Paladin, Paladin, Where Do You Roam?

The rickety wooden barstool was killing my butt. I shifted weight to the other cheek that still had blood flow. Half my ass was numb. Or maybe it was the second martini. I did a quick inventory and all parts reported in except the numb butt cheek. Okay, it was the wooden stool not the vodka. I could handle another drink. I looked around the dingy bar. I knew I was southwest of the Hudson and east of…somewhere. A sign outside identified it as “Lonny’s Lodge,” home to fine ales and beers imported, no doubt, all the way from the other side of town.

I pushed my glass forward on the sticky counter and asked for another vodka martini. I had already learned from the bartender, two drinks earlier, that Grey Goose was for faggots and Absolut was for queers. We had reached a compromise on my trying the local brew, which actually wasn’t too bad even if it was leading me to early blindness. He picked up my glass, rinsed it then set it up again.

Apparently I was privileged to be using the only long-stemmed martini glass in the place, its relatives having been smashed in a bar fight some months earlier.  While waiting I sipped some local water from a local glass and hoped I wouldn’t catch anything local from the local fingerprints all over it. Being “local” was a point of pride around here, whether it was vodka, chicken parts or dirty glasses.

I tried to focus on the tv set at the end of the bar to avoid looking at the other patrons. There were only four of them but I learned earlier in the evening that looking at others was considered offensive.

  “You come here to drink or you come here to stare at me?” one elderly gentleman asked.

I assured him I was only here to drink and stared at the counter in front of me, wondering when it had last been introduced to a clean rag.

Either the bar had a back door or the next man I met was hiding in the men’s room all night and decided to finally come out. He walked straight toward me, stopped, tilted his head, looked me up and down and, without breaking his stare, asked the bartender for a beer.

    “None of that local shit,” he said. “Gimme a Heinie, and put it on this guy’s tab.” He waited for a reaction from me and, getting none, commandeered the stool to my left. I didn’t look at him and I still didn’t react. I figured sooner or later his butt would hurt too and he’d leave.
         
    “Hey bub, you’re a Yank ain’tcha?” he asked. His tone was challenging, but compared to what you might hear at a bar, say, in Passaic, NJ, he sounded almost friendly. I gave it a long Hollywood pause then finally turned and looked back at him. My vodka-soaked brain took a moment to consider that the word “challenge,” in all its tenses and forms, seems to play a major role in dingy bars everywhere.

I tucked away that deep thought for the future and looked the man up and down. I saw that he had white hair with a long pony tail and a grey beard badly in need of a trim. He was medium height and build and wore the prescribed jeans and denim shirt for this part of the country. I thought he looked like the actor Nick Nolte after a bender. No, that wasn’t it. He did look like some actor but it was eluding me.

    “What’s it to ya?” I replied finally. I tried to sound tough, New Jersey-like, but being dressed in yuppy khaki’s and a pink LaCoste didn’t exactly add to the image of toughness. In fact, it pretty much said, “hey, beat me up if you want.” The man straightened his back and in an apparent bid to sound like Clint Eastwood, said in a soft, raspy voice, “Well, if you’re a Yankee you’re a faggot.” That did it. He got to me. No more Hollywood cool. I got very reactive.

    “Jeezus, what’s with all the faggot stuff around here? Haven’t you people heard the news? The nineteenth century is over.”

The man sat bolt upright and leaned forward.

    “There might be some delay in getting current news,” he said, pausing for effect, “they keep shooting the Yankee cable installers.”

He laughed so loudly he could be heard throughout the entire bar. Or he would have been heard if anyone other than the bartender was still there. The others had wandered out when this guy wandered in.

    “Name’s Phil Sheridan,” he said. “No relation to the fucking Yankee general.” He extended a hand.

    “Has that thing been washed lately?” I asked, looking down and extending my own hand. I figured if I didn’t at least shake hands my next view of his knuckles might be up close.

    “If you knew where this hand had been you’d kiss it,” he quipped.

    “Call me Ishmael,” I replied as I downed the rest of my third martini and stuck out a hand. I thought that was funny but he didn’t. The local brew was catching up to me fast. He smelled my glass then stared into my eyes.

    “Well Ishmael, did they tell you that you had to drink their local crap?” he asked.

I saw two heads. I wasn’t sure which one to reply to. I took a guess. I was wrong. Phil, no relation to the fucking Yankee general, Sheridan, turned to the bartender.

    “Christ almight Lonny. I told you not to stiff this guy. He’s my meal ticket.” He turned back to me. “Shit, he’s starting to burble.”

I pulled it together enough to ask Phil about the snakes and the kid. He said they would still be there, not to worry about them. I did get worried. That was the reason I was here. Well, one of the reasons. Phil supposedly had lots of interesting stories, including one about a nuclear waste plant. I was going to write about them. I was going to be the next Mark Twain. Or Clark Kent. Or Woodward and Bernstein, or Currier and Ives. It was getting really dark inside the bar.

    “Come on, Uncle Phil will take you back to your hotel,” I heard as I started singing Closing Time by the Semisomethings.  It seemed appropriate. It was about a bar closing. I couldn’t remember any Allman Brothers tunes. Suddenly I was told to shut up, slung over a shoulder and carted out.

Apparently the bartender laughed and threw his last martini glass – mine – in the trash saying faggot drinks were off the menu from now on. Phil must have thrown him some cash because I don’t recall paying. In fact I’m not sure they even took American Express cards. My very last thought of the evening was how lucky I was that my numb butt cheek wasn’t numb anymore, but other parts of my body seemed to be fading away fast.

Phil was kind enough to leave me a phone number to reach him at in the morning.