The Last of the Smoking Bartenders

by C. J. Howell

  The Aztec motel was a cinderblock dogleg along a stretch of Old Route 66 between Sanders and Chambers with boarded up motels on either side, maroon and turquoise paint chipped and fading, a long dead neon sign and a giant concrete Indian with a giant concrete feathered headdress. Across the street in an empty field stood the remnants of a drive-in movie theater, the windblown plastic bags and trash collecting against the rows of metal poles that once housed speakers. Beyond that a barbed wire fence, a half-mile of sand and scrub brush, and I-40, busy with the day’s tractor-trailers and speeding cars, silent from this distance like a moving diorama behind glass.

  The sun had been up for hours, but those still scratching out a living on the vestiges of Old Route 66 had no need to be up at this hour, and there was no one in sight and no cars on the road. They parked away from the office, and Lorne went in to get a room alone. The window shade rattled as he pulled too hard on the glass door. There was no one waiting behind the counter. He slapped at the little brass bell with the palm of his hand. A few minutes later, a large woman in a flower print dress shuffled in from a back room dragging with her the distant sound of television. Lorne rested his giant paws on the counter. She frowned at his long greasy hair and four-day road stink, but she accepted thirty-five dollars cash for a room. He walked back to the car slowly, checking to see if she peeked through the blinds, but if she was, it was too bright outside to tell.

  The carpet was an indeterminate color between green and purple, thick and crunchy but with give underfoot, like layers of dried soda. The room was hot and musty. The air was old. Lorne turned down the plastic thermostat on the wall unit, and the crusted vents exhaled gritty warm air that slowly cooled. Jimmy was parked at the peephole, looking at a fisheye view of the outside world. Ashley and Junior stretched out on one bed, heads on the pillow, skinny, young. Chevis awkwardly sat up on the other bed. Pammy wedged into the only chair, and Lorne paced, loading the pipe.

  We should come down, Jimmy said.

  Lorne paced faster.

  Not here, all of us cramped up like this. No way.

  Jimmy thought about this, nodding stoically.

  All right, well let’s get some beer then.

  Lorne took a turn at the peephole, and when he was satisfied he emerged into the sunlight and walked hurriedly to the Malibu. He returned with a case of Busch Light, a family-sized bag of Cool Ranch Doritos, and three packs of Winston Lights. The kids had showered, but Pammy, Chevis, and Jimmy hadn’t moved. Pammy emulsified in the one chair, sweating, her layers collapsing, Jimmy with his eye pressed to the tiny glass doorhole, and Chevis sitting straight up, paling, mouth red as if he were bleeding from his lips and gums instead of from the steel shaft in his chest cavity.

  It feels good to throw your life away doesn’t it?

  Lorne was looking down at the pipe he had just taken a hit from, shaking his head and smiling. The others were vaguely paying attention, as much as could be expected.

  I don’t mean that, throwing it away really. I mean actively destroying it…tearing it apart…. It feels…like freedom.

  Do you know what it feels like? Junior spoke unexpectedly, hands behind his head luxuriating on a propped up pillow, looking down through his eyelashes. Like how your gums ache just before you bite into a rare venison steak.

  Lorne wheeled and pointed at him.

  Yes.

  He shook his finger and spun and shook it at the television.

  Yes.

  Like ripping your cuticles, Pammy said. You guys don’t do that? It hurts but it feels good. Sometimes I fuck with them until they bleed, get the nail under there and push it back and then bite it off. It hurts but I can’t stop myself.

  That’s because you’re a freak, Jimmy said.

  She thrust her chin out at him and he returned the gesture, teasing.

  Ashley rolled her eyes and let an arm fall absently onto Junior’s stomach.

  I’ve felt like this my whole life.

  You’re young, Chevis said. They were surprised to hear from him. He hadn’t said anything since the killing at the gas station. He coughed and a tendril of blood looped out onto his chin.

  You all right?

  Chevis grinned, showing blood-streaked teeth. He nodded his head.

  I’ve never felt better. It’s like this guy said.

  He nodded gingerly toward Lorne.

  Blood tastes like freedom.

  The afternoon was a blur. They drank and smoked and felt much improved and much insane, the pipe erasing the lack of sleep, the rolling of the days and nights on top of each other like an undertow of consciousness. The others eventually took showers except for Chevis, who would not move. They lost control of the volume, in one moment shouting over the television broadcasting an incomprehensible blend of scenes from sitcoms and the local news flipping over each other and blending into one and in the next huddling together in whispers with the lights turned out, paranoid, afraid they could be seen through the curtains, and then raucous and grinning with glassy eyes and shiny cheeks.

  In the night Chevis took a turn, becoming melancholy and then angry and panicked. He cursed Bullfrog Frank, and white people, and then he made them promise to kill the terrorists, continue the mission at any cost. They had largely forgotten about the mission, even Lorne, and they nodded dutifully, already comforting the dead, but then the page would turn, the drug take hold, breathing life into an idea, any idea, and they remembered why it was so important, why they had killed, how they were important, how this was their chance, in this moment, in this motel. And Lorne told the story again, of Tom the drifter, the savior, who’d taken his vow of poverty and still would not be defeated, would not be deterred. And they were rapt.

  Sometime in the night Chevis died. At some point in the early morning hours they noticed Chevis was dead. Pammy had sat on the corner of the bed, and the bounce in the box springs tottered Chevis awkwardly onto his side, partially propped up by the protruding crossbow bolt. He stayed that way, already stiff. It was not dignified. Junior crouched down and studied his dead brother. He was not surprised. He felt like they had entered this death cult sometime ago, although he couldn’t be sure when the initiation occurred, and this was the natural result. Still it was weird though, seeing the husk that used to contain his brother and now was simply a beacon for his brother’s ghost. He couldn’t explain it, but he felt like Chevis was just the first of them to go, and the order of death didn’t really matter. Ashley put her hand on his shoulder. It felt odd to both of them.

  They carried his body to the bathroom and laid him gently in the tub. Ashley and Lorne waited in the outer room while the others washed his body, the water from the lime-crusted faucet melting the dried blood into a rusty stream that ran to the drain. Lorne hobbled to the front door and looked out the eyehole.

  I’m going out for a smoke.

  You’re not going to take off are you?

  No.

  Cuz you know we’d be fucked.

  He squinted back at her. Something caught in his beard.

  I mean, if you did.

  I just want to go outside for a smoke. Don’t you?

  Do you think that we should?

  I have to.

  Yeah, I need to breathe.

  Ashley picked up her skinny backpack and crept to the door behind Lorne. The hinges creaked loudly as Lorne cracked the door open cautiously. The night sky was inky black. Lorne peered down the row of vacant rooms with tangerine bug stained lights demarking the doorways, each encumbered by a small army of moths. They closed the door an inch at a time, cringing at every squeak, and sat on a rectangular concrete parking space bumper affixed to the ground by two rusty stalks of rebar. Lorne lit two Winston Lights and handed one to Ashley. She took a long drag and exhaled in a cloud that spiraled into the black night like dye in brackish water, hearing only the sound of cicadas, a deafening rattle drowning out all background noise. Occasional headlights appeared on I 40 across a dark Old Route 66. She watched the faint pinpoi
nt beams silently turn into red taillights fading into darkness. She looked up at the black sky but couldn’t find the moon. She spoke in a whisper.

  Hey, why didn’t you leave?

  What?

  Lorne was looking here and there, his head darting to lights or sounds that caught his attention or to the flickers in the corners of his eyes that were either real or not.

  You’ve got the car keys.

  Lorne pinched his cigarette between his thumb and forefinger.

  Look at the sky.

  Lorne spread his arms wide extending his fingers up to the unseen heavens.

  Have you ever seen anything like it?

  Ashley looked up at him with all of her energy in her big blue eyes and tilted her head so that the orange light illuminated her hair and looked to Lorne like tracers of fire dancing against the blackness.

  It’s beautiful here, the desert, can you feel it in the air? It’s everywhere.

  I’m just saying.

  Lorne slapped at his arm.

  I don’t want this to end.

  She looked at Lorne and smiled a little.

  Dude, it’s going to end.

  Lorne snorted and grinned back at her.

  Shit.

  Ashley crossed her arms across her breasts and hunched over. She nodded at the door behind them.

  What do you think they’re doing in there?

  Lorne dug a finger into his ear.

  I don’t know, some kind of ceremony or some shit.

  Nice.

  What? The fuck do I know about Indians?

  Racist.

  Fine. I mean I don’t know shit about Native Americans. And their burial rituals.

  Actually, I think they call themselves Indians.

  Does that mean we should?

  I don’t know. Fuck it.

  At that moment the door opened and Jimmy, Pammy, and Junior carried Chevis’s body rolled up a comforter from the bed. They took him to the trunk of the Malibu. They gathered around the trunk and took long look before they slammed it shut.

  Let’s go before someone sees us.

  The Malibu crept through town on Old Route 66. The only traffic light in sight was flashing yellow. They turned left and bounced over a railroad crossing and then through a not oft used underpass beneath I-40. The road twisted up the side of a mesa and then flattened on the high plateau. The humidity dropped and stars became visible. The air coming through the passenger side window was less soupy than at the lower elevation back in town. A lone floodlight and a lonely swatch of sumac marked Wide Ruins trading post, now empty. An hour later they reached Klagetoh with dawn approaching. The Klagetoh trading post was open with a small assemblage of pickups already in the parking lot. The Malibu creaked to a halt at a pump, and Junior went inside to pay for gas. He walked past two rows of snack foods of both the salty and sweet variety and a display of handguns under a glass countertop toward the cashier. Some fine Navajo rugs hung along the wall behind the register—red, black and white zigzag patterns on a gray background. The old woman behind the counter asked him if he liked the rugs. He said that he did. He liked the gray background, different from the red background that the weavers he knew used.

  You’re from the north then?

  He nodded.

  And how are things up there?

  They say times are hard.

  They do say that, she agreed.

  But these are the only times I know.

  The old woman laughed.

  Me too.

  He paid for the gas with two twenties Ashley had given him. He put the change through a slot cut in the lid of a plastic pickle jar that purported to be collecting money for a scholarship fund.

  Hey, travel safe young man, she said in English.

  Okay.

  When he returned to the car the glass pipe was being passed freshly loaded. The woman watched from the window as the Malibu turned onto 191 headed north.

  The sun rose over the Chuska Mountains to the east above the Defiance Plateau that the Malibu traversed at a cool ninety miles per hour. Halfway between Klegatoh and Ganado the Malibu abruptly braked and took a hard left onto Navajo Route 28, a dirt road the locals called the Klegatoh Loop. The road was grated dirt, the desert topsoil scraped clean, and the yellowed thistles and grasses temporarily plowed asunder by a recent bulldozer blade. The road ran a short distance to a low ridgeline that followed the valley where it became a rutted singletrack punctuated by rocks dried and worn smooth by the sun. The track thread a series of scattered and discordant hills and rises populated by juniper and pinions, twisted and stunted, and few white spruce taking solace in waving bunchgrass and grama bowing to the wind. On the lee side of the sierra the desert spread out before them. The Malibu bounced over a dry arroyo, bottoming out on the ruts of once running currents. Lorne ignored the sound of metal undercarriage scraping against sand and rock. If he once cared, he didn’t now. On the other side of the arroyo the Malibu left the track and spun its wheels up a talus slope, the engine revving up and down with the reflex of the shocks, and angled to a stop partway up with its nose pointed downhill.

  Ashley, Lorne, and Pammy waited in the car. Jimmy and Junior climbed close to the top of the hill and scraped out a shallow grave for Chevis using greasewood and a tire iron to break the hard earth. It was hard work. The trench was only a foot or so deep. They walked back to the car and carried Chevis up the hill and laid him in the trench. His body was even with the land. They set about gathering rocks to cover him up. Ashley, Lorne, and Pammy watched in silence. The wind moaned outside the car, and ribbons of wind whistled through the window seals. When Jimmy and Junior had covered up the grave with a low burial mound they stood for a moment and then walked back down to the car, their long hair blowing wildly in the wind.

  Is that it? Lorne said.

  Jimmy sat heavily in the passenger seat and slammed the door.

  Best not to dwell too much on dead, or else they follow you around in life.

  Pammy emptied three little baggies onto a spoon and cooked it to liquid. The wind rocked the car at odd intervals. Dust sifted through the vents, flecks of earth destined for the blood. They took turns shooting up. The effect was immediate and overwhelming. The desert spread out before them. To the northeast, dark clouds gathered over the canyon lands. To the southeast, a hundred mile view, red sand ribbed with whites, yellows, and faded gold. The sun was a pale circle in a white sea, the land blanched under it. The Malibu was back on the dirt road, dust billowing behind it like a mushroom cloud. After some miles the Malibu hit blacktop running south.

  Ashley’s cell phone vibrated in her backpack. She pulled the phone out from underneath the gun and flipped it open. There was an incoming text message. The message was from Bullfrog Frank. It read:

  Where are you

  Her blood ran cold. She looked around the car. No one was paying attention to her. Junior was distracted by something out the window in the distance. Reality slapped her like the crest of a wave. It hit her so hard she actually jumped in her seat. But the meth made it hard to gauge reality. Like stepping stones across a fast flowing river or the dotted centerline of the two-lane highway at cruising speed, reality was intermittent, coming in drips and drabs. She texted back:

  OMFG!

  Thought U were

  dead!

  She waited a few minutes, feeling her legs tingle, rubbing her smooth thighs together. Her pussy felt wetter than it had ever been, but she was bone dry. She squirmed in her seat, horny and terrified at the same time. She knew she was seriously high.

  Chapter 19

  Am I poor because I am crazy? Or am I crazy because I am poor? Here’s how it begins. You are driving to work one day, to a job you hate, where you will spend the next ten hours doing work you don’t like and eating shit from people you don’t like, as you do every day, and as you will do every day for rest of your life, or for the next thirty years, which ever comes first, and you see a homeless guy lying in the grass underneath a bush,
and you realize you actually envy this guy. I mean it’s not a passing thought you laugh off. You’re stopped at a red light on your way to work weighing the pros and cons of this guy’s existence, and you envy him. You envy his freedom, his mobility, his selfishness, his self-reliance. He has no shitty job to go to. And you think my God, I truly envy a vagrant, probably mentally ill bum. It’s actually come to this. And then something happens. Something that changes the trajectory of your life. For me, it wasn’t like I lost a child in a car accident or a spouse in the 911 attacks. For me, it was a word and an idea. The idea was that the foreign born owners of the biopharmaceutical company I worked for may have been up to no good, were at least unethical, and very well may be producing our product for some nefarious purpose (I had read the research and there was certainly no good application for the drug we produced). The word was a pejorative term I used in relation to those foreign born owners of our company, a term with an ethnic/racial connotation, a slur really, that I used only once and never uttered again so I will not repeat it here. The transgression was reported to my supervisor who reported it to the corporate ethics officer and resulted in my termination. The word I disowned. That I could never get rid of the idea I cannot explain. I became obsessed with surveillance, with monitoring my former company and its Network. One lead led to another. The investigation of my company led to its parent company and then back down to the parent company’s subsidiaries and affiliates and then to other transnational corporations and their subsidiaries and affiliates and then to certain individuals and their agents and operatives and then to their cronies, thugs, and bagmen. At some point I became aware that I was under surveillance. A street sweeper with an earpiece and a white van with tinted windows parked a half-block up. The same face one too many times on the metro with the brim of a hat low over the eyes looking at you without looking. That was when I knew that I had to drop off the grid, that I could be tracked even by microtransmitters embedded in the money. At first it was easy. Well, if not easy it was certainly novel, a game, an adventure. Disappearing. Sleeping in bus stations. Eating in soup kitchens. People seemed generous, or at least I had a generous view of people. I made intense if brief friendships. The kind I never made before. Life was more colorful, vivid. Food tasted better. The land looked more beautiful. The air smelled better, at least when there was a breeze. But then it doesn’t end. You realize it doesn’t end. There is no waking up. There is no waking up in your own warm clean bed, batteries recharged, time to plan out your day. It becomes a struggle. Finding food, a place to sleep, a place to shit. The grime, the filth, the stench of the streets, of your own body, the ragged company you keep, the mentally ill or the just plain crazy, the violent, the thieves, the perverse, the predators. It becomes a grind. A grind that stretches day after day with no end in sight except death. A grind just like the one you left.