Honky Tonk Christmas (3 page)

“How did you know about Iraq?” she asked cautiously.

“You tried to convince me that if you could drive an Army jeep to the barracks from something or somewhere named Shalma that you could drive your pink Bug to the hotel,” he said.

“That all I said?”

“There was something about sand and helicopters, then you passed out. What did you do over there?” Holt asked.

“My job,” she said. “Thanks for taking care of me. I appreciate it. I’m going to take a shower and go home.”

“Sure?” he asked.

“My head is throbbing and my stomach isn’t too sure about whether it’s going to punish me some more, but I’m sober. Still being drunk wouldn’t hurt this bad.” She tried to smile.

“Okay, then. I’ll see you tomorrow at the building site. Be careful.” He waved at the door.

She nodded and threw herself back on the bed.

Holt had seen her in her white underpants and heard her throw up. Nothing the day could bring could top that. She waited five minutes and went back to the bathroom. She stood under the warm shower for twenty minutes, shampooed her hair twice, and could still smell smoke so she washed it a third time.

A bass drum still pounded out a thump-thump-thump when she threw back the shower curtain, wrapped a towel around her body, and a separate one around her head. Using the back of her hand, she wiped a broad streak across the steamed up mirror and checked her reflection. Dark circles rimmed her green eyes. Every freckle popped out across her nose. Kinky red hair peeked out from under the towel.

She shut her eyes to the wreck in the mirror and got dressed. The last bar where she and her friends had landed was located close to her hotel. She could easily carry her tote bag and walk that far. She didn’t need to waste money on a taxi.

The free continental breakfast offered doughnuts, cereal, milk, juice, and bagels. The thought of any kind of food set off her gag reflex so she bypassed all of it and checked out. The girls had said they needed to get together once a year from now on. Sharlene thought once every five years would be enough if she was going to feel like this the next morning. Hells bells, if she was going suffer like this she didn’t care if she never saw any of them again.

The noise of the heavy equipment doing road construction between the hotel and the bar ground into her ears like artillery fire in the desert. Her cowboy boots on the sidewalk sounded like popping machine gun chatter and the bag on her shoulder weighed twice as much as her pack in Iraq. The July sun was doing its best to fry her brain and sweat beaded up between her nose and upper lip. It wasn’t anything compared to the Iraqi desert, but heat and hangovers did not make good partners no matter what country they met up in.

“If I ever get back to Mingus I’m never drinking again. I may not even have my nightly after-hours beer,” she said.

Her hot pink Volkswagen Bug looked lonely in the bar parking lot. The night before she’d had to circle the lot a dozen times before she finally found a place to squeeze the little car into, but that morning it was the only car in the place. She opened the door, slung her bag into the passenger’s seat, started the engine, and turned on the air conditioning.

She bought a cup of coffee from a McDonald’s drive-by window before she got out on Interstate 20 and headed west toward Mingus. It was only forty miles from Weatherford to Mingus, but the way her head ached it could have easily been five hundred miles. She hadn’t gotten relief when she parked her car in the garage behind the Honky Tonk. She carried her bags out across the grass to the door of her apartment located right behind the beer joint. She’d thought she’d move into the house in town that she’d inherited right along with the Tonk, but it was too convenient to walk through a door back behind the actual bar and be home at two o’clock in the morning.

Ruby Lee had built the Honky Tonk back in the sixties and nothing had changed since then. The outside was rough barn wood with a three-level façade and a wide front porch. Inside a long room served as poolroom, dance floor, and bar with a few tables scattered here and there.

Ruby had lived in the apartment in those first years before she bought a house in town. She died and left the Honky Tonk to Daisy, her bartender and surrogate daughter. Less than a year later, Daisy fell in love and married Jarod. She gave the joint to her cousin, Cathy. Then Cathy and Travis got married and she gave the bar to Larissa. Now Larissa was married to Hank and she’d passed the bar and her house down to Sharlene.

By the time Sharlene inherited the Tonk, it had a reputation for having a magical charm that created happy ever after marriages. Women flocked to it with a gleam in their eyes that reflected three-tiered cakes and big white wedding gowns. Sharlene could have made a fortune if she’d put a little statue on the bar and charged five bucks to rub the place where its ceramic heart was located.

In the beginning Sharlene had come to the Tonk looking for a story that would get her a better office and a promotion at the
Dallas Morning News
. She’d offered to shadow Larissa looking for that human interest story and they’d become friends. Before long she was living in the apartment back behind the Honky Tonk and helping Larissa out at the bar on weekends. When she got the pink slip from the newspaper, Larissa hired her full time. Going to Mingus for a story was the best thing she’d done since she came home from Iraq. She’d found a home, written and sold a book instead, and wound up owning the beer joint.

She forgot about the Honky Tonk charm when she slung open the door and yelled for Waylon. Usually he came running from the bedroom the minute he heard her but that day he must have been in a pout because she’d left him alone. She checked the bed to find the pillows mashed down where he’d taken a nap. He wasn’t under the table or behind the sofa.

“Waylon, where are you?” she sing-songed as she held her head. “Damn cat, anyway. I’ve got a hangover and he’s in a snit. I’d trade places with him. He can have a headache and I’ll hide and pout.”

She found him curled up behind the potty. When she called him he ignored her. When she picked him up he wasn’t breathing.

“Waylon!” She sat down in the bathroom floor and wept, her tears dripping off her jaw and onto the dead cat’s fur.

***

She held him until she got the hiccups, then laid him gently on the bed and went to find something appropriate to bury him in. She found a boot box and lined it with his favorite fluffy blanket, laid him inside, and taped the lid down with duct tape. She carried the box out to her car and gently laid it on the passenger’s seat right beside her.

“It’s a hell of a hearse but it’s all I’ve got, old boy. At least you’ll have a proper burial,” she said. She wiped away tears several times during the two-mile drive from the place of death to the house where she intended to lay Waylon to rest at the edge of the garden plot.

She pulled up in the driveway and removed the boot box casket from the car and carried it to the garden. Two miniature bicycles were propped against the front of the shed and toys were lined up on the back porch.

“Crap! I forgot they were moving in over the weekend,” she said.

She knocked on the back door to let Holt know she was there and exhaled loudly when no one answered. She dang sure wasn’t ready to face him again that day so she would get her cat buried, leave, and no one would be the wiser.

The house had been the talk of Mingus when Larissa had painted it turquoise with hot pink trim and yellow porch posts. Then when she painted two rocking chairs bright orange and set them on the porch everyone in town had a hearty laugh at the sight. It looked like a massive hurricane had picked it up in the Bahamas and set it smack down on the edge of Mingus, Texas, without damaging a single board.

She found the shovel in the tool shed, dug a good deep hole in the softened dirt, and laid Waylon in it. After she filled the dirt back in, she found a couple of boards and some wire in the shed. She made a small cross to set on his grave and painted his name on the crossbar in bright yellow paint.

She tapped it into the ground with the end of the shovel and began her eulogy, “Waylon, you were a good friend. I will miss you. You’ve listened to so many stories and helped me talk my way out of many problems.”

She wiped sweat from her brow and fanned her face with the black straw hat that she only wore when she mowed the yard. She was gearing up to preach a sermon when she felt a presence behind her. Not another soul in Mingus even knew Waylon. Not even Merle, Luther, or Tessa. He’d been a very private cat and hid under the bed when anyone came inside the apartment. So who in the world would be coming around to his graveside services?

She heard the doors of the truck slamming before she realized it had driven up in the driveway. When she turned around, Holt stood there with a kid hanging on each of his long legs.

“Waylon died,” she said flatly.

A little boy poked his head out from behind the man’s leg. “I’m not dead. I’m right here. Tell her I’m not dead. Don’t let her cover me up with dirt like they did Momma. I’m scared, Uncle Holt.”

She dropped down on one knee to be at the little boy’s eye level. “I’m sorry. Is your name Waylon too? My cat was Waylon and he died.”

A girl about the same age with the same brown hair and big brown eyes walked past both man and boy right up to Sharlene. “Ain’t no need to be scared, Waylon. I ain’t lettin’ her put you in the ground like they did Momma.” She looked at Sharlene. “Waylon ain’t dead, so why are you havin’ a fun’ral? And what’s your name and why are you havin’ a fun’ral in a yard? You’re ’posed to have them things in one of them places what has gots lots of other dead people in it.”

Sharlene touched her black cowboy hat and realized what a crazy picture she’d presented in her hot pink boots, a denim mini-skirt, and a bright yellow tank top. “I’m Sharlene Waverly. Your dad is going to work for me.”

Holt held up a finger and both kids hushed. “We just got back from Palo Pinto where the kids stayed last night. We’re on our way to Stephenville to buy groceries. We’ll let you get on with burying your cat.”

Sharlene slowly removed her hat and nodded.

Holt stopped on his way to the truck. “I wanted to measure one more thing. All right if I stop by the bar?”

“It’s locked. I’m finished here. I’ll follow you,” she said.

“What about the kids?” he asked.

“They’re not twenty-one but then the bar doesn’t open until eight so I don’t think the cops will come and take them away,” she said.

“I don’t want to go away with the cops,” Waylon whined.

The little girl rolled her dark brown eyes and sighed. “They don’t take you away unless you are twenty-one. Damn, Waylon, we ain’t but six.”

“You better not say that word, Judd, or you’ll get in big trouble. We won’t get to watch television if you say bad words.”

Judd popped a fist on her hip. “He likes cartoons in the afternoon because he don’t like to be outside when it’s hot. He’s the smart one. I’m the mean one. Uncle Holt says we’re playing at your house. Can we watch television there?”

Sharlene laughed again. “There’s one in the bar and you can watch it all day if you want.”

“Then let’s go see this place where my Uncle Holt is going to work. I don’t have to drink beer, do I, Uncle Holt? I can still have juice packs and peanut butter sandwiches, can’t I?” Judd snarled her nose.

Waylon tilted his head up and looked down his nose at his sister. “I like beer.”

“When did you drink beer?” Holt asked him.

“Momma left some in a bottle and I tasted it. I liked it. Judd made an awful face and tried to puke when she tasted it so she ain’t so mean.”

She shook her fist at him. “Am too!”

“Mean girls could drink beer,” Waylon said.

“Okay, okay, that’s enough,” Holt said.

Sharlene touched Waylon’s tombstone one more time and walked away listening to Waylon, the boy, and Judd, the girl, argue.

She smiled for the first time that day.

“So who’s the new family moving into your hideous house?” Merle Avery set her custom made cue stick case on the bar and motioned for a pint of Coors.

Merle had seen customers come and go in the Tonk for more than forty years. She and her best friend, Ruby Lee, had blown into Palo Pinto County at the same time. Ruby built a beer joint and Merle got rich designing western shirts for women. She was past seventy, still shot a mean game of pool, could hold her liquor, and spoke her mind. She wore her dyed black hair ratted and piled high; her jeans snug, and her boots were always polished. She was part of the fixtures at the Honky Tonk and anyone who could whip her at the pool table had something to go home and brag about.

“That would be Holt Jackson and two kids,” Sharlene said.

“The carpenter, Holt Jackson? The one you’ve been trying to hire for weeks?”

Sharlene blushed. “Yes, that’s the one. He needed a house and no one was living in mine. Rent is his bonus if he finishes my job by his deadline. He says it’ll be a piece of cake with his crew. Tell the truth, I don’t care if he nails up every board single-handedly or if he gets a hundred people to work for him. I just want it finished in time for the holidays. Did you see all those pink strings and little yellow plastic flags? The flags mark the electric and telephone buried wires. The string is where the foundation will be.”

“I didn’t know he was married, much less had two kids,” Merle said.

Sharlene looked down the bar to make sure no one needed anything. “It’s his niece and nephew. I thought they were his kids when he mentioned them but they call him Uncle Holt. I don’t know the story behind why he’s got them. Don’t really matter to me, long as he gets the job done.”

“So who’s keeping them while he works?”

Sharlene wiped the already clean bar. “He is going to bring them with him. Today they stayed with some friends up in Palo Pinto because he and his crew had to get the equipment down here. Tomorrow they start coming here.”

Merle frowned. “He’s the best carpenter in the area and from what I hear he’s damn fine looking, but he’s not that good or that pretty.”

“What does that mean?” Sharlene asked.

“You will figure it out the first time two little kids wake you up before noon. There’s Tessa. Ask her what she thinks of that situation. And hot damn! There’s Amos. He’ll give me some competition tonight.” She picked up her beer and cue case and nodded at Amos. He headed in the same direction and they reached the pool table at the same time.

“Ask me what?” Tessa asked.

Larissa hired Tessa back when she owned the joint and Sharlene kept her on when she inherited the place. Tessa and Luther, the bouncer, lived together out on a ranch between Gordon and Mingus. Someday they’d get married and the Honky Tonk could add another notch on one of the porch posts out front.

Sharlene pulled clean Mason jars from the dishwasher as she explained. “Holt Jackson is willing to put the addition onto the Honky Tonk. He needed a house so I threw in my Bahamas Mama house for free rent if he will get the work done by mid-December. Only thing is he’s raising a niece and nephew and they will come to work with him.”

“So?” Tessa asked.

“Merle thinks that’s going to be a big problem.”

“I disagree with Merle. I used to go to work with my dad. He ran a bulldozer and dug farm ponds for folks. We played and he worked. Don’t remember it causing a problem,” Tessa said.

A customer called from the end of the bar, “Hey lady, could we get six pints of Bud and a pitcher of tequila sunrise down here?”

Sharlene looked at the tray where Tessa already had six pint jars and a pitcher of tequila sunrise waiting. Her eyebrows rose and she cocked her head to one side.

“How’d you know what they’d order?”

“I’m not blessed with ESP, believe me. I heard them talking when I was on that end of the bar a while ago. They couldn’t decide whether they wanted tequila sunrise or margaritas with their six beers. They’d made up their mind about the mixed drinks and were deciding whether they needed five or six beers. We’ll just get these filled and it’ll be ready.” Tessa laughed.

Tessa was taller than Sharlene’s five feet three inches standing five feet eight in her stocking feet. Add boots to that and it pushed her up another two inches. Her nose was a little too big for her face and she wore black-rimmed glasses that made her green eyes look enormous. She was slightly bottom heavy with wide hips and narrow shoulders. That evening she wore a sleeveless red western shirt with pearl snaps tucked into denim shorts.

“Love that shirt. Is it new?” Tessa drew up the beer and made change for a fifty dollar bill.

“Thank you. I bought it yesterday in Weatherford.” Sharlene’s shirt was white with pink rhinestone buttons and the traditional Texas Longhorn symbol in pink stones across the back yoke.

“So how did the big reunion day and night go?” Tessa asked.

“Fun. Hangover. Never again,” Sharlene said.

“Girl, something happened. You told me the first time I met you your biggest failing was that you talked too much. Now you tell me in four words about the reunion you’ve talked about for a month. I figured you’d be gushing and all I get is four measly words. What happened? So you got drunk. Did you dance on the bar or take a cowboy home to the hotel with you?”

Sharlene blushed.

“That proves it. ’Fess up. What’s his name? Please don’t tell me you did a one-nighter and don’t even know his name.”

“Got customers. Nothing to ’fess up about. Didn’t do a one-nighter and why does everyone think all roads lead to a member of the male species?” Sharlene hurried to the other end of the bar.

“Apple martini,” the middle-aged woman said. “Where’s all the good lookin’ cowboys? I was told they were six to every woman over here.”

Her light brown hair sported blond highlights straight from a bottle. She wore a slinky little gold sequined top that didn’t have enough material in it to sag a clothesline and tight fitting jeans. Her boots had sharp toes and walking heels and they didn’t come cheap. Eel seldom ever got put on a sales rack. The best makeup in the world couldn’t fill in the crow’s-feet or the lines around her mouth, but the dim lights in the Honky Tonk were kind. She might pass for forty after four beers. After six she could probably convince a cowboy that she was thirty-five. It would take a bottle of Jack Daniels Black Label to make her twenty-nine.

“Got to give ’em time to wash the dirt from behind their ears and brush the hay off their boots. This is hay season. They work until it’s all in. They’ll be along in a little while and you can take your pick. Got bikers until they get here.” Sharlene motioned toward a table of Amos’s friends. “And those Harleys they rode in on cost more than a custom ordered pickup truck, darlin’.”

The woman rolled her eyes dramatically. “Those old geezers couldn’t keep up with me.”

Sharlene frowned. Amos could out two-step and out drink any of the young cowboys. “Be careful. Those
old
fellows know more about how to treat a woman than the young bucks can learn in a decade.”

“Maybe I got a mind to teach the cowboy, rather than them teach me. Grab ’em young and raise them up to suit me.” The woman smiled.

Sharlene set the martini on the bar. “If you are interested in quantity rather than quality, then take a look at the door. Those three all look teachable.”

The woman wet her lips and stood up straight. “Yum, yum!”

Sharlene leaned on the bar and watched her paint an imaginary red laser dot on the prettiest blond cowboy’s belt buckle and head that way with an extra wiggle under her tight jeans and a smile on her face.

Toby Keith had a song on the new jukebox called “I Love This Bar” and it described the Honky Tonk along with every other beer joint in Texas and Oklahoma. He said that it had lookers, hookers, all nighters, preppies, and bikers among other things. Well, the lookers just walked through the doors and the pseudo-hooker was marking her territory. Bikers would be Amos and his crew of retired businessmen who rode up from Dallas a couple of times a week to drink and dance. Preppies came from all four directions to listen to what they called vintage country music and learn to two-step in their loafers with tassels and pleated dress slacks.

Since it was Monday night the new jukebox had been turned off and the old one took center stage. Three songs for a quarter just like in Ruby’s first days had become the Tonk’s trademark. When the last bar owner, Larissa Morley, came to Mingus, she’d been instrumental in putting the news out on the Internet that there was a quaint little beer joint just over the border separating Erath and Palo Pinto Counties. It didn’t take long for the word to spread and for Luther to have to count customers to make sure they stayed under the maximum quota for their space.

“Trip to Heaven” by Freddie Hart was playing when the woman stuck her fingers through the young cowboy’s belt loops and led him to the dance floor. Freddie sang about not needing wings to fly and said that he just took a trip to heaven and he didn’t even have to die. If that greenhorn got drunk enough to let her pick him up that night, he’d think he took a trip to heaven, got rejected at the door by St. Peter, and been sent straight to hell come morning time. He’d have a hellacious hangover and a nasty taste in his mouth when he figured out the sweet young thing he’d gotten lucky with was as old as his mother.

A blushing sting crawled up Sharlene’s neck. What did Holt Jackson think when she passed out cold as a mother-in-law’s kiss in his pickup truck? And if he hadn’t been a gentleman, where would their business relationship be? Lord what a tangled mess!

The music changed to a slow Alan Jackson song and the middle-aged woman kept her cowboy on the dance floor for another round.

“What are you smiling about?” Tessa asked.

“Chigger,” Sharlene said.

“Yep,” Tessa agreed.

“What’s a chigger?” a blonde woman asked from a bar stool right in front of them. She’d been nursing a beer for the past half hour and brushing off every man who approached her.

Tessa leaned on the bar and explained above the noise of the jukebox and the boot heels on the floor as the dancers did different versions of a fancy two-step. “A few years ago a woman used to come into the Tonk every weekend. Her nickname was Chigger.”

“Was she a hooker?” the girl whispered behind her hand.

Sharlene laughed. “No. Hookers charge and Chigger said sex was too much fun to make a dollar on. She said she could put an itch on a man just like a real chigger and only a weekend in bed with her could make the itch disappear.”

“What happened to her?” the woman asked.

“She got married, had a baby girl, and is expecting another baby by Christmas. She’s happy as a kitten with its nose in a bowl of warm milk. You’d never guess that she used to try to put the make on every good lookin’ cowboy who walked through the doors. The Honky Tonk charm worked for her,” Sharlene said.

“I heard about that charm. That’s why I’m here. I heard that more people have met and gotten married out of this beer joint in the last three years than on those Internet dating services,” she said. “I’m Loralou, by the way.”

Tessa motioned toward the packed dance floor with a bar rag. “Don’t see anything you like yet, Loralou?”

Loralou shook her head. “Chigger woman got the one I might have liked.”

Tessa patted her hand. “Don’t give up, darlin’. See that big old bouncer back there?”

Loralou glanced at Luther standing in front of the door with his arms across his chest. He was as big as the broad side of a barn. His hair was cropped short and his round face serious. She shivered. “Don’t tell me that he’s interested in me, please. Just looking at him makes me want to run home and hide under the bed.”

Tessa laughed. “He’s harmless unless some idiot starts something in here. What I was about to tell you is that he belongs to me. You get a Chigger itch for a big man, you just remember that you got to go through me to get at him. The rest of the peacocks in here are free territory. You don’t like the way that Chigger woman is trying to superglue her boobs to that cowboy, you go out there and tap her on the shoulder. She creates a problem, Luther sends her out the door and lets the next one in.”

Loralou shook her head. “I’m shy.”

“Shy don’t cut shit in the Tonk. We got charm, darlin’, but you got to make your own miracles. You like the cowboy then you make a move,” Tessa said.

“Hey, could I get a bucket of Coors, Tessa? Merle just whipped me and now I got to buy a round for all the boys,” Amos said.

A black leather do rag covered up his bald head with a gray rim showing around the edges. His black vest covered a T-shirt and black leather chaps covered the front and sides of his jeans. When he went to work the next morning in one of the biggest oil companies in Dallas, he’d be dressed in a three-piece custom made Italian suit and few people would believe that he rode Harleys a couple of days a week. He’d been Ruby Lee’s best friend and possibly her lover for many years.

Tessa crammed six longneck bottles of Coors into a galvanized milk bucket, shoveled two scoops of ice on top, and handed the bucket to Amos. Sharlene filled an order for three quarts of Miller. When they looked down the bar Loralou tossed back the rest of her drink, took a deep breath, and plowed right out into the middle of the dance floor. She tapped the Chigger woman on the shoulder and stood back.

The cowboy smiled at Loralou and wrapped his arms around her.

The Chigger woman headed for the bar. “Give me one of them longneck bottles of Coors. I need some beer on my breath.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Sharlene said.

“Damn young cowboys ain’t got a lick of sense. Don’t even appreciate the taste of a good apple martini. I was going to throw him back to the pack anyway before that Sunday school teacher tapped me on the shoulder. I wonder if her preacher knows where she is tonight. If he does, he’s on his knees at the altar praying for her wanton soul. I bet she don’t even know how to two-step,” she said.

“That so?” Sharlene asked. From where she was standing it looked like Loralou had a real good handle on two-stepping and the way the cowboy was looking at her, Sharlene wouldn’t be surprised if the Honky Tonk charm had just pierced her heart.