“My mom said I could stay for a little while.”

Enie looked up and saw her again, the little girl from yesterday, a little girl so tenuously standing on the sidewalk again, on the very spot where she dropped her bike yesterday. Only this time, the bike had been dropped without Enie even hearing it, so engrossed was she in an article on lifestyle changes to help avoid stress.

Enie lifted one eyebrow. “Great,” she called out with a tiny tinge of amusement no child could possibly detect.

The girl started for the patio, this time wearing a pink plaid skort and baby pink top. The girl definitely likes pink. Kara smiled a toothy smile as she approached.

“I get the weekend off,” she told Enie.

“The weekend off … from school?”

“Yea. I get Saturday and Sunday off. So tonight I get to stay up late.” She folded her scrawny body onto the empty patio chair. “My mom watches her sometimes,” she said pointing to the cover of the magazine Enie was reading.

“Your mom must have good sense,” Enie offered.

“Where do you work?” the girl asked her.

“I don’t work, right now.”

“Where did you work?”

Enie thought about her answer, and about what she’d told the house’s builder before. “I did some work out of my home, on the computer. And before that I did other work. I didn’t work in any one particular place. I didn’t work in an office or anything like that. I worked out in the field.”

“What field? You mean like baling hay?”

She laughed. “No. ‘In the field’ is an expression for when you work outside of an office, in a lot of different places. It means you travel around. I went to businesses for my job, and I went to people’s homes and to different cities and states. I even went to different countries.”

“What did you do?”

Wow, how to satisfy this curiosity.

Enie thought for a moment about what the girl would understand, and what she would even care about. She would, of course, brush off many of the things that adults would care about. “Do you know what a detective is?”

“Yea, I think so.”

“That was the kind of thing I did. I got an order from my boss to go do something, and I would go do it. Sometimes I would go pick something up. Sometimes I would drop something off. Sometimes I would send a letter or make a phone call. Sometimes I would take a job at a new town, maybe a job at a gas station or in a restaurant. Then, for a while, I would follow people, to keep track of what they were doing.”

“My mom watches a TV show where a girl does that. She goes to other countries, where they speak weird. And she gets into a lot of fights.”

“I see.”

“Did you ever get into fights?”

“Yes,” Enie answered wistfully. “Occasionally.” She gave the girl a stern smile. “It’s hard to live in this world without getting into fights.”

“Did you have a gun?”

“No.”

“Oh, that’s good. Guns are dangerous. My mom says that if you carry a gun, that might mean that someone can turn around and shoot you with it.”

“Yes, indeed.” Enie rose from the chair. “I’m going to go get a pop. Would you like something to drink?”

“You mean Coke?” the girl asked.

“Yes,” Enie laughed. “Pop, soda, Coke, whatever it’s called here. I have some Diet Coke, and I got some cherry pop and some grape pop at the grocery store this morning.”

Her eyes lit up. “I like cherry. Is it from the Piggly Wiggly?”

“It is, indeed, from the … Piggly Wiggly.” Enie had never set foot inside an establishment as strangely named as a Piggly Wiggly before this morning.

“Great! I like that stuff.”

When Enie returned with the drinks, she said, “You know, it’s probably a good idea to keep that a little quiet, what I told you about my work.” She sat down and handed the girl the glass of cherry soda. “You can probably tell your mom about it, because a girl should be close to her mom and be able to her anything. But I wouldn’t really tell anyone else.”

She shrugged her shoulders. “OK.”

“Where does your mom work?”

“At Dr. Anderson’s office.”

“Where’s that?”

“Next to the hardware store.” Kara took a swig of the cherry soda, then set the jelly-jar glass politely on the patio table, trying not to make any noise with the glass-on-glass connection.

“Oh. On Hall Street, in town.”

“Yea. She answers phones and stuff. And tells people what to do. And puts things into the computer.” She leaned in toward the glass and looked at the three-dimensional design on the side. “Is that Snoopy?”

“Yes. A few years ago, there was a series of glasses with the Charlie Brown characters on them. They sold them as jars of jam or jelly. I collected all of them.”

“And you had to eat all the jelly?”

“It wasn’t difficult.”

“Do you like Charlie Brown?”

“Yes, but I like Snoopy even better.”

“I like dogs, too. I can’t get a dog, right now. Maybe next year.”

Enie didn’t wonder what the significance of next year was.

“What’s your favorite color?” Kara asked her.

“Black.”

Her eyes grew wide. “Really?”

“I like white, too. I especially like it when black and white are together.”

“Whoa! I don’t know anybody at school that has black as their favorite color.” She took another drink. “OK, you have to guess what mine is.”

Enie belted out a hearty laugh. “I can do that in … one guess!”

“OK, go!”

“Pink!”

The girl hung her head. “Whoa! OK, but now you have to guess what kind of pink. ‘Cuz there’s different kinds.”

“Hmm …” Enie said, drawing her hand to her chin. “I bet, hot pink, like your bike.”

The girl looked in the direction of the bike, as if she’d forgotten it was that color. “OK, I guess I have to give you that one.”

“Especially since I guessed absolutely correctly.”

“Yea.”

“That color is also called fuchsia, you know. Have you ever heard it called that?”

“No.”

“Some people even consider it magenta.”

“I think I’ve heard that one.”

“Do you like Barbies?”

“Yea.”

“Barbie always has hot-pink stuff, doesn’t she? Like her cars and her house and all that are hot pink, aren’t they?”

“Yea, they are.” She nodded. “I have a Barbie kitchen set. Do you like Barbies?”

“I haven’t played Barbies in a lot of years.” What’s it been now? Thirty years?

“Maybe we could play sometime.” She tapped her hands on the armrests of the chair. “You ever try Ice Breakers Liquid Ice?”

“No … I don’t believe I have.”

“I just got the light blue kind from the store. The dark blue flavor is still my favorite, though.”

Ummm … cool.

A couple hours later, long after her young guest had left, Enie decided she was going to find out what this Up the Creek Bar and Grill place was all about. It was Friday night, after all, and she didn’t feel like sticking around home. She felt like going out, continuing her exploration of the town, seeing what was out there. Seeing who was out there. And just like John-O’s corner market was the place to grab a pop, and the as-yet-unexplored Moe’s Diner was the place to have lunch, this Up the Creek Bar and Grill – its sign even depicting a winding, blue creek and a rickety canoe – was evidently the place to get a drink and see what was what and who was who.

Old hardwood floors, dark interior, she noted as she stepped inside and gave her eyes a moment to adjust to the lack of light. The round window she had seen next to the door, before she stepped in, was the only window in the bar. It offered a dampened slice of the sidewalk and Hall Street, not really letting in any amount of daylight. There was one turquoise-felt-top pool table off to the side. The actual “bar” of the bar was a furnishing that featured a huge, mahogany, curved rim along the length of it, perfect for leaning elbows on (even really big elbows). The jukebox, on the opposite wall as the bar (a bar which, incidentally, also featured that kind of long mirror behind it that you always see in the movies) still held the old forty-five records. Yikes, she thought. This sure ain’t no Philly.

It was Johnny Cash’s “Five Feet High and Rising” that she heard as she stepped away from the closed door, already noticed by every human body in the bar. And every human body was about eight or nine, tops, right now.

“How high’s the water, Mama? Three feet high and rising,”

the jukebox called out. How high’s the water, Papa? She said it’s three feet high and rising.”

The man behind the bar was tall and fifties, lanky but for an obvious beer belly, with a stern face, dark eyes and receding hairline. He didn’t nod or acknowledge Enie, showed no expression at all for this incoming customer – despite the fact that he knew in a heartbeat exactly who this incoming customer was. Two other men at the bar showed a reaction, though, one of them nodding toward her and smiling, then elbowing his companion. And, a couple chairs down from them, at the far end of the curved mahogany bar, was her not-so-friendly neighborhood builder, Jack Bannon, planted there on the bar stool as if his name was etched on its underside, like the VIP customer he no doubt was.

Enie saw the bartender’s lips move, as he kept his eyes pointed down on some receipts he was fishing through – lips moving though she couldn’t pick up the sound, for the jukebox – then Jack turned to look at her.

She smiled at him, as she stood there, smiled a wide-open but mildly sarcastic greeting. This was a bit of a rough crowd, it seemed. But she was still going to have a drink.

Jack’s eyes lingered on hers for a moment, the corners of his lips drew up in a half-smile, then he returned to the drink in front of him. A long-necked bottle of beer.

“How high’s the water, Mama? Four feet high and rising. How high’s the water, Papa? She said it’s four feet high and rising.”

Enie couldn’t help her curiosity as she walked over to the jukebox. There were a couple other pairs of people populating the small collection of tables and chairs scattered around the bar, people who didn’t look up, and evidently weren’t at all concerned with her, as she walked by.

“A Boy Named Sue” by Johnny Cash was another selection among the forty-fives in the jukebox, she mused as she scanned the list. Question Mark’s “Ninety-Six Tears” was there, too, along with lots of Elvis songs.

“My wife likes Elvis,” Enie heard from behind her.

She turned and saw the bartender, now standing just a yard away, a hand towel tucked into the pocket of his dirty maroon apron.

“I see,” she said with a cursory smile.

“How high’s the water, Mama? Five feet high and rising …”

“Did you want to see a menu?” he asked, his arms hanging long at his sides, in a rather apelike fashion, she had to admit, as they fell from the sleeves of his plain navy-blue T-shirt. He was assuming she was here for the “grill” part of “bar and grill.” She would have to straighten him out about that.

But as she was about to say something, she spotted, over the man’s shoulder, a puddle of fur on the floor near the foot of the bar. She must have walked right by it when she entered.

“It’s a beagle!” she said, her eyes turning back to the bartender for a moment so as to not completely disregard him before she walked away from him, and toward the bar. “It’s a baby beagle!”

She approached it and knelt down to pet it, emitting all sorts of coos. It moved its head to look up at her, its ears droopy and lazy.

“Five feet high and ri-sing …”

the jukebox drawled to the song’s close.

“Baby beagle?” the bartender said as he returned to his post behind the bar, unsure whether or not to be entertained by that. He refilled his coffee cup from the squat carafe at the bar. “That thing’s pertneer ten years old!”

She looked up at him incredulously. “It’s a baby beagle. It’s a sweet … precious … baby beagle!”

All four men at the bar exchanged raised eyebrows.

“What’s his name?” she asked.

“Name? It doesn’t have a name. It’s just a dog. It hunts with me.”

Enie stood up, with the dog now flopped over her arms. “You do have a wife, right?”

“Sure I have a wife. She likes Elvis, like I said.”

“And your wife doesn’t have a name for the dog?”

“Oh … I reckon she calls it something. I forget.”

She looked down at the dog. In typical beagle markings, it had a black back, brownish ears and a white face, though the fur on its face was getting a little lean. The white fur on the animal’s chest collected into small points just below its collar. “Hmmm. I guess I’ll have to ask your wife. I wouldn’t want to call him by any other name. That would be too confusing for him.”

The two men near her at the bar shook their heads.

Enie took a seat at the nearest table, gathering the dog into her lap. She looked back at the bartender, who was standing near Jack, studying the television mounted above him, turned down low but obviously tuned to some sports channel. With a touch of playful cynicism she called out, “I don’t suppose you know how to make a pink squirrel.”

One of the other men at the bar snorted and said, “Is that for you or the baby beagle?”

At that, Jack’s shoulders shook with laughter. Enie, though, was unshaken, even smiling, as she said, “Thanks, but it’s for me. I’m not the kind of miscreant who would feed beer to a dog or anything inane like that.”

She wondered if she should explain what the words “miscreant” and "inane” meant. The dog, meanwhile, lifted its head and started sniffing Enie’s powder-blue patterned silk blouse. It playfully grabbed at one of the buttons with its teeth.

“Pink squirrel,” the man behind the bar mulled aloud. “I’ll have to look it up."

“Crème de cacao, crème de noyaux,” Enie offered. “The noyaux is almond-flavored. That’s where the nut association comes from.” She rubbed one of the dog’s ears. “You know, squirrels and nuts?”

Curious though trying as best he could to hide it, the bartender produced a slim paperback book from a far nook behind the bar.

“It’s one of those frou-frou drinks from the ’50s and ’60s,” Enie explained with a smile. “An era in which it wasn’t yet politically incorrect to lounge around and have cocktails all afternoon.”

Five o’clock on a Friday (well, maybe an occasional Saturday, too) was all the lounging Jack could manage. But he appreciated the image, just the same.

“Crème de almond, crème de … cocoa,” the bartender read, “ice cream, or milk and ice.”

Enie had no desire to correct his pronunciation of the second variety of liqueur. “Milk and ice would be better. The ice cream makes it too heavy.”

Enie passed a glance in the direction of Jack, hunched over his beer, only occasionally looking up at the game airing above him.

“So where’s the creek?” Enie asked, patting the back of the old dog, which now had perked up considerably.

One of the other men at the bar wrinkled his nose as he downed a shot of whiskey.

“From the name?” Enie said to the silence. “The creek in the name of the bar.”

“It done dried up years ago,” the bartender replied as he hit the blender button. “It ran out the back of the property, before there was a parking lot there.”

The beagle tried to stand up in Enie’s lap, its paws digging into the tops of her legs through the denim of her skirt. Its dark eyes shined at her. As she tried to shift the animal around on her lap, her drink arrived. He had poured it into a clear glass with a fat, ballooned-out top and narrow bottom.

“I’m Buck,” he said, wiping his damp right hand on the apron.

She loosed one hand from its grip around the dog and stretched it toward him. “Buck, it’s a pleasure to meet you. I’m Enie. I don’t suppose you can run me a tab?”

“I can run you a tab another time,” he said. “Tonight’s on the house. … For the new kid in town.” She thought she saw a hint of a smile, and maybe even the suggestion of a wink, both of which for this tower of stoic-ness had to be rarities, as he turned and walked back toward the bar.

“Well, all right, then,” she returned. “I’ll try not to make you regret that. These frou-frou drinks aren’t cheap, you know.”

He turned back toward her to acknowledge her playful jest. “You better try it, to make sure it’s OK,” he then said quite seriously.

Soon enough, Buck was tucked back behind the bar again, both him and his reflected image in the long mirror trotting over to the end of the bar where Jack sat, just beyond the reflection’s reach. She heard Buck ask Jack about some carburetor he was going to look at for so-and-so. When he said he probably wouldn’t get to it until next week, Buck asked Jack if he was going into Jennyville tonight. Jack shook his head no. Enie got the feeling, as she casually watched their conversation, that the two men had a certain bond. With Buck’s quiet but commanding demeanor, and the fact that he no doubt had twenty years on Jack, it seemed like a bit of a father-son thing. And like Jack, Buck didn’t speak with the Southern accent that she had been hearing in the other townspeople. She knew Jack grew up here, and she felt like she could assume that about Buck, also.

 

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