Sean sighed. "Ah, shit," he muttered, and slowly followed Clayton and Rebecca as they climbed out of the jeep.
"It'll be fun," Rebecca said, taking his arm. "We can listen to Patti Page on the radio, play that old bowling machine of his, drink some nice watery beer. . . ."
"Ah, shit," he repeated.
"Gesundheit!" Clayton replied.
"Come on, Tarzan," Rebecca said, holding him up as one of his legs buckled. "Let's go get you some of the hair of that dog."
"Stupid expression," Sean mumbled. "Hair of the dog that bit you. What the hell does that mean, anyway."
Clayton and Rebecca were laughing at Sean's misery as they opened the door and almost fell into the room. The few townspeople who were still nursing their last beers of the evening looked at them in disgust, but not Alex Brown. He smiled broadly and held his hands out in a bizarre and totally uncharacteristic gesture of welcome, saying, "Hello, come in, come in!"
Sean was immediately suspicious. He leaned to Clayton and whispered, "What's with him?"
"Don't be stupid," Clayton whispered back. "He wants me to sell the Sweet property to the town."
"Oh." Sean nodded. "Real subtle."
Clayton preceded his friends over to the bar and said somberly, "Good evening, Alex. You're looking well."
"What would you like?" Alex asked, the smile remaining plastered on his face. Clayton had been only partially correct in his assessment of Alex's good cheer. The middle-aged bartender saw that Clayton had been drinking heavily, and that presented him with the opportunity of both overcharging and shortchanging him; and Alex had been having a few beers with the locals, as was his custom on weekend nights. He was, as they say, feeling no pain.
"I'd like a Mercedes Benz," Rebecca said as she and Sean sat down on bar stools, thus forcing him to acknowledge her presence by repeating the question to her.
"What will it be?" he asked Rebecca. "A black Russian?"
"Oh, Al, how sweet!" She grinned. "You remembered my favorite drink. Yeah, a black Russian, and a pitcher of beer."
"What about my favorite drink?" Clayton pouted. Alex snapped his fingers. "Bloody Mary, right?"
"Oh, Al, how sweet," he simpered. "You remembered!" He turned to Sean. "More vodka, buddy?"
Sean looked over at him slowly, tasting the recently relieved nausea still lurking in his throat and mouth.
After a long pause he said, "Just beer."
Clayton shook his head. "That's not the hair of the dog, Sean old man."
"Hair of the dog," Sean muttered as Alex drew him a beer and then began to mix the other drinks. "You know, that reminds me. What does that stupid poster mean, that John Wayne poster? I just like don't get the joke."
"What poster?" Clayton asked.
"The one on the wall in the trailer, the one where he's saying 'Buy a dachshund.' I don't get it."
"It's a cowboy saying buy a dachshund," Clayton replied, as if that explained it.
Rebecca sauntered over to the bowling machine and dropped three dimes into the slot. The bowling machine was one of those devices of entertainment so common in modest taverns. It consisted of an alley two yards in length, resolving itself into a series of prongs that rose a quarter of an inch from the surface. Ten small plastic bowling pins hung directly above the prongs, arranged in the customary triangular pattern. The player would slide a metal puck down the sawdust-covered alley, and the number of pins removed from play and electrically scored would be determined by the number and inter-connected sequence of prongs depressed by the puck. It was a simple diversion in many bars. It was the sole diversion in Alex's.
"Hey, Sean," Rebecca said. "C'mon, we're gonna bowl."
He looked over wearily. "I'm sorry, but I can't."
"Why not?"
"If I have to stand up, I'll fall down. I can't see too good, anyway. Just let me sit here and drink my beer."
Rebecca sniffed. "Boy, you're a lot of fun." She turned to Alex, who was busy filling their order. "You wanna bowl with us, Al?"
Alex frequently played the bowling machine with his customers, as a way of encouraging them to spend more money. "Yeah, sure. Wait a minute."
Rebecca took her turn, scoring three on her first shot. The second time she slid the puck down the alley she missed completely. Drunker than I thought, she mused as she tossed the puck to her brother. Clayton rolled up his sleeves, spat on his hands, rubbed them together, and then slid the puck down the playing board so forcefully that it rebounded of the back and slid forward into his hands.
"Steee-rike!" he yelled.
Rebecca was sitting next to Sean at the bar, draped over his shoulder and nibbling his ear, and as Clayton turned to call Alex to take his turn at the machine he noticed that the older man was staring intently at them. He laughed softly and said, "Hey, Al. You go."
Alex snapped his eyes away from Sean and Rebecca as if Clayton had startled him. He went from behind the bar over to the bowling machine, and Rebecca followed him. Sean remained seated, sighing and gently exploring the lump on his head.
Alex knew the bowling machine as well as if he had built it himself. He had played the machine almost every night for decades, and he was able to score a strike whenever he wished to. He used this ability to boost receipts by challenging his customers to decidedly one-sided games of chance, so Clayton and Rebecca knew what he was about to suggest when he said, "Hey, I have an idea."
"Whatever could it be?" Clayton asked with concern.
"Why don't we make this game a little more interesting? How about maybe a little wager?"
Clayton pursed his lips. "I don't know, Al. I don't think that's legal."
"Come on," Alex urged, oblivious to the sarcasm, "just a friendly little wager. Won't hurt nobody. If I win, you gotta buy a round for the house. If you win, I gotta buy a round for the house."
Clayton pretended to think hard about the proposition and then he nodded. "Well, okay. But what if there's a tie?"
"Then nobody buys for nobody."
"Well, okay," he repeated. "Me and Becky already went, so you go."
Alex smiled and took his shot. It was a strike. Clayton looked at him menacingly and said, "Hey! What's goin' on here? You hustling me or something?" Rebecca then took her second turn and ran up a score of six for her next two shots. Clayton followed, knocking down nine pins.
The games went on for the next hour, interrupted only by Alex excusing himself occasionally to refill the empty glasses of his customers, whose number diminished as the night wore on. Alex's meager income depended upon weekend evenings such as this, for the local farmers stayed until well after midnight, and Clayton and Rebecca stayed even later, if they came to his bar at all. One by one the locals departed, until in the last dark hours before dawn only Clayton, Rebecca, and Sean remained, the latter having slept for a while with his head down on the bar as his girlfriend drank black Russian after black Russian.
Clayton grew bored with the bowling machine, and as he rubbed his eyes and yawned he said, "Let's play something else."
"What else?" Alex laughed. "We got no pinballs here." He was swaying slightly, for the rounds of drinks Clayton had been buying after each game he inevitably lost had caused Alex to drink more than was his wont during working hours.
"Yeah, no balls and no nuts." Clayton nodded. "Why don't we flip coins for drinks?"
Alex shook his head. "No, no, I don't gamble like that. I play the bowling game, but that's different."
"Sure," Sean mumbled from the bar. "Other people got a chance when you flip coins."
Alex glared at him. "What did you say?"
At that moment Rebecca felt the room beginning to spin and she stumbled away from the bowling machine and fell heavily into Alex. She would have slipped down to the floor, but he grabbed her around the waist and steadied her. "Whoa," she said, "that kinda snuck up on me." Alex still had his hands on her waist, and he kept them there a moment or two longer than necessary. Rebecca noticed this, and she smiled at him, her sult
ry, foggy eyes half-open. He pulled his hands away sharply and looked very uncomfortable as Rebecca continued to smile and Sean chuckled softly.
Alex spun around and approached Sean menacingly. "What you laugh?" he demanded, his generally good English falling victim to the alcohol, the late hour, and his embarrassment.
His tone surprised Sean. "Hey, man, I wasn't laughing at you."
"You don't call me man."
Clayton intervened. "Come on, Al, he didn't mean nothing. Hey, I got an idea. Let's flip coins for shots of tequila. "
Alex shook his head sullenly. "I told you, I don't flip coins."
"Come on, be a sport. I tell you what: if I lose, I buy us all a round of tequila, and you can charge me triple for it. How's that?"
He examined this idea, looking for a trick, and not finding one. "Okay, okay, but I do the flipping. We use my coins, three coins."
"Okey-dokey," Clayton said, not expecting to win, and not caring if he lost. These games of chance served merely to introduce an element of diversion into the evening's major goal, which was to drink as much as possible. "I got heads, you got tails."
"No," Alex insisted, "I got heads, you got tails."
"Sure, fine, whatever. Go ahead. But get a lemon and some salt and a knife."
"A lemon? Oh, for the tequila. Sure, sure." Alex scurried away into the kitchen behind the bar.
Clayton and Rebecca sat down on either side of Sean, who was resting his elbows on the bar top and leaning his chin on his hands. "You know he's probably got trick coins, right?"
Clayton nodded. "Of course."
Sean nodded in turn. "Just checking."
Alex returned with two lemons, three quarters, and a long carving knife. "Okay, we start." He tossed the coins one at a time onto the bar, and they came up two heads and one tail. "I win!" he said, and turned to get the bottle of tequila, not noticing as Clayton took two quarters from his pocket and deftly switched them with two from the bar top. He winked at Rebecca, who giggled stupidly.
Clayton lifted the filled shot glass and said, "Okay, a toast to . . . to, ah . . . to President-elect Nixon."
Alex lifted his glass earnestly. "Da, I voted for him. I drink to him."
"Da?" Rebecca asked.
"Da. Is Ukrainian. Means yes."
"Oh. Okay, da da da! To Dicky!" She, Clayton, and Alex drained their glasses. Sean merely sipped from his.
"Okay, let's go again," Clayton said. "I feel my luck's about to change."
Alex tossed the coins a second time, and two of them came up tails. He frowned, perplexed, but said nothing as he poured four shots of tequila and began to slice one of the lemons. Sean belched and then groaned, and Rebecca said quickly, "Sean, you are not punking out of this. You drink your tequila!"
He shook his head. "Becky, I feel like death warmed over. I swear I'll puke again if I have to drink anything else."
"So you just find yourself another branch to slam against your head," Clayton said. "So what? C'mon, Brenner, don't be such a downer. Finish your tequila. Remember, children in Mexico are sober."
Sean gazed dismally at the four shots of cactus whiskey that Alex set out before them, and he sighed. "Oh, well, what the hell." He licked the arc formed by his thumb and his forefinger, poured salt on it, and then took hold of one of the shot glasses. He licked off the salt, threw the liquor down his throat, and frantically rammed a slice of lemon into his mouth.
"Atta boy," Clayton said happily, and then he, Rebecca, and Alex repeated Sean's gestures. Rebecca and Clayton sighed and smiled as the fiery whiskey burned its way down into their stomachs. Alex shuddered and began to perspire.
"One more time," Clayton said, pushing the three coins toward Alex. The tosses were made, and Alex found himself once again disgruntledly pouring shots of tequila. He blinked his eyes a few times in rapid succession as his vision began to blur.
"Hey, you remember Caroline?" Sean asked.
Clayton laughed. "Yeah. Space cadet."
"Who was Caroline?" Rebecca asked.
"This chick we met in that commune in Idaho two years ago," Sean explained, feeling rather chipper from the tequila, contrary to his expectations. "She said that if you drank enough tequila, you'd trip."
"Yeah"—Clayton laughed—"'cause it's made from the same cactus they make mescaline from."
"Is that true?" Rebecca asked.
"Sure it is," Sean said, "but before you could drink enough of it to start tripping, you'd probably be dead."
"Really." She laughed. "I wish I'd gone with you guys that summer. I'd love to see what it's like to live on a commune."
"It's great," Clayton said. "You sit around all day drinking and getting stoned while you watch all the assholes playing back to nature."
"Some of them were okay," Sean commented.
"Sure, some of them were. Caroline was, anyway. Chick could give a blow job that'd put a vacuum cleaner to shame."
Rebecca laughed louder. "Clay, you're terrible."
"So was being on that fucking commune," he said, licking a few drops of tequila from the bottom of the shot glass. "All these people talking about land and rain and sunshine and plants and loving the universe and all that shit. And then most of them got bored with it and split anyway. Caroline, too. Last I heard from her she was back in college. Swahili major or something."
Alex attempted to sound casual and only slightly interested. "What is this you say, this mescaline?"
"What?" Clayton asked.
"This mescaline you talked about. What is it?" Clayton washed the tequila taste from his mouth with a swig of beer. "It's like tequila, only it grows like naturally. Does a number on your head, let me tell you."
Alex's eyes narrowed. "This is a drug?"
"Sure," Sean said, "just like alcohol's a drug."
"No, no, you know what I mean. This mescaline, it is a drug?"
"No, I don't know what you mean," Sean insisted. "What's the difference between drugs and booze? They both get you high."
The hostility that Alex felt toward Sean, which he had been repressing all night, began to surface. "How you know about this? You use drugs?"
"Everybody uses some kind of drugs."
"I don't use no drugs!"
Sean laughed. "Give me a break, Alex! You're so drunk right now you can hardly stand up."
"Alcohol has been for thousands of years, all over the world!" Alex said angrily. He looked at Rebecca. "You use drugs? He gives you drugs?"
Rebecca's voice was patient and infuriatingly condescending. "Al, some people use one drug, other people use another drug. You just gotta let people use whatever drug feeds their head, you know?"
"I don't use no drugs!" he shouted.
"For Christ's sake, Alex," Sean shouted back, "you drink, don't you? What do you think alcohol is, ginger ale or something?"
"Is legal, alcohol. Drugs, they ain't legal. The doctors and the government, they both say—"
"Doctors," Sean spat. "They're all full of shit, just like the government is. They all lie through their teeth."
"Ah, you know better than doctors and senators, Mr. Genius, Mr. Wiseguy college kid?"
Clayton disliked the tenor of the conversation, so he interrupted it by saying, "Enough of this drivel, and enough of tossing coins. Al, set up some more tequila. I'll buy." Alex was staring at Sean with blazing, furious eyes, so Clayton tapped him gently and amicably on the arm. "Come on, Al, another round. Hey, let's drink to your homeland. What is it, Bulgaria or something? Yugoslavia?"
"Ukraine," he muttered, taking the tequila bottle and pouring four more shots.
"Oh, yeah, the Ukraine." Clayton nodded. "What's it like in the Ukraine? Is it like around here?"
"Who gives a . . . ?" Sean began to mutter until Clayton's elbow rammed hard into his ribs.
"No, no, is no mountains where I come from," Alex said. "I come from Kivertsy, near Poland. All flat. Farms and cows, though, like around here. Lotta cows. When I was a child, we had lotta cows. Pigs too."
"Moooo," Sean said softly. "Oink oink."
Alex's attention was once again riveted on Sean. "You think it's funny, farming? You think working on your land from sunrise to sunset is funny? You think hard work is funny?"
"Hey, I didn't . . ."
"You think you're better than people who work, maybe, 'cause you don't work? You try working sometime, you see it ain't so funny."
"What are you talking about, man? I didn't say nothing about farmers."
Clayton sighed. The asshole brigade is out in full force tonight, he thought. "He didn't mean nothing, Al. Come on, finish pouring the shots and we'll drink to the Ukraine." He looked around. "Nobody's left but us, so why don't we take the bottle and all go sit at a table. You don't have to wait on anybody else, so you don't have to stand up." He laughed heartily. "Besides, I don't think you can stand up!"
Alex found Clayton's laughter infectious, and he grinned slightly. "Yeah, maybe I'm a little tipsy."
"Maybe, just a little," Clayton said. "Come on, let's go sit at a table."
It was no easy task for them to manage to convey themselves, the shot glasses, and the bottle of tequila the seven feet from the bar to the table, but it was accomplished with a minimum of spillage and no serious injuries. "Here's to the Ukraine," Clayton slurred, and tossed back another shot of tequila.
Alex did the same, muttering something in his native tongue. Rebecca sat motionless beside the drunken bartender, staring off into space with dull, vacant eyes, and Sean swayed in small, slow circles upon the chair. Alex took out a handkerchief and mopped his brow, saying, "It got awful hot in here."
"Yeah," Clayton agreed, not having been at all uncomfortable a moment ago. Now he decided that he was sweltering, so he removed his leather vest and tossed it over to lie on the floor near his jacket, which he had dropped there hours before.
Rebecca watched her brother for a moment, and then mumbled, "Wow, yeah. I'm drenched with sweat. Turn down the heat, will you, Al?" She slowly pulled off her sweater and let it fall to the floor. Alex struggled to bring his surroundings into focus, and his attention was immediately riveted upon Rebecca's chest. She was braless beneath a white tank top, and the dampness of her own perspiration caused the thin cloth to cling to her breasts. Alex gazed at them obsessively, but then, realizing what he was doing and fearing to invite ridicule, he pulled his eyes away and looked around the room.
Grogo the Goblin Page 18
