Out in the Flats

Out in the Flats

Chapter One

Hugo walked into Astors and sat down. He looked around the horseshoe shaped bar. He didn’t recognize anyone else. In fact, there wasn’t anyone else sitting at the bar. The barman, Mike, talked with a family sitting at a table, who had what looked like a two year old girl with them. Mike looked over at Hugo, excused himself from the family and walked toward Hugo behind the bar.
“Hi, Mike,” Hugo said as the barman walked up.
The barman frowned. “What will you have?”
Hugo looked up at the list of beers. “The usual,” he said.
“Look, Mac, I can’t get you the usual if you’ve never been in here before. And the name is Roger, not Mike.”
Hugo stared at the barman. This had been happening a lot lately, it seemed. “I’ll have a Henry’s,” he said.
Roger walked to the cooler, passing the many taps of craft beer and brought out a bottle of Henry Weinhards, Private Reserve. Hugo had hoped for a pint, but felt that he had better not push his luck. He sucked on the beer and looked around Astor’s again. He frowned, thinking that the changes that had been made recently, hadn’t been for the best. The new owners redid the floor, taking out the maroon carpet, and replacing it with tile. The whole place had been painted, and the tables had been replaced. He missed the old pine top, acrylic lacquer tables. They had had such tight grain. Not like that crap you get today, full of knots and oozing pitch. The stools, thankfully, made the grade. They caved in when a person sat on them. They felt like a seat is supposed to feel.
Mi…Rodger, thought Hugo. That was strange. He came in every Friday, at about this time, saw Rodger behind the bar and ordered a pint of Henry’s. Why don’t you drink some real beer, Dr. Bonanza would leer at him. This isn’t some shitty place where you can’t get a decent beer! Then Dr. Bonanza would laugh and tell another story that seemed like it had no point and certainly no happy ending.
Rodger went back to the family and chatted with them, eying Hugo suspiciously. Hugo felt sure that the barman’s name had been Mike the last time he came in. I suppose that he could have a brother? Hugo thought. Or he could look like Mike the barman. I don’t know.
Just as Hugo finished his beer, Dr. Bonanza walked in. He shook rain from his coat and hung it on the oak coat rack just inside the door. He shook the rain from his cap as well, but replaced it upon his bald pate. He located Roger, flashed him the sign for two, then limped over to where Hugo sat.
He clapped Hugo on the back and cackled at Hugo. “Still drinking that shit, hey?” Dr. Bonanza said. Dr. Bonanza always ended his questions with “hey” like a Canadian with a Kentucky drawl. Dr. Bonanza grinned at Hugo, showing this missing front teeth. Dr. Bonanza held that he had lost them in a logging accident, but everyone around town, at least those who knew Dr. Bonanza best, said that he had fallen one day while getting out of the tub. “I always take baths,” he would say.
“Hello, Dr. Bonanza,” Hugo said as the old man scooted up onto a stool beside him. The barman, Roger, sat a pint of something amber in front of Dr. Bonanza and another bottle in front of Hugo.
“How’s life treating you, Roger?” Dr. Bonanza said.
“Just fine, Dr. Bonanza,” Roger said. He placed a bowl of mixed nuts in front of Dr. Bonanza, and Hugo, then walked back to the walk in cooler.
“What about you, de Naranhas?” Dr. Bonanza said eying Hugo as he sipped his beer.
“Say,” replied Hugo, ignoring the question, “isn’t that barman’s name Mike?”
Dr. Bonanza looked skeptically over at Hugo. He nibbled a peanut, then took another drink of beer. “Don’t you usually have a pint of that piss?” he asked.
Hugo fidgeted on his stool. Dr. Bonanza always smelled a little like sheep and a little like garbage. The smell made Hugo think of his childhood, his stepmother raised sheep. Hugo hated sheep. We would rather kill one than have anything to do with it. He shivered as he thought of having to clean out the sheep barn in the winter, the muck vaguely frozen to the dirt floor of the barn. Everything reeked of methane and sheep shit. They had just trimmed their hooves. He could still see the rinds and every now and then as he shoveled and scraped the muck into a wheelbarrow, he faintly smelled that one rotten hoof. The sheep jostled him as he loaded another forkful into the barrow. He knew which one it was because it limped.
Hugo mentally scooted to his right just a bit, hoping to be away from the smell.
The Family finished their drinks, and left, bidding farewell to the barman. They definitely called him Roger, Hugo thought.
Dr. Bonanza’s voice brought Hugo back to the present. “That damn ewe was tore open. And missing her right hind leg!” He said.
Hugo finished his beer before he realized what Dr. Bonanza had said.
“What did you say?” asked Hugo, carefully placing his empty bottle on the bar.
“You never pay any attention,” Dr. Bonanza scowled. “I said, another one of my sheep was killed last night, way out south. I don’t think that it was those damn coyotes, and it weren’t no cat either. I didn’t find any prints either, that ground is all rocky down there. Her leg was clean tore off,” he repeated, shaking his head.
“How do you know that it wasn’t a cougar,” Hugo asked. The barman placed another bottle before Hugo and another pint in front of Dr. Bonanza.
“I just know,” Dr. Bonanza said. He sat staring at his beer for a few minutes.
The door opened and in walked Shargugh. He is the hairiest person I have ever seen, thought Hugo. Shargugh walked to the end of the bar and watched Roger as he pulled a pint. He placed three one dollar bills on the bar and patiently waited.
“That is the third one this month,” Dr. Bonanza said. “Not on my place,” he continued, “but Heinrikson had a dead goat, and they found a mutilated deer out on the refuge.”
Hugo looked back at Shargugh, but he already walked toward the door, his glass empty except for a slice of lemon. How, Hugo thought, does he do that? Shargugh didn’t look at anyone, or anything and hadn’t said a word, as far as Hugo could tell.
He brought his gaze back to Dr. Bonanza. “Now, wait a minute,” Hugo said. “How do you know that it wasn’t a coyote, then.”
“I gotta go.” Dr. Bonanza placed some money on the bar, hopping off the stool quicker than Hugo thought that he could. He took a few quick steps toward his coat, then resumed limping.
“Thank you, Dr. Bonanza,” called Roger. Dr. Bonanza waved a hand in gratitude and shambled out the door into the drizzle. Hugo watched him go, then asked for another beer. Roger walked to the cooler once again and brought back a fresh bottle. Hugo shook his head, but didn’t pursue the matter further.

Chapter 2

Hugo shook his head as he stepped out into the rain. The streets glowed under the street lights, though it was still early, four at the latest, Hugo said to himself. He hitched up his collar against the wind and wished that he had worn something more appropriate to the weather. His thin wind breaker just didn’t keep out the cold and the rain and the wind all at the same time. He grimaced and walked on perpendicular to the wind, back though the neighborhoods toward his house.
A car splashed by.
Hugo ducked into the Third Street Market, shaking off his coat as he did so. He nodded at Sally behind the counter. She nodded back with only the barest hint of recognition. Hugo frowned, but as he wound his way though the aisles of tinned meat, bags of chips, and household cleaner to the back and the beer cooler, he tried not to think about it. He noticed that the price of Henry’s had gone up. Again. He took out a twelve pack and threaded his way back to the counter.
“Evenin’…” Hugo said. He wanted to say “evening, Sally” but was unsure of himself, or the answer that he might receive.
“That will be $10.39,” she said. Her hair, piled on her head, looked like it had not been washed for two or three days. She wore her nails long; they had been painted, and manicured, but the paint had started to chip and the nail on her right ring finger had cracked.
Hugo handed her a ten, then carefully counted out forty cents and put it in her palm. She had no calluses, he noticed. It’s funny then things that you notice, he thought. “Quite a night,” he said. He could hear the beers working on his tongue and wished that he could take back the words. She smiled at him, but said nothing, looking over his right shoulder at a black and white TV that had the volume turned down low.
A picture of a mutilated deer flashed up on the screen. Then the scene changed to a reporter in the field talking with a park ranger. Hugo thought of Dr. Bonanza and his dead sheep. He watched as the reporter interviewed the ranger. The ranger pointed off into the distance, then made a sweeping motion with his arm, finally bringing it behind his back and clasping it here with is other hand. Hugo could see the hills in the back ground, brown most of the year, turned orange by the setting sun. He wondered if the footage was recent.
“What’s going on?” he asked, feeling a little thick.
“They found another deer killed out on the refuge,” said the woman behind the counter.
It occurred to Hugo that he could reach out and turn the volume up, but the program had cut to a commercial.
He thanked the woman, desperately wanting to call her Sally, as he pushed toward the door. The wind blew the rain into his eyes. He carried his beer under his right arm and headed toward home once again.
Hugo’s house stood about three miles from Astor’s in a neighborhood that was best known for its crime and its Mexican food. The Southside addition couldn’t even be considered a suburb of McLoughlin anymore. The city had grown around the little houses, once so quaint, all in a row. Now, they all needed to be painted, and most had dogs that trampled the grass to the bare earth: some houses you could smell as you came up on them. Cars sat in yards, or on cinder blocks. Everyone heated their houses with wood. Some cold days, the smoke would hang over the Southside and choke you until you could feel your red blood cells shriveling up, gasping for oxygen.
But Hugo loved the Southside addition. He felt at home with the poor, blue collar alcoholics, the redneck, out of work cowboys, and the Mexican families. He passed his favorite house. It always smelled of good cooking: roasting chilies, steaming tamales, or some dulce baking in the oven. Tonight he caught a glimpse of the father helping to set the table while the kids ran around the living room.
He inhaled the aroma of roasting goodness, then tripped over a crack in the sidewalk and became aware of the cold wet in his jacket once again. He set the box of beer down on the wet sidewalk, opening the top, and pulling one out. He cracked it, knowing that he broke the law and drank down the sweet coldness. He remembered a home that he had never really had, then stumbled home to the house in which he lived. He turned on the light and closed the door to the rain and wind behind him.