dontravis.com blog post #563
Photo Courtesy of Dreamstime.com
Thanks for the comments on last week’s guest post from Donald T. Morgan’s The Eagle’s Claw. I’ve read the book several times and enjoyed learning more details with each re-reading. Thanks, Don.
Today,
I’m going to do a repost of a story I wrote in 2019 and posted in four parts
beginning on Thursday, May 19,2019. I don’t usually repost stories that take
multiple readings, but this one caught my eye, and for some reason I wanted to
post it again. Maybe it’s because Chesty Westy’s Truck Stop at the Continental
Divide shows up in a couple of my stories and one of my books. At any rate,
here goes.
SPLENDID
DESOLATION
I set my cruise
control and thumbed my nose at all the plain wrappers and blue wrappers and
county Mounties that used to give me goose bumps. There’s a little less tension
when there’s not a load for the tin-totters and DT’s to check. I could drive
twenty-four hours straight, and it wasn’t nobody’s business…unless I got
foolish and wiped up the road with my new wheels. Took some getting used to. The
first two days out, I automatically started checking my back door when I came
up on ten hours of straight driving. I guess it comes down to once a trucker,
always a trucker.
The other side of
that’s true, too. Once a bear, always a bear. So the first roadside billboard for
Chesty Westey’s Truck Stop advertising fuel, mechanics, clean rooms, hot
showers, and anything else a tired trucker might crave revved my motor a little.
The second, ten miles down the road, highlighted Tia Maria’s Homestyle Cooking,
and everything they claimed about it was true. Pure ‘Grandma’ cooking, and it
didn’t matter if your grandma was named Lucy or Amée or Sooky or Esther or
Wu…old Marie Tuxburry whipped up meals like all of them.
The last sign was
a garish plug for the Continental Divide Eagle Bar that sprawled beyond the
arroyo behind the truck stop. The filling station and café and mini motel that
came before were merely lures to the gigantic bear den where truckers and
bikers and military men co-existed like bosom buddies, not the natural adversaries
they were. What made the difference? The bar, of course. Or more accurately,
the bears that hibernated there.
Nobody’s ever been
able to adequately define a bear for me. For every hairy hulk, I can show you
one without a pelt. For every beer belly, I can show you a waist thick with muscles.
For every giant, I can locate a midget. It’s the attitude, I think. A
good-buddy, live-and-let-live philosophy most of us possess. Now, sometimes,
something can upset that formula, like too much alcohol or a roving cub…or even
a woman now and then. But at Chesty Westey’s, the Peterbuilts nuzzle Hogs
flanked by Jeeps as peaceably as their navigators get along behind its adobe
walls.
After I’d washed
up and topped off the gas tank at the truck stop, I pushed through the heavy
front doors of the Eagle. The blue wall of smoke parted like the Red Sea as I
crossed the threshold and then swirled to enfold me in the comfortable miasma
of the den…men, alcohol, chicken fried steaks, and sex. I was home. In the
momentary blindness of the deep gloom, the rumble of conversation, clink of glass,
and throaty laughter of barmaids rendered me deaf. Constant, shadowed,
undulating motion made me think of a vast boiling cauldron.
As a veteran, I knew
enough to detour to the left of the big double doors to pay court to the
shapeless mass of black flesh decked out in cotton field-blue bib overalls that
must have been cut out of a tent.
“Sweetie,” I
addressed the Queen of Sheba who had managed the joint for as long as I had
been coming here on cross-country hauls. I suspected most people figured this
gargantuan hulk came by his name by virtue of his high-pitched voice and outrageous
feminine mannerisms; I happened to know, it was a corruption of the dude’s last
name, Sweetwater.
The shining ebony
mound quivered, gave a loud gasp, and flashed an ivory smile that reminded me
of a chipped keyboard. “Vince Lozander!” he shrieked. “As I live and breathe! Where
have you been, you luscious mass of man muscle? Sit your bear ass down right
here and bring Sweetie up to date!”
Sliding into a chair
behind a ridiculously small table, I complied. “I threw in the towel, Sweetie. Sold
the old bobtail. Got tired of dodging Mounties and alligators and the
Transportation dicks.”
The black raisins
that served as the man’s eyes glittered. “You send all them Transportation dicks
you don’t want old Sweetie’s way. I take care of them for you.”
“Now, Sweetie, you
know I mean dicks as in pricks…not as in dongs.”
The manager gave a
shrill giggle. “All the same to me, honey. But what you gonna do with your cute
ass if it ain’t riding the saddle?”
“Opening a produce
store near San Diego. Been hauling the stuff for years, so now I’ll let it haul
me all the way to retirement.”
“Gonna miss your
pretty face in this old cave. You better haul ass back here now and then to
keep up with your buds.”
“Sweetie, you’re
the only person in the world who considers me pretty. Now bring me up to date
on everybody.”
The man absently stroked
his long, grey-flecked Methuselah beard as he gave me news oF truckers he knew
were important to me, people like Tree Trunk Martone, Hillbilly Dawson, and
Pardo Folsom. Half an hour, a gallon of beer, and a bucket of sweat later—Sweetie
would sweat at the North Pole—he finished his newscast.
“Anything new and
interesting?”
Sweetie rolled his
eyes and pursed his chocolate pudding lips, motioning across the cavernous
expanse of the bar’s main room, merely one of the many in the meandering adobe
building. “I’m trying to figure that one out. He don’t belong.”
My gaze fixed on a
young man who, from this distance, appeared to be a twink…a creature ill-fitted
to a bear den like this. “What’s his story?”
“Dunno. He
wandered in around noon and been cadging drinks ever since. But he’s sly about
it. At first, he bought his own, but when he flashed an empty wallet, the guys
started springing. These sweethearts can’t stand to see a man run dry…know what
I mean?”
“Yeah.” And I did.
This cave’s denizens didn’t go for leaches, but they were quick to help a guy
down on his luck. Wondering what tale the kid was feeding them, I lumbered to
my feet. “Gonna make the rounds now, Sweetie. Catch you later.”
“Behave,” he gave
his customary benediction.
With a mug of fresh
beer in hand, I circulated, talking to a few good-buddies and meeting new ones.
Trading blue blazers with this bunch passed some pleasant time. Eventually, I
confronted the young stranger Sweetie had pointed out. Up close, he was pretty,
saved from being girlish by an intriguing Adam’s apple. He was definitely a
fish out of water. A smoothie in a bear den was apt to be tossed out on his
ear. The kid’s blond thatch wasn’t a military haircut, but he could have been
an underclassman at UNM who wandered in from Albuquerque by mistake. On
impulse, I stuck out my hand. He met my grip and tried to leverage it, but he
was no match for my big mitt. He couldn’t have stood more than five-ten and
weighed one-seventy or less. Downright puny. Of course, his body had more definition
than anyone else in the joint, including the Air Force MPs from Kirtland and
the grunts from Fort Huachuca over in Arizona. Maybe he aspired to be one of
those male dancers they had in the Blue Room but was too shy to ask Sweetie for
a job. For some screwy reason the bears I know like their men big and beefy,
and probably with lots of hair, but they go nuts cheering slender-hipped boy
dancers on weekends.
“Vince Lozander,”
I offered.
“Davy,” he
responded with a boyish grin. “Davy Winston.”
“What brings you
to the Eagle?” I asked affably.
“Hitching, and I
thought the truck stop looked interesting.”
“Bet you didn’t
know it was a bear den. Must have been a shock when you came through the door.”
He laughed aloud,
lighting up his good-looking face. “Especially when I ran into that big black gorilla
guarding the door. Thought for a minute he wasn’t gonna let me in. Looked at my
driver’s license real hard.”
“Sweetie manages
the place, and he takes his job very seriously. You don’t have a glass in your
hand. What’re you drinking?”
I bought a pitcher
and led the kid through the main bar into one of the side rooms where the noise
level was a decibel or two lower and the smoke cloud was a mite thinner. We
found an unoccupied table and settled in. In a nutshell, Davy was thumbing his
way to California to visit a college buddy. He’d left Texas after the car plant
where he was working cut production. “Outsourced,” he announced with a nose
wrinkled in disdain.
It was soon obvious
he was fishing for a ride, but I wasn’t ready to commit. Now if he had another
fifty pounds and a mat of fur, he’d already be in the cab of my pickup. Still,
there was something about the good-looking fucker that intrigued…an air about
him. There was a mystery here yet to be revealed.
*****
Looks like Vince has
glommed onto a twink. Wonder what he’ll do with him. We’ll find out next week.
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Don
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