The-Hummingbird-s-Cage(11)

One winter night, a brushfire ignited behind the saloon and ripped through an adjacent field where a half dozen hard-cores were camped out with their wine bottles and jugs of ocean. Most managed to stagger off, but one woman couldn’t get out in time. She burned alive. They never determined the exact cause of the blaze. It might have been a campfire that the wind had whipped out of control. Or it might have been a lit cigarette deliberately tossed into a patch of dry grass by someone who wasn’t about to have his Harley stripped for parts.

Life is cheap in such places, but that brushfire convinced the city council to demand a crackdown on liquor establishments that cater to rough trade. The Javelina closed down. It reopened again weeks later under new management, the Harley decor still in place, because it was too costly to change out. Some bikers still drop in when they pass through town on the interstates. But now its main clientele is mostly working class—not least of all local police officers and deputies looking to kick back or decompress.

I had never been inside the Javelina before, but I’d often seen its big billboard from the east-west highway—the giant wild boar, tusked and razor-backed, charging at some unknown target in the distance.

You could hear classic country music from the parking lot and smell the Marlboro smoke and beer. I could swear I caught a whiff of gunpowder, too. Inside, the music thumped and a small disco ball revolved above couples slow dancing or boot-scooting on a dance floor thick with sawdust and stained with tobacco juice. But the color scheme was still orange and black, and a vintage Harley Davidson, stripped of its engine, hung from the ceiling above the bar.

I felt conspicuous from the start in a dress that was two sizes too big and shapeless from neck to knees. Jim’s choice. The other wives seemed to glisten in their tight, pretty, shiny fabrics. In their high-heeled sandals and sling-backs. Hair curled and tucked just so, or flat-ironed till it streamed like water. Their lips were painted red, mauve and pink, and more often than not parted wide in laughter. They leaned into their men, slapping their shoulders playfully, pulling them to the dance floor. I watched them and my heart began to race, my palms to sweat. I struggled to catch my breath.

“You all right, honey?”

I looked up at a waitress with short champagne hair and gray roots, ruby lips and a look of concern in her eyes.

“Could I have some water, please?” I asked.

“You sure can,” she said. “And what can I get for the rest of you?”

“Hey, Edie, when you gonna throw out that crap?” said an officer named Munoz, gesturing at the Harley suspended from the ceiling.

“Well, hell, I like that crap,” Edie said. “Reminds me of the good ol’ days when we had a classier clientele.”

The officers hooted.

“You miss those biker freaks?” snorted an officer named Sandoval.

“I miss their tips.” Edie rubbed her thumb and forefingers together. “You SOBs are tight as a frog’s ass.”

The others broke into more gales of laughter, but not Jim. He didn’t like profanity in women. I thought he was choosing to ignore Edie, but after she left with the drink orders, he grinned and said:

“Well, there goes her tip.”

The others thought he was joking.

The banter went on and on. I watched them as if I were outside looking in. As if I were pressing my face against a cold windowpane, marveling that people inside the bright room could be so easy with one another, so quick to laugh. I marveled the way I would if I were to parachute into some tribal village in the Amazon or Africa. It had all become something foreign to me. An alien culture. I had understood it once—once, I’d even enjoyed it—but not anymore.

I had lost all facility with people. All interest. All connection.

Worse, I began to look around the table, suspicious, searching their faces for telltale signs. For cracks in those happy, deceitful masks they presented to the world. Wondering what awful things they, too, were hiding.

The waitress returned to hand out the drinks. Sandoval’s wife—CeCe, I think—called out: “Edie, when you gonna get a mechanical bull in here?”

Her husband grimaced. “Now, what in the hell would you want with a thing like that?”

“You never know—I might like to do a little bull ridin’.”

He swept his arm around her and grinned. “Well, sweetheart, it’s your lucky night.”

In the midst of the guffaws, two big hands came down on Jim’s shoulders from behind and a voice boomed, “You son of a bitch!”