It's a Motel 6 morning in Bullnose Montana. Don't know what today is but the rodeo's over, the Greyhound has gone. I got two twenty dollars still stuffed in my sock from a contracting job that's all done. Don't know if my sore butt was prize for my bull ride or a gift from the plowboy still asleep in my bed. And there's just enough whiskey waiting there in the bottle to put me back under 'til check-out time comes. Thank god for his mercy, if survival is blessed, and left over Jack Daniel's and for poor memory most of all.
.............. don d bellew
It was a Motel 6 morning in Bullnose, Montana. I ain’t sure what the day was, I’d been drinking a while. But I did know fer sure, the rodeo was over and it was too late for the bus. The sun was high and the wind was warm. I rubbed my eyes, stepped back inside and closed the door, not ready to start thumbing, nor even dressed, yet. There was an inch of black label still left in the bottle, so the day was off to a pretty good start. I drained it and sat on a red plastic chair, real easy, due to my awful sore ass-hole, and wondered who the hell was that cowboy sprawled out in my bed.
I’d woke up with his breath in my face and his elbow in my ear. Not the best waking moment I’d ever had, nor the worst. At least he weren’t no haggared old woman, with teeth on the table and lipstick smeared all over her face and mine. I doubt I’d promised to marry him, neither. But I sure scratched my head at where he’d come from.
There was cards, I remembered, and a low stakes game of poker. The question was hanging: did I win or lose? A cold chill ran up me and I reached for my left foot ... my sock still in place, the fifty still catched. My billfold, on the night stand, had a couple of twenties. I guessed I’d made out all right, after all. Damn whiskey, brain drainer, I lost many a memory, some good and some bad. Mostly bad ones, I guessed, counting odds in my favor ‘cause they weren’t many of the other kind to lose or to find. Was his name something like Bolen? I remembered a Bolen, bought me drinks a couple of times. Naw, Bolen was older. He had a bald head with glasses, and gnarly hands that touched me all over the place. I don’t know this cowboy; don’t remember his face or his blue-gray suede jacket hung up by the door.
He snored, that much I knew, and he smoked something rancid or maybe it was his chew. I had cigarettes, a half pack of Camels. Now that I thought of ‘em, I needed one bad. Why should I worry? I got my shorts on, right? Just wished I’d remember the tail end, strike that, the last of the night. I couldn’t get past the notion that something was mighty wrong, and my ass still burned for reasons unknown. I eased over to the bed and lifted the sheet just to confirm my dire fears: he slept raw ... and nine inches long! I ate the first Camel, smoked the second one slow. Took a shower, a hot one, and pulled on my pants and my boots. He was stirring, coming round, and I grabbed up my shirt and my jacket, thinking I’d best be gone and not never ask for a truth I didn’t need to know. Ignorance was always my home state. Near out the door, I remembered my hat, turned back to his fuzzy, grim smile and his, “Morning, Al.”
“Hey, Pardner.” I went back to my plastic chair, slowly perched, “You ‘wake? Thought you’d sleep all day. I was in the way of going to breakfast, feel like eating?” talk always come easy to me, not answers, mind, just chatter. “Hell, yeah, if you buying. Gimme a minute to wake up, okay?” He tossed off the sheet and went to piss a gallon of high pressure hydraulics, washed his face and came out fumbling for a smoke. His Bugler bag was empty, I stood him a Camel, and lit him while he bent over me, naked and all. He sat on the bed, facing me with tense interest and skinny bowed legs, I wanted to tell him to put on his pants. I lit my third smoke and figured faster was best, just wanted to get this thing off of my chest. “Who are you, and did you fuck me while I was passed out? Sorry, but I seem to disremember your name or where we met. Liquor does that to me, and I ain’t in no mood for playing dumb games with somebody naked and where the hell did you come from, anyway, and why’s my ass burning like hell?”
He paused, squinted up and looked like heavy thinking, then grinned and sucked another half inch of Camel, “Hell, I don’t know. I was out before you, but I doubt I did anything you didn’t pay for. Did you pay me? Shit, how’m I ‘spost to know?” “You saying you some kind of gigolo? Hell, do I look like the kind of queer that hire’s a fuck for the night?”
“I ain’t saying what kind of queer you look like, Al, just saying I don’t do nothing less I’m paid to.” He was grinning at my mad. Always hated anybody like that, found my anger amusing. First wife had that nasty habit.
“My name’s Will, not Al.” “I remembered you was from Alabama, couldn’t remember your name.”
“I dis-remember yours, neither, nor where you come from.” “Shane Jimson, outta Boise, Idaho.” He stood and offered his hand. I shook it out of a habit for politeness. Never shook hands with a naked man before, that I could remember.
“And your ass’s probably sore from the bull ride, don’t cha reckon?”
“Oh, yeah!” I hoped so, anyway. “You remember a poker game? Seems like I was playing poker last night.”
“A yeah, there was some cards. Not much money, but I lost the little I had. That’s when I brought you back to your room, you had a key. You was too drunk to make it on your own. I can’t say you invited me to stay, don’t remember that part, but you was in no way of kicking me out and I didn’t have no place to go to, nor no money left, either. Best I remember, you was still drinking when I laid down ‘cause you said to take the wall side of the bed.”
“Sounds right. I always got to sleep where I can get up in a hurry, hate the wrong side of a bed.”
“And I remember waking up when you crawled in and kissed me good night, you remember that part?”, he grinned, dangerously close to suicide.
“Hell No! And you was damn sure dreaming, punk!” “Maybe, yeah, maybe a dream”, he laughed out loud. “You buy me breakfast and I might just forget that damn dream!”
“Fuck you!.. ”
“Well, if you got the money, Al, I got the ass hole”, now he was really laughing, it got to me. I tried to hold it in but nere bust a gut, so I whooped with him. Feeling the day might be a good one, after all.
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