A night in Arizona
August 31, 2008
A set of rickety metal fire escape stairs led to the door, with the red paint flaking off and speckling the ground beneath. The white board sign read " Vets: One 50 cent drink" in white and blue dry erase marker. The bar was poorly lit inside with a few meager reddish lights, and sported a few pool tables with rips in the felt and a jukebox in the corner, all swirled with a dim neon rainbow. The bartender was beautiful years ago, and she still held herself like a woman that's used to being looked at. Jordan and I sat at the bar. The bartender sat on a stool and watched TV, occasionally cleaning some glasses. There was a total of four people in the building. In the corner, there was a girl playing pool by herself. She was wearing a "KISS" t-shirt, with the silver letters and crazy band members against a black background, and tight jeans. She made a wobbly, reckless shot leaning awkwardly across the pool table, then looked up at us and smiled a drunk, pretty smile. There were lines on her face that betrayed her young petit frame and youthful eyes. I was drinking PBR and Jack Daniels.
The girl playing pool set her queue against the table, and it slid along the edge and fell with a wooden smack to the floor. She ignored it, and stumbled towards Jordan.
"Juwanna play pool?" She asked wetly and smiled a timid, woozy smile.
Jordan let out a quietly laughing grin, looking at her. He smiled at me; screwing up his eyes, curling his lips and making his eyebrows like a barn roof over his nose. Jordan made faces instead of talking sometimes, and it worked just as well and a lot faster. He was a talker too, though, and it was hilarious when he got on ranting about something.
"Uhh. Sure." He answered, getting off his stool and letting his arms slap down to his sides. He followed her stumble walk over to the pool table, her legs pecking jerkily for the sturdiest parts of the floor, like a hen going for ants. She was real quiet, I wondered if she'd ever say a word if she wasn't hammered.
"Yurshot." She mumbled, smiling pretty again and looking timidly down.
Jordan looked at the pool table, the balls helter-skelter already, some of them sunk from her game with herself. He looked across the bar at me and shot me the same good natured look of bewilderment and amusement. He bent down to pick up the queue from where it lay on the ground, then leaning testily into his shot and looking at the girl for hints, shot at a random ball on the table. It ricocheted off the bumpers and unsettled some other balls. He opened his eyes wide and smiled.
"Too bad for me. Here you go." He handed her the queue.
Her eyes flicked for a split second at his before turning down again, and she flashed her pretty timid smile. She scanned the table clumsily for the queue ball.
The door behind me opened, and I turned around. There was a man coming in, in thick tan farm pants and a greasy gray coat. His face was yellow and sun tanned, with bits of harsh red showing through about the eyes nose and mouth. White hair leapt crazily from his head, as if in a suicide trajectory off a bridge, stopping short around his chest. The hairs matted and clumped together into squash sized lumps that jangled like ornaments with his rocking walk. He was approaching the bar. He lifted one of his legs from the hip as he walked, swinging it out and around like a peg leg. His hands were terribly weathered, held in a loose gnarled fist, with gray wiry hairs about his knuckles and black fingernails. He sat at the barstool next to me. The bartender began pouring a draft without turning her head from the TV.
"How's it going Charlie?" She asked bored and detached.
"It's going." He squinted, his words growling from between teeth few and far between, brown and black and skinny like pieces of twigs. She set the draft in front of him, looking away from the TV just long enough to make aim.
Jordan looked at me. He was holding the queue and standing still, smiling awkwardly. The girl was sitting down, looking alternately at him and the floor, flashing her smile and looking totally lost. Jordan looked awkward, and smiled his apprehension.
The old man next to me clapped his gigantic hand around my shoulder suddenly, surprising me away from my gaze at Jordan. He leaned in close, using old man muscle to harness my shoulder and bend me in near to him.
"There was this bear." He said, black eyes glowing, looking at me seriously.
"A bear?" I asked incredulously.
"A bear."
He looked left and right with darting eyes and a slight head nod, not slackening his grip on my shoulder, scanning for spies.
"There was this bear, see. Went into a bar." His whisper was unsettlingly loud, and he looked me dead in the eye.
"This bar?" I asked, confused.
"No!" He shouted, letting go of my shoulder so he could gesticulate my insolence. "No! Not this bar! Some other bar!"
"Ok." I said.
He clapped his hand back on my shoulder and pulled me in again. He smelled like old tobacco sweat and booze. He stared at my eyes for a moment before he continued.
"This bear goes into a bar. And he says to the bartender," He looks up suddenly at the blonde bartender, still watching TV, "he says, 'Hey bartender! Gimme a beer!' he says."
The bartender doesn't stir, she knows this guy. I look at his draft in a plastic cup, beads of water forming on the outside and running down the sides.
He looks away from the bartender back to me and says "Then the bartender, he says to the bear, 'We don't serve beer to bears in bars!'"
"Ok." I say.
"So the bear he goes on out of that bar. But I tell you he's mighty furious, so he goes right back in a growling and a fussin."
I look at Jordan, still standing there awkwardly looking down at the girl who is sitting, wasted, smiling up at him. Jordan sees the old man, his bony arm clasped around me. He smiles his awkward amused smile, sets the pool queue against the table, and shrugs - spreading his fingers out with his palms towards the sky, his eyebrows raising. I smile back with all my teeth and some eyebrow of my own.
The old man grips my shoulder harder, and I turn back to his somber, black stare. His lips are parted, and he is baring his pointy teeth. His white hair, grayer upon closer inspection, hangs around his collar in dreads that must weigh a pound each.
"Se he goes on back in." he whispers seriously, "and he growls something mean." He looks back up at the bartender.
"Hey bartender!" He shouts, then turning back to me says "says the bear, he says 'Hey bartender, gimme a beer'"
"Huh." I say, unsure how seriously I should be taking this.
"And you know that bartender he tells him, 'I dun told ya bear! We don't serve beer, to bears, at bars! Not now not ever!' and you know that bear growled crazy! But he goes right on out. But then," his glowing eyes move closer to mine, his grasp tight and bony on my shoulder, "but then he gets to stewin', and he gets awful mad, and he goes right back in that bar, and marches up to the bartender with his big bear feet and he says 'Hey! Bartender! Give this bear a god damn beer!'"
The old mans arm slackens and he pulls away from me, looking down, then around the room in a big circle. He puts one hand around his beer without picking it up, then takes it off again and wipes the condensation on his pants. He turns back to me suddenly serious again, and leans in close.
"You know what that bartender told him?"
"I can guess." I said.
"What. What did he say?" The old man was whispering and leaning close.
"He said that they don't serve beer to bears at bars." I said.
The old man clapped me hard on the back and straightened his spine, flailing both hands above him outstretched and suddenly looking huge and menacing. His eyes whirled furiously as he spat down to me, syllable by syllable, "We don't serve no got-damn beer, to no got-damn bears, at no got-damn bars! I dun told you twice, bear!" He let his arms flop to his sides again, and shrunk down to his former size, staring me intently in the eye.
"Well that bear was mighty angry," he continued in a whisper, "and he looked around just looking for some trouble. He growled and he snarled!" He was speaking between sharp stained teeth, and it wasn't too difficult to imagine a growling snarling bear.
"Well he growled and snarled and went over to the juke box, where there was a woman standing there and he ate her up!" His eyes opened magically wide as he finished this sentence and his mouth hung open, like he'd just been shot. For a moment, I felt alarm.
"He ate 'er up!" He repeated with those same eyes.
"He ate 'er up! From head to toe!" His eyes glazed and squinted.
"Oh but then, then he got to rubbin his big bear tummy, and growling and wobbling around all woozy like. He looks at the bartender and he says, 'Hey bartender! What's wrong with me! I feel all weird and woozy and my bear-tummy hurts!'" The old man looked at me silently, for three then five seconds.
"You know what the bartender said?" He asked, whispering wetly.
"I haven't a clue." I was mystified, but tried to smile regardless.
The old man put his right hand in one of his pockets and fumbled. He wrapped his left hand around his full beer. He got really close to my face and spoke loud and clear, almost shouting, focusing on each syllable.
"Of course you feel woozy bear! That was a bar-bitch-you-ate!"
As he said "bitch", the hand that had been fumbling in his pocket yanked out swiftly, crashed on the bar and deposited two quarters. His left hand brought the beer to his mouth and he drank the whole cup down lustily in three gulps. He stood up, using his hip to swing his dumb leg around, and made for the door hunched over and mean like a pirate about to set sail.
"Night Charlie." The bartender said without turning from the TV. The door slammed behind him.
Jordan came back and sat next to me, he looked at the bartender.
"You might want to call a cab for that girl, she's just sitting there staring around and smiling. She's pretty wasted." He looked at me.
"Was that guy crazy?"
"Kinda."
"You want to take off?"
"Not really."
Tags for this piece: story nonfiction drugs friends arizona bears