Cockfighter - Charles Ray Willeford [31]
I took a fresh sheet of paper out of my notebook, sat down at the desk and looked at it, trying to figure out a strong selling point for my slender abilities. At last it came to me, a simple straightforward statement of fact. In large capital letters I wrote JOB on the page, and put the slip of paper in my shirt pocket. If a prospective owner was interested in the word JOB he would give me an audition. If I got an audition, my guitar would have to talk for me.
I checked the little square felt-covered box inside the case, and there were plenty of extra plastic picks and two new strings wrapped in wax paper. As I started toward the door, carrying my guitar, I caught a glimpse of my grim, determined expression in the mirror. I almost laughed. I made an obscene gesture with my thumb at my grinning reflection and left the room.
The time was only ten thirty. There were dozens of bars, cabarets and beer-and-wine joints in Jacksonville, and I decided to cover them all, one by one, until I found a job.
I entered the first bar I came to down the street and handed the slip of paper to the bartender. He glanced at it, gave it back and pointed to the door.
At the bar on the next corner I tried a different tactic. I had learned a lesson in the first bar. Before presenting my slip of paper to the man in the white jacket, I made the sign of the tall one, and put change on the bar to pay for the beer. Beer is the easiest drink there is to order, whether you can talk or not. No matter how noisy a place is you can always get a bartender's attention by holding stiff hands out straight, the right hand approximately one foot above the left. This gesture will always produce a beer, draft if they have it, or a can of some brand if they do not.
“Sorry, buddy,” the bartender returned my slip of paper, “but I don't have a music and dancing license. I couldn't hire you if I wanted to.”
I finished my glass of beer and returned to the sidewalk. A license for music and dancing had never occurred to me, but that simple requirement narrowed my search. I decided to become more selective. After bypassing several unlikely bars, and walking a half-dozen blocks, I came to a fairly nice-looking cabaret. There was a small blue winking neon sign in the window that stated Chez Vernon. The entranceway was between a men's haberdashery and a dosed movie theater. To the left of the bar entrance another door opened into the package store, which was also a part of the nightclub, and there was a sandwich board on the sidewalk announcing that the James Boys were featured inside every night except Sunday.
There were four eight-by-ten photos of the James Boys mounted on the board, and I studied them for a moment before I went inside. They wore their hair long, almost to the shoulder, but they had on Western-style clothes. They were evidently a country music group. In the smiling photos two of them had Spanish guitars like mine, one held an electric guitar and the remaining member peeped out from behind a bass. I entered the bar.
The bar was in a fairly narrow corridor—most of the space it should have had was crowded out by the partitioning for the package store—but there were approximately twenty-five stools, and a short service bar at the far end. Only one bartender was on duty, and there was only one customer sitting at the first stool. The customer sat with his arms locked behind his back glaring down distastefully at a double