The Last of the Smoking Bartenders

by C. J. Howell

  Hailey hardly recognized the town now. Even the pawn shop was boarded up.

  She followed the road to the end of town, the massive mine on her right, still smoldering. Fire crews in dayglow yellow were spraying white foam and mopping it up. She was surprised at the size of the fire. It had been huge. The buildings were ash and blackened metal. There were no trees of any kind in the narrow canyon cut, but if there had been they’d have been vaporized. The earth was scorched black, like the very rocks had burnt.

  When she’d driven the length of the town, she turned around and drove back looking for a place to start. At the entrance to the canyon, she stopped at a bar that looked more like a mobile home. Not quite noon but the parking lot was crowded. Most of the vehicles had the signs of some variety of emergency responder, sirens or the appropriate decals, stickers, and plates.

  She claimed a stool at the bar. The place was tiny. It seemed full even though there were maybe a dozen customers. A side room with curios and postcards was empty. The bartender was a middle-aged woman, white blonde hair and red skin, dangling a cigarette, too skinny.

  Well, aren’t you adorable? What’ll you have, sweetie?

  Hailey smiled, and even might have blushed at little in spite of herself.

  Miller Lite, draft, please.

  The barmaid poured a pint of yellow beer with a practiced hand.

  What brings you here, darling? Come to see the fire?

  Yeah, work.

  You a reporter or something? You’re a little late, they all been here.

  No, I’m an agent with the FBI.

  Hailey said it as if it were a question.

  Really? You don’t look like a cop.

  Hailey smiled again. It was good to know. She couldn’t tell anymore.

  To tell you the truth, I don’t feel like a cop.

  That’s probably for the best, dear.

  Is it always so busy in here? I mean, this early?

  Hell no. I’ve done more business in the last two days than in the last year. I’m sorry the mine’s gone, but if I’d known that thing burning would be this good for business I’d a burned the thing down myself.

  Did you? Hailey twisted the ends of her hair. The barmaid laughed.

  My goodness, you are a cop aren’t you?

  Well, were you working the night it happened, see anything strange?

  A group of firefighters huddled around a table by the window slammed their glasses down in unison and called for another round of shots.

  Hold on.

  While the barmaid left to serve them, Hailey gulped at her beer. The icy bubbles burned her throat. She’d had no pain pills yet today. The beer was cold and good. Actually refreshing, she thought, like in the commercials.

  The barmaid returned shaking her head.

  Assholes.

  Hailey turned to look. Four of the five were staring at her. The fifth was kind of cute, she thought.

  So were there any strangers in here that night, anything like that?

  Well, there were two fellas come in here that night.

  The barmaid leaned in conspiratorially and lowered her voice.

  They were a little strange, I’d say.

  Hailey leaned in to meet her midway over the bar.

  Really, like how?

  Well, first of all, they backed in, you know, like they do when they’re gonna rob you and make a quick getaway.

  Did you see what they were driving?

  No, just the taillights.But probably something big and American. I even brought the revolver out from the back office and set it under the bar, just in case.

  The barmaid winked at Hailey as she said this.

  Hailey leaned in even closer.

  But it was okay?

  Oh, they were cool.

  What made them strange?

  Well, they were longhairs you know?

  Like hippies?

  Well, one of them was sort of like a hippy, but the other was more like…a vagrant…you know, like he smelled bad. I mean bad.

  Do you think they did it? Why do you think so?

  I didn’t say they did it. But one of ’em was talking about the mine with some of the old-timers who drink here, getting them all riled up. Getting those old farts riled up is about all I need, you know what I mean?

  Was it the stranger that brought it up?

  What do you mean?

  Did he start talking about the mine first or was it the old guy?

  I don’t know, they didn’t seem to care until Emmit started yapping about the mine starting up again, how there were people down there working it. It’s all bullshit. There was nobody working that mine.

  Hailey thought about this, about the body.

  So you don’t think these guys planned it…if they did it. They didn’t seem like radical environmentalists or something?

  Hailey figured this was where Western Division would be going with the case. Blame the Animal Liberation Front or Earth First; the eco-terrorist angle would open the money spigots and bring the cameras. Two things that made prosecutors drool.

  Honey, I don’t think these guys could have spelled environmentalist. Not that kind of hippy, not the college kind. I mean, the one smelled bad…not like patchouli stink bad…like dumpster diving bad.

  Hailey thought about the plastic cap from the bottle of Old Crow she’d found. She finished the rest of her beer.

  I mean, the one had a cast on his foot, but it looked nasty, like it was coming off, like he’d jerryrigged it or something. Now, a college environmentalist hippy’d be on his mama’s insurance, don’t you think? Wouldn’t let it get like that.

  Were you scared of them. Did they seem like criminals?

  No. Like I said, the one with the peg leg was really nice, even got along with the crusty bastards that call this place home. Even left a good tip, and honey, that makes someone okay in my book. The other was quiet, kept to himself.

  Did you tell this to any of the other cops that came in here?

  Nope.

  Why not?

  They didn’t ask. Only asked for drinks.

  Hailey drank another beer and left a twenty on the bar. She nodded to the barmaid, busy closing out a tab, who gave her a salute in return and then laughed in a way that Hailey could only describe as a cackle. Hailey stole a quick glance at the cute firefighter who was pretending he didn’t see her and then made her way out to the parking lot and her cruiser. As she swung her car around she could make out the faces of the firefighters through the window. She headed south through town again and up the canyon. She was pretty sure she knew who she was looking for. She was looking for a bum.

  Chapter 9

  Tom woke on the cold earthen floor of the old woman’s kitchen in her mud brick adobe hut. He had gone to sleep wrapped in his wool coat, using his backpack as a pillow, but now he found himself covered in a thick woven blanket, coarse as horsehair, but warm. The old woman kneeled over a blackened billy can suspended on a spit over a small fire. The smoke from the fire crowded the ceiling and slowly escaped through a hole in the corner that acted as a chimney.

  Ya at eeh abini, the woman said, which Tom guessed could only mean good morning, so he reciprocated with a nod and a smile. A rooster crowed loudly. The culprit stood at an open doorway to the outside. Beyond a dirt courtyard, clouds hung low in the sky, and a steady drizzle rolled across the valley. The bird cocked its ugly head at Tom and strutted into the room a few steps before the woman shoed it back outside by throwing a small rock at it. She looked at Tom and laughed. He laughed too.

  Steam rose from the billy can. She wrapped her hand in a cloth and grabbed the lid of the billy can and lifted it off its hook over the fire. With a little grunt, she poured two ceramic bowls full of coffee. She motioned with her hand for him to come closer, and he slid across the floor to take one of the bowls in both hands. She reset the can on the hook. The fire was fed by only three sticks that came together in a small point of flame. She pushed the sticks toward the middle wit
h her fingertips as the ends burned down. Tom was impressed that she could get such a large can of coffee to a near boil with only a few sticks. He held the bowl to his face and felt the steam clear his sinuses. He took a sip and grunted his appreciation.

  After a while, she removed the steaming can from the fire and placed a circular piece of sheet metal across the spit. She put two pieces of flat bread on the sheet metal. She filled their bowls with the rest of the coffee from the can. When the bread was good and heated she licked her fingers and picked up the bread off of the glowing sheet metal and tossed them on her lap to cool for second. When the bread had cooled enough for Tom to handle, she gave him a piece. She ate the bread slowly, pinching off little pieces and dunking them in her coffee, staring out the open doorway at the morning gray beyond.

  Cold, she said, making a shivering motion.

  Cold, Tom agreed.

  They watched the world outside framed in the doorway. The drizzle turned into a steady rain. Mud began to splash a few feet into the room. Tom took out his pack of GPCs and held it out to the woman. She took one of the longer butts and lit it with a stick from the fire. Tom took the stick and lit his smoke and then carefully placed the stick back in the ashes with the ember-end next to the burning ends of the other two sticks, and the fire came back to life. She smoked hers down the filter and then put it in the fire.

  Eventually Tom rose and stretched. He shook out his coat and put it on. He made a little bow and put his hands together as if praying.

  Thank you, he said. He offered her a dollar in nickels and dimes, but she waved him off. She gave him a toothless grin, the deep rutted lines in her face zigzagged upward.

  Thank you.

  • • •

  Tom hitched up his pack and started down the dirt road back toward town. Although it was only drizzling, little tributaries of rainwater meandered down the road, bobbing around newly uncovered rocks and clumps of hearty ditchweed, eroding small canyons in the single lane track. The old woman’s hovel was on a small rise stretching uphill from town. A patchwork of houses spotted the descent below, some whitewashed, but most were brown mud brick adobe or cinderblock. At the base of the rise, the road crossed a gully before a short jog up to Main Street. The gully was probably bone dry ninety-nine percent of the time, but today it was a muddy stream rolling across the road at an indeterminate depth. Fortunately, others had crossed already today and left a wooden plank spanning the gully a few inches above the waterline. Tom took a cautious step onto the plank and felt it rock with his weight. The pack made him top heavy, and halfway across he nearly pitched in steadying himself with his knees bent in a wide stance and arms outstretched. It struck him then, as it had many times before since setting out, how tenuous this all was, all of his belongings waterlogged, or worse, lost forever with one misstep; the pack, the ziplock of change, the emergency cans, a roll of the dice away from slipping into oblivion. He was always a roll of the dice away from ruin. He wondered what he would do then, when he had no food, no clothes, no loose change, when he literally had nothing. He thought all this as he calmly slide-stepped across the plank to the other side, and as he scampered up the short hill to the road it occurred to him that he’d probably have no alternative but to turn to crime.

  After waiting only an hour or so at the General Store, he got a ride in the back of a pickup truck with six or seven other men heading to Chinle to work. The truck was a Toyota, low to the ground, with a plastic bedliner. The sides of the bed were slick with moisture, and Tom lost his grip and tumbled into the bed. The men gave a forgiving laugh and handed him his pack, which had rolled into the mud. Tom laughed with them, laughed at himself, with himself; he’d sacrificed pride a long time ago.

  The engine started like a whisper, the low purring of a loving mum, a small pickup that could still carry a load. In these conditions the driver was not in a hurry. The forks and coiled springs groaned a little under the weight, but at twenty miles an hour no damage was being done; it could run forever. It felt good to be moving. Immediately out of town the dirt road became a minefield of potholes filled with rainwater. The truck snaked around them, veering from one side of the road to the other, trying to pick the clearest path and avoid bottoming out. The men were grateful. Each bump, misjudgment, or lapse in concentration letting the speed get too great sent the men in the bed crashing into each other and the ones sitting on the sides of the thin metal rail of the truck bed holding on for dear life. No one was in a hurry.

  The desert was beautiful at twenty miles an hour, the air damp but fresh, thick with sage and yucca. Hardpan and arroyos turned soft under the rare but much needed desert rain. The rain picked up in earnest, and gusts of wind stung with surprising cold. Tom tilted his face up to the sky and felt the pure rain pelt his skin. He imagined the road filth draining from the hard creases and lines his face had formed over the past years. A poor man’s shower, his matted hair so greasy the water clung rather than ran through. He knew it wouldn’t do much for the smell, but it felt good.

  The sky was a white-gray wall of rolling, swelling clouds. The mesas and mountains that marked the boundary of earth were invisible. The boxed-in effect confined the world, restraining it to the immediate consciousness. Jostling in the back of the Toyota with the ebb and flow of the road, Tom imagined a life raft adrift on the ocean. But this was the desert, and the desert commanded attention. All around the visible spectrum from the road until the gray reached the ground, life, long left dormant, emerged, hibernating for just such an occasion. Green sprigs next to columns of long yellow thistle grass. Over the splashing beneath the tires Tom could hear the cactus drinking.

  After two hours of twenty mph and weaving around the worst of the potholes and rocks, they intersected a two-lane blacktop highway. The last twenty yards were the toughest for the little rear-wheel drive Toyota. The highway was built up with fill to elevate it off the desert floor for drainage and to thwart blowing sand drifts, and the rear wheels spun to crest the lip of the asphalt and skid a harsh right turn onto the highway.

  The Toyota accelerated slowly, a fine mist spraying behind it. The men nodded to each other and started rearranging and gathering up their things. Most of the workers carried small day packs or plastic grocery bags with the day’s belongings. A few minutes later they passed the telltale signs of a town—a gas station, a tractor supply, aluminum sided storage bins, rusty water tower, decaying fencework, and the odd yellow or brown leafed tree.

  It was a gray town on a gray day. Tom felt a little pinch of apprehension in his gut as the truck slowed down, the uncertainty of a ride ending and having to get a new ride, decisions to make, life back in his control rather then the driver’s. Buildings appeared on both sides of the road, low, one and two story, some boarded up with plywood windows. The truck stopped in a parking lot rutted with broken asphalt behind a hardware and feed store. The driver, a large Indian man, got out and stretched. The men each gave him two dollars. Tom gave the man eight quarters.

  The men shuffled across the parking lot and huddled under a corrugated tin awning next to the metal back door to the hardware store. Tom followed. He lit a half-smoked GPC.

  What are you waiting for? Tom lobbed the question towards the center of the group.

  Work. They send a van to take us to the mine.

  Tom twitched. The mine? Isn’t that in the other direction, north?

  It’s on the Hopi reservation. South of here.

  What do you mine?

  Coal. But we don’t mine. We work the pipe, mix the coal with water. They ship it that way, across many miles, to the cities.

  They were silent for a moment, listening to the rain.

  You want work? We could ask.

  Would they hire me? I mean for a few days?

  The man who had been answering shrugged.

  We’re Navajo. If the Hopi hire us they would hire a white man.

  The other men mumbled their agreement.

  Tom nodded. He stood at the edge of the cir
cle, not quite under the awning. He felt the rain at his back. He daydreamed for a while, thinking about a paycheck, a few days work, what he could do with a hundred dollars. He imagined a little white envelope with crisp twenties, so new they stuck together. But they’d all be embedded with electronic strips, like all the money nowadays. Even out here he’d be traced in under eight hours. In twelve he’d probably be dead. Anyway, he couldn’t waste the time working. He was close. He had come this far. He had to keep moving. The change bag would either last, or it wouldn’t.

  He made a spontaneous gesture that was a mix of a Hindu Namaste, with hands clasped together as in prayer, and an old west salute.

  Take care.

  The men nodded and watched him walk into the rain.

  He walked around the side of the building and set his pack next to a brown stucco wall under the overhang of the roof, just out of the rain. He dug deep into his pack and fished out a badly crumpled and creased army green plastic poncho. He put the pack back on and did his best to stretch the poncho over his body and the pack. He tucked his hair under the hood and walked to the road. He looked left and right. Smooth, wet, blacktop. He walked on the gravel shoulder through town. He passed a defunct Indian curio shop and Mexican restaurant with two pick-ups parked around the side. He held out his thumb as a few cars and an eighteen-wheeler passed, but he didn’t turn to face them. Experience had taught him that no one picked people up in town. A half mile to the next string of businesses and then unevenly spaced streets leading to shuttered homes every quarter mile or so. It was at least three miles before he felt he was at the edge of town and stood toward traffic and stuck out his thumb.