Rhonda sees me first. She's always got a smile for me. She winks one heavily lined eye and pops open a domestic beer. She sets it on the counter, away from everyone else so I'll only have her to talk to, then puts a couple of shot glasses next to it. As I sit down, she's pouring tequila into each of the shots.
“Thanks, Rhonda. You’re a doll.”
“Oh, don't I know it,” she croaks, her voice rough and gravelly from years of cigarette smoking. With a wide, flirty smile, she licks her upper lip before downing the tequila shot in one gulp. Then she knocks the shot glass down on the bar and refills it immediately.
“Hurry up, Owen,” she quips. “I expect you to keep up with me.”
“Oh, you could always drink me under the table, Rhonda,” I laugh. It feels good to laugh. Just tell a stupid joke to somebody I barely know. Kind of nice. Sort of normal.
A couple of old-timers come in the front door and drop themselves into the barstools at the other end, immediately calling for Rhonda's attention. She rolls her eyes dramatically and heads off, leaving me alone at my corner of the bar.
This was practically my dad’s second job, sitting here. Drinking. Holding down this barstool, as he used to call it. It’s a lame joke, but I remember thinking it was pretty funny when I was ten or so.
Silas never thought that was funny at all.
But to be honest, I never understood why Silas had such a problem with our dad drinking anyway. It wouldn't have made anything better if he had stopped. We were always going to be poor. Life was always going to be kind of rough around the edges. If he stopped drinking it wasn't like he was gonna buy us all matching BMWs or anything anyway. So what was the real harm?
But Silas always thought he could smell what was off about people. He thought fixing it was his personal mission, just for the sake of fixing it. Whether or not a person's faults did any real harm. It never really occurred to him to wonder whether the act of fixing something was more damaging than just leaving it alone.
“If it ain’t the great philosopher,” Dustin says, scraping a barstool next to me and dropping his fat ass into it. He picks the tequila bottle up and pours himself a shot into Rhonda's glass. After he swallow it, he blinks one eye in comical discomfort and looks at me with the other one.
“Haven’t seen you for a few weeks,” he observes. “You been busy over there? Saving souls and whatnot?”
“I don’t save souls, Dustin. I just fix the tractors.”
“So how does it feel to be Jesus's mechanic?”
“It's a living, I guess,” I tell him.
That's kind of a funny joke. The truth is, I don’t make a living. I have a job, but not a living. I just kind of haunt the edges of my brother’s great Calling.
“When are you gonna get with the program? Find yourself a little wife and settle down?” Dustin asks me. He pours himself another shot. By the smell of him, he's about a half a bottle in tonight. So far.
“I don’t think that's for me,” I say, trying to breeze past it. I feel like that's probably true, but I don't like to think about it.
Dustin shrugs. He rubs his palm across his stubbly grey chin and points with his knuckle at the far side of the bar. There's a group of three stragglers, teenage girls who don't realize that they look like teenagers. They’re huddled in a table the dark corner of the bar, probably trying to work up the courage to attempt to order a pitcher of beer. Probably trying to scrape their quarters together.
We get a lot of runaways. There are two highways that intersect here, and if you're lucky enough to hitchhike with a trucker, this is where they are generally going to drop you off. At the truck stop they point out here in this direction, and somehow runaways just end up here at Dustin's, the unofficial hub for people who feel like trafficking in earthly delights of a certain sort.
You would never know it from the outside. Just a cinderblock building, with a single lit sign that says Dustin on it. Cars out front. Gravel parking lot. You'd never even suspect that this is where half the missing children end up. Not for very long, though.
“Looks like I got some new converts for your cult,” Dustin chuckles. “I'll let you have them for cheap.”
“I don’t want them.”
“Sure you do,” he replies. “You’re always looking for new mates, aren't you? Gotta keep the genetic diversity and whatnot?"
“Not, I
think we’re good for right now,” I observe grimly. I catch a glimpse of myself in the mirror behind the bar. I look gray.
“What's that supposed to mean?”
I shrug. “Just that it's been sixteen years. Some of the young ones are just about ready to be married off. We’re gonna have a whole new generation in the kingdom in just about a year. Assuming we can keep everything going that long.”
Dustin nods slowly. Despite his gross exterior, he is one of the few people that actually listens to me. He's known me since I was a kid, and has treated me like I was a man since I was old enough to reach the top of the bar.
“Money’s tight?”