The guy mumbled something of the un-Christian variety, got in his truck, and pulled away without raising so much as a speck of dust.
24
JODIE EASED THE HAMMER DOWN ON HER .38 AND TUCKED IT in her waist just as the rain started coming down. She was stooped over to pick up one of the cases of whiskey when she heard boots on the boardwalk coming her way. Her hand went back to the gun’s grip as she stood up to face whoever it was.
“Allow us, ma’am,” Howdy said with a friendly smile and his hands halfway raised.
Jodie looked at the two men curiously. She hadn’t seen Howdy in at least two years. Though she’d seen Slim more recently than that, she’d never seen him in the company of anybody else, let alone somebody she knew in the context of her old club in Oklahoma, so it took her a moment to put it all together. When she realized who they were and why they were there, she pointed at their truck and said, “How long you two been sitting out there?”
“Few minutes,” Slim said, bending over to grab one of the boxes.
She tucked the gun back in her waist. “Fine couple of gentlemen you are,” she said, yanking their chains. “Didn’t you see I was involved in a potentially deadly confrontation with a hardened criminal?”
“Why do you think we stayed in the truck?” Howdy picked up a case of whiskey, then went all hayseed on her. “I mean, heck, we’re just a couple of harmless ole gi-tar pickers.”
She shook her head. “You mean to tell me you’re still not carrying a gun, even after what happened in Lawton?”
“He had one for a minute back in Beaumont,” Slim said, somewhat accusingly. “But he threw it away.”
“Threw it away?”
Slim nodded like he agreed it was a dumb thing to do. Then he looked at Howdy with a curious smile. “What happened in Lawton?”
“Long story,” Howdy said, trying to get everybody past it.
Jodie shook her head. “It’s not that long.” She turned to Slim, confiding, “See, your buddy here was—”
“I vote we save story time for later,” Howdy interrupted. He gestured at Jodie the best he could with the case of whiskey in his hands. “Besides, if you’ll recall, owning a gun wouldn’t have done me much good at the time.”
“I guess you have a point,” she said. “They do you more good if you actually have them at hand when you need ’em.” She turned back to Slim and said, “He was nekkid as a scraped hog at the time and both his hands were occupied with . . . what was her name? Mrs. uh . . . ?”
“She told me she was divorced,” Howdy said.
“She said her husband was in Canada for the month.”
“What’s the difference? The point is . . .” Howdy paused. “Shouldn’t we get out of the rain?”
“Fine,” Jodie said with a smirk they’d both seen before. “I understand. We’ll change the subject if you want.” She folded her arms, looked at Howdy, and said, “So exactly when, where, and why the hell did you throw away a gun?”
“Well, now that’s actually a pretty good story,” Howdy said. “See, Slim here had managed to get himself into a tight spot with this fella in Beaumont who was wavin’ a knife that was about yea big.” He held his hands about two feet apart. “So, there I was, in the kitchen—”
“I thought we voted to move story time to later,” Slim said, nudging Jodie with a box. “Where you want these?”
“Inside,” she said, leading them back into the storeroom. “Just set ’em on that table.”
After they got all the boxes in from the rain, Howdy stood there looking at Jodie for a moment. She was the same strong, beautiful woman he remembered. But changed at the same time, burdened as she was by the sadness that came with being the one left to carry on without the love that had been her reason for living. Somehow, this just added to her beauty.
“Listen,” Howdy said, softly. “I was sure sorry to hear about Frank.” He stepped closer and pulled her in for a tender hug. After a moment, he eased back but kept his hands on her arms while looking in her eyes. “I didn’t know till the other day when Skeets told me. I didn’t even know he was sick.” He shook his head, offering a sad smile. “I wish I’d heard before. I would have liked to come to the service. And you know I’da been there if I’d known.”
“I know you would’ve.”
“He was a good man.”
Jodie cupped a hand on Howdy’s cheek, her pale blue eyes taking in all the features of his face. “He sure was,” she said, giving him a little pat. “Thanks, hun. That’s sweet of you to say.” She took a deep breath, said, “It was hard to let him go, but . . . what’re you gonna do if the Lord decides to take him?”
Howdy nodded. “Only one thing to do,” he said. “Either quit or keep on keeping on.”
“Exactly right.” Jodie smiled and held her arms out wide. “So welcome to keeping on at the Lost and Found.”
25
A FEW MINUTES LATER THEY WERE SITTING IN JODIE’S office, shooting the breeze, listening to the rain come down. Jodie looked toward the ceiling and said, “Keeps up like this, it’s gonna be a slow night.” She had her boots propped on her desk, a cup of coffee steaming in front of her.
Howdy had made himself comfortable in a niche carved out of some of the boxes, his butt planted on a case of bourbon, arm resting on a case of beer. Slim was leaned back in a chair touching the wall behind him, his long legs helping him keep his balance.
Jodie tipped her cup toward Slim, said, “Hey, did you ever get your guitar back from Boone Tate?”
Slim and Howdy looked at each other and busted up laughing. Then Slim said, “Yeah, I got it back.”
“That Brushfire’s a nasty piece of work,” Howdy said. “And I say that based on knowing him all of about five minutes.”
“You’re a good judge of character,” Jodie said. “Boone Tate was born nasty. And after that fire, he just got nastier. Of course the liquor doesn’t help.”
“Doesn’t seem to hurt his ability to hold a grudge though,” Slim said. “He still seems to think he owes me for that business at Diablo’s Cantina that night.”
“Still?” Jodie shook her head. “That’s not holding a grudge,” she said. “That’s clutching it to your breast and nursing it to maturity.”
“What happened at Diablo’s Cantina?” Howdy asked.
Jodie and Slim exchanged a look. “Nothing,” Slim said. “Nothing worth telling, anyway.“
Howdy shrugged it off, figured he’d get the answer later.
Jodie said, “So what happened with ole Brushfire?”
Slim and Howdy took turns telling her the story about the hedge clippers, the knife, the gun, and their wild night with Tammy and Crystal.
When they finished, Jodie said, “Well, I can see how two men might bond after an ordeal such as that. Skeets told me he wasn’t sure how you two had gotten partnered up. I guess that’s as good a way as any to do it.”
“Well, now, I wouldn’t say we’re partnered up,” Howdy said, as if a partnership with Slim or anybody else was the sort of idea he was unlikely to entertain. He was a solo act, a lone wolf, a solitary man. He thought about adding that particular Neil Diamond song to his repertoire.
“Yeah, we’re just travelin’ together,” Slim added with a shrug. “Circumstances dictating the way they sometimes do.”
“Uh-huh,” Jodie said, understanding how circumstances will do that. She kept her eyes on Slim and said, “What about Caroline? Where’d circumstances take her? I mean if you don’t mind my asking.”
“Wait, wait, wait,” Howdy said. “Who’s this Caroline?”
“She was one of my best waitresses,” Jodie said. “When I first came back to Del Rio.”
“Well, well, well,” Howdy said. “The plot thickens.”
Slim casually waved a hand, like he was shooing a fly. “She was last seen headed east,” he said with a shrug that was intended to give the impression he didn’t care one way or another what happened to her. But he was unconvincing.
&nbs
p; The poor performance perked Howdy right up. He slapped his hand on the case of beer and said, “Wait a minute. Is Caroline the girl you stole from Brushfire Boone? The one you said you’d gladly trade back for the Martin?”
Jodie smiled, looked at Howdy. “Did he say that?”
“He did,” Howdy said, nodding. “Something about her not being real big on leaving a forwarding address.”
“Well, he didn’t mean it,” Jodie replied. “That was just the hurt talkin’, wasn’t it, honey?” She did enjoy yanking a man’s chain.
Slim held his legs straight out, tipping the balance until his chair listed forward and his boots hit the floor. He acted like he was going to stand up and leave. Take his ball and go home. He said, “You girls want to gossip about my love life, I think I’ll go see a man about a horse or something.”
“Oh, sit down,” Jodie said. “We’re just having fun.”
“Yeah,” Howdy added. “If it makes you feel any better, I had one just like that, name of Marilyn Justine.” He smacked his lips and got a fond look on his face. “Made the best margaritas . . .”
Jodie said, “Did you get the recipe?”
“Nope. Girl didn’t leave me so much as a good-bye on a sticky note.”
“Ohhh, Howdy, that is so sad.” Jodie rubbed an index finger back and forth over the top of her thumb, playing that little violin part to accompany his pitiful little story. “Still, you two will always have your night with Candy and Wanda.”
“Crystal and Tammy,” Slim said.
Jodie rolled her eyes. “Whatever.”
Howdy gave her a wink and said, “Hey listen, I’m curious about earlier.” He gestured out toward the parking lot. “Exactly who was that guy with the, uh, with the scalp situation?” He pointed at the top of his hat.
“Oh, that was Link,” Jodie said.
“Link?” Howdy cocked his head at the name. “Like the sausage?”
“More like the thing that’s missing between us and cavemen,” Jodie said.
Slim leaned back in his chair again and said, “See now, I don’t normally like to judge a book by its cover, but . . . he didn’t exactly look like the brightest bulb in the marquee. The biggest, maybe, but not the brightest.”
“That much is true,” Jodie said, touching her finger to the side of her nose. “The boy has a bad case of the simples.”
“I don’t think he was here last time I was,” Slim said. “He’s the type I would’ve remembered.”
Jodie shook her head. “No, he showed up a few weeks after your last gig,” she said. “You remember Big John?”
Slim nodded, held his hand out kind of low to the ground. “Little guy, talked kinda funny?”
“That’s him,” Jodie said. “Well, he quit on me, moved up to Portland after some girl.”
“The kind who leaves a forwarding address, obviously,” Howdy said.
Slim held up the middle finger on his left hand and tilted it toward Howdy.
Jodie said, “So I needed somebody working the door, taking cover charge, counting heads, bouncing, all that. That’s when Link showed up, looking for work. He was big and scary with those damn things in his head, especially the way it pinches that ridge of scalp along the crown. So it seemed like a good fit.” She shrugged and took a sip of her coffee. “First couple of weeks he was fine. After that he started stealing everything that wasn’t too hot or too heavy to tote. He set about robbing me blind without wasting a bit of gas trying to be slick about it.” Jodie counted things off on her fingers. “The take at the door dropped off, cases of stuff started walking out the back, sound equipment started to disappear.” Jodie shook her head. “So I got some cameras installed. Only took two days to get enough video to forestall any legal proceedings he might consider for me firing him without notice.”
“So that was the business in the parking lot?”
“That was his termination interview,” Jodie said. “Sometimes it’s hard being the boss.”
“It’s a tough job, all right,” Howdy said. “But I think not shooting him was a pretty generous severance package.”
“My thought exactly,” Jodie said. “Only big surprise is how ungrateful the son of a bitch seemed. Still, it’s good news for the two of you.”
“How so?”
“Now you’ll both have jobs every night if you want. One of you playing, one of you on the door. Whaddya say?”
Slim and Howdy exchanged a quick glance and a nod. “Fair enough,” Slim said.
“Deal!” Jodie slapped the desktop and opened a drawer. She pulled out another pistol and slid it in Howdy’s direction. “So, let me ask you,” she said. “Prior to throwing that gun away back in Beaumont, jew get a chance to find out if you’re any good with it?”
Before Howdy could open his mouth, Slim pointed at Jodie and said, “I tell you what, we’ll all be plenty safe if any major appliances come in here trying to cause trouble.”
26
AS THE RAIN TAPERED OFF, THE CROWD TRICKLED IN. SINCE neither Howdy nor Slim cared one way or the other about who did what that night, they flipped a coin. Slim called it in the air and opted to take the stage when he won. Fine with Howdy. He’d work the door. They decided to alternate daily, keep from getting in a rut.
Hank Williams, Jr., kicked off the Monday-night game the way he always does with all his rowdy friends. It was Giants-Redskins, neither of which had what you’d call a substantial fan base in the greater Del Rio metro area. Still, it was football and guys’ll watch and cheer for damn near anything where people get hit or where there’s the possibility of a wreck, especially if there’s cheerleaders and beer involved.
Of course nobody at the Lost and Found was wearing Giants or Redskins paraphernalia—or anything else from back east for that matter. Sports apparel was strictly Lone Star oriented. Cowboys, Longhorns, Texans, Aggies, Owls, Horned Frogs, and even a few old Oilers jerseys. The one exception being a chesty little blonde in an Arizona Cardinals T-shirt that nobody seemed to mind.
Otherwise, fashion broke down along the three usual lines. The majority wore jeans, western shirts, cowboy hats, and boots. Next most popular was T-shirts, jeans, and baseball caps. The third was a variety of air force dress.
Howdy was working just inside the front door, perched on a stool behind a rickety podium with a small light on top for checking IDs, and a shelf below where he kept the cash box for the cover charge and his little pad for writing down song ideas. Jodie’s extra pistol was tucked in the small of his back. It was just a .22 but it was enough to keep most people from doing anything really stupid.
Every time somebody came through the door Howdy clicked his chrome counter, said, “Hey, howyadoin’?” and took their money with a smile. Flirted with the girls. Shot shit with the guys. It didn’t take a high percentage of Howdy’s concentration to do the job, so, as usual, he was thinking about other things.
In fact, ever since the conversation in Jodie’s office, Howdy had been thinking about Marilyn Justine. Where was she? What was she doing? Why had she left? How much trouble would it have been to leave a note? What was in her margaritas?
Lacking, as he was, answers to any of those questions, Howdy moved on to thinking about that first night he tried to drink her out of his mind. Started with Corona, moved on to tequila. Margaritas, of course, in her honor, alternating with a shot of gold now and then. The margaritas weren’t as good as the ones Marilyn made with that secret recipe of hers, but Howdy still managed to build a pyramid toward the ceiling with all the glasses he emptied.
The bartender that night kept saying that one more drink would make him forget. Howdy just shook his head, saying, “It’s going to take more than a margarita to make me stop thinking about her.”
Thinking back on it, Howdy pulled out his note pad. Wrote that down. That was a song as sure as he was sitting there.
The moment he put the pen down, the door opened. It was three gals looked like they’d just come from working in an office all day. Howdy tipped hi
s hat, said, “Hey, how y’all doin?” He took their money and watched them wiggle off toward the bar, then turned his eyes back to the pad. Wrote down, “hurting, even while not feeling any pain.”
That was how it happened sometimes. He’d be looking back over a page from his life or the life of someone he knew and something would jump out at him, give him a line to work with, a foundation to build on. Other times he tried to write from the perspective of someone he imagined or somebody he’d seen in passing and he’d try to project who they were, what they’d gone through. Like once when he saw an old man standing on the porch of a weather-beaten house looking toward the sky. Or that time he saw a young woman sitting on a bus bench crying, a sheet of paper clutched in her hand. Was the man praying for rain? And what was that piece of paper? A good-bye? Bad news from the doctor?
You write about life’s trials, mama, how it’s a hard row to hoe, and the one who broke your heart so bad you thought you’d die. Songs come from a snatch of language overheard at the coffee shop, two people breaking up, maybe, one asking to be released from the other. Released. What a choice of words. And then there’s all the good times and honky-tonk girls, the fast cars and the run from the law. It’s life, the stuff you go through.
And it has to come from the heart, not the head.
Howdy knew that writing songs was funny business. Sometimes one’ll squirt out like mustard from a squeeze bottle, other times it can take months, drive you up a wall trying to find the point, or the rhyme, or the perspective. And all that before you even try to tackle a melody. But there was nothing like the feeling you got when you got hold of a good idea.
While there was a deep satisfaction in adding a good song to your catalogue, Howdy knew at least half the fun came in the actual writing. It was like life or taking a long drive—the journey itself meant as much as the destination. It reminded Howdy of something somebody said one time about how chasing a dream is almost as much fun as living it. And songs were like dreams, real and not real at the same time, a version of reality that could reveal itself at any moment.
The Adventures of Slim & Howdy Page 10
