ART’S AND LINDA’S DEW DROP INN–LOUNGE AND RESTAURANT didn’t have a front and a back. If you went in one side and up some steps you found yourself in a restaurant that was closed Mondays and Tuesdays and open every other day from six until eleven. If you went in the other side and down some steps you found yourself in what seemed like the den of a man who has a little money ahead, except for the jukebox and bright electric signs flashing three colored images of bottles of beer being continuously poured into bottomless glasses, and clear blue mountain water foaming over blinking rocks, which ceased to exist every morning at two when Art cut off the electric flow of the signs and shut down the lounge before climbing the flagstone steps leading to the restaurant and then up the knottypine stairway between the two doors marked: COWBOYS and COWGIRLS, and into the top floor with its five full rooms of Danish Modern anchored on the softpile of wall-to-wall avocado tint carpet. If you forgot where you just came from you would think you were in any number of recently built suburban homes slammed onto the freshly bulldozed landscape surrounding any California city, and if you made a mistake and pulled the drapes, which were always closed, you would give a start at not seeing your neighbor’s house with the proud stamp of green lawn pasted in front, but instead the top of a pinetree rubbing its branches against the glass obstacle of the window, and behind, the valley rolling out flat for thirteen miles until it bumped in a haze against the bare eastern mountain rim, and you would realize you weren’t on your familiar street, but fifty-two hundred and twelve feet high in the Sierra Nevada Mountains straddling a restaurant and bar. Art got off his ship at the Alameda Naval Station after the War and decided he wasn’t going back to Indiana. He took one look around and knew California was his future, where he would die. With the money the Government had given him for sailing on its ship Art bought a car and headed for Los Angeles. He made it to within onehundred and twelve miles when the car broke down in Bakersfield and to pay for its being fixed he got a job at the gas station that had towed him in. The weather in Bakersfield was good to Art. Within a year he had enough money to get married to a girl just graduated from the highschool who was a little old for her age, and with his G.I. Loan to buy ten acres of hot raw land south of the city limits just off the road to Los Angeles. On one part of the land there were some long, lowslung sheds that had housed chickens until several years before Art’s arrival when the chicken rancher had gone bankrupt. Art thought he could make the chicken ranch go. There had been a lot of talk in the magazines he read that year about chickens being a sure enterprise, and like the man at the big feedstore who sold him his stock in Bakersfield said: “I never met an honest man yet who didn’t eat eggs.” Art didn’t get the chance to eat many eggs himself, within two years time he received a letter from the California State Highway Department informing him that a new fourlane freeway to L.A. was going to punch right through the length of his land and the State was offering him six times what he paid for it. Art accepted. With eighteen thousand dollars in cash and a new car he finally made it to Los Angeles, where he drove up and down the busiest streets trying to find something to spend his money on. He found it. Not in the center of town, but further out on Wilshire Boulevard where there wasn’t a tremendous amount of traffic during the weekdays but on the weekends the road was quite congested with people going to the beach at Santa Monica. What he found was a building shaped like a monstrous dog painted orange and blue. People walked through the door in the belly and ordered across the counter the 150 hamburgers advertised outside in black letters on the ear of the dog. Art was always smiling as he slid the hot paper wrapped orders across the counter because on good weekends he could sell thirteen hundred hamburgers, and behind him his wife Linda worked hard and well over the open faced grill; she had turned her craft into art, she prepared all the 150 hamburgers on the afternoon before the day they were to be sold and kept them in a special deep steamer; having this done she was never rushed, the only thing she ever cooked right after it was ordered was the Delux 45¢ steak sandwich, so she was relaxed and pleasant through the day, listening to the soft hum of the traffic outside and the grease popping regular around the thin patties of meat rowed neatly on the grill. The weather in Los Angeles was good to Art. He never did think once of knocking the dog down and putting in a larger place with maybe some tables outside. But somebody else did, they had the idea of knocking the dog down, but not putting in a larger place, no. As it was explained to him in a letter from one of the Downtown banks representing an expanding Eastern Oil Company, what they had in mind was a gas-station. The traffic in front of Art’s dog had increased 80 percent since the year he bought it and gas-stations had been built on all three corners surrounding the dog, a fact Art checked out for himself by glancing through the plateglass window in the dog’s southern side; now the dirt the dog sat on was a prime corner lot, worth nine times what he had paid for it. Art sold out, bought a new car and headed for the Sierra Mountains. There was still gold to be found in California. What Art found was a valley fifty-two hundred and twelve feet high, twenty three miles north-east of Truckee, and there he was able to buy fifteen times the the land than he could at Lake Tahoe, which was only thirty-six miles away. It didn’t make much difference to Art where he settled in the valley, the way he had it figured sooner or later someone would want to put a freeway through it, a gas-station on it, or make it part of an airport, so he chose the west side of the valley off the main State Highway 89 on country road A-24. There were no places of business on the road as far as the eye could see in both directions and farther, and in the winter there wasn’t any traffic on the road except maybe a rancher driving slowly along seeing how his fences held. During the summer there was some traffic, mostly tourists who had wandered off one of the main highways and had lost themselves in the mountains. But none of this bothered Art, for he was certain that all a man had to do in California was to go some place and sooner or later the people will follow. So he built on a corner, because they were always worth more over the long haul, and it made no difference to him that the only living things around were the cattle munching their way across flat fields, and he decided to go all out on the construction of a restaurant and bar, because the more you had on a piece of property the more they paid you to knock it down. When the construction was going on the ranchers throughout the valley, and even from as far away as Portola, came over to see what was going up at the corner of county A-24 off the main State Highway 89, which was like eight-hundred other corners anywhere in the valley, take your pick. One said he thought it was going to be one of those new modern bowling alleys he had seen a picture of in LIFE magazine, but everybody thought that a crazy idea as the only things around to bowl were the steers; the hell if they were going to work all day and spend their nights trying to knock down sticks with a black ball. It was eventually decided a rich man up all the way from L.A. was building himself a mansion and he’d have a swimming pool in the front. But when the building was complete the equipment to dig the pool didn’t come, instead large trucks rolled up and unloaded case after case of beer and whiskey; it was a rich drunk up all the way from L.A. A few weeks later a sign went up right along the road, ART’S AND LINDA’S DEW DROP INN–LOUNGE AND RESTAURANT. Art opened the next day and nobody came. Fall had just about finished with itself and the winds came hard over the spine of the Sierra from the south and nobody even drove by the place that looked like it had accidentally been dropped from the sky into nothing. Art had himself an Italian cook and served Italian dinners, but the only ones the Italian ever cooked for were Art and Linda, then he would go downstairs to the bar and spend his wages getting drunk. One night the Italian got so drunk he hitchhiked into Truckee and never came back. Art had six cooks that first winter and he and Linda never ate so well, but the cooks never stayed long. In the spring the man who sold Art the corner off one of his fields, a man called Dixel who owned most of the best land in the valley and didn’t care much about anything other than raising prize Appaloosas became Art’s firs
t customer, and he had a theory. The theory was to hire a Chinese cook, the people in the valley won’t come out for ravioli but they will for chicken chow mein, for some reason the ranchers and loggers and just about anybody else liked Chinese food, and they would also find out the drinks weren’t as expensive as the building looked, and the best part was this, Chinese cooks are the best, they work hard and for little pay, then on their day off they go over to Lake Tahoe and gamble all their money away, you were always certain of them being back the next morning, broke and ready to work; Chinese are incorrigible gamblers. Art drove down to Orosi below Fresno which was once a Railroad town where he had been told a lot of Chinese were still to be found and out of any real kind of job since the Railroad deserted the town fifteen years before. He bought himself a cook, amended his sign, ART’S AND LINDA’S DEW DROP INN LOUNGE AND RESTAURANT–CHINESE DINNERS, and the first night he had customers, a family of five. The weather in the Sierra was good to Art. The smooth balloon of his face which floated up off his short body always had a cheery-delicate smile painted on it. Art was in no hurry, he was just waiting. There was never any trouble in Art’s lounge, the place hadn’t been torn up once. The men who drank at Art’s regarded him as a priest, after looking at cattle and horses and their wives all day it was a pleasure to go someplace that was a notch too good for them where the little man behind the bar was polite and always had a smile on his face like he was expecting you to hand him a check for $800,000. The smile was natural to Art, and because it was natural it was a good defense, there wasn’t one man he served a drink to who couldn’t put him in his pocket. So he had his smile turned on like the electric beer signs flowing all around the walls when he saw up through the window the battered blue pickup roll to a stop and Odus jumped out with the Indian. Art never tried to figure anyone out but once or twice it slipped through to him the Indian was odd. Art never had many Indians come into his place, he knew like everyone how Indians were born to drink so he took it as fact like the sun passing through the sky that they bought their liquor at the grocery in Sierraville. He hadn’t seen many Indians since he’d been in the valley, most of them lived on the other side in Loyalton, he saw maybe six, and he heard there weren’t many more, twenty or thirty, but time was when the five mills were going years ago before he came, there were more than a hundred, tuberculosis got almost every one of them some of the older ranchers thought was what happened. Most of the Indians left were Paiutes, this one was Washo, Odus said, but Art couldn’t see the difference between him and the ones he knew to be Paiute, he was not very much interested in them. They weren’t like the tall ones on the plains he had seen in the Randolph Scott movies, not this one anyway, he wasn’t much taller than Art himself, he wore the same flannel shirt and jeans as the other men and didn’t look as strong, his skin was soft and had a tame look and the face muddy and blunt, but this didn’t stop his wife from trying to get his picture with her Japanese camera one afternoon last summer; he’s cute, she always said when he left, he doesn’t act the way the rest of the men up here do, he just doesn’t seem to act, he’s like a brown doll. But what slipped through to Art about the Indian was the fact he only drank with Odus, and Odus never let him pay, so then always the next day the Indian would come back and give Art exactly the amount of money Odus had spent on him and would say to treat Odus with it the next time he came in, but not to tell him why. So when Odus and the Indian settled themselves at the slick polished counter Art glided down his narrow no-slip runway in front of the gleaming bank of glass bottles, set two glasses of gin in front of them and waited dutifully for the ice to stop clinking before he announced, “Men, let me have the honor of the first round.”
“Damn you Art,” Odus raised his glass and felt its chill in his palm. “A man works all his life so he can retire and you rob him of a way of spending his money.”
“Oh, I got lots of ways for you to spend your money Odus. You just bring it all in one day in a paper sack and I’ll write down ten ways how to get rid of it.”
“Art, if you were a fish you’d be a shark. Why didn’t you ever go into real estate, a man as quick on the cash register as you could own the whole State of California and the green part of Nevada.”
“I play a little at it.”
“Well if I played as well as you I’d get myself over the hill to Reno and play Bill Harrah himself. Five card, everything but painted ladies wild.”
“That’s the only way you’ll ever beat Bill Harrah, that’s for sure, that’s for sure,” the words spread all over the room before the man who spoke them as he closed the door behind him. “Five card, everything but painted ladies wild, that’s the only way for sure.” He set a black poodle down on the counter and covered its whole wooly head in the caress of his large flattened sunburnt hand. “Me and Petey’s thirsty Art. Gin for me and a bowl of gingerale for Petey.”
The words sent Art gliding up and down his no-slip runway. “I keep this bowl here just special for Petey, Ted,” Art set the bowl in front of the dog and filled it with fizzing liquid.
“Petey appreciates that,” Ted pulled the small straw hat off his long head pushed in flat on both sides and broke out on the top in stiff blond stubble and placed it next to the bowl. “Here’s iron in your pants, Petey,” he raised his glass and tipped it to the dog as the dog sunk its face in the fizz, its sharp pink tongue lapping like the sputtering blades of a boat engine in water. “The vet over to Portola says gingerale ain’t good for poodles, especially miniatures, says they don’t have the stomach for it, too delicate, gives them ulcers I guess. But Petey can’t stay off gingerale, he’s hooked. Look at him, he’ll lick that bowl clear through. Fill him up again Art, and me too.”
“Why don’t you give him a shot of tequila,” Odus said over the private tune he was rapping out on the counter with his fingernails. “That’s what they do in Mexico, even force a whole bottle down the throat of a burro. Guaranteed to kill worms.”
“Petey doesn’t have worms. He doesn’t mix with other dogs.”
“What about females? Petey may only be a miniature but he still needs a place to put it.”
“No females. He’s never out of my sight. Goes everywhere with me in the truck on my deliveries, wherever there’s a load of hay to be dropped.”
“Are what you telling me Ted is Petey’s a celibate?”
“Hold it one moment Odus, hold it up right there,” the ears flattened up against Ted’s head blinked blood red. “Not one word further till you explain to me what you mean by calling Petey a celibrant.”
“He means Petey’s a monk, Ted,” Art’s wife stepped carefully down the glossy knottypine steps from the restaurant above and set herself stiffly on a specially padded stool at the end of the counter and patted the sprayed strands of reddish hair contoured into an awkward shape that looked like a bird taking off on top of her head as she waited patiently for Art to glide down his slot behind the bar and present her with the only drink she ever allowed him to serve her, rum and Coca-Cola. “What he’s trying to say Ted is that your little Petey’s a virgin. Cheers,” she tipped the drink to her drawn lips. Art’s smile never faded, but if it was watched closely you could see it change colors. Whenever his wife came down from the restaurant, which was a little past noon each day when the men started coming in, it turned a lily-white, by twelve-thirty each day Art broke his own rule and served himself, by one o’clock his smile was again dusted an even glow. Having his wife at the bar was like having a strange lady come in every day as a steady customer, she told jokes he’d never heard, wore dresses he’d never once seen, and showed more skin in daylight than he had ever caught a glimpse of since his wedding night. The altitude of the valley was good to Art’s wife. It brought something out in the sex of her that he couldn’t get around, but he was always trying, and the afternoons was all he had because after closing the bar down each night he would pass up through the restaurant to his home and he’d find the girl from Bakersfield High who was a little old for her age and ha
d made him so proud as she stood behind him at the dog over the open faced grill listening to the soft hum of the traffic outside and the grease popping regular around the thin patties of meat.
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