Bar Fight

Auto-fiction

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**The following is chapter 9 of another autobiographical novel of mine called Running Solo II. There is a Running Solo I, but I decided to pull random chapters from both for now to lure readers in (hopefully). Later, at some point, I’ll probably publish the books in toto. The only context necessary here is this: It’s 2009. The narrator, James Wagner, is on a cross-country road trip with his friend Leanne from San Francisco to the east coast. That’s all you need to know.

Photo by Nate Foong on Unsplash

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Chapter 9

It was a little before eight PM the next night when we dipped down into Cheyenne, Wyoming, in the southeastern-most part of the state. I was driving this time. I’d been behind the wheel all day. My legs were tired; my back ached. We’d woken up early, parked on the shoulder just outside of Carlin, Nevada, as the sun was rising in the east, around six-AM. We’d stretched, yawned, peed, made instant coffee using my Jet-Boil stove, slammed water, and then, around 7:30 in the morning, we’d headed out, no one around at all, the road deserted, the sun and mountains in the distance superb and angelic. I’d pulled a U-turn, tires spitting dirt from the shoulder, heading back to Interstate-80, the junkie vein zigzagging across the United States.  

            We’d passed through the rest of Nevada, heading east, and then had gone through the narrow top of Utah—which had been fascinating and gorgeous, with all those red gullies and valleys and arches and natural rock formations and barrenness—and then through nearly all of Wyoming, passing little towns which made me think of the Midwest exclusively: Little America; Green River; Purple Sage; Rock Springs. It made me think of Bruce Springsteen. God Bless America. Leanne and I’d laughed, not at Wyoming so much as at America. We were American, so to a degree we were laughing at ourselves.

            Around Elk Mountain, passing the stunning, massive, Medicine-Bow-Routt National Forest, we’d slowly dipped southeast towards Cheyenne. After Laramie it wasn’t much farther. We were very close to the Nebraska border. We were almost right smack dab in the middle of America; literally. But not quite; we were slightly west still of exact center. But still: I enjoyed this reality. Something about not being on the West Coast in that moment felt comforting.

            I pulled off I-80 and drove through town in Cheyenne. It was just past dusk. I saw the outlines of medium-sized buildings. In the distance you could see long, nearly flat mountains, and then big, sharp green peaks. Leanne was asleep in the passenger seat, her head resting on her right shoulder, bobbing. A speck of drool dotted her chin. The seatbelt prevented her from falling forward. I drove past a dark, closed store called THE WRANGLER: “The best of Cheyenne Ranchwear Since 1949.” And then a place called THE CHEYENNE DEPOT PLAZA, the gate closed and locked, with a giant statue out front of a humungous cowboy boot, spurs and all. The statue must have been twenty feet high, ten feet around. I laughed quietly.

            Few cars were on the road. The ones that passed were huge dented trucks, usually Fords that’d been lifted so they were absurdly high off the ground. This reminded me of growing up in Ojai and Ventura. Especially in Ojai you saw a similar thing. We called them SoCal-Bros. They always had giant lifted trucks with flowmasters so that their exhaust pipes were luridly loud. Big truck, small dick: That’s what me and my punk friends always said.

            I pulled slowly into a dirt lot in front of a bar: “Sanford’s Grub & Pub.” The “Pub,” however, was missing the end “b,” and so it just glowed in a pink neon “Pu.” There were three other cars in the lot, all giant battered trucks multiple feet higher than Leanne’s green Nissan. The bumpers were all spattered with dried mud. I cut the engine and sat there a moment. I listened to the engine clicking and cooling. Leanne was still asleep.

            I opened the door and stood, stretching, yawning, shaking my body. It was cool out. The stars were already beginning to show. What a night. What an adventure, I thought. I’d been driving for over ten hours. We’d stopped half a dozen times, briefly, like the first day, but I was exhausted. Drained. And exhilarated.

            “Hey,” I heard Leanne say, half in a yawn. “Where are we?” I couldn’t see her. She was still sitting in the car.

            I leaned my head in, grinning. “Hey Sleepy-Head. We’re in Cheyenne, Wyoming. You’ve been asleep for hours. I didn’t want to wake you.”

            She looked groggy. She rubbed her eyes, smirking. She wiped the spittle off her chin with the back of her hand. She sighed, shaking her head fiercely. “Jesus. I guess I needed the rest.”

            A minute later she opened her door and stood, did the same motions I had. It felt great to stand up, to not be driving. My back was throbbing. My legs felt half numb. I was grateful the old car hadn’t broken down. It seemed to be fine as far as the engine overheating, oil, etc. It was a little green workhorse.

            From across the car Leanne said, “So what’s the plan?”

            I breathed in slow. Exhaled. “Well. I think we should go into this bar. Get a drink or two. Chill for a bit. And then ask a local about where we might stay for cheap.”

            She considered this, nodding. “Sounds like a plan.”

            I looked her over, her thin body, her attractive face, the angular cheeks, her firm, small breasts pushing against her blue blouse, and I felt that lust rise in me again. Platonic, yes, but I was horny. I thought of screwing Emily. Rough. In her bed, in the Tenderloin. But then I saw her blue-and-purple black eye and felt disgusted. Was she still seeing her ex from Seattle?

            A few minutes later—after rummaging through the trunk and grabbing our ancient flip cell-phones (neither of us had smart phones yet) and slugging water from a gallon-jug—we entered the bar.

            It was a small place with little round tables—all empty—and a long straight bar. A few old men sat at the bar, holding bottles of beer, wearing cowboy hats and spurred cowboy boots (like that statue) and tight blue jeans. Merle Haggard was playing on the juke box, “Proud to be an Okie from Muskogee.” Only about half a dozen people were in there. No women. It smelled like sweat, cigarettes and stale beer, with the slightest whiff of body odor and urine.

There were old black and white photographs on the wood-paneled walls and some animal heads, including what seemed to be a wild boar head. This made me think of childhood, the cul-de-sac, the small yellow house on Carol Drive in Ventura, the Maplethorpe’s, Liam’s father who hunted and had guns and who had all the hollowed-out wild boar heads he chased us around with in the late eighties; if he caught you he’d pull your pants down and spank your ass until it was bright red. I’d always sprint home crying.

Everyone’s eyes seemed to be on us. It was clear we weren’t from around town. Leanne was the only woman, and besides that, she was an attractive woman. One man shouldered his buddy, glancing over at us.

We sat down at the bar, as far away as we could get from the men. The bartender, who looked exactly like the men, wearing a large beige cowboy hat, wandered over and said, “Well. What’ll it be?”

We ordered Michelob bottles. He brought them. They were cheap. I paid. I had plenty of money saved up from my savings from my shitty dead-end retail job in San Francisco. We clinked our bottles and drank deep. Michelob was no great beer but it didn’t matter: It tasted like the nectar of the gods. We sat there a moment and didn’t speak. I ogled our reflections in the mirror behind the bar and it reminded me of being with Jasmine at The Missouri Lounge that night, being rejected by that woman. It still burned. Rejection always did.

Then, just as I was about to order another beer, I felt a presence behind us, and a man said, “Excuse me, Ms., but would you like to dance?”