The men, a local and a one-time, no longer local sat across the table from one another. The bar was the Mag, a dirty, dim place in Rawl’s Springs along the Big Highway, thick and sawdusted in its dive bar, low-down charm. Before, in those long ago days when they were more Bukowski than McMurtry, the pair had frequented the town bars. Places with discerning palates and strange beers. But Local didn’t have the stomach for yuppies anymore and One-Time never cared for the strange brews of craft depositories in the first place. So, they met in the Mag, when meetings were possible. Most of the time they only met when One-Time happened down to visit a mother or brother or some other family with good enough sense not to run away to Tennessee, but that time, a quiet and hot Mississippi April threatening tornadoes and thunderstorms, they met special. One-Time with a book deal and Local not able to make it north for the big to-do.
So, April and sawdust and old attitudes hanging in the air alongside the smoke of John Prine’s illegal smile, Local and One-Time sat across from one another in the Mag on a Wednesday evening, two big rednecks playing pool in the distant light of the other side. The bar was still lit with old sixty-watt incandescents, the last dying remnant of a pre-modern Mississippi hanging in the air like the dying flames of cowboy fires. Willie Nelson’s “Time of the Preacher” started up, but of course it did. Local had expected it from the moment he stepped inside, because it was six o’ clock on a Wednesday. The Owner had played the whole red headed album every Wednesday since he’d taken over from his daddy in ninety-four, or so the story went.
The humid silence hung between them in a way that seemed to weigh on the scarred and sticking tabletop, and they sat like that for a long while. It might have been five minutes, it might have been an hour, but that didn’t matter. What mattered was that the tiredness at the little shadowed table hung like the moon above them until the Waitress walked up, her hips cocked and worried and familiar.
“Hey now, boys. Been a minute since you been in.”
One-Time nodded and scratched at the back of his neck. Dried patches of picked-over folliculitis lined the nape. The sign of a man with too many irons in the fire.
“Same as always? Light n’ heavy?”
Both men nodded and the Waitress walked away, headed towards the bar across the room in quick, determined strides. The Mag was nearly empty, but she still moved as if a rush was expected at any moment.
The Local pushed his hat, a wide brimmed Stetson, back on his head. “So, book deal, huh?”
“Yep, finally. Only took better part of a decade.”
“This one’s the Y.A., right? Golden Wakes of Alvinia?”
One-Time nodded and picked at his front teeth with the edge of his thumb nail. “Yup.”
The Waitress brought their beer and sat a Coors Light in front of Local and a Coors heavy in front of One-Time. “Anything to eat?”
One-Time shook his head, but Local raised a hand, beer bottle already on his lips.
“Yeah, I’ll take a cheeseburger, triple bacon.” Willie’s “I Couldn’t Believe It Was True” started up in the background as the Waitress made her way back and the men drank in steady pulls from the cold bottles.
“That shit’s gonna kill you. Gonna end up with a triple bypass by forty-five.”
“Maybe so, but it’s up against some stiff competition.” Local tapped the edge of his beer with one heavily ringed hand. “So, how much’d you pull for an advance?”
“First time, you know? So about ten thousand.”
Local slapped his hands onto the table top and laughed a loud, lubricated chortle. “God-damn. Y.A. fantasy author, how ‘bout that? Sure ain’t the next McCarthy the way everyone at Southern expected, huh?”
“Guess not, but hey, money’s in the genre, you know?”
The waitress brought Local’s food and sat it down in front of him. Local, beer at his lips, held up two fingers and gave a nod. “Two more,” he said as he swallowed the heavy down.
“Light n’ heavy.” Local bit into the burger just as the Waitress walked away. His Stetson rested on the back of his head, barely hanging on. “So, big to-do in Knoxville, huh?”
“Yeah, there’s a bookstore there that wanted to host an event. Wish you could make it, man.”
Local nodded.
“You know, I can buy you a ticket up.”
Local stopped and finished his bite in slow, thoughtful motions. “I told you, it’s not about getting up there. It’s about work. I’m too busy to make any trips right now.”
“It’d only be a couple of days.”
“You know I’d be there if I could.”
“You know you still haven’t been up to see my place?”
“It’s been a busy couple years.”
“Yeah.”
The waitress returned, another two beers in her hand. “You sure you don’t want something to eat?”
One-Time shook his head and smiled through thin lips. The Waitress shrugged and started towards the rednecks at the pool tables.
“Things haven’t changed much around here, even after the pandemic.”
“Well, don’t figure they should have. You’ve only been gone two years. Place changes in two years probably wasn’t worth anything to start with.”
“Yeah, I guess so. How’s your writing?”
“Good enough. Published a couple more shorts last year. Working on a collection.”
“No luck on any agents for the Western?”
Local took a swig and shook his head.
One-Time took a drink of his own and smiled. “Just need to sell out to the Y.A. overlords. It worked for me.”
“Mmm.”
The lights overhead flickered some, from a cause so commonplace the many patrons had long forgotten what it ever could have ever been.
“Man, when are you going to quit holdin’ this shit against me?” One-Time asked.
“What? I ain’t holding anything against you. I don’t care that you started doing Y.A., man.”
“That’s not what I’m talking about.”
Local sat his beer down and leaned back in his chair. “What the hell are you talking about, then?”
There was a long pause that stretched on between them. Local sat waiting, still leaned back, still accusing, while One-Time avoided his eyes, tapping at the side of the table with one nervous finger. “Blue Eyes Crying in the Rain” began to fill the air, its thumping guitar a staccato punctuation to the incandescent frustration between them. Now the Waitress stood across the room, an elbow propped on the counter, watching the men as the occasional clack of pool balls broke through it all.
“You’ve been giving me shit since I moved away.”
“What? Man, I don’t give a shit that you moved up yonder. That’s your business.”
“Yeah buddy.”
“Cut the shit and get to it. What’s going on? If you’ve got a problem, spit it out.”
“You can’t take the fucking time off work to come up to Knoxville? My first fuckin’ book, man. You can’t come up to be with me when we went through all this together?”
There in the Mag, the sounds of Willie Nelson moving on and on, Local’s eyes rested on the beer bottle just before him. The sounds of clacking pool balls had stopped right about the time “Red Headed Stranger” began to groan through the tired old speakers. Now, the rednecks sat at the bar, whispering to the Waitress.
One-Time couldn’t tell if the Local had said anything or not, but he sat there, eyes on his beer, twirling the bottle in small circles. “Did you say something?”
“I said yeah.”
“What the hell does that mean? We were supposed to be in this together.”
Local ignored him, bringing the beer to his mouth.
One-Time leaned forward, bracing against the table. “Man, come on!”
Local sat the beer down hard, and it rocked and fell off in a single quick second. When it hit the hardwood floor, it did it in just the right way that it shattered, sending beer across their feet and the cuffs of their pants. Local didn’t seem to notice, though. He was almost all the way across the table, the big Stetson almost tilting back off his head in the suddenness of his movements. “You fucking watch it! I don’t need this shit from you, fucking sell out.”
Before One-Time could say a word, the Waitress was at their table. “Now you boys know the rules. If you got shit to kick, do it outside.”
One-Time stood up from his chair and pushed it under the table. He dug through his wallet and dropped a twenty onto the tabletop. “I was just getting ready to leave, anyway. Sorry about the mess.”
One-Time left the Mag, never stopping to look back at Local as he crossed the old, un-mopped floor. The door, rattling and worn in its steel frame, clanged closed behind him. The parking lot was a dim, gray-rock lot with no markers or signs. He had parked at the far edge, for what reason he could not remember, because he knew that the lot hadn’t been filled. That it had never been filled. His truck, a new Bronco he knew Local would never have called a truck, was hidden in the dark shadows along the edge of the lot. He started across, but only made it halfway before he heard the Mag’s door slam and gravel scatter underneath boot heels.
Local stood, legs wide and his hat in his left hand. The pulsing light of the parking lot casting him in an otherworldly glimmer. “You fucking left. Don’t fucking talk to me about stickin’ together, you son of a bitch. You left, not me.”
One-Time turned and started back across the parking lot and in a moment, Local and One-Time stood across the dim, gray lot from one another. Willie had moved on to the b-sides, and the speakers along the eaves of the Mag put out a crackling, water-logged rendition of “Denver.” A little more tired, a little more ragged, but still all the same.
“You left.”
“I did.”
“Why? You’ve never told me why.”
“I needed to.”
“Bullshit. You could’ve published and every bit of that shit here, too, but–”
“It wasn’t just about publishing. It just needed to leave.”
“Why? Stop the bullshit and just tell me why.”
“I don’t owe you an ex–”
Local’s fist came hard and sudden, and One-Time stumbled back, landing on his ass. His nose was running and bloodied and dropping little remnants of disagreement on the gray-rock.
“You fuck. You broke my nose.”
The other man just stood, not much further than he had before, hat in one hand and flecks of blood on the knuckles of the other.
One-Time rested his forearm on his knee, still seated on the ground, and wiped at his nose. Blood streamed down his chin, edging the lines of his mouth. He looked up at Local, the booger lights casting everything in the Faulknerian look of a false summer. The whistle of cars running down the Big Highway drowned out the crackling speakers, leaving only the memory of Willie in the air.
Local pulled a handkerchief from his back pocket and wiped at his bloodied fist. Stuffing the rag in its place, he then held a hand out to One-Time. “You just gonna sit there and dirty up them Levi’s?”
One-Time took his hand and Local pulled him up. The pair stood there for a moment, the highway quieting enough for “Can I Sleep in Your Arms” to pierce the ambient roadway.
Local popped the Stetson back on his head and kicked at the gray-rocks. “One-hundred and ten.”
“What?” One-Time’s nose still dripped a little, but he held his own handkerchief to it.
“That’s how many queries I’ve put out for the western. Hundred and ten.”
“Ah.”
“You told me you were leaving not long after I got the first few shorts published, you know? I really thought we were about to start something real here.”
One-Time stuffed the bloody rag into his back pocket and nodded. “Just coincidence, man.”
“Yeah.”
“Remember me” started up through the old speakers and One-Time glanced at the watch on his wrist. “Well, I’d better go. I’ve got an early flight tomorrow.”
“All right.”
One-Time started across the parking lot, and Local stood there, his boots digging deeper and deeper into the gravel lot. He watched until One-Time got to his Bronco, new and shining and midnight blue, and left. That was it. The end of the visit between the local and the one-time, no longer local. No more words fell between them. No check-in text in the hours wandering down the road. No last minute changes of mind. No quick-bought, regretful plane tickets. No long drives north. There could have been, maybe in some other world there would have been, but there along that Big Highway, mosquitoes already making their way into the air as the Mississippi heat picked up its months-long crescendo, there wasn’t.
Local took off the big Stetson and ran a hand through his hair just as “Hands on the Wheel” groaned through the air. Knowing that “Bandera” was still left, Local walked back into the Mag, resigned to finish the ritual.
After all, he didn’t quite feel like goin’ home.
#
