Alehouse, Chapter 5

*copyrighted material*

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    June 16th, 1928. The alehouse’s chamber smelled like deep roasted scallions, root crops, and burnt cypress lumber, waking bypassers’ appetite with a fine distinction through the half-round windows of the basement. With patience, these same fragrances would imprint themselves on the Elsner brothers’ memory too. Edna had sketched down the location to the rotgut and chow business on a rouge-stained napkin—Booze Bucket Bar or B.B.B for short. It had been an eventful evening at the hangars, no less up to the rafters with exhaustive laboring after a whole week’s cyclone alert, which had concluded a day before around witching hours. Wyatt had committed to his job as a ‘snow maggot’—preferably called shovelers—for at least three years to this day, ten hours straight from 02:00 P.M. to 12:00 A.M. of snow removal four times a week. A workhorse in the making to put it frankly. 

    Edna, devoid of any complex feelings towards the boys but secretly bothered by the idea of them alone, insisted on him meeting up with a man called Nelson Beatty. Head cook, tapster, and owner of B.B.B. A colleague of hers had merrily acceded to her role assignment proposal for the youngest Elsner kid within his culinary craft. Nelson’s palate expertise communicated in his methodized execution of it. He’d taken good care of Booze Bucket with a couple of kitcheners and a single servitor, the latter had renounced and left town for private matters. A new pair of

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unspoiled hands would be of service—it didn’t matter who or why really. The tasks required welcoming customers at the entrance and taking orders with impeccable manners. Delivering those orders would come later with a much more reasonable age and experience. Calvin had grown up to be a healthy eight-year-old student thanks to Wyatt’s uninterrupted line of work. The extra money would certainly suit them well too.

    Nelson had greeted them both with scallion pottage and grilled tuber salad for supper at their first meeting, the boys had stuffed themselves with little to naught of self-awareness. Forsaken or not, he could not help but feel these kids had fallen in the clutches of a nation’s misery. Being alone amid adulthood was bad enough in the modern age, regardless, these moppets had faced him with outspokenness, somewhat meddling, even so unassuming. Setting new roots for their foundations, somewhere close to the man’s heart too, yet never as a fatherly figure but rather as a very close friend.

    July 2nd, 1931. Wyatt's coming of age and the pubescent voyage had concluded naturally many moons ago. At twenty-two his unfledged and boyish demeanor was non-existent, but callousness could never be easily washed away in two decades by any means. Calvin on the other hand—an easily troubled yet regardful eleven-year-old—had kept his job as a waiter and host at Booze Bucket. Social but unconventional made him a juvenile target at most. The bond between the brothers and the alehouse’s owner gained strength within prosperous times, not in wealth but joy, turning a cheerless corner of the place into a picturesque collection of photographs, pulp covers, posters, and clumsy cutouts. Beaches, dashing ladies, swing, and ragtime jazz bands. Steaming imagery of Nelson’s star dishes: ham hock pinto beans, pasta with clams and oyster sauce, quail eggs in butter, and much more, all true to the client’s taste.

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    On the upper right side, they had saved a space for their most recent image acquisitions. One of them photographed four months ago showed Calvin on a stool. About to give a bite to his smoked salmon triple-decker, his side-parted blonde hair, and clear eyes were enlightened under the flash. Amongst other shots, Wyatt was partially out of frame with long-quiffed hair, a broad chin, and cracking a good smile, holding what seemed to be an oxidized coin with a bullet hole. A discovery found hiking in the woods with his mates.

    Out in the cold, an earthbound wind had taken over the streets beclouded in mist and the bluest new moon of the season. Hot booze and an ancient wood-burning stove chimney were enough to battle the weather in this town. Clients welcomed with new machinery, a 10-selection Rudolph Wurlitzer Co. Debutante jukebox stopped and rolled a new song. B.B.B’s establishment looked like a pre-war tin can full of sardines. Livestock farmers, pipefitters, and roofers from a nearby construction site, technicians, and a whole lot of pilots off-duty, or rather that's what they'd claim.

     Wyatt walked past his brother, a busy child taking orders. Rolling up his all-new detective comic book, he hit him on the head. That startled Calvin more than caused him any pain. He glared back and shrugged.

    “You are making faces again.”

     “I don’t make faces.” The kid protested.

    “The ladies at the next booth would like to differ.” He tousled Calvin’s hair, winking at a group of gal pals observing them from their seats at the next table. The trio exploded in laughter.

    “Oh, no!” Calvin poked his sibling with an accusing finger. “You are not going to use me for your ‘crotch business’. Back off!”

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    “Well, someone has to take their order . . . ” Wyatt announced with a subtle, but malicious smile. The boy knew that face all too well. 

    Having seen their fight from the serving window, Nelson came out of the kitchen. “What on earth are you waiting for boys?! There are clients ready to order. Shoo! Shoo! And you, Wyatt! It’s 10:30 pm, and I’ll need help back here when the garbage truck arrives. Get your ass to the back door!” Nelson stomped back in, fuming. The kid shuddered on his way back to work, but his older brother grabbed him by the shoulder.

    “Calvin,” He began, his eyes showing all of his misgivings. “I need to ask you a favor.”

    “Not now. I’m busy, Nelson is going to kick my ass if I make all those people wait any longer!”

    “Look, just, . . . just listen. I need you to deliver something to Bixbee . . . ”

    “Bixbee? Who is Bixbee?”

    “Oh, come on! Vivian Bixbee, one of the girls at the booth. The prettiest girl of the . . . the . . . the province, you could say. I don’t know . . . ”

    “Don’t drag me down with you in whatever mess you are getting into Wyatt, it never ends well.”

    “Look, this is not like any of the other times. She doesn’t have a boyfriend. What a change, huh?”

    “Hmmm . . . ” Calvin scrutinized the girls’ faces as they held their conversation. “Which one?”

    “Sandy-haired, freckled, and a tiny nose. The new girl in town.” Wyatt couldn’t turn away from her small complexion and made-up gentle features, he patted his jacket here and there looking

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for something. When he finally found what he was looking for he clutched Calvin’s arm a bit too harshly and placed a nicely folded piece of paper on his little brother’s palm.

    “Might be the only chance I’ve got . . . ” He muttered. To which his younger brother rolled his eyes and Wyatt proceeded to hit him in the head again.

    “Hey!”

    “Take it seriously, bonehead!”

    “All right! All right!”

    “WYAAAAATT!” It was Nelson’s vociferous roar, surprisingly louder than the music spilling out of the jukebox.

     “I’ll be back soon. Okay?” The young man disappeared through the kitchen’s frame, poking his head through the door glass one last time and mouthing something unintelligible before vanishing completely. Calvin headed towards Bixbee’s booth just then.

    He made his way through, pen and notepad at hand. He had never spoken to a client before in these circumstances, especially to a lady. It didn’t help much that the three of them had shown a jaunty kind of brashness that evening. Had he ever talked to a girl at all? Edna counted as a lady too did she not? Frothing all over Wyatt’s mistakes at the runways.

    Transpiring cold, he placed the menu on the table and opened his mouth. “Your order, ladies?” His discomfort was evident. The shortest of them all, a brunette with hair roller curls, pressed her lips together to suppress her laughter. Bixbee gave her a nasty look as if knowing what she would do.

    “I know what Bixbee wants!”

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    “Dorothy!” Bixbee wheezed, her eyes dropping down at her purse in embarrassment while the other two girls cackled on. Their waiter could only feel so much empathy for her.

    “Maybe we can start with the drinks? What do you think?” Bixbee and the girls had no trouble ordering alcohol.

    “Very good, I’ll bring your drinks now. We have a pretty big menu, maybe you’ll be ready to order then?” The trio agreed and their waiter excused himself, taking another handful of orders at the other side of the room. This time a quartet of stinky drunk pilots and a family of farmers. While doing so he reminded himself of the note Wyatt had trusted him with, by the time the girls’ beverages were ready he returned to their table, served, and took out the note from one of his waistcoat pockets.

    “Umm? Pardon me, Miss. I forgot I was supposed to give this to you, from the gentleman at the kitchen.” Bixbee looked at him baffled, then thanked him and took the note from his hand with a well-mannered gesture and a dorky, yet satisfactory smile. She was flushing, fidgeting with the note between her fingers.

    “Are you brothers?”

    “Yes. He is my older brother, Miss.”

    “Oh, that’s funny, you guys don’t look like brothers. Well, I mean that—” Her companions snorted loudly again and Bixbee curled her lips into a sour grin, ready to even things up. “These two bozos are my step-cousins, Dorothy and Nina. They drank a bit too much before coming here. I’m sorry . . . They think you make a really cute waiter for your age. Them blabbermouths can’t stop talking about it. Isn’t it so, girls?”

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     Her step-cousins remained in utter silence and shot daggers. The situation turned undoubtedly troublesome, but he was quick enough to take out his notepad and asked for the rest of their orders before they could go any further. Dorothy ordered a smoked salmon triple-decker, and Nina asked for creamed cabbage salad with chicken bites. Calvin turned to Bixbee for last, she ordered their well-known onion stew with breadsticks, Wyatt’s favorite.

    “Great choices ladies, I’ll bring your food in a few more minutes.” He walked away to another booth and noticed Wyatt spying through the kitchen’s door glass again. The kid called his attention with a wave and a thumbs up. But his brother was clutching at the door with an unfathomable expression on his face. Good or bad, he could not tell.

    Nelson’s alehouse served rounds and rounds of food and liquor to their customers for the rest of the night. You wouldn’t think this country was undergoing an unforgiven blitzkrieg kind of warfare for decades if you spent your days going from rathskeller to rathskeller. If there was something the country never ran out was alcohol, cigarettes, drugs, and other kinds of vices. Even food supplies were balanced proportionally to cause feebleness or gluttony. Calvin, at that age, had concluded that whatever kept people away from the theater of war was a convenience to Roanoke’s Military actors. Needless to say, the remaining authorities hadn’t done much for their people for three full decades. No state-of-the-art restrictions, bills, reforms, or laws to preserve order. When the civil war broke out, the government decided to mask away from its civilians. Which even included the profile and whereabouts of their legal head of state.

    The jolly gals soon got their meals served, the step-cousins asked for more intoxicating beverages but Bixbee insisted they didn’t need more of those for what was left of the night after all being the oldest one carried some responsibility. The engaging joshing around continued, but her interest was somewhere else entirely. Her eyes fixed on the cook’s swinging door from time

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to time, yet Wyatt was nowhere to be seen. Calvin noticed his shovel was still standing against the counter and decided to venture into the kitchen without warning.

     He was greeted by vapors, hanging pans and pots, and the smell of freshly harvested goods in a nearby basket. He searched through the storage room but there was no trace of his brother. Nelson, accompanied by his cookery subordinates as he diced radishes on his maple wood chopping block, cleaned off the sweat from his face with his forearm and then looked at him pointing outside.

    Calvin headed to the back door and used all his strength to push it open in the face of the overpowering currents allowed to flow from above the highest parts of the mountain. He stumbled outside on the frozen pavement and found his brother just a couple of meters away from him. He stared back at him, trembling against the bad weather. The snow-packed alleyway, gushing with snowflakes. Wyatt broke eye contact with the boy and fixed his gaze on a flickering street light, the winds tossing it to its unscrewed side.

    “What . . . What are you doing? What’s going on?” His younger sibling asked, the wind buzzing in his ears. “I thought you’d handle the talking after making me deliver that note. I mean, you looked so sure . . . ” He hesitated to answer for an instant, and the boy noticed the empty box of cigarettes he was crunching in his fist. “I thought you said you’d quit smoking. At least don’t smoke the expired one, did you know that’s worse than—”

    “Easy on the pocketbook. Give me a break.” He tucked the carton in his pocket and quickly changed the subject, “I wasn’t prepared for whatever that was . . . ”

    “I don’t follow?! She read the note. What else was she supposed to do? Vivian likes you, Wyatt. Don’t screw this one up because there’s no way I’m apologizing on your behalf if you just leave

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leave her hanging.” The boy grabbed him by the jacket and pulled him inside and away from the inclement squalls.

    “Vivian . . . ” He breathed. The young man cleaned off the snow from his hair, and fixed his knitted green striped sweater and his russet-colored leather jacket.

    He was ready to confront the situation he had put himself in, yet before anything else Nelson ripped off some mint leaves from a nearby flower pot and stuffed them in his mouth, making him gag. “Chew it!” 

    “What is that for?” Calvin snorted.

    “It kills bad breath, it’s not the time to stink like tobacco.”

    Wyatt chewed and spat out green mosh and twigs before walking into the bar again. The kid stood snooping by the door glass.

    “Hey . . . ” He looked back at Nelson, “You think he’ll be alright? I’d never seen him act that way before. It was . . . bizarre.”

    “Any form of vulnerability is bizarre.” Nelson chuckled, then twisted his mustache. “What do I know?”

    “You think . . . he . . . is?” 

    His sibling engaged in small talk with the ladies pretty fast. Bixbee's step-cousins left their seats, drunk enough to find the new jukebox a funny thing. He found his place next to her, notably close for just any conversation. It was best to let them be.

    Nonetheless, Calvin kept an eye on them as he served again and welcomed more hungry customers to the newly emptied booths. Bixbee and Wyatt remain engrossed in one another for

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two solid hours. Revising a handful of unused photographs and cutouts for their wall collection, all brand new and exclusive material kept in a dusty cardboard box. She admired every piece with care, even those already on exhibition. Sometime later, she announced her departure as she was supposed to take her relatives back home safely. But Wyatt couldn’t let her take all the responsibility all by herself after staying so late to talk to him. Taking into consideration that both Nina and Dorothy had fallen asleep near the washrooms.

    Once the establishment closed its doors, Calvin swept the timber floors with hot towels while Nelson treated the toilets with cleansing salts. Sweeping under Bixbee’s table, the boy found a familiar piece of paper with his brother’s handwriting on it. He read it, then chuckled. The clock read as followed: 03:24 A.M. He had plenty of hours to sleep before going back to waiting tables tonight.

END OF CHAPTER #5