Scott Repass's Blog

“Spears channels Raymond Chandler in his tale of a Houston bar owner in over his head. A hurricane is approaching Houston, and protagonist Little John gets unexpectedly caught up in the city’s violent drug underworld. The engaging narrative and the moral ambiguity of Little John’s inner life are buoyed by a cast of complex and often quirky characters. The quickfire prose, taut narrative, and convincing characters make this a winning read.” — The BookLife Prize in Fiction

This is all true.  I changed the names of the kids because, well, they’re kids.

TRISTAN

Our day started yesterday with a neighbor kid calling Helen’s name from the street.  Helen wasn’t ready to go out, so she didn’t answer.  A few minutes later, there was a knock at the front door.  I answered.

Miss Anna was standing there, looking nervous.  Miss Anna is a woman in her 60s, squat and sweet.  She teaches Helen’s folklorico dance class and my first thought was that she needed Helen’s costume for something.

“Mr. Scott,” she said at last, “has Tristan been over here, maybe to play with Helen?”  Tears were filling her big eyes and I knew immediately that Tristan had run away.

For a few days, Tristan had been telling Helen and the other kids at school that he was going to run away.  His plan was to hop on a train to Alpine, get some “provisions” there, then get on a train to New York.  Helen came home and told me about it.

“Do you think he’ll really do it?” she asked me.

Of course I didn’t.  The trains don’t even stop here in Marathon – they streak past, fully demonstrating the Doppler effect four or five times a day.  Tristan’s dream was romantic, even cute.  He invited Helen to come with him.

“Why would I want to run away?” she replied. “My life is perfect.” (And did my heart swell hearing those words from my daughter.)  She teased Tristan after school.  “See you tomorrow!” she taunted.

Tristan is a sweet kid.  Beyond sweet.  If he asked me permission to take Helen’s hand in marriage, I would probably give it.  My only reservation would be that they are nine-year-olds.  This is a kid who likes to dance with Helen, a kid that once said to Dawn and me, “I like Helen – she’s smart.  She’s the smartest one in the class.”  Once, seeing me ride my bike to the school, Tristan said, “I like your bike.  Is it new?”  Another time, Helen came home and said, “Oh, Tristan says to say ‘hi.’”  What kind of nine-year-old boy says these things?

He is a polite kid, a cute kid.  Friendly and smiley and smart.

When Helen asked me, “Do you think he’ll really run away?” I told her no.

“Kids like to imagine things like that,” I said.  “They like to talk them out and think about them and imagine what it would be like.”  He wouldn’t really want to run away, I said.

Yet there was Miss Anna on my front step.

“He snuck out around five this morning,” she said.  Three hours.  “We thought maybe he came here to see Helen.  He likes her.”  (Small heart swell.  Even in this moment – a moment of sick fear – I can’t help but like the kid’s romantic notions.)

“Oh, Anna,” I said, choking on guilt.  “He told Helen he was going to run away.  He said he was going to jump on a train.”

“He told a lot of kids that.”  (Somewhat diminished heart swell.)

I promised to call her if I saw him and she left, on to the next house.

Helen was excited.

“He really did it,” she kept yelling as she got dressed.  “He said he was going to and he did.”

We went outside to join the search.  Already, neighbors were walking the blocks, looking behind bushes, in sheds.  I asked Helen where she thought he might be hiding.

“He said he was going to hide in the Gage Gardens until a train came,” she said.  “But I bet he’s on the way to Alpine by now.”

“I don’t see how he could get to Alpine, sweetie,” I said.  “He’s probably just scared and hiding somewhere.” She and a couple of neighbor kids ran over to search the Garden.

Dawn and I walked the streets near our house.  Tristan’s bike was found at the library, tilted under a picnic table.  The little Marathon Museum next to the library was found to be unlocked, but Tristan wasn’t hiding among the World War II uniforms or the Ladies Club Cookbooks.

More and more people took to the streets.  Sheriff’s department cars drove up and down.  By chance, the volunteer fire department was having a benefit cook-out in the community center, right next to the library.  Hefty men in boots, young guys smoking cigarettes, tall cowboys in denim jackets joined the search. Sheds were pried open.  Abandoned houses were peered into.

We all began to fear – if not the worst, then certainly not the best.  His sister said he climbed out the window at five am and it was now 11.  Maybe he had fallen.  Maybe he was stuck somewhere.  Maybe he had climbed into a tourist’s RV and was unwittingly on his way to Ohio.  And, of course, there were worse fears.

I began to feel guilt gnawing at my gut.  Tristan had told Helen.  Helen had told me.  I was supposed to be the responsible adult and I had done nothing.  I hadn’t told his teachers or his parents.  What if, I thought, he had actually tried to jump on a train?  They blow through Marathon at 40 miles an hour.  A grown man would be crushed, torn apart, if he got too close.  Tristan, sweet romantic Tristan.  I had known of his plans and I had done nothing.

I drove over to the railroad tracks.  A sheriff’s department helicopter was circling overhead.  Grey gravel and tar and stacks of ties.  Rusting cans.  A rotting trailer.  I picked along the edge of the tracks, looking in the scrub and the cactus, hoping to find Tristan hiding.  Hiding, not hidden.

There’s a concrete structure near the tracks, some remnant of when Marathon had a semblance of industry.  A crumbling structure that looks like a Greek ruin.  Inside its columns stands a rusted pump.  I was staring at the pump when my phone rang.

It was Carol, the hotel manager.  She was driving in from Alpine because of the chaos Tristan’s disappearance was causing.  Tristan’s father, Tony, works in the Gage restaurant.  Carol was calling to ask if Dawn and I could watch Tony’s daughter, Hailey, so Tony could join the search.

I was in the process of saying yes when Carol said, “Oh.  Here’s a little boy.  Oh.”  I heard the muffled fluffing sounds you hear when someone is putting down a phone.  Then I heard here say, “Hi, Tristan.  Do you need a ride?”  More muffled fluffing, then she said to me, “I got him.”

And that was it.  Carol had spotted him on Highway 90, about a mile west of Marathon.  Tristan had decided against hoping a boxcar and was, instead, walking to Alpine.  To get provisions and to find his way from there to New York.  Carol drove him through town, toward the library, when they passed Helen and the other kids returning from the Gardens.

Tristan rolled down his window.

“See, Helen?” he yelled out the window.  “I told you I would do it.”

I have been here less than a week and I have already learned something that I never would have learned — never — had I stayed in Houston.

Javelinas make good pets.

So.  I was talking about dogs with the father of a couple kids in Rocket’s school.  He is the ranch manager of a huge hunting ranch south of Marathon.  He told me that they have two Australian Shepherds that are worthless.

“I live out so far that if someone shows up on your doorstep, you greet them with a gun,” he said.

But, recently, a man managed to drive up to the ranch, get out of his truck, and knock on the front door without the dogs even waking up.

“So, what I really want is a javelina,” the rancher told me.

Apparently, if you catch a javelina when it is very young, bottle feed it and care for it, it will become a loyal pet.  The javelina will be very protective of your family and very territorial.

“And they spray like skunks,” he said.

“There ain’t a man alive that’s gonna get out of his truck if he sees a javelina charging,” he said.

We lived in New Orleans, my wife and I, well before Katrina, in the mid-90s. Crime was terrible, corruption was rampant, health conditions were deplorable.

We loved it, of course.

We lived for a while in the Quarter, on Saint Anne, between Dauphine and Burgundy. We would ride our bikes or walk to House of Blues, where we were both servers. Our days were spent explaining ettouffe to tourists and our nights were spent dodging those same tourists as they stumbled drunkenly down the sidewalks.

It’s very hard to get away from tourists when you live in the Quarter. This is not shocking – it is one of the great tourist destinations in the country. But we lived in the Quarter and worked in the Quarter. We had no car, so almost all of our off time was also spent in the Quarter. Let me stress, I was not one of those people who hated the tourists who provided his income. It’s just that, some nights, you don’t want to sit next to the couple who is drinking crappy Hurricanes and wearing Mardi Gras beads in July.

You want Molly’s.

I can’t explain why Molly’s isn’t full of obnoxious tourists. Maybe it’s because it is in an odd enough stretch of Decatur that tourists don’t think to stop there. Maybe it’s because the tattooed, sometimes curt bartenders don’t smile when you order a Hand Grenade or an Everclear Daiquiri. Maybe it’s because the regulars are a little more reluctant to make room at the bar for the wobbly guy wearing a UT frat t-shirt and oversized sunglasses.

None of this is to say that Molly’s is unwelcoming in any way. Quite the opposite. Molly’s is extremely welcoming if you keep your behavior within certain parameters. Drunk is fine. Drunk and loud are fine. Drunk, loud, and ordering something neon green? Now you’re testing their patience.

Molly’s is one of my favorite bars in the world, probably because it was the first bar I discovered in a category that would be so important to me for the rest of my life – the bartender’s bar. It is the bar where bartenders and servers and chefs and cooks from other bars and restaurants come to drink. They are not looking for karaoke or big plastic novelty cups or drunk Mississippi girls. They are looking for a place to relax, to escape from the corruption and the crime and, yes, the tourists.

Bless you, Molly’s. You were that escape to me.

Try it. Trust me.

Click here to get Last Call Lounge on Amazon.com, please.

I owed Jen a favor, is how it started. She had bailed me out a few months before, so when she asked me to help her move, I couldn’t say no. It was New Year’s Eve when she asked, at the end of my shift. It was ten o’clock and my only plan for the night was to go home and drink. Jen stopped me on my way out the door, touched my arm and asked if I could help. That’s how I found myself, early on New Year’s Day, waiting on the sidewalk outside Jen’s apartment with Tim Cole, who was also there to help. He said he owed Jen a favor, too, but I think he just wanted to be involved, wanted to see inside Jen’s apartment.

It was one of those days when everything was gray, the street, the sidewalk, the windows, and Tim and I looked gray, too. He was a regular at the bar and we weren’t used to seeing each other in daylight. At night, his shuffle seemed manic; during the day it seemed nervous, shy. We stood a few feet apart, smoking, not saying much. It was too early, and I was hung-over.

Jen pulled up in a dirty white moving van. She was all oranges and browns – red hair, brown sweater, brown corduroys.

“Have you been waiting long?” she asked, sliding the side door open.

“Yes,” I said and Tim Cole chuckled nervously. It wasn’t true, but I wanted to make sure Jen knew I was annoyed.

“Sorry,” she said. We went upstairs and Jen made coffee while Tim and I poked around. Everything was in boxes, for the most part, and the bare walls showed yellow. The bed was stripped down to the mattress and boxes were piled on top. Tim Cole looked at a box of books and I stared out the window.

Jen came in with coffee cups and we sat on the floor. She and Tim talked about some guy who had been in the bar the night before.

“He’s the same guy you threw out before Christmas,” Tim said.

“I know,” she said. “I thought I’d give him another chance.”

I drank my cup, poured another one from the pot on the floor.

“Sorry to get you guys up so early,” Jen said.

“On New Year’s Day,” I said, not looking at her.

“I know,” she said. “I’m sorry. I have to work tonight, otherwise I never would have started so early.” She smiled apologetically and I knew I shouldn’t be mad at her, but now I was and it was too late.

“Why do you have to move out today?” Tim asked, but he wasn’t mad.

“Fucking Jeremy fucked everything up,” Jen said, and if you knew Jeremy, that was really answer enough. Jen’s body didn’t show her age yet, but her face did, and her years with Jeremy had added weather to her tan. She had changed, in her time at the Tavern, from the hot young bartender, to the bartender/mom, in charge, loved but not always liked. The favor I owed her, the bail, had been on a stupid possession charge. I’d never been arrested before, and when I was allowed my phone call, I called Jen.

But today I was fed up and tired and I wanted her to know. I drank my black coffee in silence. Jen got up, streched up on her toes, put the coffee pot back in the kitchen. Tim Cole got up, too, and they took a couple boxes downstairs while I sat and finished my coffee. I heard them coming up the stairs, so I waited until they came in, then got up, took a box off the bed, and went downstairs. I tried to time it right, so that I wouldn’t have to deal with them much, but every time we passed on the stairs, Tim Cole would fake a grimace and chuckle and Jen would give me a sympathetic/thank-you smile.

Everything went the way you would expect. Up and down the dusty stairs. No one else in the building was up and you didn’t even hear any TVs or anything. Through the open tops of the boxes, you could see little bits of Jen’s life. Nothing much, just the colors, the edges. Smells of things and sounds of things as they shook in your arms, bouncing down the stairs. A ribbon had slipped out of the top flaps of one box, a red ribbon with “2nd Place” glued on in glitter. I pushed it back under the flap before I picked up the box.

The van filled up with reasonably neat rows of brown boxes and beer boxes from the bar. Jen found places between the rows for unboxed things, a frayed broom, a purple and black Rothko print. The street was still quiet and gray.

Everything was done except the bed. It was the only big thing and Tim and I huffed it – mattress, then box spring – down the stairs, while Jen walked behind us, not able to help, but not wanting to abandon us either. On the stairs, on the way down, I realized Tim Cole and I had done this before, performed this same chore before. The memory made me blink. Years before, a friend had died, a mutual friend named Zach. Zach was a bartender, the one who had trained me how to be a bartender. I had just moved to town and Zach took it as part of his duty to show me around the neighborhood, too. A few years later, he overdosed and his mother had come to the city, sought us out. She wasn’t like you expected Zach’s mother to be. She was younger than I thought and her grief had made her beautiful, exquisite somehow and full. Dark hair and dark eyes and long white hands. We’d helped her empty Zach’s apartment. She sat in a chair and packed Zach’s things into boxes and cried while Tim and I went up and down the stairs, wordless except for short, occasional instructions – “watch your feet,” “right behind you.”

This day, this other wordless day, helping Jen, as Tim Cole and I levered the box spring out the front door, I thought about Zach and looked at Tim. He was holding in a smoker’s morning cough and his face was red. His eyes met mine and I thought for a second he was thinking about Zach, too. He raised his eyebrows, not asking. Jen wouldn’t have known Zach – he was before her time at the Tavern – so I didn’t say anything. I felt grim and stupid and immature and didn’t know what to do about it.

We carried the box spring to the back of the van, where we were going to slide it in through the back doors, on top of the mattress which was already on top of the boxes. Tim lifted his end in first, up kind of high, and I started shoving. I got it about half-way in when it got stuck.

“Wait a second,” Jen said, and opened the sliding door to see if she could rearrange anything. “Wait a second,” she said again, louder, but I started shoving, kind of hopping and shoving until something gave and the box spring slid in. “Wait,” Jen said louder but I was done and there was a thud and a crash.

I came around the side of the van. A box had spilled out, onto the sidewalk, and Jen’s things lay at her feet. A big silver hair brush, a wooden jewelry box. A small plate, too, had fallen out and broken and when Tim Cole bent down to pick it up, I saw that it was a souvenir plate, painted in bright blues and reds and yellows, a scene from some campground or state park. Tim looked at the two pieces in his hands, down at the smaller pieces on the ground among the other things.

“God damnit,” Jen said, and she held her hand to her nose like she was going to cry. I was about to say sorry, when Tim threw one of the pieces down, hard. It smashed and pinged as shards of plate went everywhere.

“Look,” he said, holding the other piece high above his head. “We’re Greeks!” Then he yelled, “Opa!” and threw the plate near Jen. It smashed, white and color on the gray pavement. Jen didn’t move, so Tim stomped on the pieces with both feet and yelled again.

“Opa!”

Jen shook with a little laugh, then Tim grabbed her hands. They jumped up and down on the shards. Jen threw her head back and let out a thin, high laugh.

“Opa!” they yelled. Jen let go of Tim’s hand, held her hand out to me. I smiled down at my feet, took her hand, joined the circle.

“Opa!” we yelled and jumped up and down on the remnants of the plate. When we finally broke the circle, we were all red-faced and winded. Jen touched my shoulder. Tim lit a cigarette. I picked up the brush and the jewelry box and the jewelry, put them back in the box, put the box in the van.

We smoked for a minute, then Jen got in the van. Her new place was two miles away and the van was full, so I rode over with Tim. I had never seen Tim drive before, and when he got behind the wheel of his big Buick, it seemed like a very grown-up thing for him to be doing. At night, in the bar, his hands were always touching him somewhere – his face, his forehead, his nose and ears. Behind the wheel with a cigarette, his hands were still and calm. He rolled the window all the way down, cold air blasting in while he smoked. I lit a cigarette, too, and cracked my window.

The streets went by outside the way streets go by. I mean, you want to think that you’re seeing something or witnessing something, but the streets go by like that for everybody. Stores you’ll never go in, some you never even notice. My father grew up working in a store like that, a store his father owned on a street like this. Signs everywhere, and criss-crossed power lines and telephone lines. Everything was suspended and quiet and slow and I remembered it was a holiday. We stopped at a light.

“I was thinking about Zach,” I said finally. Tim nodded, kept his eyes on the road. We were going under the highway, now, and traffic clunked overhead. I could picture Tim at Zach’s funeral. We were all a bunch of young stupid morons, unkempt and unclean in harsh sunlight, but Tim Cole showed up in a blue, tailored suit, a shine on his shoes. I’ve seen Tim a thousand times at night, but maybe only four times during the day, and that was one of those times.

“I’m still mad at him,” I said. Tim nodded again, looked out his window. I didn’t feel like explaining it. Tim knew, we all knew. We were all mad at Zach for a long time, for doing what he did, for putting us through all that shit, that bullshit. Picturing his mom sitting in his apartment, picturing his funeral, brought it all back and I felt the anger again in my neck and in my eyes.

“Me, too,” he said at last, then turned to me. “He never told us his mom was so hot.” I looked straight ahead, then out my window. Then I rolled my eyes and laughed through my nose. Tim giggled. I threw my cigarette out the window, lit another one, rolled the window all the way down. Cold air blasted around us as we smoked. I was overcome with giggles and Tim started giggling again and we smoked and giggled the rest of the way.

Jen’s new apartment was in an old brick building, a big house cut into four apartments. There was a black fence around the back yard, a path of cracked red bricks up to the front door. The sun was fully up now and the grayness was started to fade. The front door was open and the van door was open, so Tim and I grabbed a box each and went inside.

The stairs were wide and well-lit and Jen’s new apartment was small and smelled of paint. The walls were white, whiter even against the dark hardwoods. Jen was in the kitchen, which was really just an extension of the living room, plugging in the coffee maker. Tim Cole and I set down our boxes. Tim went to check out the bedroom and the bathroom. I stood next to Jen, waited for coffee. Something occurred to me.

“Where’s Jeremy, anyway?” I asked and Jen looked at me and smiled.

“We broke up,” she said. “That’s why I’m moving out, dumb-ass.” She smiled bigger, because I was a dumb-ass, because she knew I’d wanted her to break up with him for a long time, or maybe just because it was New Year’s Day and I was there and Tim was there and we were drinking coffee in an apartment that smelled of fresh paint.

Jen and Tim were finishing their coffee, so I went downstairs to have a cigarette. I sat on the front step, looking at the sky. The wind was cool and dry. There was a small church down the block and a faithful family walked by, didn’t notice me. When I was a kid, my mother went to church every Sunday, sometimes more often, and she would always make me and my sister get up extra early. She liked the early Mass, liked to go to confession. My father, who didn’t go with us, would stand by the doorway and kiss her as she left.

“A more suspicious man would think you had a lot to confess,” he would say. Mom would pretend to be more prim, would fuss with her purse.

“You have to be forgiven if you want to take communion,” she would say and my father would laugh.

“Yes,” he’d say, smiling as she herded us out the door. “But you have to sin if you want to be forgiven.”

It took an hour or so to unload the van. Jen ordered a pizza and Tim ran to the corner for beer. We sat on the floor among the boxes and ate and drank. Then Tim had to go and he was my ride, so I got up and Jen came over to hug me good-bye.

“Sorry about the plate,” I said. She smiled, a big open-mouth smile, and hugged me again.

“Please,” she said. “Don’t worry about it.”

That night, Tim Cole and I sat at the bar while Jen served us. She bought our drinks, poured them heavy. The Tavern was a little place, dark and brown and smoky. It was New Year’s Day, the bar was slow. Everyone was with their families. I played Lefty Frizzell on the jukebox and we did shots of bourbon. Tim’s hands went from his cigarettes to his shot glass, to his mouth, to his ears. Tim got drunk and I got drunk. I got drunk and I couldn’t help it – every once in a while, I’d grab Jen’s hand and say, “I’m sorry about the plate,” so that she’d have to smile and say, “Don’t worry about it.” And then Tim would yell, “Opa!” and we’d all laugh.

You look like you’re doing something wrong when you go into Hunter’s Pub.

Or, more accurately, Hunter’s Pub looks, from the outside, like a place where wrongs are being done.  Its entrance is stuck in the ugly corner of an ugly strip-center on a not-particularly-attractive stretch of South Post Oak.  A small, 70’s-era sign and a cheap “Open” neon mark the door that appears to lead to a seedy backroom of a defunct used computer store.

Instead, it opens to a warm, low bar, populated by friendly, if skeptical, regulars.  The front half of the main room is dim and comfortable.  The back half is brighter to accommodate the pool table, dart board, and full-size shuffleboard.  Another questionable door, at the end of the bar, leads to a spacious patio with picnic tables and a charcoal grill.

This is the kind of bar that has Christmas lights up all year.  This is the kind of bar that puts out crackers and dip and white paper plates on a plastic folding table.  And this is the kind of bar where you can order a scotch on the rocks from a deaf bartender at 2 o’clock on a Tuesday afternoon and you don’t look like you’re doing something wrong.

10549 S Post Oak Rd

You look like you’re doing something wrong when you go into Hunter’s Pub.

Or, more accurately, Hunter’s Pub looks, from the outside, like a place where wrongs are being done.  Its entrance is stuck in the ugly corner of an ugly strip-center on a not-particularly-attractive stretch of South Post Oak.  A small, 70’s-era sign and a cheap “Open” neon mark the door that appears to lead to a seedy backroom of a defunct used computer store.

Instead, it opens to a warm, low bar, populated by friendly, if skeptical, regulars.  The front half of the main room is dim and comfortable.  The back half is brighter to accommodate the pool table, dart board, and full-size shuffleboard.  Another questionable door, at the end of the bar, leads to a spacious patio with picnic tables and a charcoal grill.

This is the kind of bar that has Christmas lights up all year.  This is the kind of bar that puts out crackers and dip and white paper plates on a plastic folding table.  And this is the kind of bar where you can order a scotch on the rocks from a deaf bartender at 2 o’clock on a Tuesday afternoon and you don’t look like you’re doing something wrong.

10549 S Post Oak Rd

Last Call Lounge is available for the ultra-low cost of nuthin’ today on Amazon.  Please enjoy it and, if you do enjoy it, please review it on Amazon.  Find out why former New York Magazine theater critic Scott Brown called me a “heartstompingly brilliant bastard.”

http://www.amazon.com/Last-Call-Lounge-Stuart-Spears-ebook/dp/B011ANCPLM/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1439742771&sr=8-1&keywords=stuart+spears

Thanks,

Stu

The sign said bingo but there was clearly no bingo going on inside.

“Nobody said anything to me about bingo,” the bartender said.  “Sorry.”

Clearly, we didn’t care.  We ordered Lone Stars or Bud Lights or whatever beer it was everyone else was ordering and took over the dart board.  Like most American Legion posts, this one looked like a cafeteria with a bar built in.  The lights were up.  A case on the back wall was filled with ribbons and trophies and commemorative plates (I have a soft spot for commemorative plates.) The main room had a pool table and a blessedly unused karaoke machine.  The back room, where you would expect to find eight-liner gambling machines, there was a large conference table with three or four computers.  Two elderly women sat at the computers playing what looked like a desktop version of eight-liner gambling machines.

Everyone smoked, or so it seemed.  I suppose American Legion posts are private clubs and therefore are exempt from smoking bans.  None of us in our group smoke, but I appeciated the smoke, really — breathing in second-hand tobacco while shooting darts made me nostalgic for my bartending days.

The whole place, in fact, made me nostalgic for the old dive bars of Texas – the wood-paneled walls, the Formica table tops.  It’s the kind of place Willie sings about.  It’s the kind of place your grandfather hung out in after the swing shift.

We drank our beers and threw darts and joked around with the cowboys shooting pool.  We left rather quickly, only because we had tickets to an Alpine Cowboys baseball game.  The bartender smiled and waved and gave us a hearty, “Come back and see us!” as we walked out into the late afternoon sun.

Bingo or no, I plan to take him up on that invitation.