luxurious stretch that seemed erotic in nature. To Archer, Poca City was
getting more interesting by the minute.
He pushed open the red door and walked in.
The first thing he noted was the floor. Planked and nailed and slimed
reckoned. His one shoe stuck a bit, and then so did the other. Archer
compensated by picking up the force of his steps.
The next thing of note was the crowd, or the size of it anyway. He didn’t
here, it might qualify as a metropolis.
The bar nearly ran the length of one wall. And like on the bows of old
exposed bosoms of women – he supposed loose ones. And every stool had a
butt firmly planted on it. Against one wall fiddle and guitar players plucked
and strummed, while one gal was singing for all she was worth. She had red
them. Her notes seemed to hit the ceiling so hard they ricocheted off with
the force of combat shrapnel.
Archer had ever seen and then some, by a considerable margin. He
long as the coin of the realm kept up.
hereabouts, Archer considered he might be in a dream. With three years of
probation to endure, he felt like a large fish with a hook in its mouth. He
could be yanked back at any moment, and that lent force to a man’s whims.
Thus, he decided to take full advantage while he could.
white three-piece suit far nicer than Archer’s. He also had a knotted blueand-white-striped tie, with reptile leather two-tone shoes on his feet, a fully
realized smirk in his eye, and a woman less than half his age on his arm.
yellow band of silk.
Archer caught the bartender’s attention and held up two horizontally
stacked fingers and tacked on the words “Bourbon, straight up.”
The gent, old, spent, and thin as a strand of rope, nodded, retrieved the
liquor from the vast stacks, poured it neat into a short glass, and held it out
with one hand, while the other presented itself palm up for payment. It was
a practiced motion that a man like Archer could appreciate.
“How much you charging for that?” he asked.
“Fifty cents for two fingers, take it or leave it, son.”
“What’s the bourbon again, pops?”
“Only one bourbon in these parts, young feller. Rebel Yell. Wheat, not
rye. You don’t like Rebel, you best pick another type of alcohol or another
part of the state. Give me an answer, ’cause I ain’t getting any younger and
I got thirsty folks with folding money want my attention.”
“Rebel sounds fine to me.”
He passed over the two quarters and settled his elbows on the bar with
the short glass cupped in both hands. He hadn’t had a drink in a while. He’d
banged one back the day before prison, just for good luck, so he reckoned it
was a certain symmetry to have one the day he left prison. He was into
balance if nothing else these days. And moderation, too, until it proved
inconvenient, which it very often did to a man like him.
The banker eyed Archer, while his lady ran her tongue over full lips
painted as warm a red as a sky hosting a setting sun.
“You’re not from here,” said the banker. His silver hair was cut, combed,
and styled with the precision available only to a man who had the dollars
and leisure time for such tasks. His face was as flabby as the rest of him,
and also tanned and creased with lines in a way that women might or might
not find attractive. For such a man, the thickness of his wallet and not the
fitness of his torso was his main and perhaps only aphrodisiac for the ladies.
“I know I’m not,” replied Archer, sipping the Rebel and letting it go
down slow, the only way to drink bourbon, or so his granddad had informed
him. And not only informed but demonstrated on more than one occasion.
He tipped his hat back, turned around, bony elbows on the bar, his long
torso angled off it, and studied the banker, then flitted his gaze to the lady.
The banker’s smirk broadened – he was reading Archer’s mind, no doubt.
“I like this town,” said the banker. “And everything in it.”
He patted the lady’s behind and then his hand remained perched there.
She seemed not to mind or else had grown accustomed to this fondling, or both. As the man’s fingers stroked her, she took a moment to powder her
nose while looking in a mirror attached to a shiny compact. The lady next
shook out a tube of lipstick from her clutch purse and repainted her mouth
before once more taking up what looked to be a murky martini with three
fat olives lurking mostly below the surface, like gators in a bog.
“Been in Poca City long, have you?” inquired Archer.
“Long enough to see what’s good and what needs changing. And then
changing it.”
He closed his mouth and eyed Archer from under tilted tufts of eyebrow.
“You gonna keep me in suspense?” said Archer finally.
The banker laughed and swallowed some of his whiskey. His eyes
flickered just a bit as the drink went down, like wobbly lights in a storm.
Archer’s mouth eased into a smile at this weakness, but the man didn’t
seem to notice. Or care.
“Poca’s growing. This used to be just cattle land. And farming. Now
that’s changing. Business and money coming in. Not too much riffraff.”
“How do you decide about riffraff? See, I might fall into that category
and then where do we go with this happy conversation?”
The lady laughed at this, but the banker did not. She shut her mouth and
sipped her bog.
The banker intoned, “Fact is, a man can make money here if he’s willing
to work. With the war over, we have winners and losers. I aim to make
certain Poca falls on the winner’s side of the ledger. See, I was here before
the war, trying to make things work. Place was an armpit then. Now the
country is rebuilding, hell, we’re putting the bricks and glass back up all
over Europe, too. Had that damn Berlin Airlift feeding all them folks.
Commies taking over in China. That Stalin fella getting half o’ Europe
under his iron thumb and testing them damn nuclear bombs. Now, Truman
said we’d all be getting a fair deal here, but I don’t take no man’s word for
that, president or not. Folks are heading west again, making their way to
new lives, new fortunes. And in Poca, we’re sort of at the crossroads of all
that. Betwixt old America where most now still live and new America that
lies west of here. People pass through. Some stay. Most keep going because
we can’t compete with the likes of Los Angeles and Frisco and that
gambling haven in Las Vegas. But opportunities still abound here. And I’m
well positioned to take advantage of every one of them. And I am, by God.”
Archer listened to all this, nodding, his mouth twitching back and forth as
he processed the man’s many words.
He said, “Saw the fountain with the babies, and the geezers playing
checkers. Kinda odd sight.”
The man laughed. “Old and the new. Before long there won’t be time for
people to be sitting around playing checkers.”
“No water coming out the fountain though.”
“We’ve had a drought,” the man said. “For a long time now.”
“People gonna come to a place where there’s no water?”
“Not if your livelihood depends on raising cattle and crops. That’s why
we’re changing our ways. We use the water for drinking and bathing and
such and not cattle and crops, we’ll be fine. You know how damn much a
cow drinks?” He laughed.
Archer nodded and took another sip of the Rebel and let it slide down his
throat like lava over fresh dirt. “I guess I can see that,” he replied.
“Look, where you coming in from?”
“A seven-hour slow, dusty bus ride from the east.”
The banker squinted as he calculated. “That’s a fair stretch of road,
mister.”
“I figure you for a banker type, but I’d like to be sure.”
“Why, you looking to rob me?”
They all three had a laugh at that, but Archer’s died out before the other
two had finished guffawing.
Archer glanced at the woman, who was doing the tongue-on-lip thing
again. She was in her late twenties with silky, dark hair in a Veronica Lake
peekaboo. The sheet of hair fell off the side of her head like a waterfall at
night, which contrasted sharply with her pale complexion. Archer could
smell her scent across the span of the banker’s cologne. It was spicy and
warm and tapped something in him that prison had never inspired. She had
on a tight, late-day, thunder-blue dress with a wide, deep neckline that
revealed things she evidently wanted to reveal, and a black dog leash belt
encircling her small waist. She had on white wrist-length gloves, and a
matching narrow-brimmed hat with a small bow. Her heels were high
enough to muscle her calves. She wore a small necklace with a rock of
diamond in the center. She kept fingering it like she wanted to make sure it
was still there.
