Every Happy Memory (PT.2)

Was going to wait a week, but I think these would be better rolled out in a quicker clip. So here is PT.2 of Every Happy Memory. Thanks everyone.

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Everett

Ranch Road 12 meandered through the Texas Hill Country like a river. Snaking through limestone cliffs, dry river beds, green valleys, and sleepy little tourist towns where yankees came down in the winter in droves to sun bathe and purchase welcome mats that said “Yall Come Back Now!” Snowbirds. That’s what we always called ‘em. Rich, upwardly mobile types from places where all the cold and money made them needy, greedy, and easy to aggravate. But they spent their money the same every season. Tootsie’s Ice House was just off Ranch Road 12, tucked between the main road and a maximum two-horse town called Los Lobos. Before she passed, Tootsie used to regale me with stories about how Hell’s Angels shot callers used to call the place their “homebase in the Lone Star State.” She’d say it through a grimy smile blackened by years of meth abuse. “These boys raise Hell all the way from Barstow and they’re lookin for a cold beer, a hot meal, and a loose woman” she’d say before throwing back a handful of pain pills. “3 of my favorite things, Ev. 3 of my favorite things.” I wouldn’t call Tootsie a lesbian, in the same way you wouldn’t call a rat a pet, even though it lives in your house and eats your food. They were similar in certain respects. Lesbians and Tootsie. But also vastly different. 

I left home young and found Tootsie’s by sheer cosmic luck. College was out of the question, the military wasn’t too keen on takin’ kids who were already in the system by then. So I guess sensing a bit of desperation and a desire to earn enough money for beer and cheeseburgers, Tootsie gave me my first job in 1992. I was 17 years old. Tootsie overdosed in 98. She had no husband, no kids, no surviving kin, save for a potbelly pig named Hubert. Hubert, being unable to own and operate property on a count of being a pig and all, was skipped over in the will and Tootsie’s was left to me. In all its glory. Piss troughs, blood stains, and all. I didn’t quite expect, need, nor want it. But, owning a dive bar in the middle of nowhere Texas that is the watering hole of choice for men and women of ill repute had its perks. Especially at that time in my young life. When the new millennia hit I was 25 years old running a wood-paneled bar with no debt, no formal education, and only 2 expunged felonies. 

I wasn’t sure what I expected when I fell asleep and left Lurch and the Fat One in that shock white room. I guess I thought maybe there would be more of a sensation or feeling. But honestly it felt like spacing out the whole way to work but still catching your exit at the last moment. One second I was with Lurch and Fat Boy, 99 years old and dying in real life. The next I was 27 years old, the prime of my life, polishing glasses in Tootsies. The hot water running over a deep cut in the palm of my hand didn’t feel real. It was real. My joints didn’t hurt, my vision was perfect, I could feel in every ounce of me the taken-for-granted pleasure of youth. To just be and not be in pain. I was there.

 I looked over at the Miller Genuine Draft clock that hung above the hazy pink “Tootsie’s” sign that was haphazardly duct taped to the wood panel wall and sure enough, clear as crystal. 12:38 AM, Sunday September 8th, 2002. “Ooooh Ev, that looks bad. Real bad. The hell happened, boy?” Looking up I saw the biggest, meanest, burliest old timer in the bar. John Pulido. Pulley, as we called him. He wore a red bandana on his head, tied back above his long salt and pepper gray hair, which was woven into a thick pony tail that fell to the middle of his back.  His beard, speckled with food and a bit of spittle, hung down to the middle of his stomach, which was only slightly covering the grip of a nickel plated colt 45 he carried with him everywhere he went. “Ahh hell, Pulley. Some cocksucker wasn’t too fond of the way I asked him kindly to stop harassing Lefty, especially with her workin so damn hard to pour him a beer and all. So we had a bit of a disagreement. He made his point with a knife. I made mine with Lassie, we went our separate ways.” Lassie. The word fell out of my mouth but the memory of it came after. Lassie was a thick wooden club with a brass knob at the end of it given to me by a Chosen Few Sargent in Arms named Tricky Mick. “An Irish man named Mick. Aint that somethin.” It was his favorite quip, sometimes the only thing he’d say before getting hauled off either by his boys or the cops. I had held on to some dope for him while the feds were sniffing around the club house, and in return he gave me 5 grand and Lassie. “My da used it on many an Ulster. May it keep ya outta trouble, or get ya into it.” He said before stumbling out the door one Saturday night. I always thought that giving away something so sentimental probably meant he had used it fairly recently to do something incredibly reasonable to a man’s head. “We got this girl rollin’ with us, she’s a nurse. She’s been stitching up our guys for a few months now. Maybe she can take a look at your paw, boy.” I wrapped a bar rag around my hand and twisted it tight with a bar key. “A woman rolling with the Moccasins? Look at you, Pulley. Breakin’ the mold. That’s mighty progressive of ya.” Pulley reached across the bar and lightly punched my shoulder. Well. Light to Pulley. I thought for sure it had dislocated. “Blow it out your ass, Ev. Come on. Let me introduce ya.” Pulley threw a rolled up twenty on the bar and heaved himself off the bronze railing. “Left, you got the bar for a sec?” I asked. Left got hired on around the same time as me, and came with the bar. A rather rowdy fight with her ex-husband resulted in her losing her left eye, and him losing, well, his life. The court ruled in Left’s favor. “Take your time, Ev. Ain’t nobody in here but Pulley anyway.” She said in between puffs of her Virginia Slim. “Thanks, Left.” I followed Pulley out into the warm September air. This part of  Southwest Texas doesn’t get cold until mid-december. Summer was still very much in full swing. The locusts were out bad, they made a low-hum that created a kind of noise floor with the buzzing of their legs. Almost like a set of cheap speakers. Pulley and I walked to a row of Harleys parked in a semi circle. Two younger men were fighting in the dirt, and sitting on an old C10 truck bed was a redhead wearing an old Dolly parton cut off tee shirt. She had a prospects vest on, and a tattoo of a snake that went from her upper right shoulder all the way down to the palm of her right hand. The pale yellow light of the only street lamp on the corner caught her eyes, a deep hazel. I forgot how love feels when you were young, too. “Ella this is Everett. Everett got in to it with some asshole and the guy cut him pretty good. You think you can stitch him up?” Ella hopped off the truck and flicked a cigarette into the gravel behind her, the orange ember faded into the darkness as her head whipped back around to meet my gaze. “You get stabbed often, Everett?” she asked, exhaling the last bit of smoke from her cigarette. “You can call me Ev. And, well, I guess about once or twice a year. If you can call that often.” She smiled. I thought to myself well Ev, you can go ahead and bleed out right here. That’d be just fine. “Come on over, then. Let’s get you looked at.” She walked to the corner of the truck led me to the passenger side. She popped the passenger door open and dug around in the glove box for a moment before pulling out an old wonder woman tin lunch box. “She had the lasso. I always wanted to be just like her. Save people, things like that. Silly things, you know.” The lunch box opened with a snap, and inside it was a roll of gauze, 4 rolls of nylon thread, sewing needles, bandages, a snub nose .38. “Gimme the hand. I am guessing you would be the one that wrapped this dirty bar towel around a fresh stab wound?” She unwound the rag and, before I could protest, snapped open a bottle of rubbing alcohol and poured it directly onto dried blood forming along the edges of the gash. “Believe it or not, that’s the cleanest rag in the whole bar. Fuck! God damn, woman.” I yanked my hand away instinctively, but she grabbed it before I could pull it away completely and blew softly on the wound in my hand. “Oh hush. All you boys are all the same. You beat the snot out of each other and when it comes time to get patched up you’re soft like butter.” She was weaving a clear thread along the length of the gash in my hand. Every time the needle went in I thought I was gonna pass out. “Lurch wasn’t kidding.” Ella looked up at me, confused. “Who’s Lurch? He your boyfriend?” She cracked a small smile. I had thought out loud, but I was honestly still in shock at how all this worked. “Old buddy who was an army medic. He said sewing up a wound aint much different than sewing up an old pair of slacks.” Ella laughed again before tying off the end of the thread and burning it closed with a pink bic lighter. “Bit different, but not too much. You’re all done, Ev. Now try not to get cut but just once a year, these boys keep me busy. Especially this one.” Pulley had come out from behind the shed where we keep all the empty kegs. “Had to piss like a race horse. She got you taken care of, Ev?” He stumbled past me and sat up on the truck bed next to Ella,  where he wrapped one of his arms around her waist. “She’s real nice to have around, ain’t that right baby.” He lightly kissed her on her head, I felt my heart sink in my chest. Couldn’t feel the hand anymore. “That’s right, darlin.” She leaned in to Pulley and kissed him back. White hot rage. The kind usually reserved for crimes of passion.

 I missed feeling so much. Even the bad ones. When you’re old, even bad news ain’t so bad. Desensitized. Dead friends, dead family. Tragedy is part of life. It is the bulk of it. When you’re young, every slight is a cruel betrayal. Every insult is a cause to fight. Every love is the first. “Well. I uh. Thank you, Ella. I gotta get back to Left, Pulley. Yall holdin the fort down out here?” My throat had gone dry. The lump in my throat made it hard to breathe. “Yeah, we’ll be right in Ev. Have a couple Coors waiting for me and the better half?” Pulley said, hopping off the back of the truck to light a cigarette. “Of course, Pulley. Of Course. No Problem”