Honky Tonk Christmas Read online

  “I deserved to get plastered out of my mind when I got back stateside. You fair-weather friends left me over there the last two months all by myself. And I’ll be there. I’ll feel like a big celebrity signing books. Three months? What month is this anyway?” Sharlene slurred.

  The short brunette giggled. “It’s August 15, darlin’. Four years to the day since we left you in Iraq and came home without you. It wasn’t very nice of us to leave you like that, was it? But if they’d have given me a choice of staying and sleeping with Brad Pitt every night or coming home, old Brad would have been sleepin’ alone.”

  Sharlene laughed with her. “We got to do this more often.”

  “What? Get drunk?” Kayla asked.

  “No, get together and talk about it. No one but a vet understands what went on over there. Was it hard for you to leave behind?” Sharlene rubbed her eyes and smeared mascara.

  “Hell, yeah,” Kayla said.

  Sharlene nodded. “I still hear the helicopters in my sleep.”

  “We all do,” Kayla whispered. “Bringing the dead and maimed to the hospital.”

  “That sound of them buzzing around haunts my dreams and…” Sharlene clamped a hand over her mouth. Not even her four best friends were privy to the classified ops she and Jonah shared. She’d been in hospital administration and only she and a handful of top officials knew what else she did.

  “It’ll get better with time.” Kayla patted her arm.

  “When I’m so old I have demen… dement… whatever the hell that word is that means I can’t remember, I’ll still hear them,” she said.

  “Well, it’s midnight and I’ve got to drive this bunch to the airport in five hours so I’m going to call it a night for all of us,” Maria, the short dark-haired one of the group, said.

  “Not me. I’m going to sit right here and watch you all go. Just like I did back then. I’m going to drink one more beer and then go to my hotel. It’s just a couple of blocks from here. I’ll be fine,” Sharlene told them.

  “You sure?” Maria asked.

  “Sure as sand will sneak into your under-britches.” Sharlene laughed at her own joke. “Call me when you get home, all of you.”

  Group hugs. One more toast with one more round of tequila shots. One more suck on a lime wedge. And they were all four gone.

  Sharlene looked at all the empty bottles and shot glasses on the table. “Shhhtory of my life,” she muttered. She pushed the chair back, staggered to the bar, and slapped it with her fist. “One more Coors.”

  Holt could hardly believe his eyes. It couldn’t be Sharlene Waverly of Mingus, Texas, slapping the bar right beside him. He’d just visited with her yesterday and moved into her rental house that very morning. The kids had been elated to have a house again. Judd had done a jig all the way to the front porch when she saw the hideous multicolored house.

  “I’ll give you one more beer for your car keys. I can call you a taxi but I can’t let you drive as drunk as you are,” the bartender said.

  “Over my dead body. I can drive an Army jeep back to the barracks through a Shaqi windstorm after an all-night mission. I can drive anything with four wheels and can shoot the eyes out of a rattlesnake at fifty yards, so give me a beer and I’ll drive myself to the hotel. Besides, it’s only two blocks from here,” she argued loudly.

  “She’s with me,” Holt said. “Give her a beer and I’ll see to it she makes it home.”

  “And who the hell are you?” Sharlene turned bloodshot eyes at him. Was there one or two fine looking cowboys sitting on the stool? Dear God, was that Holt Jackson, the man she’d hired to add the addition to the Honky Tonk?

  “Don’t you remember me? I’m Holt, the man who’s going to put an addition on your beer joint in Mingus,” he said.

  “Well, slap some camouflage on my sorry butt and call me a soldier, I believe it is.” She picked up the bottle of beer and turned it up. “And you’re going to take me home?”

  “Wherever you need to go. Boss gets killed, I don’t have a job.”

  She set the bottle down with a thump. “Well, pay the man and let’s get out of here, Mr. Jolt Hackson.”

  The bartender waved away the bill Holt held out. “Her friends took care of their bill and paid for her last drink. They made me promise to call a taxi for her. She’s pretty wasted.”

  “Shit-faced is more like it,” Holt said.

  Sharlene laughed and stumbled when she slid off the bar.

  Holt hooked an arm around her waist and slipped his fingers through her belt loops. He led her outside where the hot night air rushed to meet them as if someone had opened a giant bake oven in the parking lot.

  “Hot, ain’t it? That’s my pink VW Bug over there. Just put me in it and follow me to my hotel, cowboy.” She tried to drag him in that direction.

  “You are not driving anywhere, not even out of this lot, Sharlene.”

  “I been to Iraq. I could take you in a fight. I’m that good. Don’t let my size fool you,” she said.

  Holt grinned. “Where’s your hotel key? I’ll take you there and you can get a taxi to come get your car in the morning.”

  She fumbled in the back pocket of her jeans and brought out a paper envelope to the Super 8 with the room number written on the outside. “If you look that way…” she squinted to the south and tilted her head to one side “… nope, guess it’s that way…” she turned too quickly and fell into his arms “… there’s that sorry sucker. Do you reckon they moved the sign while me and my friends were in the bar?”

  Holt laughed. “Surprising how those things happen when you’ve had too much to drink.”

  “I’m not that drunk. I was worse than this when I came home from Iraq. They all came to New York to welcome me home. Did I tell you that I was in Iraq two years? They killed Jonah. Sand was everywhere. Blowing in my eyes and sneaking down my bra. It was everywhere. It was hot like this, only hotter. Take me to my hotel. It’s cool there,” she said.

  He put her in the cab of his pickup truck and drove to the Super 8. She was snoring when he parked.

  “Hey, wake up, Sharlene; you are home,” he said.

  She didn’t move.

  “Damn!” he swore as he opened the door and rounded the back end of the truck. He opened the door and she fell out into his arms but didn’t open her eyes. He carried her like a bride through the front door, across the lobby, and down the hall to the right to her room. It took some maneuvering to get the key out of his shirt pocket without dropping her, but he managed.

  He laid her on the bed, removed her boots and denim miniskirt, pulled the comforter up from the side of the bed, and started to cover her when her eyes popped open. “Shhhh, if you make a noise they’ll see us. You have to be very quiet. They’re up there but you might not hear them yet. I hate this place. I want to go home where it’s green and there ain’t burned up trucks and bombed out buildings.”

  “What do you hear, Sharlene?”

  “The helicopter blades. They buzz like flies lighting on cow patties. Shhh, they’ll be here soon and we haven’t finished the job. If we don’t do it, the men will be in trouble.”

  He sat down on the other side of the bed. She grabbed his arm, looked him right in the eyes, and pulled at his arm. “Get down or they’ll see you. Don’t make a noise. I can’t get you out of here if you talk. Just lie here beside me until they are gone.”

  “I’ll be quiet.” He stretched out beside her.

  Her eyes snapped shut and she snuggled up to his side. He decided to wait until she was snoring again before he left. As drunk as she was, she might see aliens the next time her eyes opened and if the hotel owner had her committed he wouldn’t have a job come Monday morning.

  So she’d been in Iraq, had she? Was that the demons that made her get drunk? He thought of his sister and the night she died because of a drunk driver. He fell asleep with his sister on his mind and a strange woman in his arms.

  ***

  A sliver of sunshine poured in
to the room in a long uneven line through a split in the draperies. Sharlene grabbed a pillow and crammed it over her head. She hadn’t had such a hellish hangover since she got home from Iraq. They’d had a party to celebrate her homecoming and they’d really tied one on that night. The next morning her head had been only slightly smaller than a galvanized milk bucket. Her head throbbed with every beat of her heart and she’d sworn she’d never get drunk again. But there she was in a hotel room with the same damn symptoms.

  She needed a glass of tomato juice spiked with an egg and lemon and three or four aspirin. Somehow she didn’t think raw eggs and tomato juice would be on the free continental breakfast bar in the hotel dining room. She peeked out from under the pillow at the clock. The numbers were blurry but it was nine o’clock. Two hours until checkout. That gave her plenty of time for a shower. Maybe warm water would stop her head from pounding like a son-of-a-bitch.

  She and her friends had hit four… or was it five bars? She didn’t remember dancing on any tabletops or getting into fights. She checked her knuckles and they were free of bloody scabs. No bruises on her arms or legs. She wiggled but didn’t feel like she’d been kicked or beaten. Either she didn’t start a fight or she won. She frowned and in the fog of the hangover from hell she remembered arguing with a man. Then the helicopters were overhead and she told him that Jonah was dead.

  Then they all left and the man brought her to the hotel. She sat up so quickly that her head spun around like she was riding a Tilt-A-Whirl at Six Flags. She was hot and sweaty, barefoot and her skirt was missing. She was still wearing panties, a T-shirt, and a bra, so evidently the man had put her to bed and left.

  The newspaper reporter in her instantly asked for what, when, who, and how. She drew her brow down and remembered the what. She’d been drunk and passed out in his truck. The when involved after all the bars closed. The rest was a blur.

  She moaned as she sat up on the edge of the bed and the night came back in foggy detail. Four of her girlfriends who’d served with her in Iraq had come to Weatherford for a reunion weekend. One from Panama City, Florida; one from Chambersburg, Pennsylvania; another from Orange Cove, California; and the fourth from Savannah, Georgia. Sharlene could only get away for Sunday so they’d flown into Dallas and saved the best until she arrived. One beer led to another and that led to a pitcher of margaritas and then the tequila shots. She vaguely remembered a tequila sunrise or two in the mix. Her stomach lurched when she stood up and the room did a couple of lopsided twirls.

  She leaned on the dresser until everything was standing upright and her stomach settled down. If she waited for her head to stop pounding she’d be there until hell froze over or three days past eternity—whichever came first.

  She held her head with both hands as she stumbled toward the bathroom. Hangovers had been invented in hell for fools who drank too much. Or maybe the angels developed them. A good hangover would keep more people out of hell than a silver-tongued preacher man ever could.

  “Holt Jackson! Dear God! That’s who brought me home. Lord, he’ll think I’m a drunk and a slut.”

  She’d slept in his arms and had not dreamed. Even with a hangover, she knew she hadn’t dreamed. She hadn’t seen Jonah’s eyes the night before and she’d slept for the first time in years without the nightmares. She looked back at the tangled sheets on the king-sized bed and the rush of what might have happened made her even dizzier than the hangover. She grabbed the wall and scanned each corner of the room.

  “Did we? I can’t remember. Oh, shit! I can’t remember anything but getting into his truck,” she whispered. She reached for the knob to open the bathroom door: It swung to the inside and there stood Holt Jackson, drying his hands on a white hotel towel. She had to hang onto the knob for support or she would have fallen into his arms.

  “Good morning,” he said.

  She rushed inside, shoved him out, and hung her head over the toilet. When she finished, she washed her face and brushed her teeth. She heard deep laughter and bristled. Sure, she was in misery, but he had no right to laugh at her unless he was a saint or an angel and had never had a hangover. When she opened the door, he was sitting on the end of the bed putting on his boots and watching cartoons. He ran his fingers through his dark brown hair and green eyes looked at her from beneath thick deep dark eyelashes. His face was square with a slight dimple in his chin and his lips were full.

  The anger left and was replaced with remorse. “Sorry about that. I haven’t been drunk in many years.”

  “Not since Iraq, huh?” he said.

  She glanced at the bed. “We didn’t… did we?”

  “You snored and I fell asleep. Didn’t mean to but it had been a long day with the moving and then driving to Fort Worth for supper. I apologize. Other than that, nothing happened.”

  “How did you know about Iraq?” she asked cautiously.

  “You tried to convince me that if you could drive an Army jeep to the barracks from something or somewhere named Shalma that you could drive your pink Bug to the hotel,” he said.

  “That all I said?”

  “There was something about sand and helicopters, then you passed out. What did you do over there?” Holt asked.

  “My job,” she said. “Thanks for taking care of me. I appreciate it. I’m going to take a shower and go home.”

  “Sure?” he asked.

  “My head is throbbing and my stomach isn’t too sure about whether it’s going to punish me some more, but I’m sober. Still being drunk wouldn’t hurt this bad.” She tried to smile.

  “Okay, then. I’ll see you tomorrow at the building site. Be careful.” He waved at the door.

  She nodded and threw herself back on the bed.

  Holt had seen her in her white underpants and heard her throw up. Nothing the day could bring could top that. She waited five minutes and went back to the bathroom. She stood under the warm shower for twenty minutes, shampooed her hair twice, and could still smell smoke so she washed it a third time.

  A bass drum still pounded out a thump-thump-thump when she threw back the shower curtain, wrapped a towel around her body, and a separate one around her head. Using the back of her hand, she wiped a broad streak across the steamed up mirror and checked her reflection. Dark circles rimmed her green eyes. Every freckle popped out across her nose. Kinky red hair peeked out from under the towel.

  She shut her eyes to the wreck in the mirror and got dressed. The last bar where she and her friends had landed was located close to her hotel. She could easily carry her tote bag and walk that far. She didn’t need to waste money on a taxi.

  The free continental breakfast offered doughnuts, cereal, milk, juice, and bagels. The thought of any kind of food set off her gag reflex so she bypassed all of it and checked out. The girls had said they needed to get together once a year from now on. Sharlene thought once every five years would be enough if she was going to feel like this the next morning. Hells bells, if she was going suffer like this she didn’t care if she never saw any of them again.

  The noise of the heavy equipment doing road construction between the hotel and the bar ground into her ears like artillery fire in the desert. Her cowboy boots on the sidewalk sounded like popping machine gun chatter and the bag on her shoulder weighed twice as much as her pack in Iraq. The July sun was doing its best to fry her brain and sweat beaded up between her nose and upper lip. It wasn’t anything compared to the Iraqi desert, but heat and hangovers did not make good partners no matter what country they met up in.

  “If I ever get back to Mingus I’m never drinking again. I may not even have my nightly after-hours beer,” she said.

  Her hot pink Volkswagen Bug looked lonely in the bar parking lot. The night before she’d had to circle the lot a dozen times before she finally found a place to squeeze the little car into, but that morning it was the only car in the place. She opened the door, slung her bag into the passenger’s seat, started the engine, and turned on the air conditioning.

 
She bought a cup of coffee from a McDonald’s drive-by window before she got out on Interstate 20 and headed west toward Mingus. It was only forty miles from Weatherford to Mingus, but the way her head ached it could have easily been five hundred miles. She hadn’t gotten relief when she parked her car in the garage behind the Honky Tonk. She carried her bags out across the grass to the door of her apartment located right behind the beer joint. She’d thought she’d move into the house in town that she’d inherited right along with the Tonk, but it was too convenient to walk through a door back behind the actual bar and be home at two o’clock in the morning.

  Ruby Lee had built the Honky Tonk back in the sixties and nothing had changed since then. The outside was rough barn wood with a three-level façade and a wide front porch. Inside a long room served as poolroom, dance floor, and bar with a few tables scattered here and there.

  Ruby had lived in the apartment in those first years before she bought a house in town. She died and left the Honky Tonk to Daisy, her bartender and surrogate daughter. Less than a year later, Daisy fell in love and married Jarod. She gave the joint to her cousin, Cathy. Then Cathy and Travis got married and she gave the bar to Larissa. Now Larissa was married to Hank and she’d passed the bar and her house down to Sharlene.

  By the time Sharlene inherited the Tonk, it had a reputation for having a magical charm that created happy ever after marriages. Women flocked to it with a gleam in their eyes that reflected three-tiered cakes and big white wedding gowns. Sharlene could have made a fortune if she’d put a little statue on the bar and charged five bucks to rub the place where its ceramic heart was located.

  In the beginning Sharlene had come to the Tonk looking for a story that would get her a better office and a promotion at the Dallas Morning News. She’d offered to shadow Larissa looking for that human interest story and they’d become friends. Before long she was living in the apartment back behind the Honky Tonk and helping Larissa out at the bar on weekends. When she got the pink slip from the newspaper, Larissa hired her full time. Going to Mingus for a story was the best thing she’d done since she came home from Iraq. She’d found a home, written and sold a book instead, and wound up owning the beer joint.