4: Tumbleweed

The night had lost all the life and was completely silent. A handful of hobos were the only people that kept themselves on the road at the time and even them, not by choice. Holbrook turned into one of the most dangerous places in the world in such dark nights. Crime ran rampant at the early dark hours of the morning. People didn’t hesitate throwing a slash or two just for a few bucks. Even the seemingly dormant hobos were a threat. Most of them were junkies, the things they did to get their hands on just a pinch of the product, were unspeakable. The long stretch of highways around the city were also the reason the city looked so deserted. As little as it was, all the life was still in the back alleys where it all stayed out of plain sight. The area was away from the densely populated area of Arizona, so only one or two odd vehicles populated the roads and even that for mere seconds. Any car that was about to arrive at the cross roads, could be heard from hundreds of meters away. Such was the silence. Crime was still the second worst enemy. The stereotypical Arizona heat was enough to cook a person medium rare in ten minutes. In the night, every room became a sauna. Diamond Boot Bar stood right at the entrance of the deserted road. The bar didn’t have much attendance in the regular hours so it was bound to be tranquil at three in the night. The bar was the cheapest in ten blocks so whatever magnitude of audience it did had, was not the elegant type that cared much about etiquettes. The only vehicle parked in the parking lot, was a motorbike that belonged to the bartender. It was no Harley Davidson but one of those discontinued Japanese bikes that were in demand back in the day. It did the job well enough to put food on the table of its owner. Inside the bar only half a dozen heavily intoxicated middle-aged men remained seated. Well, one would hardly call it being seated. They had managed to balance themselves well enough to prevent an embarrassing fall. The entire expanse was dimly lit with yellowish lights that made the place look like it had time travelled straight from the westerns. The jukebox faintly played on like the band on the sinking titanic.

“It’s a brand-new day with you by my side!” or something like that from at least three decades ago. The state the machine was in, it was nothing less than a miracle that it still worked.

The bartender, who looked to be twenty and educated enough to be doing something better, had served the last of the drinks half an hour ago. He was white with head full of black hair that fell to his face. He wore a black T-shirt that had the emblem of some death metal band which looked more like a pencil sketch of a random bush. He wiped the counter with a damp cloth, waiting for the last hours of his shift to pass. An elderly white man, too woozy to walk ten feet, stumbled across the bar, causing an earthquake, and found the counter to save him from the brutal force of gravity. The bartender watched him as he did while he cleaned the perimeter. He ran his hands around and navigated himself to a barstool.

“How about a last one for the night?”, the old man barely produced the words over his grunts and the load of other noises that his numb mouth made as tried to speak. The look on the young bartender’s face, clearly told him that he wasn’t getting any. “Give me one more or I trash this shit hole!”, the old man threatened and the bartender couldn’t help but smile.

“Look around you, Ben. The place is already at rock bottom. It’s gonna take some effort, making it worse”, the bartender responded and the old guy agreed. He fell silent and rested his forehead on his arm on the counter. “I’ll call you an Uber”, the bartender said as he wiped the glasses with a napkin. The old man grunted in agreement. The bartender called for an Uber. He was back to clearing out the counter as he was supposed to, at the end of his shift. The door gently creaked open. The bartender half expected to see a drooling drunkard ambling in. He was surprised to see a sharply dressed middle-aged black man carrying a black brief case. He wore a fedora hat over a trench coat like in one of those 1940s spy thrillers. He took the seat at the farthest end of the counter and placed his case in front of him. The bartender kept on tending the glass tankards that were rarely used but had been used for the party earlier in the evening. He anticipated a request that never came. Not even an eye contact. That man just pulled out some papers from his case and read them, oblivious to the wreckage around him. The black man stroked his shave every minute or so, keeping his eyes on the paper. He looked at the old man dozing off on his arm. He observed him for a few seconds and got back to his papers. The counter was clear now and the bartender didn’t have much left to clean, so he sat back on the sole barstool that stood on the other side of the counter. His phone buzzed. It was the Uber. He gently woke the old man up. The drunk man didn’t want to but scrambled to his feet after a moment of persuasion. He was helped outside and into the car. The old man thanked him and the bartender whispered the address to the driver. As soon as he was done with the old man, he walked back into the building. He saw the trench coat man staring right at him. He had seen his share of creeps but this one hit different. The man reluctantly turned his gaze as soon as he caught the bartender watch him stare. The bartender’s doubts turned into facts. The man was here to see him. The bartender played it cool and walked back behind the counter. He picked up an already wiped glass and polished it further with a napkin, trying to look busy.

“Last hour, big guy! I don’t know if the new prick is gonna show up for his shift. So, I’m afraid you’re gonna have to speak up”, he said without looking up from the glass that was about to lose a layer due to too much scrubbing. The trench coat guy looked behind him at the handful of drunks laying around on the tables along the walls and resumed the inspection of papers. “Oh! a shy one in Holbrook!”, the young man thought to himself. If that was the case, he had no choice but to wait till he had gathered enough courage to order something and piss off. He was gonna sit around and do nothing for an hour anyway.

“These guys all have someone coming to pick’em up”, he half comforted his potential customer. The man was looking more and more suspicious every passing second. He was starting to look restless. If he were a robber, he had the optimal opportunity. A lone young man behind the counter, who had no stake in the establishment so he wouldn’t give a fight, a bunch of drunkards who wouldn’t notice even if a bomb went off. Yet he let all of the opportunities go. The feeling of creepiness was gradually being substituted by curiosity but then again, the trench coat was big enough to hide a bazooka if the man was willing to cause trouble. The door hastily creaked open and a young man in scrubs entered the bar. He looked as if he was on his way home but had to make an unwanted detour. The bartender recognized the man, he was the only son of the old man who was snoring sprawled on top of a table that looked too frail to bear his weight. The son was there to pick him up. Just as he was helping his father up, the door opened again and this time it was a girl that was here for her husband. “Poor girl!”, he thought to himself. One after the other, all the drunks scattered around the bar were fetched by their loved ones and the bartender and black guy in trench coat were left alone. The man was putting on a pitiful show, pretending to mind his own business. He was caught multiple times trying to steal glances. It was no secret now that he was waiting for the bar to empty and his wait was now over. The bartender clutched a bat under the counter awaiting his first move.

The man finally looked around to make sure the place was deserted and folded the papers and put them in his case. The grip around the bat’s handle was further tightened. He moved to the barstool closest to the bartender and sat there. Their eyes met. The bartender was far from afraid. The eyes of the trench coat man showed desperation but then again all of the muggers have their moments of self-reflection just before they pull the trigger. But there was also something else, the young bartender couldn’t place it. His thoughts shifted as soon as he caught it. It was reverence.

“You need to relocate”, the black man whispered his first words, staring into the soul of the young man. The bartender was petrified. The man had just hit the young man with a cannonball and was collecting his things from the countertop to leave. The bat was no longer gripped.

“Wait! What do I do now?”, the bartender protested and ran out of the small flapping spring door at the corner of the workstation. The man had stood up and abruptly dashed out of the door. The young man panicked, trying to contemplate his next course of action. After wasting a minute or two in paralysis, he caught a glimpse of a white object on countertop. He gathered himself and found out that the informant had left a piece of paper. The few words that he read, indicated that the paper was left behind deliberately for him to see. He quickly ran inside and cleared out the establishment from his belongings. He came out of the inner rooms with a small suitcase and a helmet. He locked the building from the outside.

The sky had been canopied by dark clouds all day. The swollen clouds had finally started to burst. Faint tip taps of raindrops echoed as they touched down on the large billboard nearby. The volume of rain could be measured in front of the flickering lights on the billboard. He mounted his bike and took off into the highway that was at a walking distance from the bar. The tarmac glistened by the raindrops and the biker knew that the roads were the most notorious in rains that were long enough to bring out the absorbed oils, and not long enough to wash them off. The biker kept the bike slow hold it steady in case it slips. The raindrops gradually gained weight. After a roar of thunder, the shower had risen to its full power. The biker’s doubts were removed. He shut the visor glass of his helmet and rocketed on his way.