Denim & Diamonds
Guest post by Aurthur Garrett
Peter Chavez drove the winding country roads around the Colorado River valley outside Bastrop, Texas where he grew up tending his family’s land. He kept a large coffee mug full of beer, tossing the empty cans behind the seat just like his dad showed him twenty years before when they drove the same baby blue ’82 Chevy El Camino along the same roads. A lot of the woods burned up out there the summer before. The fires had nearly jumped the river and everybody north of highway 71 felt the full force of the heavy blaze as it tore through the county. Pete thought about his old friend, Ray, and the kid. Supposedly Ray got the call only minutes before the fire took the house and the barn. Ray grabbed the family pictures and the dog and a few bags of clothes but the fat assed cat, Rex, burned up crouched underneath the old Dodge in the side yard. Pete hadn't been out to visit Ray or the kid in nearly a year. He wanted to see them and maybe drink a case of beer out under the big oak tree down near the catfish tank. Pete really wasn't sure why but he didn't see much of his old friends anymore. Everyone seemed preoccupied with jobs and pregnant wives or what-have-you.
He pulled off the black top just north of Flatonia and slowed as the tires on the old Chevy kicked up dust and the smell of white chalk and cattle feed filled the cab of the pick-up. He reached over and rattled a few aspirin from a plastic bottle into his left palm and chased them down with a swig of the beer. The rolling pasture-side arched up and then down toward the big yellow house. Several head of cattle grazed in the field. The house was coming apart. It was only right. No one had lived there for quite sometime and probably never would again. Whoever owned the place now likely had a modern spread outside La Grange or Columbus. They probably only saw the place once or twice a year. Pete got out and leaned against the warm hood. The dull ache in his gut throbbed heavily now.
The old man sure wasn't saying anything anymore, not about cows or hard work, much less what a real man should do or be. The burning sun and the hard black-land soil finally shut him up once and for all. Pete laughed under his breath and kicked at the gravel. He took a long look at the old place.
“I’ll see you later old man. And when I do, well…”
Pete pulled back onto the blacktop and headed north. The humidity directed his hands on the steering wheel. He meandered out of the old soggy creek bottoms where the spirits of dead confederates and their proud, turgid posterity fished up the old boots of black boys sent to an early death by peckerwoods filled with too much corn swill and wild-eyed obsessions of miscegenation. Pete headed up toward the plains of the yeoman up country toward Belton and Temple. He decided against stopping in on Kenny boy after all.
As the sunset out the driver-side window, Pete cracked open a fresh cold beer from the cooler in the passenger side floorboard. It was his last and he hankered for something stronger to cover the twisting pain in his guts. Outside Belton, just off the highway in the woods sat a busted old roadhouse. He turned off and came to a stop in front of a large hand-painted sign that read Denim n Diamonds. Pete sat for a minute and polished off the remaining gulps of beer. He glanced in the rearview mirror across the road to the dense thicket of cedars and then back at the worn down old shack of a saloon.
‘What a mess,’ he thought.
He gathered up the empties from behind the seat and stuffed them into the brown paper bag, climbing out of the cab and dropping them in the dumpster beside the bar, he adjusted his belt and tucked his shirt into his pants before opening the front door. The light slung across several hard-worn faces before the door shut behind him. A few old men sat in the corner playing cards and two younger dudes leaned against the corner of the bar. They all looked Pete over as he entered the joint. He saddled up at the bar and ordered a beer.
“Pearl Light?”
“Sure thing fella.” The bartender reached down into a large, 24 gallon cooler and fished a can out from under the ice.
“Two bucks son.”
“Thank you.” Pete replied kindly.
Pete sipped from the beer can for a good of couple of minutes before he turned to survey the landscape. The place largely consisted of plywood, both floors and walls, except for a smattering of faded promotional beer posters and cardboard cutouts of swimsuit models. A few scattered patches of dark indiscernibly colored carpet lay about the room, and some cheap wood paneling covered the floor in front of the jukebox. The bar was backed with a sizeable mirror framed in Christmas lights, a few dirty old ball caps, and a woman’s bra. Pete eyeballed the small bags of fried pork rinds hanging on the clips in back of the bar.
“Pardon me sir, can I get a packet of the pig skins?”
“Sure thing bub.”
“And another beer?”
“Comin’ up.”
Pete figured it was cold beers only, but he guessed at the old timer keeping a handle of something hard in the reserves. Few men could spend twelve hours a day in a place like that without a sip or two of spirits.
“Say friend, you got anything stronger somewhere back there?”
The bar tender gave a sly smile and spoke under his breath.
“You know it fella’, but it’ll cost ya’ two and a half bucks.”
Pete put three ones on the bar and took another long pull from his beer. The bartender placed a small glass on the bar in front of Pete and poured a tall shot of what looked like homemade corn whiskey. The two old men eyed Pete closely as he drank it down. They knew he wasn't from the neighborhood and they didn't trust anyone they didn't’ know.
“That’s my own recipe.” The old timer stated. “Call it Coon Dick.”
“How about a round for us?” One of the old patrons suggested, glaring at Pete.
Pete nodded to the bar tender and he poured for all three men.
“Here’s to you gentlemen, and to Coon Dick!” Pete toasted.
They all drank and laughed and Pete played the jukebox. A few other locals strolled in and took their places around the tables. Two women, a handful of bikers, a few kids fresh off the farm in their dirty shirts with leather work gloves stuffed in their back pockets. The crowd was of mean condition to say the least, but they smiled and hollered, got good and drunk like any good folks would under the circumstances. By closing time, they were just getting started and the old guy behind the bar was in no shape to physically remove them—some weighed well over two bills—from the establishment. One of the old timers saddled up at the bar next to Pete and asked him how he liked their homebrew.
“Not bad at all.”
“If you want, I got a few jugs back at my place I’ll sell you for five bucks a piece.”
“Awful kind of you.”
“Yeah, I just live across the road over there.”
“Sure.”
Pete followed the three old buzzards out of the joint and started for his truck.
“No, no,” the old man hollered, “its just over here. Can’t drive through there. Just a short walk,” he said, pointing over at the woods across the road. The other two were already entering the tree line, leaning on each other for balance and slurring Hank Thompson.
“I gots tam fer un mo rown’ an a sers pa t’ go.”
Pete followed the man across the road and down into the cedar trees.
“Name is Earle.”
“Earle, I’m Pete.”
“Pleased to know ya’ son.”
“Likewise.”
They walked a half a mile or so through the woods until they came up on a large clearing. Pete could make out a few heifers in the distance lying under a patch of Pecan trees. There was a trough and a bale of hay nearby.
“You farm this place?” Pete asked.
“Yessir.”
“You own it or just work it?”
“Own it outright, all fifty-seven acres. Grew up down near Victoria.”
“The prairie, huh?”
“Moved up here when I lost my first wife, bought this piece, run it ever since, going on fifty years now.”
“You ever remarry Earle?”
“Yes I did, in ’67, she died of the cancer some time ago. Now its just me and the hands.”
They made their way across the field and up to a large barn. Down below in the pasture sat an old house, single story, shiplap siding, tin roof, with a porch out front. Earle motioned to Pete and they headed over to the barn. He opened the door and pulled a shovel from the inside wall.
“Here, take this.”
Pete took the spade.
“What’s this?" he asked.
“I don’t keep the stuff lyin’ around, its illegal you know. We gotta go over in the yard and dig it up.”
Pete thought the notion odd, but he followed Earle anyway. The other two men had made their way to the house. Pete could see them out on the front porch. He heard them talking, arguing over something. The indigo sky overhead felt cool and a mild breeze blew across the land. They walked down to the yard thirty feet or so from the house and Earle took the shovel and started digging a hole. After a good few swipes, he paused and looked around.
“I’ll be damned. Thought it was right here somewhere.”
“You mean you don’t know where you buried it? Pete asked.
"No, I know I buried it right here, just not exactly where, right here.”
The old timer kept at it for a while, and then started to hack and cough some. Pete took the tool and told him to take a rest. He started digging a few feet away from Earle’s hole and then every foot or so within the yard. He didn't find anything though.
“How deep did you bury the hooch?”
“Couple a feet maybe, less even?”
They took turns digging until nearly the entire yard was pock marked with what looked like small craters.
Pete finally grew exasperated and sat down in the dirt.
“If its here we’re not likely to find it tonight. I better be on my way. I still have to make it into Temple tonight.”
“Hell you do, you agreed to pay me five bucks for a jar of my corn buck; you cain’t re-nig on our deal now. Uh-uh! No sir. I’m afraid I can’t let that happen.
“We’ll, Earle, from the looks of things here, you don’t exactly have any CORN DICK to sell, now do you? And this whole damned escapade is likely some cruel lark.”
“Why you son’va bitch, I should’a know’d you was a double-crosser. Now…you help me dig up this swill…or… else!” Earle belched in exasperation.
Pete sized up the tired old drunk bastard and figured he was out of sorts.
“Well…Earle, you have yourself a nice life buddy. I’m going to Temple.”
Earle reached in his coat and pulled a tiny boot revolver and pointed it at Pete. Pete started to back away slowly, raising his hands in the air, laughing nervously.
“Don’t shoot, you crazy ol’ coot, I’ll give you your five dollars, just put the damned piece away.”
“Uh-uh, I don’t take handouts, a deal is a deal. Besides, you tore up my lawn and that’ll cost me extra…time to recompense youngster.”
Pete felt one of the piles of dirt under his right toe and he kicked it at Earle and turned to run, but Earle fired and caught Pete in the right shoulder. Pete went down for a minute but got back to his feet and ran for the trees and the highway beyond. Once inside the woods he paused, catching his breath; he felt the wound in his back, the slug still burned inside his flesh. He tried to make out the proper direction back to the road but the trees blocked out much of the light and he couldn't hear any cars. He stumbled at a modest pace in the general direction from whence he’d come.
Back in the yard, Earle hollered at the fellas on the porch to help him.
“Get that cheatin’ and swindlin’ bastard!”
The boys weren't sure what had transpired in the yard, nor did they care to get involved.
“Oh come on and sit down and have a drink Earle.”
“That no good lousy thievin’ cretin! He owes me five bucks.”
“How do you figure Earle?”
“Yeah Earle, did he take something from you?”
“He took my time on a promise to pay five bucks for a jug of my corn swill.”
“Did he take the swill without payin’?”
“We never found the damned hooch on account of we weren't done diggin’ it up yet, when he up and decided to skeedaddle.”
“Well that is low down, if I do say so myself.”
“Yessir, suppose it is Earle.”
“This whole country has gone to shit, that’s for damned sure. There are no more good guys out there these days.”
“What about us Earle? Ain't we the good guys?”
“Shut the fuck up Dale before I shoot you’re ugly ass and the Jesus his self thanks me fer doin' so!”
Pete hobbled through the woods until he made out a light a stint or so ahead through the trees. He heard Earle fire his pistol a couple times in the distance. He thought to himself that the next time some old man offers to sell him some moonshine, he’d ask him to deliver the product himself prior to the discussion of purchase price or quality of said product. His shoulder burned like shit fire and he couldn't tell how bad the bleeding was but he knew he was far from any hospital. Slowly he meandered his way upon the road and he saw the roadhouse in the distance. As he crossed the road and made it to his pick-up, an eerie moan came from the shadows on the side of the building. Pete climbed in the cab of his truck and turned the engine over. Switching on the headlights, he caught a fully lit view of a fat bearded red neck on bent knee performing fellatio on an old man up against the dumpster. Pete slammed the driver’s side door and tore hell in reverse out of the gravel parking lot nearly crashing into the mesquite thicket across the road and punched the gas. He spun the steering wheel hard right and skidded out north, screaming as he pushed the gas pedal to the floorboard.
“COCKSUCKIN’ SONS A BITCHES!!! FUCKING A…JESUS…H. FUCKING …OH…AHHH…CHRIST…AHHH…MAN!!!”
The blacktop stretched out under his headlights and he switched the brights on, blinking hard to get a good look at the road. The trees lofted out in an arch overhead until they met those on the opposite side, forming a canopy. It looked as if he were driving through a tunnel toward the depths of hell. He cringed under the pain of his shoulder wound and swerved fighting his increasingly blurred vision. The booze seemed all gone now, but it was really just overridden by the endorphins from the gunshot.
Pete slouched, trying to hold the wheel steady. He felt his blood drip from his arm onto his hand as it pushed the gear stick from fourth to fifth. He suddenly felt he really might not make it.
The Christmas lights spun all around him, reflecting off the mirrors and windows. The troopers had him good this time. He meant to slow by pushing down on the brake but his lack of coordination impaired him and he gassed the El Camino hard. Texas State Trooper, Joe Hooley, saw the late model Chevy El Camino roar past him a mile or so from the Markeska’s place. Joe Hooley was a grunt. He never quite made the Marines but every man in his family had. Joe played ball and was smart as a whip, but he didn't have the taste for foreign lands and barking generals. He loved his country—Texas especially, and America tangentially, at least as much as he understood it—and he figured he did as well as any man. Joe made a fine cadet at the trooper academy in Austin. He aced all the tests and was a torrid force on the obstacle course. All the pasty white sullied boys from deep east Texas saw Joe as a cowboy, and they looked up to him. He graduated the Department of Public Safety training school at the top of his class.
Joe liked to shoot things. He mounted seven near-ten point bucks on his wall in just over sixteen years of handling the thirty-thirty his father passed on to him. Joe wasn't afraid of using his side arm. Once, outside a Mexican Joint in Waco, he fired on two shit heads that tried to run him down in their dually. One lived but never walked the same. The other took one in the jugular; dead on arrival at the local hospital. Joe didn't feel bad about either one. He figured he was a cop. It was his job. Not an easy one either. But it paid the mortgage and his boat loan. Joe liked being able to carry a gun, and use it on occasion. The Judge let Joe off on the manslaughter charge, said it was self-defense.
“There aren't too many good guys left in this world Sgt. Hooley. You’re one of them. You go home to your family and thank god for all you have.”
Joe’s wife, Cindy Hooley, pressed her hips hard up against him outside the courthouse smearing her fire-red lipstick across his mouth. She loved being married to a cop. She liked Joe to wear his holstered pistol to bed. Joe like that too.
Joe Hooley took off after the blue El Camino, sure he’d get the poor bastard and lock his ass up for being a piss poor degenerate. He watched the tailgate swerve back and forth across the road. He knew it was some worthless asshole by the beat up condition of the pick-up. Only a dumb shit would drive an old piece of shit like that. Joe called in the license plate and reported the speeding offense to the operator, Jeannie, back at the office. Jeannie smacked her sugarless chewing gum and pressed the open wavelength button so the other troopers could hear the report across the radio. Joe smiled determined now, he wanted the piece of shit in a pair of cuffs. That’s what he did; it got him fired up.
Pete spilled off the road and into the barbed wire fence dragging the truck to a stop only after the impact forced him to let loose of the steering wheel. Joe Hooley watched the truck pour over the gravel shoulder and knew he had a real situation on his hands. When he approached the crash, gun drawn and calling for the driver to show him his hands, he hoped the shit heal was unconscious, but he was prepared to shoot any drunk bastard who didn't follow his commands right quickly.
Pete was drunk indeed and his leg was twisted up so he could not use it to get out of the truck cab. The impact broke his nose and blood covered his face and shirt. He saw the cop approach, gun drawn through the side mirror and he hoped he might avoid being shot, so he managed to place his hands on the steering wheel.
“You okay there pal?”
Pete hardly heard the cop talking, but his voice faded in and out as Pete’s consciousness failed.
He awoke in a stark white room; the sun shown through the curtains, almost convincing him that he’d gone to the afterlife. The nurse, a hefty, cute brunette, asked him how he was feeling. He starred at her almond eyes and long curls wondering all the while if he were dead and gone to heaven. He had not. The fact made itself more clear as his body recovered enough to feel the damage that it sustained in the crash that night on the roadside. The television in the hospital room played CNN and Pete left the dial there almost permanently, except for the early evening when he turned to the American Movie Classics station to watch Jimmy Stewart in The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, or Sydney Poitier in Blackboard Jungle. To Pete, the slightest subtly delivered line or affected monologue by classic actors lent him some solace against what the newspapers and business reports constantly purported to be the total chaos and impending doom, incessant cultural division, and unending detritus of the great American century sinking to its long awaited demise. Pete did not buy the easy analysis that the U.S. was in decline, nor did he accept obtuse suggestions that George H. W. Bush was a reasonable man, or a convincing commander in Chief. NO, Pete sat in his hospital bed watching with utter disgust as the spray-tanned anchors suggested that the latest Presidential debate was a draw.
“I’d draw on him, sure as shit!” Pete said out loud. The empty hospital room offered no response.
Joe Hooley opened the door and politely asked Pete if he could have a minute of his time to finalize the police report on the accident. Pete acquiesced figuring he was in for the riot act, him being an obviously drunken gunshot wounded driver on a public road in the dark of night. He vaguely remembered Joe Hooley’s face from the night of the accident. Joe took a seat in the chair next to Pete’s bedside and looked up at the television. He opened the leather binder containing the police proceedings from the crash and looked at Pete squarely.
“Do you remember why you decided to get behind the wheel that night Mr. Thompson?” Joe Hooley asked.
Pete hesitated before finally asking the young, flat top square head, what Pete figured was a superfluous but importantly and meaningfully distracting question.
“Do you believe in freedom sir?”
“Excuse me?” Joe Hooley responded.
“Never mind.”
“You must be a ton a bricks son?” Hooley asserted.
Pete didn't look away from the television. “Just a man on the fly sir. But I guess you’re genius detective work already figured that much out.”
“This report paints a fairly poor picture Mr. Chavez.”
“I guess it is a ‘fairly poor picture’ all together,” Pete motioned toward the CNN broadcast on the screen: “depression and wars, AIDS and what not.”
“You some kind a bleedin’ heart son? A liberal?”
“Sir?” Pete asked.
“You a fairy assed quitter…a fag? Do you love America and George Washington?” Hooley prodded.
“George Washington Carver? Who doesn’t like a good goober pea, sir?” Pete smiled without meeting the officer’s gaze.
“Son, your sarcastic wit might be what is keeping you back.”
“Well, I love Texas and Sam Houston law man, is that good enough for you?”
“Are you one of the good guys Mr. Chavez? Cuz right now, your comments are leaving me in serious doubt as to the content of your character.”
“Are your hands clean sir?” Pete countered.
The Nurse returned, just before Hooley could answer, to check on Pete’s condition.
“Anything else officer?” Pete asked.
“Just need you to sign off on this form. Luckily no one was hurt but you, the court date for the DWI is in 90 days. You can contact the court at this number here on the back of the citation.”
“Thank you officer. And you keep your head up sir.” Pete offered.
Pete was just relaxed enough from all the booze that when he hit the tree his left leg folded over under the force of the crumbling engine block and thus narrowly escaped a terrible break. Pete glanced over at the nurse’s figure as she adjusted his heart monitor. He thought of Poppa in A Farewell to Arms and whether the young nurse might fancy a roll in the sack. It remained unclear if he was fit for such activity, so he let it aside for the moment and refocused on the television. As she tucked him in, the nurse grazed at his groin and Pete glanced up at her in suggestion. She glared in contempt of his weak attempt at a sexual interlude, of which he was totally incapable of executing. Nonetheless she admired his audacity, as most women do. She placed her warm hand directly on Pete’s crotch and said…
“You’re a big boy…but I need a soldier.”
She then abruptly left the room. She did not return for exactly forty-eight hours. Pete lay in that miserable sterile room wondering, minute after minute, when they’d release him. He accepted the loss of his truck and the police were sure to arrive any minute to take his statement and begin the legal case against him for reckless endangerment or disturbing the peace or god knows what trumped up charge. He eventually dozed off under the influence of the heavy pills the nurse fed him. The television ran on and on about the President and the Super Bowl, and the economy, as if any of them would change the game substantially for anybody trying to get out of a hole. Where was the nurse? Where were the cops? When would he get the fuck out of this stinking prison, this oppressive regimen of thermometers, green peas, and white rubber gloves? Who could stand this inhumane treatment? If only that chunky little brunette bombshell would return to finish the business she started?
When Ray and the kid pulled into the Hospital driveway in his blue Dodge Ram, Pete sat perched in a wheel chair with a bandaged foot and a stitched up face. The boy, Charlie, sat up front. They both got out and greeted Pete, who sat in that miserable wheel chair, leg in a caste, shoulder still heavily bandaged from the bullet wound. Suddenly the nurse appeared over Pete’s shoulder. She whispered into his ear then licked it hard and wet. Ray and the kid walked over and smiled glad to see Pete in one piece.
“Fuck was that about?” Ray said. “You remember Charlie don’t ya?”
“Sure,” Pete said. “How you doin’ Charlie? I’m your cousin Pete."
“Hey Pete.”
Ray drove directly to Pepe’s Café out on the interstate where the boys all sat at a red vinyl covered table eating enchiladas and guacamole Pete and Ray drank beers and Charlie had a Roy Rogers.
“You gonna be alright brother?” Ray asked.
“Oh sure.” Pete replied.
For that moment at least Pete felt everything was not lost. The kid was a handsome daring one, and Ray was a good dad, and they had survived a terrible fire, lost everything but each other, but there they were, eating enchiladas and drinking cold Mexican beer. Maybe there was hope for America after all.
Charlie looked up at Pete.
“Wha happen to your face Pete?”
“Well tiger, cousin Pete had a bit of a car accident…I got in a jam with some bad men.”
“Oh yeah?” Charlie asked, excited by the idea of gunslingers and derelicts. “Oh yeah? Bad men? What kind a bad men?”
“Oh just some down right dirty dealers son.”
“Are we the good guys pop?”
“Yeah bub,” Ray smiled, “we’re the good guys.”