The smoked glass of the barroom windows darkened rhythmically with the passing of pedestrians. The bartender went to his radio and turned on the livestock reports, which became the country music station, Hank Williams Jr. love marches and boasting.
“Turn that shit off,” yelled Karl, “or change it.”
“There ain’t a Norwegian station,” said the bartender.
“Jesus Christ,” said Karl, but the bartender changed it to something like background or elevator music.
“That we like,” said Karl in a firm voice. “And another round all the way around. These boys’ll take shots with their beer.” Frank and Dick tried to object but the drinks came and even seemed good, and they ordered the same thing again.
Frank was now at the end of the bar whirling with his right hand a rack of snack foods — ruffled potato chips, beef jerky, cheese popcorn. His left hand was deep in a three-gallon wide-mouth jar of pickled eggs. The pickling solution soaked into the sleeve of his jacket and he paused to feel the slippery eggs bumping into the back of his hand, never the front where he could grab them. “Hey, can’t catch these bastards,” he cried. He tried putting both hands in, but it made the juice slop out onto the bar. By the time he got an egg out, he had about ten of them in his hands and the bartender was watching him sharply. He went over to the booth, where Karl and Dick were forehead to forehead in a heated conversation about the Middle East.
“Who wants a pickled egg?” he called out. Hoiness waved him away without taking his eyes off the passionate explanations of Karl Hammersgard. This hurt Frank’s feelings and he thought of slugging Hoiness. He stood cradling the rubbery, strong-smelling eggs against his chest. “Well, then,” he said, “I don’t want them either.” He went back to the end of the bar and tossed them one after another with a splash into the jar.
The bartender was right in his face. “No egg?” he said.
“My eyes were bigger than my stomach.”
“You think it’s a good idea to handle them a lot, then toss them back in for the next customer?”
“Only a sucker would buy one of those eggs,” said Frank.
“You’re buying them all or you’re out.”
“Put them on the tab, Hal,” called Karl from the table. “Frank, get your ass back here and stop wandering around stirring things up.” Frank seemed to respond to this suggestion and trudged back to the table and sat down.
“What’s the subject? Still Middle East?”
“No,” said Hoiness, “the spotted owl.”
“Another round!” bayed Hammersgard. “Get in here and don’t act like you want to go out and face the world. Be a gentleman, even if it kills you.”
“The world is just an illusion anyway,” said Hoiness. Most of Frank’s friends were able to revert to hippies in a heartbeat. He knew plenty of middle-aged people ready and willing to discuss karma at any time.
“Not in Red Lodge it ain’t,” said Hammersgard. “They got one of the best defensive ball clubs in the state of Montana. They got a third baseman who’s like the Crest invisible shield. Nothing gets by this monkey. That’s why I’m fielding my man. When he turns his shit loose, the Red Lodge nine will make appointments with their optometrists.”
Frank leaned across the table and said, “My face is numb.”
“I’m close to hysteria,” said Hoiness. “I’ve got an appointment to sell a group plan to the cement plant in Belgrade. Before I sell them even one leetle premium, I’m gonna show them how the big boys puke.”
“Euphoric,” said Frank.
“How’s that?”
“Euphoric.”
“Oh, good, Frank,” said Dick, “that’s good.”
Four cowboys burst in the door. They were in high spirits, laughing even before they came in. The bartender checked the shortest one’s identification and the others ridiculed him and pointed out that Shorty didn’t need to shave because the cat could lick his beard off. In a moment, tall draft beers were arrayed before them.
“Kids,” said Hammersgard cheerfully.
“But loud,” said Frank.
“It’s part of their deal,” said Hoiness. “Frank, it’s normal.”
“Loud is?”
“Mm-hm.”
“How are you?” called one of the cowboys, a tall man with a rag tied around his neck.
“We’re fine,” said Karl.
“Why, that’s all right,” said the cowboy, turning back to drink with his fellows.
“What did he mean by that?” Frank said. “What’d you mean by that?” he called across to the cowboy. The cowboy put his beer down on the bar and came over to the booth. He wore a green flannel shirt and a belt buckle with some sort of animal head on it, a sheep or a goat.
“I guess I meant, how are you,” he said.
“Do we know you?”
“Frank, Frank,” said Dick.
“I’m not acquainted with Tex,” said Frank. “What difference is it to Tex how I am?”
“You need us over there?” called one of the cowboys at the bar.
“Not yet,” said the one at the table. “Just doin’ an attitude check here.”
“Let me save you some time,” said Frank. “The attitude is bad. I may cancel my insurance.” His head was full of clouds, the day, the misunderstanding, the drinks. “I may cancel your insurance,” he added in a ridiculously ominous tone.
“Let me help you to your feet,” the cowboy said, and reached across Karl to take Frank by the shirt. Karl roundhoused him onto the floor with such concussion, the three other cowboys had to more or less jump over their companion to reach Karl, Frank and Dick at the mouth of their booth. “Not again,” said Hoiness in a voice of despair; yet in pretending to rise to his feet, he was able to surprise one cowboy with a stomach butt and knock the wind out of him. Frank bent over the airless man sitting like Raggedy Andy and pressed him for his social security number. Frank was slugged solidly in the right ear, which removed his sense of humor instantly.
The bartender moved quietly to the phone, and the cowboy who had come to the table first, seeing this, slipped over to the farthest bar stool to feign quiet drinking. Karl charged the entire row of bar stools and the cowboy went down in a wilderness of chrome legs and red naugahyde. The front door parted just enough to flash in some sunlight and the prospective customer failed to enter. Gripping each other’s ears, Karl and the tall cowboy began a grim waltz down the center of the bar. Frank and his new acquaintance were silently trying to lift each other off the floor by the ears. Hoiness had succeeded in recognizing the smallest of the cowboys, who looked like a penguin in a big hat, and knowing his ID was false (“I know how old you are, I sold your father crop insurance this summer”), urged him to go out the back door before the police got there. It must have been Hoiness’s years of barroom rock and roll that sharpened his instincts, because he slipped out the back with the youngster.
When the police arrived, the ear-grip dancing was still in stately progress, and the hair lifting too, though handfuls of it were scattered here and there around the booth. The arrival of the police was like the sound system quitting at a disco. Everything just wound down and stopped. The bartender was fooling with the dial on his radio. One policeman, a handsome young man with curly black hair and a jawline like Superman’s, leaned close to the entrance and kept an eye on things while his companion, a much older man with a bright gold tooth, helped the fellows with their handcuffs. “You can make nice or not,” he said in a jolly way that made everyone feel better, “but it’s down to the hoosegow we go.”
In one way or another, they all agreed to go; they were eager for someone else to plan for them. It was only human. Frank and Karl slipped quickly into the back of one of the two squad cars, embarrassingly surrounded by pedestrians in a town where everyone knew everyone else. Karl said to Frank, “It would have been nice if you hadn’t called that feller over to our table.”