Part 14 (1/2)
”Huh?” asked the bartender.
”I'm avoiding my truth-facing session.”
”You want another shot?”
”Of course.”
The three-piece band played ”Jambalaya,” ”Stand By Your Man,” and ”Big b.a.l.l.s in Cow Town.” Some oil field roughneck types shot pool while some cowboy types tromped a circle around the dance floor. The few girls present seemed to prefer cowboys to oil-who can blame them? The farmers nursed beer and looked sullen. Who can blame them, either?
I did my own drink nursing, determined not to waste myself before the appropriate time. Only amateurs throw up before last call. I wondered why they call making a drink last ”nursing.” I can see the baby-on-Mama's-t.i.t a.n.a.logy with alcohol, but in my experience babies are hungry. Auburn sucked it down fast as I put it out, as if I might be yanked away at any moment. What little I nursed Shannon she was slower, somewhat like a bar nurser. Sometimes she fell asleep at the wheel.
On ”Across the Alley from the Alamo” the energy level of Pepi's picked up a couple of notches. It was a noise deal-the dancers shuffled louder, the pool player broke rack with more oomph. Took a moment to figure out what was waking people up, until I heard the harmonica riff twisting in and out of the guitar lead. Shane sat at the base of the band platform, puffing his rosy cheeks into a hand-held microphone. He had two harps cradled in his left hand, different keys, I guess, and a jailbait cowgirl on his lap. Shane, the jailbait, and all three band members seemed especially pleased with themselves.
The bartender paused in his lemon cutting. ”The old guy can really blow,” he said.
”That's one way to put it.”
”I heard he lost his legs riding Tornado.”
Anyone even vaguely connected to rodeo in the sixties knows who Tornado was-the Babe Ruth of Brahma bulls. The most famous cow athlete of all time. Cowboys still take their hats off at the mention of his name, which is a bigger deal than you think. Those old cowboys never take off their hats except for showers and sometimes s.e.x. A hard-core code follower even tips his over his face to sleep.
To say Shane rode Tornado was akin to saying I danced the two-step with Hitler.
”You really believe that?” I asked the bartender.
”If Mr. Rinesfoos says he rode Tornado, you better know he rode Tornado.”
”Mr. Rinesfoos?”
After his break, Shane spun circles on his left wheel while the cowgirl in his lap squealed and did nose-to-nose b.u.mps. I'd wager tomorrow's bottle she'd never been on a horse. As he flashed in the circle, Shane pinched b.u.t.ts all around. The fluttery girls took this as an honor bestowed on them by the life of the party. The boyfriends grinned like a bunch of good sports. Crippled or not, if the pervert ever touched my a.s.s, I'd wheel him through the jukebox.
It's weird when the whole world takes delight in some guy you think is a dirtbag. Everybody's-wrong-but-me doesn't wash when other people make the claim, but I'm different.
Shane played ”Setting the Woods on Fire” with the band, then did a solo version of ”I'm So Lonesome I Could Cry” that was pretty moving in spite of coming from a man with three chins. I was raised country but broke loose in college when I discovered Jimi Hendrix, Joni Mitch.e.l.l, and the Mothers of Invention. Those frat boys I went out with were big on Bread. Psychedelic wonder rockette as I became, some elemental deal from my upbringing left me susceptible to Hank and Patsy. I tried to outgrow sentimentality and failed.
Just as Shane had me dewy-eyed, he spoiled the mood by leading the crowd into a round of ”Cotton Eye Joe.” That's the one where everybody drapes arms around each other's shoulders and hops up and down, and at the proper moment they all shout Bulls.h.i.+t. I hate ”Cotton Eye Joe” above all things rural in America.
The jailbait in his lap raised both hands high when she shouted Bulls.h.i.+t, practically sticking her t.i.ts up Shane's nose. Some guy with sideburns down to his armpits grabbed my hand and tried to drag me onto the dance floor. He wouldn't take ”No” for an answer, so I said, ”No, c.o.c.ksucker.” He left me alone after that. Drugstore cowboys hate it when you call them c.o.c.ksucker.
Through the noise and cigarette smoke, I saw Lloyd working his way down the bar, showing the picture to each hunched-over nurser. He had on a clean pair of overalls that looked exactly, down to the soft right thigh, like the pair he'd had on since we met. His hair was Vitalis slicked, with the part running straight as a knife edge. Gave him that untrustworthy look of a door-to-door Bible salesman.
When he came to me, I said, ”I've been thinking this over seriously and I've decided that I'm not, technically speaking, an alcoholic.”
He had the photograph in his left hand and a bottle of Coca-Cola in his right. ”I'm happy to hear that,” he said without a smile. ”What made you decide?”
I set down my drink and held up three fingers. ”First, it doesn't run in the family. Second, when I wake up with a hangover, I never crave a drink right off the bat. None of that hair-of-the-dog jive for me.”
Lloyd looked me in the face. I'll never quite get past those eyes of his. ”And third?”
”Third, I never black out. Real alcoholics black out entire days, and I remember every move until the moment I fall asleep.” Third was partially a lie. Only partially since I never lost an entire day, but there were times I went from A to B with no idea what happened in between.
Sipping drinks, I'd come up with a fourth reason that I didn't tell Lloyd because it's an old bar joke: How do hospitals define alcoholic? Anyone with insurance. I didn't fit that description, either.
Lloyd kept staring at my face; made me nervous. ”I'm glad you discovered you're not an alcoholic,” he said.
”So am I.”
”Answer me one question. This afternoon, if I'd told you I had hidden a bottle of whiskey somewhere in Moby d.i.c.k, what would you have done?”
”Did you really?”
”Reality is not the point, Maurey.”
I stared at my drink in search of answers. I had none, then I had six, all of them lies, then I had none again.
Lloyd held his hand out toward the tattooed truck driver on my left. ”Have you seen this woman? Her name is Sharon Carbonneau, but she may be calling herself Sharon Gunderson.”
From there the evening took on a fuzz mode. Cowboys danced as roughnecks chain-smoked around the pool tables and farmers sulked. Shane sang a few songs in a voice like a cartoon frog. The women ate it up. Lloyd finished the hopeless quest number and sat alone at a table drinking c.o.kes. I had another Yukon Jack and ate a pickled egg.
I thought about something Sam Callahan said in one of his short stories: ”You can't be paranoid unless you once trusted; you can't be cynical unless you once believed; you can't hate unless you once loved.” I wasn't paranoid, cynical, or hateful, so I must not have ever done those other things, either. I missed out.
A narrow-hipped boy in a Rainbow Radiators windbreaker asked me to dance on ”Walking After Midnight,” and I did. The boy had lovely fingers and sweet breath. His eyes reminded me of Auburn. At the end of the song I allowed myself two seconds of resting my cheek on his shoulder, but when he asked for a second dance, I said, ”No thanks. Two in a row is more of a commitment than I can handle.” The boy looked at me funny, which was to be expected, and went away.
I felt flat. I didn't want to drink more, didn't want to stop drinking, wanted to find the motel room and take a shower, didn't want to leave the anonymity of the crowd. I wanted to think about the children I'd had and lost and the men I never had but lost anyway, only I was too tired to sink. Even depression takes energy.
What I really wanted was to be young again-before s.e.x, before whiskey, before anyone I loved died.
”Where's Shane?” Lloyd asked.
With effort, I raised my eyes from staring at the dew ring my gla.s.s left on the bar. ”Hustling jailbait on the dance floor.”
”No, he's not.”
I looked over toward the band. Three or four couples had their eyes clenched in ecstasy or desperation or something as they slow-dance-hugged across the floor, but none of them were sitting down. ”People disappear from the bar, they're either outside drinking, outside doping, or gone somewhere to get laid.”
”He's not drinking.”
”Can you be sure?”
Lloyd rubbed his leg. ”I'm sure.”
”That leaves doping and nailing.”