American Boy - Larry Watson [50]
“No, man. I said forget it. It was a stupid idea, anyway. I shouldn’t have brought it up. Like I’d ever have a chance with her.”
Just then Louisa came out of the Red Hawk, toting a case of beer. And a paper bag. This time the beer was Budweiser.
“What took so long?” I asked.
She shrugged. “Just shooting the shit with the bartender. We’re old friends now.”
Smells traveled easily in the small warm cave of the car, and I could smell Louisa’s breath. She’d had a drink in the Red Hawk. And it was probably on the house.
Johnny put the car in gear and began to back away from the bar. “What’s in the bag?” he asked.
She reached into the bag, took out a bottle, and held it aloft. It was Regal House Red, a cheap sweet wine. “Lester used to mix beer and wine. ‘Fucked-up juice,’ he called it. Pardon my French.”
“Literally mixed together?” I asked. “In the same container?”
“Sure. You open a beer, drink a little, then fill the can back up with wine. The more you drink, the more wine you pour in.”
Johnny saw the advantage of this concoction right away. “Like an everlasting beer!” he said with delight.
“Exactly. Only stronger.”
“But doesn’t it taste like shit?” I asked.
Johnny and Louisa both groaned at my question, then laughed. It was the conspiratorial laugh again, and though I’d heard it often, it was never in chorus with my own laughter.
14.
THE MERCHANTS CLUBHOUSE SAT at the top of the highest hill in the county, and looked down on both the first and ninth holes. The ninth, a par five, climbed up from the valleys and flatlands below, so that golfers often finished their rounds panting with effort, especially in the summer. But the fairways and greens—sand until two years earlier—were covered with more than a foot of snow now.
Standing in this snow, Johnny, Louisa, and I huddled around a massive oak, keeping its trunk between us and the biting north wind. We were in the tree’s shadow, as an almost-full moon slanted its light across the hilltop. Johnny groped inside a head-high hollow in the tree. “I know it’s in here,” he said.
“What makes you so sure?” I asked. “How do you know Ernie doesn’t take the key out at the end of the season?”
“Because,” Johnny said, reaching farther in, “I’ve got it!”
“Good thing the squirrels didn’t beat you to it,” said Louisa.
“Squirrels would have trouble carrying this off,” replied Johnny, rapping against his gloved palm the six-inch length of lead pipe the key was wired to.
Snow had drifted against the clubhouse door, and Johnny and I kicked through its hard crust, clearing enough room to pull open the screen door. He took off his glove to turn the key in the lock, and we opened the door and stepped inside. “Don’t turn on the light,” I said.
“Why the hell not? Who’s going to be out here?” It was true. The golf course was at the end of its own quartermile drive, and we’d seen no sign of other cars on the road nor out in the lot.
It proved to be a moot point anyway. When Johnny flipped the light switch, nothing happened. The power had been turned off for the season. Fortunately, enough moonlight found its way into the clubhouse for us to see, though dimly.
Louisa was right behind us with the bottle of wine.
No one in Willow Falls ever used the term “Merchants clubhouse” with irony or derision, but they might have. The dingy low-ceilinged cinder block building was longer than it was wide, and not much bigger than a trailer. Right inside the door was the counter where Ernie Russell took your money (unless you held a membership, as the Dunbar family did), and sold you a Milky Way and a Coke when you finished your round. Through a door was the men’s locker room (women also golfed at Merchants, but they had no restroom or changing facility), which had a sink, a toilet in an open stall, a urinal, a single shower, and a row of ten freestanding lockers that had been salvaged from the old junior