hank said. “Real cowboys. Wild West types. True Grit. A Fistful of Ugly. The Fast and the Furious. All that stuff.”

  “Can I have another one of those soda waters, Ms. Cauley?” Pete said.

  “Just like I made it before?” she asked.

  “Please,” Pete said, and laid another ten on the bar.

  “That’s some expensive soda water,” Hank said.

  “Charity,” Pete said. “Before the need for it.”

  “Well,” Douglas said, “A Fistful of Dollars is set in the 1870s or so.”

  “Is it?” Hank said.

  “It takes place during the Civil War,” Douglas told him. “That’s a major part of the movie. That’s not hard to remember.”

  “A war amongst ourselves,” Hank said. “What a dadgum tragedy.”

  “Amen to that,” Pete said, and lifted his empty glass. “Never again.”

  “So, what’ll it be, pardner?” Cauley asked, and set down Pete’s drink. She smiled. “Don’t ask me for moonshine, cactus juice, or rotgut. We’re plumb out.”

  “Whiskey,” Douglas huffed. “Get the man some whiskey.”

  “Yessir,” Hank said. “Whiskey for my horses and water for my men.”

  Hank held up three fingers to order three shots and, for whatever reason that neither Pete nor Douglas complained when it was set in front of them, the rest of their night began.

  A few pleasant hours passed as they discussed everything but what was truly on their minds, watched Cauley walk to the back to serve the other patrons, and told a few jokes. Douglas’s generally good disposition returned, so far distracted was he from his troubles, and he took to trading stories and laughing.

  They’d eventually gone through three shots each, eaten every variety of potato chip that Cauley had access to, lost track of who was paying for what, and Pete realized he had forgotten how much he liked whiskey. It was delicious, if appreciated. And what are we here to do, he reasoned, but appreciate the world around us? He also knew the way it made him feel in the morning, though, and had privately prescribed a number of penances for himself to complete come sunrise. Twenty extra ­push-­ups. Maybe a jog. Three Hail Marys.

  Hank was also feeling cheerful, and led a rambling conversation that could be summarized like this:

  “A horse walks into a bar,” Hank said. “And the bartender says, ‘Why the long face?’”

  To which Pete replied:

  “How manly was he? Let’s just say, if he wanted to lose any weight, he could just shave his back. If that didn’t work, he’d just set down that moose he’d been chewing on.”

  To which Douglas replied:

  “You know, I bought a thesaurus the other day to expand my vocabulary, but I don’t think it’s any good. I mean, not only is it terrible, but it’s also terrible.”

  The men had begun to roll with a sort of inexplicable laughter at this point, the kind totally unwarranted by the quality of their jokes but also one that felt glorious to inhabit, so removed were they from their current worries about bicentennials, nieces, wives, sons, jazz.

  “I’ve got one,” Pete said. “A priest, a mayor, and a History teacher walk into a bar. The priest looks around and says, ‘Hey, have you heard the one about us?’”

  This was the capper. The men fell over one another, laughing and patting one another’s shoulders as if they had always been the best of friends. And maybe they were now. The joke immediately memorialized the night for them, it seemed, assured them each that this would be a moment they could recall to one another at whatever future space they found themselves together and, in that way, it added new scenes to their life story and was therefore like the foundation of a million similar friendships. The men felt good, beyond good, and then they heard another man’s voice behind them.

  “What do we have here?” he said. “Some sort of triple-­M ménage à trois?”

  They looked up to see Deuce Newman approaching with another guy none of them recognized. These had apparently been the people Cauley was serving in the back and they also looked a bit high on the feel of the evening.

  When Deuce recognized that Father Pete was among the group, he stopped grinning. “I’m sorry, Father,” he said. “I didn’t mean to offend.”

  Pete raised his glass and gave him a wink. “Deuce,” he said. “I hereby pardon your French.”

  As good as the joke was, Deuce’s sudden appearance had quietly sapped a certain energy from their conversation. Although they could not know this about one another, another thing these men had in common besides this evening was a mutual distaste for Deuce Newman. Douglas had a lifetime of reasons, primarily centered on Deuce’s ­tongue-­wagging at Cherilyn, and felt himself nearly angry at his presence, the way he’d made him to look a fool in his photo that morning. Hank, on the other hand, couldn’t stand Deuce’s constant presence, the way he was always asking for more, always seemed to be angling for his job. Pete, of course, would never admit to disliking anyone, but a permanent seat in the Confessional can make some people hard to admire. For Deuce, it wasn’t any awful sin that he’d admitted to but rather the way he seemed to use Confession to fish for compliments. He would confess to doing some good deed, going the extra mile for someone, and his need for attention rivaled only that of Douglas’s need for the love of his wife.

  Regardless, Hank shook Deuce’s hand. “Seems we can’t get away from each other these days, don’t it?”

  “Which reminds me,” Deuce said. “Shouldn’t you be working? Preparing for tomorrow’s meeting?”

  Hank stared at him, lifted his glass, and finished his whiskey in one dramatic gulp.

  Pete said, “Who’s your friend, Deuce?”

  “This,” Deuce said. “This is nobody y’all would know. Just an entrepreneur like me. Someone looking for opportunities.”

  Douglas felt his neck growing hot. “That is a really mysterious answer,” he said. “What’s the man’s name, Bruce? We didn’t ask about you.”

  “My name is Jack,” the man said, and nodded to everyone. “I’m from up in Oxford, working for the Mississippi Tourism Board. Deuce was just telling me about all his plans for the bicentennial. That mosaic idea is amazing. All of it done up in water and light!”

  “I told you, Hank,” Deuce said.

  “I’ve not signed off on that damn fire hose,” Hank said.

  “Just so you know,” Cauley said from the bar, “if anyone says ‘Hotty Toddy’ in here, they will be asked to leave.”

  “Understood,” Jack said, and raised his glass to the bar.

  “Fire hose?” Douglas said.

  “Seriously, boys,” Deuce said. “What’s the occasion? Hubbard, I can’t say I’ve ever seen you out without Cherilyn. And on a school night, no less. Don’t tell me there’s trouble in paradise.”

  “Cherilyn’s home,” Douglas said. “Things are fine. I appreciate your outsized concern.”

  “You be careful leaving a beautiful woman like that home alone,” Deuce said. “My buddy ­Wick . . . do y’all know Wick Bart? He started working a night shift a while back. Said his wife went crazy.” Deuce leaned in to whisper. “I mean, like sex crazy. Took to shaving her pubie hairs, changing things around, you know, in the bedroom, which Wick was initially excited about. But it turns out she’d been running around with another man those nights and he was just sort of getting the collateral benefits of her newfound joy de vivre, I guess you could call it.”

  Pete knew, of course, that Deuce was full of shit. He had heard the real story from Wick in Confession, and the truth was that he had been destroyed by his wife’s infidelity, which Pete knew was likely not sparked by the late shift at all, but by Wick’s impotence, which he’d been suffering from for y
ears. He’d long been concerned that this would make his wife wander, and so Wick’s story was not at its heart a funny anecdote to be shared at a bar, but rather a man’s recognition that his trainload of nightmares had finally pulled in. Such is the awful knowledge of priests.

  “Deuce,” Pete said. “I’m not sure how appropriate it is to discuss another man’s problems without him here to tell it himself.”

  “Understood, Father,” Deuce said. “I apologize. I’m just saying that one should look out for any sudden changes in a person.”

  At that point, all of the men looked over at Hank. Was he wearing spurs?

  “Thanks for the tip,” Hank said.

  “So,” Jack said. “I’m wondering. Have any of you guys tried that DNA machine? Deuce showed it to me over at the grocery today. Seems pretty exciting.”

  Douglas finished off his own whiskey and said, “If by ‘exciting’ you mean ridiculous, futile, impossible, and dumb.”

  “Don’t listen to Hubbard,” Deuce said. “He’s above all that. He already knows what he is. The luckiest man in the world, right? Some things you can’t change.”

  “Listen here,” Douglas said, but Pete put his hand on his ­shoulder.

  “I think we’re all pretty lucky, in the grand scheme of things,” Pete said, and looked over at Hank, who he realized, after saying this, was not lucky at all. He had suffered so much, he knew, losing a wife and son. So, Pete tried to backtrack. “I mean, in the really grand scheme of things. We’re not living in a basement being tortured by a psychopathic uncle is what I’m saying.”

  “I guess that’s true,” Hank said.

  “We ain’t living in Iraq or Kuwait or any of those places, either,” Deuce said. “We ain’t eating rice in a river of our own sewage.”

  “My God, Deuce,” Douglas said. “That is an incredibly ignorant thing to say.”

  “Anyway,” Pete said. “My point was that I’m lucky to have a job that starts in about eight hours. I should hit the road.”

  “We’re leaving, too,” Deuce said. “A lot to do. Opportunities everywhere for ignorant folks like me, Hubbard. Not much time to capitalize. I’ll see you at the meeting tomorrow, Hank.”

  Hank tipped his hat as the men walked out, Deuce putting his arm around Jack’s shoulder and throwing his beer bottle in the trash can by the door.

  “If I wasn’t in the presence of a priest,” Douglas said, “I might have a few choice words.”

  “Well,” Cauley said from behind the bar, “you are in the presence of a priest, and you are also in the presence of a woman who’s ready to go home. It’s closing time, boys.” She set three ­odd-­looking shots down on the bar. “I’ve called Tipsy to come and get you. Here’s one more for the road.”

  With Deuce gone, the men tried to shake off their newly soured moods, to get back to better times that now seemed long ago. “Well, my trusty horses,” Hank said. “What do you neigh? I’m game for one more if you are.”

  The men smiled and reached out for their shots and Douglas asked, “What is this, Cauley?”

  “It’s called a three wise men,” she said. “It’s best not to think too much about it.”

  And so the men clinked one more time and took it down, all with varying degrees of success. After they each managed to swallow, to shake their heads and cough a bit, Hank said, “I’ve been meaning to ask, do either of you guys know where I can get my hands on a player piano?”

  Then the door to the bar swung open and Tipsy Rodrigue walked in. “Gentlemen,” he said. “Your chariot awaits.”

  The men stumbled out of the bar and into Tipsy’s Town Car before Douglas had to get back out and fetch the trombone and bag of groceries from Cherilyn’s Outback. “Sorry,” he said, and sat in the back seat of the car, where he cradled them both.

  “Hey,” Tipsy said. “Have y’all heard that Britney Spears is opening up a new restaurant?”

  “Hey,” Hank said. “Have you heard the one about us?”

  The mention of this sent the men back to their smiling, back to feeling comfortable in their heightened spirits, and Pete said, “Hubbard, is it true that you’re some sort of expert whistler? That’s the rumor at work.”

  “Is it true?” Tipsy said. “Have you never heard this man whistle? My goodness, it’s like a songbird from heaven.”

  “Give us something, then, pardner,” Hank said. “Give us something for that old dusty trail.”

  Although it wasn’t in Douglas’s typical nature to perform like this, he figured he had more energy left to whistle than he did to withstand the endless nagging he’d get if he refused. So, he leaned back, pulled his trombone case tight to his chest, and whistled the opening bars of The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly, which all the men recognized. But Douglas didn’t stop there. He went on to whistle the entire theme song, composed, he knew, by Ennio Morricone, full of the little trills and bass tones that required him to hit a flurry of different notes, to do a number of things he loved, and the men didn’t say a word to interrupt him.

  Instead, they each fell quietly into their probable futures. Douglas wondered what Cherilyn was doing right now, if she was already asleep, what he would say to her about why he hadn’t come home, and about what he had learned from his own disastrous DNAMIX reading, what he had learned about hers. Could he tell her? If so, how? Hank thought about his sons, both the physically missing and the emotionally missing, and how he needed to make some repairs. He needed to get his hands dirty, he felt, mending the mess of his life that seemed to grow more solitary each year. He could do this, couldn’t he? He had to. For his part, Pete looked out of the window and thought of nothing much at all besides the beauty of Douglas’s song, his tremendous gift. And he would have been happy to stay in this state of appreciation forever but then saw what looked like a person climbing out of a window of one of the houses they passed. They moved like a thief in the night, this person, like one of his favorite verses from Thessalonians, which says, “The day of the Lord will come like a thief in the night,” and Pete didn’t say a word to the other men in the car about it. He knew he should. Of course, he knew he should.

  But he did not because he knew it was Trina.

  14

  Things That Go Bomp in the Night

  Is it true that she was first dreaming of elephants?

  Cherilyn believed it to be, and upon that dream canvas stood on an endless road of dust. Not Deerfield, not gravel, not oyster shell, not even dirt, but a soft talcum dust the color of great pyramids. She was in a place she had never been to and could not name because it had no name and no purpose but for her alone to stand tall and straight and covered in red silk and gold thread, wrapped in a dress so long and fluttering that it behaved more of the wind than in it. Stretches of time since she’d stood there, she felt, with nothing else in sight, and it was undeniably her. Between the flitting red scarf, below the jewels on the woman’s forehead, she saw her own unmistakable eyes. Not the green she saw each morning in the mirror but a green strong enough to pull life from that dust, strong enough also to pull her own consciousness inside of that dream body where she became more than just a voyeur to this vision but now lived inside of that person, as well. She was on the outside and the inside of this dream, both the director and the actor, and then heard the thunderous noise from behind as a caravan approached. She felt the ground shake, the bells on her ankles sending song to her ear as two rows of elephants flanked past her now, their wide backs adorned in blue blankets and diamonds, their faces masked as if in military uniform. She reached out her hands to gently tip their thick skins with her fingers and each animal raised its strong trunk to bellow gratefully at her touch. Such a strange and joyful noise, and yet Cherilyn remained placid and calm in this dream because she knew it was for her that they sang. The sound of their calls like new music, the upward turn of their tusks like swords, their progress upon the ground like earthquakes. L
ouder now, as if to announce her, as if to tell the world of her majesty and march beyond sight into the unknown plains of her life to foretell the story of what was to come. The constant blaring of their horns. Or, no.

  The blaring of one horn.

  To tell her that Douglas was home.

  Cherilyn opened her eyes and looked at the clock. It was after midnight and yet she had just fallen into that deepest part of sleep that knows you. Why had she stayed up so late? She could say that it was worrying about Douglas, and this may have been partially true (out drinking on a school night?), but was that really what kept her up? In the living room, she heard it again. The sudden blast of his trombone. The semblance of one note and then another with no obvious relation between them. And then one final noise that had an unfortunate and deflating sound, as if Douglas had lost his breath in the middle of blowing it. She sat up in bed. She heard the strange shuffle of uneven footsteps. Then, a crash.

  She heard Douglas say, “Welp.”

  Cherilyn felt no need to run.

  She understood her husband well enough to know that if he was blowing a trombone in the house at midnight, he was extremely, as her mother would say, tooted, and had likely just lost his balance. Douglas didn’t get this way often. He might sip a little whiskey before dinner, split a bottle of wine with her on the couch, but they’d never laid down any sort of expectations about each other’s drinking those last twenty years because there had been no need to. And what a luxury that was. Douglas stayed in his lane throughout all of life’s moods and that was a comfortable thing about him. Plus, they both used to cut pretty loose in their day, so who was she to judge? She still smoked cigarettes, after all, didn’t she? She was not perfect. And so Cherilyn didn’t worry in the way that so many spouses must worry.

  Douglas was unfailingly fun in these moods, Cherilyn thought, and she pitied her friends whose spouses turned cruel or depressing when drunk. What kind of life would that be? No, she and Douglas had struck a good balance with their partying, for which Cherilyn was grateful, because anytime Deerfield offered up an open bar they could get their money’s worth without guilt. And it was no wonder she liked this version of him. Douglas merely morphed into an exaggerated version of himself when they drank. And that was some advice she could give a young person, she thought. If you’re going to marry a man, make sure you like the drunk version of him, too. You’re marrying more than one person, she’d say. That’s what some couples don’t realize. When you get married, you’re marrying a thousand people.