Because of the Chickens - [excerpt]

It was the usual dream.  It came to Ernie in his sleep, and it came in the waking hours, through drunken stupors and idle moments.  The only way to ward it off was to drink even more, until not a single thought could stand upright.

“Ernesto!  Ernesto! ¿Qué le has hecho a las piernas de su hermano?”

“No, no, Mama! Era los pollos! Los pollos!”

His mother’s hands came crashing down, flailing at the sides of his head, buffeting him from side to side without so much as a pause.  Sometimes, she would pause to consider what he said, or even stop entirely.

Always his hands rose in self-defense, trying to ward off the blows.  Always, his head pounded; always his ears burned and echoed leaden each time her palms had slammed into them enough.  Even when he managed to cup his ears in his protective palms, they burned and rumbled like they always had before.

Sometimes amidst these visions, he tumbled off the bed; sometimes he twisted himself tight in his blanket.  Often, according to those around him, he cried out and shrieked in pain.  Ernest wasn’t sure which of the two was most humiliating, but they were both humiliating enough.

Soaked in alcohol and cocooned inside its stupefaction, this time he managed very little flailing about, despite what his body told his arms was happening.  All he managed this time was to fling himself haphazardly off his barstool, his forehead banging on the bar as it slipped from his forearm where it had been resting.

He had fallen into a vast ocean of misery, rather onto a vast ocean of misery, and one whose surface was as hard as concrete and smelled of linoleum.

His companions, the brothers Jay and Dale, took two beats before it fully registered with them that he had fallen.

“Goddamn, Dale, what the hell did you do?”

“Shit, man, I didn’t do nothing – I just poked him on the arm a couple of times to see if he was passed out, and he starts flapping his arms.  Ernie, man!  Hey, Ernie!  You okay, buddy?  Wave or something, man!  Jay, check on him.  If I come off this stool, I’m going to end up right on top of him.”

Jay grunted and poured himself off his own barstool. As he reached the floor, his knees tried to buckle, like the weak and wobbly springs on his rusted F150.  He bent as low as he could go without doing a roll right across the top of Ernie, then nudged him uncertainly with his foot.  Each nudge drew a snort from Ernie.  “He’s okay, Dale.  He didn’t hit nothin’ on his way down, just folded up.  He’ll be sleeping this off for a while, man.”

It was like that a lot when he was away from home, and almost as often at home.  Whether he was passed out, asleep or merely idle, his mother still came into his head often, blaming him for letting his baby brother catch polio while they were out playing.  While she flailed at him, he screamed out that it was the chickens who had infected his brother.  

In the real past, but never in the dreams, his protests took root with his mother, and against her strong sense of their family economics, she killed all fifty of their chickens, then threw their carcasses back into the chicken house just before splashing gasoline over the walls and immolating the whole mess.  She’d heard the rumors, too, about birds spreading the polio, but when neighbors convinced her that the chicken was nonsense, she blamed only Ernesto, not only for the loss of the chickens, but for his brother's legs.

That was 1923, forty-nine years ago, though.  He had aged from twelve to sixty-one, and Jorge was now fifty-five himself, his crutches and braces closing in on fifty themselves. She'd never forgiven Ernie, not even as she slipped into the next life.  Ernie had lain on a lot of bar room floors in that time.  Sometimes she would ask, "Why do you drink so much, Ernesto? You're such a useless drunk." and he would give her medicine back. "Because of the chickens, mama. Because of the chickens."

The bartender was cursing the three of them, demanding that Dale and Jay get Ernie off the floor, then realized they were barely able to move themselves, much less a limp body.  Instead he walked around himself, without dispensing with the cursing.  He hooked an elbow around one of Ernie’s and dragged him to an empty table. He hoisted him into a chair, all the while trying to stay away from his mouth and avoid putting pressure on his belly. It doesn’t take many encounters with drunks for a man to know that if you don’t want to be vomited on, you stay away from the pressure point and the release valve.

When Ernie woke, it was in a cheap motel in El Reno, just west of Oklahoma City.  He rasped out both brothers’ names, but got no reply, so he slid down to the foot of the bed, bringing himself into a kneeling position on the floor.  He rested and tried both names again, wondering if he was with the brothers or if that was his imagination.  He squinted side to side and from the sheer size of the mess, was certain that he was there with someone, even if they didn’t happen to be there at the moment.

It took half his will to raise his head, knowing that the pounding in his skull would go off the chart, and the room’s wobble would make navigation nearly impossible.  He searched his pockets for a pack of cigarettes and found a single, a little bent but useable, in his back pocket.  Apparently, he didn’t do much sitting last night or it would’ve been crushed.  Grateful for the air burning its way into his lungs, he used the rest of his will to stand and totter toward the bathroom, grabbing handholds on the mattress, chair, dresser, and wall as he went.  He dropped to his knees in front of the toilet with such force he almost banged his head on the open lid.  No matter – his head couldn’t hurt more than it already did.

He shouted his guts into the toilet, flushing three times before he was done, then wiping his mouth on toilet paper.  He rested on the cold porcelain, then let himself slip slowly down to the equally cool and comforting tile floor.

Five hours later, the brothers stumbled through the door, having spent half the day recharging their alcohol reserves.  He had since moved back to the bed.  They thrust two paper bags in front of his nose – one with burgers in wax paper, and the other with two beers so cold their condensation had begun to soak through the bag, almost as much as the grease from the burgers.

It was a contest to see which he could consume faster – the burgers or the beers, and the beers won out by nearly three quarters of a burger.  In the end, though, the race was for nothing, because within five minutes he was back in the bathroom, releasing the entire meal back into the wild.

They sat in the room, nursing a beer or two over the next couple of hours, just trying to hold it together through the day.  Dialing for Dollars was on, but none of them had a clue what the movie was.  Shadows drifted from one wall, across the beds to the other. He could think of two ways to get money.  He could sell his glass eye, the one he earned in a bar fight in Amarillo, or he could call his little girls.

Ernie rolled to the bedside table and picked up the phone.  The dial tone rang in his ear and it felt like his brain was simmering. He got his finger in the hole on the dial, and dragged it all the way around to zero.  “Collect call, operator.  Ernie to 542-2174.  Huh?  Area code 303.  Pueblo.  Colorado, yeah.”  He waited in the background while the operator got the child who answered the phone to track down an adult who could accept the call.  The first person he handed the phone to spoke only Spanish.  The second person accepted the call, while confusing the operator in English.  The operator said “You have a collect call from Ernie, will you accept the charges?” and the person replied “Pino?”  “Ernie.”  “Yeah, Pino.”  Finally she gave up and decided that they were in agreement and let the call through.

“Hey, who’s there?’

“Everybody.”

“No, damn it, who is this?”

“Greg.”

“Is one of the girls there?”

“What girls?”

“What the hell girls do you think I mean?  Is Bobo there?”

The phone thudded and went quiet for a moment, then was picked up again.

“Hello?”

“Bobo.”

“Dad?”

“Hey, honey.  How is everything?  Kids okay?  You doing’ alright with Troy?”

“Uh, yeah, what’s up?”

“Nothin’ I was just calling in to see what’s going on there, niña.  Anyhow ...  Mira, I’m in Oklahoma and a little short …”

“Yeah …?”

“You know, car problems, and stuff, so can you help me out with maybe a hundred bucks, mi hija?”

“I … uhh … if it was next week … you know … lemme think.”  She sighed.  He waited.

He heard her tap out a cigarette from her pack and light it.  That’s what he needed now, another cigarette.  He muttered, “Hang on, niña …” as he set the phone down.  It took a moment of stumbling to find both cigarette and lighter, then return to the phone.

“… hey – dad – are you there?  Pino!?”

“I’m here, I’m here, I just had to get a cigarette.  So, what do you say?  Any of the other girls there?  Where’s Lucy this time of day?”

He heard her blowing smoke out loudly, sighing as she did so, “Yeah, I can do seventy-five.  I need to hold onto something until I get paid next week.  Where do I ~”

“Thanks, baby, I’ll pay you back when I get home.”

“I know, yeah.  So where do I send it?”  Of course he wouldn’t pay her back.  He’d bring her some beer and fill up her car next time he used it, or maybe drop by with twenty bucks in groceries and call it even, like always.  “Why shouldn’t she help out, anyway?” he thought.  “I’m her goddamn father. Bible says she should honor me.”

“Hang on, hija.”  He put the phone down again and grabbed the phone book out of the nightstand, about as big as a TV Guide, but twice as thick.  He found the Western Union, which was in the Piggly Wiggly store about three blocks over.

“So when do you … uhh …”

“About an hour, pop.  Listen, I gotta go. It’s before five and this call is crazy expensive.”

“Thanks, hija, you’re my favorite.  Give everyone kisses.”

But she wouldn’t know what he wanted her to give everyone because before he got the word out, he was talking to a dial tone.

Now that it was done, he could relax.  His share of the next couple of days was taken care of, without having to try to sell his glass eye.

Dialing for Dollars was gone.  Now, Phil Donahue was talking to a girl who says she used to be a guy.  He crossed himself.  It’s a strange damn world, he thought.

He finished his beer and started another.  He could afford to be generous with himself.  He’d have seventy-five bucks waiting for him soon.  He woke up when the second beer rolled out of his hand and landed on the floor, spewing all over the carpet.  It was dark outside, all the light and shadows having run off past the horizon.  He checked his wrist for the time, but he’d lost that watch months ago, even if the habit was still present.  He dragged himself over to the other bed. He found someone’s left arm, but couldn’t tell in the dark who it belonged to.  He twisted it up to read the watch face.  It looked like a quarter after seven o’clock.  Two and a half hours after the phone call.  The money had probably been waiting for him at the Western Union for over an hour.

“Hey” he rasped out.  Useless. He barely hear it himself.  He cleared his throat, trying to flush some of the gunk out. “Hey!” He tried again, managing to turn the word into a shout that was both gravelly and phlegmy.  It worked, though.  Both Jay and Dale stirred in the dark.

“¿que pasa, Ernesto? ¿qué hora es?” Sometimes, these very white brothers sounded more Hispanic than he.

“Time to get some money, amigos.  Time to get drunk.  Drunker.  Come on, borrachos.”

“On the clock, man.  What time?”

“Look at your own damn watch.  It’s almost seven-thirty.  Get your asses out of bed, unless you’re ready to dry out, gringos.”  They barely moved at his words, but when the door cracked open and the heat from the parking lot washed inside, they rolled themselves from the bed and precariously stumbled toward the door.  He left it wide for them, but each managed to slam a shoulder into the door frame while careening through the opening.  Talk of drink wouldn’t do it, but movement toward drink, yes.

It was three easy blocks on a slight downhill grade, but all three were panting and awash in sweat when they reached the Piggly Wiggly.  The alcohol permeating their bodies dampened their metabolisms as much as an hour of exercise would have, though that would’ve been a purely theoretical comparison.

Thirty minutes later, they stepped thorough the doorway of Mike’s Tavern.  That stretch of Route 66 was barely lit, and the contrast between El Reno night and the neon of Mikes’s made them all squint.  The fact that they hadn’t had alcohol for nearly an hour didn’t help.  With a straight track toward the bar, they intended to rectify that problem as quickly as possible.  With 3.2 beer, it always took an extra effort to get back up to saturation.

Terry the bartender saw them approach. With a sigh, he threw his bar rag onto the counter, squaring off as they drew near.  “You sons-a-bitches owe me fifteen bucks from last night.  What the hell y’all up to, walkin’ your tab? Hell of a goddamn nerve. I shoulda called the fucking cops.”  None of them had any memory of having done so, but then none of them had any memory of anything after about ten o’clock that night.

Ernie turned to Jay, who turned to Dale, who shrugged at Jay, then turned back to Ernie and shrugged at him.  “You gringos have NO money?”  The shrugging started again.

Ernie turned to Terry.  “Fifteen?”

“And if you think you’re drinking here, it’s fifteen plus a deposit in case y’all walk again.  You bastards done broke pay-as-you-go.”

Ernie handed him a twenty and a ten. Terry flipped the twenty over, rubbed it between his fingers, and held it up to the light.  He looked expectantly at Ernie.  The other two were invisible – they didn’t have cash, and without cash, they were irrelevant.  “This is what you’re giving me?”  No response. “This will hold you maybe to the top of the hour.”  It was eight-fifteen.   He turned and punched the no sale button on the register, slapped the bill down into its slot, then slammed the drawer shut.  He turned and crossed his arms, leaning against the bar back.  He looked through Ernie, and through Jay and Dale as well.

“Come on, friend – three Coors.”

Terry stood, his eyes drilling further into Ernie before reaching for empty glasses.  Three pulls, and he slid the glasses toward the threesome.  As the third began to fill, Ernie started in.  “I don’t see why you have to be a son-of-a-bitch about this.  You think we’re going to cheat you after all the money you got from us the last couple of days? I mean, hell, man ~ ”

“You can go ahead and shut up now, unless you and your buddies want to just get the hell out of here. I'll keep y’all’s deposit and drinks, but I might give y’all some bruises to go.

Ernie waved him off and turned toward the brothers with his beer.  He jerked his head back toward the other beers and Terry. “Better get them before the son of a bitch throws them out.”

He threaded his way through the tables, working toward the corner farthest from the bar and the bartender.  The table wobbled as he went to the far side of it; his chair wobbled as he dropped into it.  The room wobbled as his body waited for the curative effects of his next beer.   He didn’t wait long.  His lips were to the glass by the time Jay and Dale caught up with him.

Ernie sat and watched the game two tables over for a good forty-five minutes before walking up.  Five players in a dealer’s choice poker game, all of them pretty evenly matched, from what he could tell.  He gave ‘em another twenty minutes and two more rounds of beer before he walked up.

“Hey, can a guy get in this game? What’s the buy-in?”

“Minimum ten bucks.  Twenty’ll give you a fighting chance, assuming you’ve got a little skill, paco.”

Ernie dropped a twenty on the table and himself into the only unoccupied chair.  The bill vanished and was replaced with stacks of nickels, dimes, and quarters.  A closer look at the table showed some guys had started with a lot more than twenty bucks.  Eighty or a hundred, maybe.

The dealer froze mid-deal, holding the card bound for Ernie. “I know you.”

Ernie took it in stride, or tried to, “Maybe you do. Maybe I don’t care.” He tried to hold eye contact, but with both eyes doing a nervous dance, it was hard, so he just looked down at his hand.

“I don’t know where, but I do.”

“So you’re not going to deal to me, Chico?  My money ain’t shit?”

“Nickel ante.  Jacks or better to open.  And don’t fucking call me Chico.” He said it to everyone, but he was watching Ernie.

The nickels hit the middle of the table.  The guy from Canadian waved off and stepped off, but the other five stayed and tossed their nickels in.  The cards made their laps – one, two, three, four, five.  Dale scooped each up and read them as they arrived, but everyone else waited til all five were down before picking them up.  He usually waited, but maybe he had enough beer in him to need more time to think.

Around once, and nobody had the nuts, so they threw the cards back, threw in another ante, and got fresh cards.  This time, the drunk to his left, three from the dealer, had enough to open with.  Ernie had a suited King-Nine of clubs, so he stayed in and asked for three more.  He picked up Ace of Spades, Nine of Diamonds, and Four of Diamonds.

He then threw another nickel in to call when it came around.

Four still in, seventy cents in the pot.  It was going to take a long, good night to get home off of this game.

Queens after the dealer; nothing came next; Ernie had just the pair of Nines.  Starter had nothing more than his opener Jacks, after him was a pathetic 8-high nothing.  Ernie cursed, but knew he would make it up on the next hand.  Queens drew the pot and the deal rotated.

Queens – or whatever his name was – Carson or Carlson, something like that – had the deal and called for Mexican Sweat.  Right flipped up a ten and went a nickel; Ernie flipped a four, a nine, a six, then a jack. He bet five.  Seat three came up with a pair of fives, but it took six cards to get there.  He bet five.   Canadian and the Chico blew through their cards trying to find a pair of anything, and both fell short.  The dealer went tits up in seven cards, too. Right flipped a six and then a ten, then bet five on his pair of tens.

It was back to Ernie, who was now distracted by the woman sitting two tables back, and who kept glancing over at him.  He didn’t know what her game was, but she looked like some kind of school mom who was sneaking out.  Whore.  His wife never snuck out on him.  None of his women ever did.  Gloria had a husband, but that was Bruno’s problem, not his own.  Some others had boyfriends, but again, not his problem.  If a man can’t manage his woman, that’s on him, not nobody else. Nobody else.

So, he glanced back.  She was twenty years younger than him, but it didn’t hurt to be nice.  Gotta be polite, no?  She had some Mexican and some Indian in her, which looked real good on her.  Her skin said Mexican and her cheekbones said Indian.  The rest was from whatever white guy her family had let marry her grandmother.

He flipped three more useless cards and was done with this damn hand, so he went up to the bar to get a shot to go with his beer.  Terry took his time to serve him, and while he went to pour his shot, the woman came up alongside him, waving a cigarette toward him.  “Can you give a lady a light, papi?”

They both cupped a hand against the non-existent breeze while he lit her cigarette.  After a deep draw and a long slow plume of smoke, she nodded down at his shot.  “You’re a Beam man, no?”

He nodded and threw it to the back of his throat, then cleared his throat against the phlegm it loosened.

She stroked the V in his shirt.  “Are you going to make me ask you for a drink, papi?”  He just smiled and waved Terry back over.  Two fingers wiggled downward and the signal was passed.  Two more shots appeared, and then quickly vanished.  She tugged him by his collar closer to her soft lips, kissed his cheek, then whispered “Let me know when you get tired of poker. We can play another game, papi.” He liked being called papi.  She strolled back to her table.  He watched with all his eyes.  She was no stick.  She had curves, but wasn’t fat.

Back at the table, he played another couple of hands but wasn’t in the game.  She had woken his bull, and he couldn’t keep her from inside his head.  She walked up to the bar and asked for the phone.  She talked, listened, nodded, checked her watch, then nodded some more before the handset went back to the cradle.  Back at her table, she picked up her purse and walked his way.

“Papi” she whispered in his ear.  “I have to go see a friend.  I’ll be back.  Gonna wait for me?”  He gave her a nod as he examined his hand, then she left.

“You pick up a lady friend, man?” Dale asked.

The others, the regulars, just looked at their cards.  Chico smiled to himself but said nothing.  When the hand played out, Chico only had a pair of sixes and a King kicker, so it wasn’t his cards that he was smiling at.

An hour went by and she hadn’t come back, but Ernie’s pile grew.  He’d started with twenty bucks, and now had a little over a hundred, maybe a little over a little.  Probably, it was because with her gone, he wasn’t distracted.  And he and Dale had come in late to the game, with everyone else there for hours, and most of them drunk by the time he started.  Soon, he’d be the drunk at the table and they would be sobering.  Soon, it would be time to call it a night.

She came in, a little wobbly on her heels, after almost two hours.  Two of her friends at her table had already left, replaced by two more, a mix of gringos and Mexicans.  She slowed passing their table and put a hand on his shoulder then leaned down and said “Way to go, papi.  Looks like you’re a winner” before landing at her table. They looked like a hen party, all comparing notes about something in as serious a manner as the players at his table, but now and again they’d break up in laughter.

Fifteen minutes later, she came back over, asking him for a light.  She steadied his army zippo with one hand while he steadied her cigarette with his.  “I’m getting bored.  Let’s go find someplace quiet, huh?”

“Gimme two hands, huh?  Then we can get out of here, ok?  Why don’t you get another drink? Tell Terry it’s on me.”

Terry poured out a shot, then a second, and Ernie smiled.  “One for her and one for me.  This is a good woman” he thought.  Then he poured a third, fourth, and fifth and put them on a tray, which she carried over to her table.  “What the hell, woman!?” he muttered.  When they all turned and raised their glasses his direction, then downed the shots, he felt a little better.  At least they thanked him.  Still, just to make sure, he caught Terry’s eye and gave him the cut-off sign.  Terry acted like he didn’t get it, so he made a more exaggerated slash a couple of times, and Terry gave him the same puzzled look, so he stood and did it again.  “Hey!” the other players called out and quickly tipped their cards downward.  Terry laughed and waved him back down in his seat.  Bastard had been yanking his chain all along.

As the cards went out the next hand, he said “Last one for me, hombres.  I’m checking out after this one.”  There was the usual attitude – “What the hell, man?  You take our money and then you leave!?  At least give me a chance to win some back.” They all said it, everywhere.  Colorado, Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas, wherever.  It’s always “Give me a chance to win some back” no matter if they’re ahead, too.  They’re just pissed because someone who wasn’t them walked out with some of their money, no matter how much or little.  It was always your fault if they were down, not their own.

He threw a few bucks back on the last hand, spending it on a weak pair, so they would stop bitching, but Chico was still pissed “Aw come on, man.  What kind of asshole walks out just when the tide is turning?”  The tide was always turning, or about to be.

He stuffed bills into his pocket, all but one, then poured the coins into his other pocket.  As he clanked toward the bar to sell off some of the coin to Terry, he stuffed that one bill into Chico’s shirt pocket.  “Buy yourself a violin, little girl.”  “Tu madre!” is what he got back from Chico, who fortunately remained seated as he passed.  After trading up and making sure he and Dale at least were square with Terry, he ended with a hundred and eight dollars and some change.  Not bad for a twenty dollar start.  His usually skinny wallet was now fat with nearly a hundred and fifty dollars.  One other thing he got from Terry – the name of his lady friend.  Carol.  He waved “I’m out of here” to Dale.  No telling where Jay was.  Then he turned to Carol and nodded toward the door.  He walked, she followed.

“I’m down at the Motor Courts.” He told her once they were in the parking lot.  “But,” he added, “I didn’t drive.  My buddy, the redhead at the table, drove.”  He glanced around and saw only two gas stations, already closed, and a diner with a sign that said “Open til midnight.”  It was eleven thirty, and he didn’t want food anyway.

“I have a little room the next block over.  Come on, Papi.”.  She took his hand and started walking that way.  He started following.  “Damn, this woman is direct.”  Better than making him guess, though.

They rounded the block and went into a little courtyard between two old apartment buildings, probably with six rooms each, and probably built in the twenties when El Reno thought Route 66 was going to actually bring prosperity and growth.

She took him to a door across from a fountain that had been turned into a planter, and unlocked it.  “Gina?”  No answer.

She waved him into a little living room with barely a chair, tiny sofa, and end table.  No tv or radio or even pictures on the wall.  No overhead light, just a half-bright floor lamp in the far corner.  She said “Gimme two minutes” in a very business-like tone and disappeared down the dim narrow hall that led toward the back.  He stood.  The living room was more like a tiny waiting room to a doctor’s office than a living room.  All it wanted was old magazines.

It probably was only two minutes, but the room was starting to drift around him by the time she led him back.  She walked in with a bottle of Beam and two jelly glasses.  She poured two fingers in each and handed him one. “Cheers”

She walked behind him to put the bottle and glasses on the end table, then her lips touched the side of his neck and she said “Come back, Papi.  It’s time to play.  First door on the right.”

A single lamp was on, the bed had been turned down, and a nightstand drawer was partly open.  There was a dresser next to the door and the only thing on it was saucer or maybe a candy dish.  She wasn’t interested in wasting time.  She followed him in and she’d no sooner broken the plane of the door when she started undressing.  First were her shoes, then she turned to have him unzip her dress.  He leaned against the dresser and fought to get out of his clothes as her dress dropped to the floor.  He stared at the dish on the dresser and thought about how bare the room was, the whole place, in fact.  She hadn’t said anything about money, but he still wondered for a moment if this wasn’t a hot pillow joint.

When they were both in bed, she shut off the light.  A dim night light flickered on, and was the brightest thing between there and the living room.  She kissed his neck and let her hand slip down his torso to his manhood.  After all he had to drink, it hardened faster than he expected, but not by much and not all that hard.  Once it was hard enough to be useful, she said “damn, rubber” and tugged the drawer further open.  “Damn.  Be right back.  She hopped from the bed, heading for the bathroom, he figured.  A door opened, closed, and opened again, and a dim, scrawny silhouette cut past the open doorway before it closed again.

She dropped the packet on his chest, he figured to have him open it, which he started to do.  Her hand, now cold, reached again for his hardness.  Semi-hardness.  He cursed to himself.  Now, she would have to start again.

A sudden pounding came from down the hall, and any hardness that he had left instantly vanished.  One-two-three – a voice shouting “Gina!?” from the living room, and suddenly a very broad silhouette with a very bright flashlight filled the doorway.

What the hell are you doing with my daughter, you son of a bitch!?”  Ernie scrambled to escape from her body, almost falling off the bed as he flipped the lamp back on.  That was one big, angry bastard in the doorway.

Daughter?  Who the hell was this?  He didn’t look much older than Carol, and besides, she was old enough to do what she wanted, wasn’t she?  He turned to see what she thought was going on, and there was no Carol there.  There was a younger – much younger - woman with similar features, but no Carol. “Papi!”

“Baby, what did this bastard do to you?”

“I’m sorry, daddy, it wasn’t my fault! He made me – he followed me home and dragged me into the bedroom, papi! I was so scared.”

“Go out in the hall, baby.  Wait for me in the living room.”

Ernie watched all of this in silence.  All he managed to say as she jetted out of the bed and through the door was “Gina??”  The girl was already in the living room before he realized that, whoever she was, she was in bra and panties.  He hadn’t even noticed that, unlike Carol, she wasn’t naked against his body when she got in the bed with him.

Papi closed the door behind her and leaned against it.  Cheap door.  It creaked and cracked against his body.  Kind of a foreshadowing sound.

Ernie was getting very lightheaded, between all that he’d had to drink and the fact that he was barely breathing.

He watched “Daddy” and waited for him to say or do something.  Finally, with a shrug, “Daddy” said, “Alright, pendejo.  You don’t need a little girl screaming rape and an angry father calling the cops.  We’ll make it easy on you.  Grab your pants and hand me your wallet, and if there’s enough dinero in there, I won’t beat the shit out of you.  Slow.

Pants … yes.  But first he had to get up.  Naked, with another man in the room.  Didn’t seem so important right now, but it had probably been forty plus years since another man had seen him naked.

He stood, then let the room catch up with him.  Hands over his crotch, until he stumbled on his drunkenness and had to put them out to grab hold of the wall, the bed, anything.  Too late.  He missed everything but the floor.  He crawled the few feet to his pants tangled on the floor, then pulled himself and his pants up, using the bed and then the dresser.  He fumbled from pocket to pocket.  Handkerchief, no. Room key, no.  Change and pocket knife, no.  Hurry, hurry.  Where the hell is it?  Don’t look at him, just look for the wallet.  Room key, out onto the bed.  Handkerchief, out onto the bed.  Change and knife, out onto the bed. Finally, one heavy pocket, and his wallet.  He pulled out a fist full of wallet, not just wallet but his whole filing system for everything he needed.  He hesitated, and the big man read it as a change of mind.  He took one step closer and then his knee rocketed through Ernie’s groin, speeding toward Oklahoma City.  Ernie wrapped himself around it tumbling for the floor. The wallet slipped from his fingers and his mind almost slipped from consciousness.  As he lay there, melting under the weight of his throbbing, burning scrotum, his wallet landed on his face.  The man then rifled through his pants to make sure he wasn’t hiding anything, said “Shit” then opened the bedroom door.

“Get out.  The performance is done and you’ve paid for the show.  Leave here and leave town now, chocho.  I see you around, I’m going to cut out your other eye and feed it with your cojones to my Dobermans.”

When Ernie didn’t move, the man slowly pressed the ball of his foot on his outstretched hand, which got him moving, albeit sluggishly.  He yanked his pants up to his hips, grabbed shoes, and shirt, then stuffed everything back into his pants.  No stopping for underwear. The man stepped to the side and Ernie shot out into the hall, through the living room, and out into the dark.  He ran into the bushes in the back of the courtyard and put the rest of his clothes on.

It was only with luck that he wandered back to the motel.  He would see something that looked almost familiar, then drift toward something else, something that at least didn’t look entirely unfamiliar.  Eventually, he noticed a water tower in the distance and knew that there had been a water tower not too distant from the motel.  Of course, it would’ve gone easier for him if he’d checked the tag on the room key.  The address was right on there.  He at least knew he was too drunk to stop anyone for directions.  He’d spent enough nights in local drunk tanks, and sometimes weeks there, to know that was a poor play.

He was too tired to think, too drunk to discern.  All he wanted was a hiding place, a place to curl up, and a bottle for companionship.

When he was finally in the room, and his eyes had adjusted to the dull, yellowing non-neon light coming from one of the bedside lamps, he had a stroke of good fortune.  Jay was gurgling and snoring on the floor between the beds; Dale was on the far bed, his body flat out and spread across the bed diagonally.  Either Dale was poured onto the bed and just sleeping it off or he was stretched out trying to hold the bed steady as he tried to drift into unconsciousness.

Ernie rolled into the other bed and made it about a third across before surrendering to gravity and alcohol.

Aside from his two trips stumbling to the bathroom to pee red, his next day started sometime after noon.  Same as the day before.  Wander around, trying to function enough to get some food in, but not sobering up enough that the shakes and vomiting started.  Kill time, waiting for the three of them to have enough collective energy to roust themselves for another night of drinking.

The afternoon was one long lager-tinted blur.  Other than a vague dis-ease, all Ernie felt was dried out and used up.  He had some aches, but he popped aspirin like chick-lits until his belly started burning again. The aches didn’t much matter at that point.

He stood by the window when he wasn’t laying on the bed.  There had been a red Firebird outside the flop.  He was in no shape to cross paths with the big fisted son of a bitch who’d fleeced him, and he wasn’t even close to being drunk enough to try.

When dusk came, he’d slip out and go on down to the beer joint.  One more night and he could get enough cash to get on down the road.  He did it last night with $20.  He could get enough to scrape together and get out of town.  He only had a $10 that he always kept hidden in the Gideon bible; now it could earn its keep.

Dale and Jay were still passed out when he decided it was dark enough to go. He walked the distance avoiding street lights as much as possible, then snuck along the edges of the bar's parking lot.

He paused at the door to the bar and fished the ten out of his pocket. He stroked the center, with the picture of the president and stoked the fire of his odds by speculating about the final outcome of the evening.  He pictured himself walking away with enough cash for a nest egg, a rock solid stake that he could parlay into a small fortune over a long weekend.  

Then, he noticed the red Firebird parked on the other side of the awning over the door.  Not just a red Firebird, but the Firebird, the one he saw outside the flop.  He sat on the nearest bumper and pondered his options.  

The sun was all gone.  The moon was a tiny sliver in the western sky. There was just enough light from the parking lot to drown out the stars, which made the canopy over him all the darker.
  
The Firebird had made him stop in his tracks, but even without the car and its owner, he couldn’t figure a scenario where he got his money back and gathered a small fortune, and slept for an honest week.  All his usual get rich schemes burned themselves out as he played them through his head.  They all took him to the same place, sitting on the ground waiting for the next bus or generous motorist on his way out of town, so why take the hard way there?

He shook his head.  “Why waste the time?  Why waste the pain?”  He slid off the bumper and started for the road, walking toward the sharp and shiny moon. Dale and Jay could have this town.