Honky Tonk Christmas

by Carolyn Brown

  “You got a pretty bathroom. How old is God?” Judd yelled.

  Sharlene smiled. “Thank you. I don’t know how old God is. Why are you asking me?”

  “Because Uncle Holt says our bathtub is as old as God. I wondered how old it really is. What do you do in here all day?”

  “I don’t spend my whole day in the bathroom,” Sharlene hollered back and looked up to see Judd standing in her doorway.

  “I’m right here now. I got finished in there and I didn’t mean in the bathroom. I mean in this house. If you don’t have to build stuff like Uncle Holt does, then what do you do?”

  “I write books.”

  “Like Bambi books?” Judd asked.

  “Something like that.”

  “Oh. I like Bambi and Cinderella. Uncle Holt reads to us before we go to sleep at night. Waylon likes Bambi better than Cinderella. Someday I’m going to grow up and be just like her. I’m going to wear pretty dresses and the fairy godmother is going to make my hair all pretty. Hey, you want to come outside and play with me and Waylon? You can be it and chase us,” Judd said.

  “I think I’d better stay inside and get some work done but thank you. You and Waylon can come in and use my bathroom anytime you want,” Sharlene said.

  “How about Uncle Holt? Can he use your bathroom? I’ll tell him to put the seat down,” she whispered.

  Sharlene bit her lip to keep from grinning. “If he can remember to do that, I suppose it’s all right.”

  Judd took off like a jackrabbit with a coyote snapping at its fluffy tail, yelling at the top of her lungs. “Uncle Holt, Sharlene said you can use her bathroom if you put the seat down. That goes for you too, Waylon Mendoza. If you don’t put the seat down I’m going to slap a knot on your head.”

  “No you won’t,” Waylon yelled. “I can outrun you.”

  “But when I catch you I can whoop your ass. Whoops!” She looked at Holt.

  “You better learn to watch those bad words or you’ll get in big trouble when you start school,” Holt said. “And Sharlene, Judd can use the bathroom out in Donnie’s trailer. They won’t bother you again.”

  “Sorry,” Judd sing-songed and ran off to play with her brother.

  Sharlene poked her head out the door. “That’s a long way to run. You might want to let them come on in here when they’ve got to go. It’s closer and could save you a lot of laundry.”

  “If it becomes a bother, just tell me.” He waved.

  She stepped out onto the tiny back porch and leaned on a porch post. Three men were busy hammering boards into a framework for the foundation support. She hadn’t realized the addition would take up so much space. There would be no side yard to mow anymore and she wouldn’t be able to step outside her back door and see all the way to the road. But change was good… wasn’t it?

  Kayla said it had been good. Even Baghdad was better than Oklahoma according to her. She’d finished her tour and went home to get a master’s degree in nursing and nowadays she was pulling in a good salary in Savannah, Georgia. Yes, change had been good for Kayla, but Kayla had been trained as an army nurse so she had something to fall back on when she got home. Sharlene had been trained as a glorified secretary and a sniper. One she could use on the outside; the other she’d sworn not to talk about once she was discharged.

  At least I got away from wheat and cows in Corn, Oklahoma. And now I own a beer joint, a house, and I’ve written a book—which is all a miracle. Not many authors can say they got an agent and a publisher for their first rattle out of the bucket. If I had to enlist again, would I? Even with the nightmares? Who knows?

  She shook off the memories and looked at the men working on her addition. It was hard to think that in a few weeks there would be walls and a roof, hardwood floors. And it all started with strings and a foundation.

  Holt wore bibbed overalls that were stained and faded with a gauze muscle shirt underneath. She’d never thought the day would dawn when a man in bibbed overalls was sexy, but he was. Sweat poured off his forehead and he kept wiping at it. She vaguely remembered seeing him wipe at his forehead when they got into the pickup truck at the bar where she’d gotten so drunk.

  And spilled my guts. What is it about him that gets me to talking about things like Shamal winds? I never told anyone, not even Larissa, about Iraq, other than to say that I’d been there and here I am talking to Holt Jackson about it. I can always blame tequila shots for the first time and grief for Waylon for the second, but it will not happen again. Drunk is over. Grief is past.

  Folks on this side of the big sand pile didn’t need to know what she did over there. If they thought owning a beer joint tainted her reputation, they’d fall off the edge of the earth if they ever found out her classified job description. She went back in the house and made a pot of coffee.

  She drank two cups while she made corrections on what she’d written the week before but couldn’t keep her mind on the screen. Her editor wanted the second book done by the first of December with a publication date of November of the next year. A book a year was her goal and so far she was ahead of schedule. The first one would hit the racks in November. She started another chapter, but the hero kept looking more and more like Holt rather than the blond-haired Texan she’d described earlier.

  The computer screen was blank and she couldn’t find words to fill it. For the first time in her life she had a dose of writer’s block and it scared the bejesus out of her. Writers had to make things happen on paper. If they couldn’t, they were finished.

  Finally she shut her laptop and slipped her bare feet into a pair of old boots sitting beside the door. The noise had stopped and all she heard when she stepped out on the small porch was one lonesome truck engine going up the road toward Mingus and a couple of dogs barking in the distance. The kids were sitting on a blanket eating sandwiches and the men were lazing in the shade of an old pecan tree with their lunch buckets open beside them.

  “Y’all need ice or anything?” she asked.

  “We’re all right,” Holt said.

  “Sharlene!” Judd ran to her side. “It’s hot. Can we come inside and watch cartoons?”

  “Judd!” Holt scolded.

  “Well, it is hot. I’m even sweating in my under-britches.”

  “Then I suppose you’d better come on inside where it’s cool. A girl can’t have sweaty under-britches,” Sharlene said.

  “Come on over and meet the crew.” Holt motioned her that way with a wave of his hand.

  Judd hugged up to her side and kept in step with her the whole way. “Waylon still takes a nap but I don’t.”

  Holt winked at Sharlene. Her heart tossed in a couple of extra beats but she told it she’d be stone cold dead if she didn’t think he was good looking. And he had seen her without her boots on—a feat not many men could lay claim to. Not to mention he’d heard her hugging the toilet the morning after she’d tied one on and listened to her ramble on about Iraq. One more drink and she would have told him classified information. Thank God and good tequila she passed out when she did.

  “This is Kent and Chad Stigler. They’re brothers from up around Wichita Falls. Little community called Jolly. And this is Bennie Adams. He’s from Palo Pinto. Guys, this is our boss, Sharlene Waverly.”

  “She’s the one who painted our house all the pretty colors,” Judd said proudly.

  “Actually I only helped with the painting. Larissa, the lady who owned the Tonk before me, picked out the colors. I wanted to paint the Tonk just like it but she wouldn’t let me. I’m pleased to meet all of you. Y’all got set up all right in the trailer spaces? You need anything else?”

  “We’re fine. We laid claim to the two at the very end of the lot,” Kent said.

  “You didn’t really consider painting the beer joint those gawd awful colors, did you?” Holt asked.

  “I did but Larissa convinced me it would look more like a hippy flower shop than a beer joint so I left it alone.”

  Kent nodded. “Well she was a w
ise woman. It would sour the beer and turn the whiskey to water. Why’d you put trailer spaces behind a beer joint?”

  “I didn’t. That happened when Cathy owned the place. Amos Lambert owns the land and he put in the trailer spaces to accommodate his oil well crew. When they finished up in this area he leased the land to the owner of the Tonk for ten years. I inherited the lease with the business,” she explained.

  “Well, it’s an ideal situation for us. We can walk to work and we got a place to get a cold beer after we finish,” Chad said. “What nights are you open? You got a live band?”

  Waylon edged his way to Sharlene’s other side but he was careful to keep space between them. She reached down and pulled him close.

  “Open six nights a week from eight to two. No live band. We’ve gotten a reputation for being a vintage bar. Got an old jukebox in there that still plays three songs for a quarter. The old stuff, like Hank Williams, Waylon Jennings, and Willie. Friday and Saturday nights I plug in the new box. Blake Shelton, Miranda Lambert, the Zac Brown Band, and Josh Turner.”

  She clamped her mouth shut. Her biggest failing was that she talked too much, especially when she was nervous, and Holt Jackson sure enough made her nervous. She’d left Corn because she didn’t intend to ever get entangled with a man who wore bibbed overalls, and there she was, panting at the sight of Holt in striped overalls.

  Kent looked over at Chad. “Sounds like my kind of place. We go home most Friday nights but we like the old stuff, don’t we?”

  They were definitely brothers with their sandy blond hair and brown eyes, but Kent was taller and lankier than Chad. Both good looking men but neither was sexy as Holt. On a scale of one to ten, they were a good solid six and Holt was an eleven or maybe a fifteen.

  “I’ll have to bring Coralynn down some weekend. She’s been after me to go dancing for a month. She heard about this place from a friend who comes down here pretty often when you got the old music going,” Bennie said.

  He was the shortest one of the three, had a receding hairline, a white rim where his cowboy hat kept the sun from his wide forehead, and a round baby face. His eyes were crystal blue and his arms bulged beneath the knit of a faded T-shirt.

  “Bring her around and the first beer will be on the house,” Sharlene said.

  Chad chuckled. “Coralynn don’t drink beer. Will the first margarita be on the house?”

  “You got it,” Sharlene said. “All right with you if I take these kids inside for a while?” she asked Holt.

  “If they won’t bother your work,” he said. “Judd, don’t you shut your eyes. Waylon, you wiggle every now and then so you don’t fall asleep. Get your pillows out of the truck.”

  “I got pillows they can use. Come on, kids. I’ve got that satellite stuff that gets the Disney channel. I don’t know if they’ve got cartoons in the afternoon but we’ll see,” she said.

  Waylon shyly reached up and put his small hand in hers. Judd ran on ahead to the door and waited.

  When she was in the house, Chad whistled under his breath. “Now that’s one sexy lady.”

  Bennie grinned. “She’d be your dream girl, Chad. Owns a bar and plenty of beer.”

  Kent pushed his brother’s shoulder. “This ugly old boy ain’t got a chance when I’m here. Besides, Gloria would beat him to death with a broom handle if he looked at another woman. I’m the good lookin’ brother and I’ll be the one who takes her home. Bet you ten dollars I’ve got that pretty redhead in my trailer by the time we finish the job.”

  A shot of pure jealousy heated up Holt’s veins. If Kent got her drunk he might win the bet. Holt had seen what happened when Sharlene had too many shots. He wasn’t about to let himself get involved with another woman so soon after Nikki, especially one who owned a beer joint, but he dang sure didn’t want any of his crew to go after her either.

  Bennie finished off a bottle of water. “Okay, let’s get the rules laid out before we bet. She can’t just go in your trailer. You got to get her into bed.”

  Chad shook his head. “No, that ain’t going to work. He could get her to sit on his bed and we’d lose. He’s got to have real sex with her. Like Bill Engvall says, he’s got to have some hot pig sex with Sharlene or all bets are off.”

  “Hell, that’s worth a fifty dollar bet,” Kent said. “How many of you are willing to give me fifty bucks if I sweet-talk Sharlene into a bout of sex?”

  Holt stood up. “She’s our boss. All bets are off and the first one I catch flirting with her is fired. You’re all being disrespectful when you talk like that.”

  “Whew! Who pissed on your scrambled eggs this morning?” Kent asked.

  “Let’s get back to work. We’ve got a trench to dig, forms to build, and concrete to pour before we quit tonight,” Holt growled.

  ***

  Sharlene turned on the television and tossed each child a pillow. Waylon laid on his back and laced his hands behind his head. Judd flopped down on her stomach and propped her face in her hands.

  “Little Mermaid is coming on Disney in about one minute,” Sharlene said.

  “Yes,” the kids said in unison.

  “You want to watch it with us?” Judd asked.

  Sharlene sat down on the sofa. “Maybe for a few minutes. Anyone need to go to the bathroom before it starts?”

  “Where is it?” Waylon asked.

  Sharlene pointed.

  “You put that lid down,” Judd said.

  Waylon frowned at her. “Don’t boss me. I know what to do.”

  Judd rolled her eyes. “Men!”

  Sharlene grinned. “Where did you hear that?”

  Judd sighed. “From my momma. Sometimes I miss her but I don’t tell Uncle Holt acause he misses her too and it makes him sad if I cry.”

  Waylon came out of the bathroom when the music started at the beginning of the movie and threw himself down on his pillow. “I put the seat down.”

  “That’s good. We don’t want Sharlene to fall in the potty like Momma did that time,” Judd giggled.

  Waylon’s eyes twinkled. “She said some bad words, didn’t she?”

  Judd poked him on the arm. “She said it was your fault that she cussed. And besides, she got her whole as… hind end wet and that ain’t funny. I fell in one time in the middle of the night when you didn’t put the seat down.”

  “Well, it was your fault that she cussed more times than it was my fault,” Waylon argued.

  “Which one of you is the oldest?” Sharlene asked.

  “I am but only by four minutes,” Judd said.

  Sharlene looked from one to the other. “You are twins?”

  Waylon nodded. “Yep, we’re twins but I’m smarter than she is.”

  “Well, I’m tougher than you are,” Judd said.

  “Is your name short for something?” Sharlene asked.

  Judd grinned. “Nope. It’s for the Judds. Them singing girls. Momma didn’t know which one to name me for, Wynonna or Naomi. I’m glad she didn’t name me either one of them names. I don’t like them. So she named me for the one that’s on television sometimes. Her name is Ashley and that’s my name too. Ashley Judd Mendoza. And Waylon is Waylon Jennings Mendoza. Uncle Holt is going to ’dopt us and then we’ll be Ashley Judd Jackson and Waylon Jennings Jackson. He said we could keep our names but we decided if he was going to be our ’dopted daddy then we want to have a name like his.”

  “Momma said that the reason we call her Judd is acause I couldn’t say Ashley when I was a little kid but I could say Judd,” Waylon said.

  “Shhhh, the movie is startin’. If we talk, we’ll miss the good parts,” Judd said.

  Waylon settled into his pillow more comfortably. “I thought we were going to watch TV in the bar where we went yesterday.”

  “It only gets the sports and news channel. I thought you’d be more comfortable in here,” Sharlene said.

  “I like it in here. It smells good,” Waylon said. He was asleep in ten minutes.

  Judd forced
her eyes to stay open, blinking only when her eyes stung so badly she couldn’t bear it. She finally picked up her pillow, put it next to Sharlene on the sofa, cuddled up next to her thigh, and went to sleep.

  Sharlene leaned into the corner of the sofa. She and the mermaid had a lot in common. They were both misfits in the world. Sharlene had grown up in Mennonite country where the puritanical influence was still prevalent. Her parents weren’t of that faith but they were very strict, very religious, and still adhered to the old ways. Girls grew up to be women who stayed home, raised babies, cooked three meals a day, and kept a spotless house. If they did work outside the home, they didn’t neglect their first duties to the family. They even ironed pillowcases and tea towels and God forbid that they ever had frozen dinners for supper. Sharlene wasn’t sure that a wife and mother could even look at the Pearly Gates if she didn’t make supper from scratch and that involved going to the garden to gather it in the spring and summer.

  Boys grew up to be men who had jobs outside the farm only if necessary and who milked cows, ran cattle, plowed, planted, harvested, and brought home the bacon. Men did not do dishes, cook, or wash clothes even if they had the time and the wife had a job in town. One sink full of dishes would rob them of their masculinity for all eternity. Sharlene figured if her mother died before her father that he’d starve to death. She might need to suggest to her mother that she start putting frozen dinners in the extra freezer out in the garage so he’d survive long enough to rope in another wife.

  She went to sleep with a smile on her face. If Claud Waverly looked at another woman before or after Molly died, he wouldn’t have to die to get a taste of hell. Molly would deliver it to him on a shiny silver platter.

  The minute she drifted off to sleep the dreams started. Jonah was beside her in this one, asking her if she was ever going to ruin her perfect record. According to the U. S. Army, the average soldier would hit a man-sized target ten percent of the time at 300 meters using an M16A2 rifle. Snipers were required to hit the same target ninety percent of the time from 600 meters out. Sharlene was one of the elite who could hit it ninety-five percent of the time from 1000 meters. So far she hadn’t missed. Jonah kept joking about her falling apart the day that she did.