Her name was Laura, and it had been a while since she had cared about anything, including herself. She was 42, and spilling off the end stool of the bar at the Last Stop. Harvey had inherited her, you might say, from the previous owner when he bought the bar almost ten years ago. Once she had been a healthy happy young girl, as attractive as any they say. Now, she spent her days deteriorating behind a desk in the Town Office Building and her nights deteriorating in front of the bar at the Last Stop. She knew everyone in town even as a child, and was a popular girl. Maybe too popular as it turned out. She was too "modern" in a town that subconsciously retained its Puritan New England heritage, and, when the haze of her youth dissipated, no boy from that town had chosen her to settle down with. Long ago, everyone had accepted the tacit reality of her alcoholic spinstership, and the scope of her life had now narrowed to an endless corridor between maintenance and oblivion, hung with images from songs she had heard the jukebox pound out more times than she would ever remember.

It was one of those slow hot Saturday nights in deep summer. I don't know why people call these "dog days". I don't know many dogs that like hot weather. Harvey W. Keene and I pulled into the Last Stop just as Fiddlin' Red Jenkins was finishing up his first set to a crowd of about thirty people sprinkled here and there around the room. Red is an old friend of Harvey's from their days in the Navy. They had spent a lot of time picking together back then, and had kept close ever since. Red had gone into music after the service, married a backup singer named Polly, and the two have been traveling and playing ever since. Polly plays fine guitar, and the two sing duets as well as anyone you will hear. Just finishing up "Faded Love" as we walked in, Red wound up the set with "Highway Feelin'", just to let Harvey know he had seen him.

We were at the bar checking with Julie the bartender when Red came up. Red mostly smells like Polly, when you come down to it, with a hint of bow rosin tossed in. He isn't a big man, able to reach down to scratch me without hardly bending at all, which is what he was doing when Harvey turned around.

"Are you getting shorter, Red?" he asked over the jukebox.

"Not where it counts, asshole!" A big handshake turned into a hug. "You're lookin' pretty good for an old fart living on borrowed time."

"Well, I'm feelin' pretty good, Red. I always feel better for seeing your wife." This last was directed to Polly who had stopped by one table to sell a CD. She was a particularly beautiful woman with a sharp tongue, a heart of gold, and a whole variety of scents that she alternated between.

"Don't try and charm me, you old reprobate. You call this a house? I got more cousins than this." She pecked Harvey on the cheek.

"Maybe if you learned something that people wanted to hear..."

"Never mind that, Harvey Keene. Why haven't you married that woman of yours yet? You think you're likely to find any better?"

"How do you stand her?" he asked Red.

Red started to answer, but his attention was caught by the sight of one of the biggest human beings he had ever seen sidling through the door of the Last Stop. Harvey turned around to see what was up, and the four of us stared. He was just over six feet eight, having had to bend slightly as he came through the door, and his weight was inestimable. He wasn't fat, at least you wouldn't call him that to his face, just huge. Jim Croce's line "build like a 'frigerator with a head" came to mind. He wore an enormous pair of bib overalls over a black tee short, and boots each the size of a guitar body. His hair and beard were close cropped reddish brown, the skin on his face and arms darkened by the sun.

After looking slowly around the room with an expression that Harvey hoped was a smile, he ambled over our way. Red, like many small men, is uncomfortable around very big men. I could smell his fear as the big guy came our way. With the possible exception of Laura, every eye in the Last Stop was turned his way. I could feel the floorboards move as he passed by, nodding to Polly. He smelled of gasoline and cows. Halfway down the bar, he stopped, pulled two bar stools together, and sat down on both of them. Julie walked over with her "Howdy" smile on. Nodding, she turned and started to fill a pitcher with draft beer, stopping only for a just perceptible twitch of her right eyebrow in our direction. When she set the pitcher and a glass on the bar, and turned to make change for the bill he had set there, the big guy pushed the glass away with the back of his left hand, slid the fingers of his right hand through the pitcher's handle and, picking it up like a beer stein, drained it in one breath. Julie had only turned back in time to see the last few swallows go down. Even she was impressed and hesitated a moment before laying the change on the bar so that it and the now empty pitcher landed at the same time.

"Its a tie," he said, the jukebox being between songs so we could hear. His voice was higher than you would expect, with a flat Midwestern accent. "We'll have to go again."

"Comin' right up." Julie had regained her composure. The change was on the bar long before the second pitcher was gone. Polly started in again on Harvey, but he wasn't really listening. As he watched the biggest person he had ever seen in his bar finish a third pitcher of beer, the first cold fingers of concern began to play up and down the back of his neck. There was no bouncer at the Last Stop. One had come with the business, along with Laura, when he had first bought the bar. He was a nice enough fellow named Stan, but most of the trouble back then came from drunk off-duty state policemen, which a bouncer could do little about. The bar had been robbed about six months after Harvey bought it and the first thing the robbers had done was shoot Stan. Stan was fine, but the effectiveness of that sort of security had been brought seriously into question. Since then, there had been no bouncer. Fights came and went, but not often now that the policemen were gone and the place had become known for good entertainment. There had only been one robbery since, and Julie, as instructed, had just given them the money and wished them well. She did keep a Winchester 12 gauge pump holstered in easy reach behind the bar for personal protection, but genuinely had no desire to use it. Now, as the big guy at the bar lifted the fourth pitcher of beer to his lips, Harvey wondered how this evening was going to turn out.

"Well, there's sure no point in my trying to talk sense into this old fool if he isn't even going to listen to me!" Polly finally snapped. "Come on, Red. Let's go outside for some air before the next set. Some people got no sense at all."

Harvey took a look around the room. Things looked OK, everybody had relaxed, about ten or twelve tables full of people - Bonnie the waitress wouldn't have too bad a night. The Last Stop Regulars were grouped around one of the pool tables in the alcove. He sighed, and walked over to the big guy as he finished pitcher number four.

"Howdy there. I'm Harvey, and this is my place," he said, holding out his hand.

The big fellow turned at looked down.

"Howdy, little fella." he said and then, turning to Julie, "One more!"

"I never seen a man drink beer like that in my life."

"Well then, you never seen a man like Roland Thunder, The Wrastlin' Trucker, before I reckon!" boomed Roland, slapping the bar for emphasis. "Where's that beer, darlin'?"

Julie glanced at Harvey, who shrugged. She headed off to get another pitcher.

"Don't you be thinking of cuttin' me off, little fella." warned The Wrastlin' Trucker as he heaved his bulk up off of the bar stools. "I'm just gettin' started here."

He rumbled over and squeezed down the hallway and through the door to the Mens' Room. Almost immediately, one of the Regulars rushed out, pulling up his fly, and ran over to the alcove to confer with the others. Julie came up with pitcher number five.

"What do you think?" she asked.

"I have no idea," Harvey replied. "What's a Wrastlin' Trucker?"

"You know. World Wrestling Federation, Hulk Hogan. He's one of them."

"You're into wrestling?"

"Not me. The Regulars. They watch all the time."

"Hum."

"You think he'll be trouble?"

"Is John T. Catholic?" He paused for a while. "Let's hope not. He's been in the head a while, maybe he's passed out."

"Naw. He just drank two gallons of beer. I don't care how big he is, its gonna take a while to get that out." Julie turned away and, as if to punctuate her statement, The Wrastlin' Trucker emerged from the bathroom. The Last Stop Regulars were all peeking around the edge of the alcove and pounding each other on the backs with pride at seeing one of their sports idols in the flesh. Red and Polly had gotten back up on the stage and were tuning up as he rumbled back to the bar.

"Now you're talkin'!" he yelled toward the stage. "I'm ready to stomp!"

Red and Polly started off with "Pig in a Pen". Roland Thunder drained his fifth pitcher of beer in a gulp and sprang to the dance floor, grabbing the first partner he passed from a table full of girls and began dancing in an astonishingly nimble manner for a man of his unbelievable size. The poor girl's feet hardly touched the ground, and her eyes rolled up into her head in terror. Nobody could react. When the song ended, Roland returned the girl to her table where she managed to squirm loose as he announced his intention to dance with all four of them and snatched another victim off to the dance floor. Red began to talk his way into the "Tennessee Waltz", which was normally next on his program, when Polly jabbed him with her elbow and whispered in his ear. She had seen the look on the girls' faces, and understood their plight as only another woman can. They played fast songs for the rest of the set.

As soon as the song started, the three girls fled to the Ladies' Room, abandoning their friend to her fate. Laura joined them, making one of her stately, if increasingly less steady, excursions from her spot at the end of the bar and back again. By this point, the Regulars had appointed one of their group to approach The Wrastlin' Trucker for autographs, and as the song ended, they unintentionally rescued the fourth damsel and she escaped through the front door. Everyone headed back to the bar for some beer - one pitcher for him and one for the Regulars. It was beginning to look like they may have saved the day when the big fellow stood up.

"Stand back, boys," he yelled. "I came here to dance!"

And so he did, selecting this time a partner from a table occupied by two couples. To his credit, the girl's date did start to stand up and protest, but the huge wrestler just put his massive hand on the guy's shoulder and sat him back down, assuring him that he would bring his date back. I don't suppose that poor guy saw much more of that girl, but I don't know many men who would have tried anything else. The other girl at the table fled to the Ladies' Room. When the dance was over, The Wrastlin' Trucker's latest partner got loose and, with a look of fury at her former boyfriend, stormed directly out the door.

Undaunted, Mister Thunder had moved on to the next table, selected another partner and continued with his agenda. Most people in the bar were aware of what was happening by this point. It was hard not to be. The Wrastlin' Trucker was by far the largest thing in the place, and was the center of most of the activity. One by one, as the situation became clear to them, the ladies in the place began to decide to leave before they had the opportunity of dancing with a professional wrestler. It was something to watch. Harvey had seen a lot of bad bands clear barrooms in his day, but this was impressive. By the end of the set, Red and Polly were playing to and empty house, not counting the Regulars, which, of course, you never did.

He may have been feeling that sixth pitcher of beer. He didn't seem to notice that the place was close to empty now, and when the music stopped he started a bit unsteadily toward the bar before veering off to the Mens' Room. Red and Polly, instrument cases in hand came up to Harvey who was standing at the corner of the bar.

"We are getting the Hell out of here," he announced.

"Oh come on, Red...."

"No way, man! You are gonna have yourself some trouble here, and me and the little woman won't be here when it happens."

"Who are you calling little?"

"Goddamn it, Harvey!" yelled Red. "This guy could tear this place up."

"Suit yourself."

"You're not gonna talk me into playing another set. No way."

"I haven't said anything, Red. Have I, Polly?"

"Don't ask me. I'm just the little woman."

"So, now it's both of you. I can't believe it. You actually want to play more? Here? Now?" Red hissed out the last words in a whisper as The Wrastlin' Trucker emerged from the john. "I definitely need some air, then."

"For Christ sake, Red. You might as well light up in here. There's nobody left. Hell, get the big guy stoned. It might help."

"I don't know what you mean," replied Red, as he led Polly toward the door. He liked to maintain the illusion that he didn't get high, even with Harvey, which was, of course, ludicrous. Roland Thunder loomed over to Harvey as they went out the door.

"Are they done playing?" he asked.

"No," answered Harvey. "No. They were, but I've asked them to stay and play a little longer."

"All right, Harry! You're a good little guy. You got a nice place here." He looked around the room as if to confirm his assessment. "Empty. But nice all the same."

"Thanks." There was no point in correcting him.

"And you got a damn find barkeeper!" Mister Thunder turned and pounded on the bar. "Barkeep! Another beer!"

Julie glanced at Harvey, but when he did nothing, she filled another pitcher and set it on the bar, making change from the pile of cash there. The seventh pitcher didn't seem to be going quite as quickly as the previous ones. He seemed almost to be sipping it. Harvey was idly wondering about the size of kegs and how much might have been used when the evening began.

"Yep," the big man said after a few sips. "This is a nice place you got here, Harry. Could do worse than this, that's for sure. Maybe I'll get me a bar someday. Settle down. Stop rollin'. Stop wrastlin'. You want to know what my life is like, Harry? Its pretty fuckin' nuts. I mean, I ain't complainin'. I see a lot of places and the money is good. But sometimes I wonder....."

As a matter of fact, Harvey didn't give a damn what his life was like, but wasn't about to say it. So he sat and listened as Roland Thunder, The Wrastlin' Trucker, described his life. The narrative was incoherent, but enthusiastic. With no background in the subject of professional wrestling, a lot of what he heard had no meaning, but Harvey got impressions of a world which mixed camaraderie with raw aggression in a more overtly theatrical manner than the National Football League. This was, of course, combined with added peculiarities of the life of a cross-country truck driver - a career that Roland insisted upon maintaining due to some bizarre and apparently selective sense of authenticity he seemed to have. Halfway through the eighth pitcher of beer, the conversation turned to the loneliness of the road, and became serious. Red and Polly returned, obviously pretty blasted, found the bandstand, and began to get ready to play.

"Music! Yes!" yelled The Wrastlin' Trucker as Red and Polly began with "The Race Is On". He finished pitcher number eight and stood up looking around for a partner.

Both he and Harvey saw her at the same time. By eleven fifteen, Laura generally reached the point in her evening when one of two things would happen. Most nights, she would fall over, sometimes passing out, and one of the Regulars would be dispatched to see that she got home in one piece. None of them ever took advantage of her, there being a code of honor among them that kind of resembled gallantry. She was, in any case, the Queen of their Silver Dollar. Occasionally, and on these evenings everyone felt just a little sad, she would take some truck driver home. Nobody begrudged her the intimacy, deep inside they just wished her life were different. With a leer at Harvey, the big man stood up and swept Laura up from her stool and onto the dance floor. Laura had never been so light on her feet before. Only semi-conscious, she fortunately had to exert no effort as he carried her around and around. The song ended and Red began "The Orange Blossom Special".

"What the Hell is this?!" Roland turned and stepped to the edge of the stage. Even standing on an eighteen-inch riser, Red was looking up at him. "Don't you two play any slow songs? Play a slow song, dammit!"

Red was staring straight ahead, his knees shaking visibly. Polly started into "The Tennessee Waltz", but all Red could produce on his fiddle was a sound like shivering. The Regulars were no longer pretending to play pool, and stood in the alcove watching. Something inside Harvey stirred, and he shifted uncomfortably on the stool.

"This is one to tell the grandkids about," observed Julie at his elbow.

"I can't let this happen," said Harvey.

"Huh?"

"I can't let him take her home."

"I guess he's in a lot of trouble, then. Huh?" said Julie.

"It just isn't right, you know."

"Of course it's not right. It hasn't ever been right, but you let her go home anyway, with whoever. Why object now? Because he's big? Scratch that. Because he's enormous?"

"I don't know, Julie. I just can't."

"Well. What do you plan to do?"

"Improvise, I guess," answered Harvey.

"You want to improvise with my Winchester?"

"No. You keep that in reserve. I'm gonna try to reason with him. Hand me the Louisville Slugger."

"I wouldn't recommend that, Boss. Unless you want to make him mad. Even if you can reach his head, he's drunk four gallons of beer. He won't feel a thing."

"So what do you suggest?"

"A Mickey."

"You think you can take this guy down, Julie?"

"Are you doubting me?"

"It's worth a try, I suppose." Harvey gave the "cut" sign to Polly as Red wasn't looking at anything right then. She finished up, thanking the "audience", and started dragging Red offstage. The Wrastlin' Trucker let go of Laura to applaud and yell for more and she wobbled off toward the Ladies’. The big fellow was insistent, cornering Red and Polly at the edge of the stage. By the time Harvey got there, Red was cowering behind Polly, who was thanking the wrestler over and over again. He managed to talk the big man into another beer, while Red and Polly escaped into the night from an evening they would still be reminiscing about thirty years later in a nursing home near Greenville, Mississippi. Back at the bar, Roland hoisted his ninth, and, Harvey hoped, thanks to Julie, final pitcher of beer.

"Here's to the lady of my evening" he toasted.

"Look, Roland," began Harvey. " I wish you would leave her be."

"Leave her be, Harry? She wants me. I want her. Leave her beaver? Hah!" He took a big pull on the pitcher.

"You don't know her the way I do. She's had a rough time."

"I'm sorry for her, Harry. I really am." Another couple of eight ounce swallows.

"Save your sympathy for someone else, man. For her it's just a curse."

"What are you, sweet on her, Harry? You her boyfriend?"

"Please, Roland. Don't take advantage of her. It just makes things worse. She's better off alone."

"I think I've heard about enough of this shit." Mister Thunder slammed the nearly empty pitcher on the bar and stood up. "Where do you get off telling me what to do, little fella?"

"I don't mean to seem unfriendly, man." Harvey stood very still. "She's just what happens to a good time girl when the good times are all gone."

The big man towered over him, glaring down.

"The best thing you can do right now is simply let her be." Harvey's said in a quiet voice. "You see, mister. She's my sister. And, one way or the other, she's goin' home with me."

"Your sister?" the big man asked after a pause. "She's your sister?"

"Yea. My sister." Harvey had absolutely no idea why he had said that. "I got to take care of her. You know how it is."

"I know how it is, Harry." Tears filled the big man's eyes. "I had a sister, and I wasn't there for her." He sobbed a few times. "You're OK, Harry. You stand up for your sister. You're OK...."

Julie's Mickey must have been having some effect on him, because Roland's speech was becoming uneven and his eyes weren't focusing.

"No one to dance with," he muttered. "No one to take me home."

Suddenly, something like a look of inspiration crossed his eyes and the big man turned and lurched toward the door. In a moment, he was gone.

"Smooth, Boss." was Julie's only comment as she began to wipe down the bar. She wasn't easily impressed. Harvey Keene sagged back against the bar and relaxed for what seemed like the first time that evening.

"Well, John T," he said scratching between my ears. His hands were still shaking a bit. "Looks like we got away with that one."

 

 

The Regulars emerged from the alcove and began to help clear the tables off and set the chairs up so that the sawdust and peanut shells could be swept up, signaling the end of another night at the Last Stop Cafe. Someone turned the jukebox on, and Buck Owens' music filled the air. Things seemed normal once again. Trollie, the de facto head of the Regulars, plopped down next to Harvey at the bar. Trollie smokes cigars that smell like chocolate.

"So. Waddaya think, Harv? The Wrastlin' Trucker. Here at the Last Stop. Jesus H Christ! Huh?"

"Too bad we didn't get a picture," said Harvey.

"Oh Jeez! How come nobody thought of it! Shit! We could have had a picture with all the Regulars. I can't believe it."

"I really am sorry, Trollie. You guys deserve it."

"Oh my God!" said Trollie, staring wide-eyed over Harvey's shoulder.

He turned around to see Roland Thunder lead a full grown milk cow in through the front door of the Last Stop, and out onto the floor where they began to dance cheek to cheek to Buck Owens.

"He's back," observed Harvey to Julie who was staring open mouthed.

"Hey," she said, after closing her mouth. "Talk to your friend Dr. Barnes. He sold us that stuff."

"Unbelievable," said Harvey W Keene.

"You think he is gonna make it with the cow?" asked Trollie.

"Oh, for Christ sake, Trollie."

By this point, Roland Thunder was staggering around the dance floor with the cow, singing along with Buck at the top of his lungs. The Regulars were delighted by this and cheered loudly from the periphery of the room. Julie stood behind the bar, close to the shotgun, sniffing dubiously at the neck of a small, evil looking, brown bottle, the entire contents of which she had emptied into that ninth pitcher of beer that she had served to The Wrastlin' Trucker. Harvey was rubbing the bridge of his nose between his eyes in the hope that the headache that was starting there would go away. Trollie had taken out one of his cigars and was spinning it round and round over his lighter.

And right then, Roland Thunder, The Wrastlin' Trucker, stopped dancing, stood up to his full six foot nine and, like a giant redwood in the woods of Oregon, like a skyscraper blown down by a family of demolition experts, like an avalanche of ice and snow on a Swiss mountainside, he toppled forward and landed with a thunderous roar beside his dance partner on the wooden floor of the Last Stop Cafe. The room fell silent; the impact of his fall had unseated the jukebox. The only sound came from the confused hooves of the cow as she tried to decide where to be.

"Timber!" said Trollie after a while.

"What did I tell you, Boss?" said Julie with relief.

"OK, everybody," said Harvey W Keene. "Let's get this place cleaned up and go home."

This was the sort of task that the Regulars excelled at. Harvey reached over the bar and drew himself a beer and sat back to watch. The Regulars already knew that Thunder was staying at the Truck-Stop-Up-The-Road, which was just down the road from the Last Stop. He was hauling a load of milk cows, from which the one presently on the dance floor had come. They got the wrestler's now snoring bulk onto a cart that Julie used to move beer kegs, and a couple of them rolled him out the door toward his rig, under which they intended to leave him in case it rained. The rest were assigned to collect the cow, which, by this point, was a bit nervous. They chased her around he room a couple of times, finally succeeding in getting her headfirst into the hallway between the bathrooms, where she couldn't turn around. After a some tugs on the tail and a couple of attempts to squeeze past to the head which were greeted by sideways kicks against the walls, it was conclude that cows don't go backwards. Someone suggested that it might take some more beer to get this done.

In the end, when it became clear that this would take forever as it was, I slipped in between the cows legs and had her out of there in a jiffy. People make such a big deal over herding dogs. Any dog can do that, collies and sheepdogs are just the only ones stupid enough to let on. That was pretty much it for the excitement. The Regulars even got their picture with The Wrastlin’ Trucker. Trollie couldn’t let the idea go, and so, after The Last Stop was safely closed up for the night, the crew paid one more visit to the Truck-Stop-Up-The-Road. To this day, a picture hangs on the wall of the pool alcove, right next to the TV set, which shows the Regulars grouped around the apparently dead body of Roland Thunder, The Wrastlin’ Trucker, looking for all the world like something out of the Old Wild West.

 

 

Now here's the nice part of this story. Laura, you remember, was last seen heading into the bathroom. Well, she had passed out in the bathroom. Julie found her there and got her home. No one saw Laura for a while, until one evening, a few months later, she walked into the Last Stop. She looked good, better than a lot of people could remember, and she asked if Harvey was in. Before long, she found him by himself at the bar.

"I wanted to thank you," she said. "For the other night. What you did. Julie told me some, and the boys."

"Well..." began Harvey.

"You stood up for me. You could have been killed. Why?"

"It wasn't nothin'..."

"No. It was. Why do you care...about me? You don't love me."

The last statement made Harvey start. Something about the honesty of it appealed to him.

"No, Laura. But I care. Somebody has to care. You haven’t." Harvey put his hands on her shoulders and looked into her eyes. "I know things have gone hard for you. Things haven't turned out like you wanted. They don't always. But you can't give up. You can't give up on yourself. You never know when the right person might be coming along. You have to take care of yourself so that when that time comes, you're ready. You gotta believe in yourself."

She broke into tears and hugged Harvey hard. After a time, she regained her composure.

"I guess if you can care about me, then I should be able to. After all, I want you to be proud of your sister."

We didn't see much of Laura after that around the Last Stop Cafe. She stopped drinking and went back to school. After finishing up college, she went on to Franklin Pierce Law School in Hew Hampshire, where she graduated at the top of her class. She has been working as a public defender for the State for several years now and is quite well respected. Now and then she stops in for old time's sake, and iced tea. She has lost weight, smells much better, and looks great. Some people say she will become a judge one of these days, which could certainly come in handy for Harvey W. Keene.