"And that's the kind your mama warned you about," Dukes drawled as she strolled by. He let his head swivel with the California blonde while she ordered her drink at the low-lit bar. Then he started cussing. Jimmy'd tossed back the last of his whiskey and just sidled on over. And while he thought he oughta be more optimistic, the reality of the fact was that that right there, boys and girls, was all she wrote for ol' Fred Dukes.
The bar was a Colorado bar. A quiet one. There was a man on the stage with a cigar kind of voice and a woman leaning over the piano with more cleavage than any one lady really needed to let hang out. She couldn't sing either, but she thought she could, and made a point of proving it.
They were here to wait. What the hell for, Dukes didn't know or care. It wasn't his business to think. It was, however, his business to lay the smack down on anything in his way. Victor sat his hulk over a tumbler of Old Crow like a damn troll. Jimmy flirted with the California Blonde. John's eyes were half closed, setting on the back legs of his chair as close to the door as he could manage.
That was one that he wasn't sure where he stood on. John came in handy, shadowy as his skin and level in a fight. It was getting to the point that he almost didn't mind being seen in public with him. That gave the Georgia Boy pause, but then again, he didn't get paid to think. He did, however, need something to drink.
He tried to move without drawing attention to himself. That's tricky business when you're 6'8" and white as the driven snow. He'd been referred to as the Abominable Snowman on more than one occasion, and this time…well he narrowly avoided upsetting the waitress and her tray of chili-fries bound for Mr. Creed. Victor snarled, she squeaked, and Dukes found himself shrugging.
"My bad, ma'am."
The blonde on Jimmy's arm laughed like she was watching a tableau.
Dukes sighed and ordered a full bottle of Jim Beam. Then he took it back to his seat and started slugging. This evening didn't have to be unpleasant. He could spend it buzzin'.
And then the shifts changed. The wizened guy behind the bar traded out with a little brunette, the piano player and The Cleavage gave way to a fairly decent band, and people started trickling in. Another quarter of an hour and the band was growing on Dukes. They played Skynyrd. He liked Skynyrd. They played Marshall Tucker Band and he liked them too. They even played some Allman Brothers, which Dukes could dig on, but only in small doses.
He leaned over his bottle and focused, kinda, on the band. It was getting to be more than the five guys on stage, but they were at a break in the set. The front man was off the stage yacking with the bartender, like he was trying to convince her of something, or that she needed to do something. She was blushing and laughing and shaking her head and then she huffed and shrugged and the front man grinned.
"But you owe me!" she yelled after the front man, and the front man dropped a wink.
Dukes cocked his head. Five minutes later they started the next set. The front man took the mic, (he looked like he was totally covered in fringed buckskin leather) dropped a charming grin and started to speak.
"You all, we're in for a lil somethin' special tonight. Y'all see that little brunette over yonder behind the bar? Those of you that aren't regulars don't know it, but our girl's got some pipes, and she's agreed the sing a number for us, but I'm under oath to not ask for another week. So I'm gonna rob you of your barkeep for just a couple minutes but…"
The little barkeep hopped up on the stage and smirked, plucking the microphone from the front man's sweaty paw.
"Y'all'll have to forgive David. He does go on so."
Dukes started upright and smiled like a fool. He hadn't heard a woman speaking proper Southern English in close to a decade, and it still sounded as good as he remembered. She turned toward the folks in the bar like she was facing a crowd of thirty thousand and flipped the switch on a megawatt smile.
Dukes did two things at this point. First, he dropped his whiskey bottle. Amazingly enough, it didn't tip over when it hit the floor, but Fred ignored the slip. He was too busy with the second thing that happened. He fell. Hard. In luv. With the little barkeep. He could have sworn that the lights dimmed when she smiled. They had to have.
And then, of all the things she had to pick to sing, it was 'Blue.' It wasn't Patsy Cline, but that didn't make any difference. She wasn't trying to be. SHE was singing the song, not Patsy, god-rest-her-soul, and she sang it like she owned it.
"Three o'clock in the morning, here am I! Sittin' here so lonely, just so lonesome I could cry….."
When she was through, Dukes ran a hand across his face and discovered, to his everlasting dismay, that he was crying along with every other drunk in the bar. John cocked a brow at him and chuckled. Victor rolled his eyes. And then Jimmy swept through the door with his usual religious fervor and motioned everybody outside.
0oooooooo00000000ooooo0000
Dukes wished a thousand thousand times that he had managed to get her name. He wished, too, that he could go through any 3AM he was conscious without her crossing his mind. That every time he put on a pair of blue jeans, heard the name David, or dropped a bottle of Jim Beam, that bashful look he'd seen that evening wouldn't go traipsing across the bottoms of his eyelids.
And God HELP him if he actually sat down and listened to Patsy Cline.
John helped him burn all his Patsy records three months later after he went on week-long bender.
He never went back to that part of Colorado.
He thought, for all of a minute, about taking leave and making that trip. But he didn't get paid to think, and in the end, Fred Dukes knew better than to hope for more than what he had. Anything else just wouldn't fly.
But he did make provisions, in his will, that whoever remembered him, and whoever scattered his ashes, make sure they played 'Blue.'