On any Sunday morning at 6:00AM on Highway 20 in Nice, California, you can see several men waiting. They aren’t waiting for mass at St. Brigid’s, or a hike in the manzanita strewn hills, nor are they waiting to rent a dinghy to catch catfish on the lake across the street. These bedraggled fellows are waiting for the Holiday Bar to open and provide them with their first drink of the day. When Jake unlocks the door they will climb up onto those scabby, wooden bar stools and ask for a snootful of whiskey and soda, or Wild Turkey, or whatever it is that each truly devoted drunk uses to start the day instead of bacon and eggs. Greeting them will be the fetidity of cigarettes and spilled cheap booze, and a jukebox loaded with down home, hard luck, sad looser, country songs.
Leticia never expected to work in such a dive, not a place with linoleum so worn the pattern was nearly gone, a joint with embossed metal ceilings so old they were rusted, and especially not in a place where the Saturday night fights were in the room, not on the TV. But there she was, joint owner of a single card table restricted to the game of lowball poker, in the back room of the Holiday Bar, adjacent to a malodorous, single toilet. At home were her two small children in the care of a nineteen year old with flossy hair, a toddler of her own, and the singular ability to make sourdough whole wheat bread so good that the first loaf disappeared before it cooled.
An unstable bench outside the bar was Leticia’s perch for a break. It was relief from the clatter and boasts of the chip bleeders who’d spend the night trying to outwit one another at cards. She’d headed there at 9:00PM, after shilling to fill the game. Two more guys with paychecks had arrived so she had stirred the chili pot, made more coffee, and walked past the pool table, and through the dirty old bar, to rest on the bench.
Snowbird was on the jukebox --- “And if I could you know that I would fly away with you”. She envied the brilliance of the song writer, a wit who’d strung a bunch of cliches into a top seller, and wondered at her own foolishness for turning a college degree into work that most trailer trash would reject. Nightly she cleaned ashtrays, mopped spilled beer, and played mommy to the weak players and wild cards who liked this game, thus creating her paltry living. She daydreamed about her small, blond daughters, missing their constant questions and their warm, savory hugs. Had her husband, Ronny, not bought the right to run the game, and cashed-out his Post Office job, she’d be making oatmeal cookies and reading Call of the Wild out loud. She also missed her small ranch at the end of the valley, her spinning wheel and loom, and all the other homey additions that had made her life so sweet. The Holiday Bar was a hell she resented. It was ugly, stinky, hard on the ears, and way too far from home. But there were children to feed, so she’d stand pat.
“Nice night,” Jim said as he came out of the door. He was the resident broom pusher and “gofer”.
“Yea,” responded Leticia, leaning to the right to see a bit of glittering lake. “Pretty loud in there,” she added.
Sitting on the bench he lit a Camel, spitting out the bits. Nondescript explained all of Jim --- khaki pants, grayed shirt, mouse brown hair that was neither too short nor too long, and simple conversation. He smelled of cheap dryer sheets, Bud, and smoke. His voice trailed a twang of Oklahoma through to Bakersfield, still dusty from the mistakes of parents and grandparents. Leticia looked at his hands and then hers.
“I’d better get back in there,” she said to give her a bluff from conversation.
At about 11:00PM Meat came through the door, all two hundred fifty pounds, six foot two, able to shot-put-the-table-through-the-window of him.
“I’m ready,” Meat cawed and dropped two c-notes into a game with a ten dollar buy-in. “Deal me in, and her too,” he said, elbowing his sprite of a wife in the brown print dress. She giggled as they sat. Ronny smelled action and welcomed Meat with a crooked grin. The guy was good for at least four hundred, would lose it all, and stay jolly through the whole process. Plus he’d tell good stories. Meat was a tunnel hog working on those huge machines that grind through mountains to create holes for roads and trains. It was hard, dangerous work. Although he was broad, Meat wasn’t fat. He was muscled like a giant. Lots of guys couldn’t tell the difference, thus giving Meat an ace in barroom bets. His angle was to bet a drunk he could lift a heavy bar stool by the bottom of one leg with one hand. Meat would lie on the floor and raise the stool high, pocketing the ten or twenty that had been the bet.
In the card room the players called for set-ups, so Leticia went to the bar. She waited for Jake, the barkeep, to fill her tray with a bourbon and cream, a gin and tonic, four Buds and a Mich as she watched the line-up at the bar. The jukebox had gotten to Thank God and Greyhound You’re Gone, one of the few songs she could tolerate. A skinny military sort was talking too loudly down at the end of the bar and telling the short guy next to him that the “weed in Nam is the best in the world,” causing Jake to wince. Three seats closer a guy in a denim jacket had his head down on the bar, snoring.
“Why don’t you sing a few bars of I’ve Got to Get Out of This Place? “ Leticia said to Jake.
He snickered and Leticia followed singing, “if it’s the last thing I ever do”.
“That bad?” asked Jake. He’d been there for fifteen years.
Leticia finished, “Honey, there’s a better place for me and you.”
The tray filled and she thanked him adding, “Shit! Just give me a little air.”
Back at the card table Meat snuggled his wife as he dragged a pot on the table.
“I’m on a rush. Splice those cards, cut, burn one, and deal.” Meat grabbed his beer, tossed a nickel bill at Leticia, and fanned the hand close to his chest. Ronny leered and winked. As owner of the game he always loved a loser, but a happy loosey-goosey kept him chuckling. He knew the game would go through the night, fueled by cash and yarns from this great, jovial bear. He also knew that the two of them would return to the valley in the morning sufficiently bankrolled to stretch through a couple of weeks.
“Let the good times roll,” Ronny thought. “Let ‘em roll and roll.”
The chili was burning in the crock pot, so Leticia stirred it and served it in paper cups. One of the metal chairs had lost a screw and finally broke under the stress of the girth and mirth of Meat. The toilet went on the fritz and would probably keep running for a few hours until Jake could get back to fix it. And Leticia felt fat. She was fat, tired, and smelled of smoke and beer.
At about midnight Leticia took another break. By this time the jukebox was playing Why Don’t We Get Drunk and Screw. She figured that the besotted patrons likely missed the joke in the
Jimmy Buffett song. “Your voice it sounds so wonderful, but yer face don't look too clear.” She liked this one, too, but hated most of the others. The Tammys and Georges and Hanks were trash singers to her, reminiscent of the 1950’s in her southern Ohio home. All of country music with it’s booze and trains and fucked up love affairs was bull-pucky. But the snob in Leticia warred with life’s necessities. “I’m just betting on the come,” she mused, “then I’ll get outta here.”
Exiting the bar, Leticia found a small boy of about eight sitting on the bench. Lowering herself next to him, she asked where his folks were, expecting to hear that they were inside partying.
“Dad’s in that, thar,” the boy said pointing to a tiny old trailer parked beside the bar.
“And your Mom?” asked Leticia hopefully.
The kid shook his head. “He’s thar with some lady.”
“Some lady!” Leticia thought cynically. “Who the heck’d leave a small kid in front of this dive on a busy road while he porked some floozy.” She missed her girls, hoped they were safe and asleep. The long blond braids, the missing teeth --- she was skipping part of their waning childhood while working in this midden.
Looking at him more carefully she saw a kid of about eight, thin, and sandy haired. His clothes were dirty and so was he, and there were no socks for his shoes. And then there were those sad eyes and the almost inaudible voice. Leticia’s mind rolled to her mother’s childhood stories about being left in a train station late into the night while her father drank. It was so traumatic that the old lady still wept at age eighty-five. “Those of us who had sweet childhoods don’t understand the experiences of those who haven’t,” she thought.
“What’s your name?” she asked, seeking some solace for this child. He was out here, lost like an exposed card in a pat hand, unexpectedly abandoned and in danger.
Speaking softly he twanged, “Joey.”
“Well, Joey, I guess he’ll be back soon. Meanwhile I’m going to get you something. I’ll be gone just a minute.” Then she walked up the street. A block away was an all night Quick Mart. She bought a pack of HoHos for herself and a chocolate cookie as big as a hub cap. Grabbing a napkin she hustled back to the bench.
“Here.” Leticia handed the cookie to the kid. His grim eyes belied his smile of thanks. She felt all-in and knew she couldn’t stay with this child. “Just remember,” she told him, “nobody is always a winner.” “Amarillo Slim said,” that she mused to herself. For a few minutes Leticia watched Joey nibble. He picked each chocolate chip out with a dirty finger and ate it slowly. It was a nice distraction, but she worried what would happen to him later, tomorrow, and for his whole life.
At this point the barkeep stuck his nose out and said, “Ronny needs help, he’s yellin’ for you.”
Leaning over Joey, she kissed his mussy hair.
“Don’t take any wooden nickels,” she said. He looked at her, puzzled.
Opening the bar door she walked into bedlam.
Meat was on a break from playing cards and baiting a lush on the barstool bet. Jake was grabbing a case of Miller’s from the cooler. The guy who’d been snoring was picking a fight
with the military pot head. Loretta was singing Coalminer’s Daughter in her snuffley, bluegrass voice. Her husband stuck his head out of the card room saying, “Get in here. Sit in the game.”
“Fuck” Leticia whispered. “Where’s the exit from this bad dream?” She walked through to the card table, sat through the deal, and picked up the queen of hearts.
Photo by Kathy O'Leary
