That Evening Sun
By Chas4455©
I've got a cane bottom rocking chair, one of four actually, that sits on the veranda looking out across the dirt road and a seemingly endless vista of green cotton fields. I'm sitting here with a cold PBR in one hand, and mindlessly stroking an old dog by my side with the other. Lady is about thirteen now, and doesn't do much except follow me around all day. And that's good enough for me.
"Daddy, what you doin' out here?"
"Well, Junebug, I'm just watchin' the sun go down."
"Momma says tell you supper is 'bout ready."
"Okay, you go tell her I'll be along directly."
Lizzy is four years old, and the light of my life. I just love her to pieces, almost as much as I love her momma. Most every day, she is hanging around the store, in her shorts and tee shirt, her little feet perpetually in red flip flops, with her hair in a single braid down her back. She won't go barefoot like her older brothers Jeremiah and Samuel, and she insists her momma has to keep her red polish on her fingers and toes. Her caramel colored skin is just like my coffee every morning, creamy and sweet. Just like her momma, Sara Jane.
You know how that old song goes, "I hate to see that evening sun go down."
The sun sets in the west, and I know my kids will be watching it just as I am. And it breaks my heart knowing I'll never see them again. My old lady, my ex, is living in Honolulu with my two children, Robert and Maria, whom I haven't seen in ten years. At my expense, of course. And I'm living in back of a beer joint in Mississippi.
It ain't much, but it's mine.
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Smilin' Jack
I grew up on a dusty dirt road about 10 miles from Clarksdale, Mississippi. Across the road, to the west was 200 acres of cotton. There were a few trees to the back of our place, where Black Bayou ran. My old man, Charlie Gardner, ran a country store, really just a beer joint with a few groceries. He told me my great-grandpa had been a moonshiner back during prohibition, so serving alcohol came naturally to me. My mom, after she ran off and abandoned me and my little brother, was a whore on the streets of New Orleans, according to my dad. I was 16 when the mail carrier stopped to deliver a package to my dad. Dad said it was my mother's ashes. He kept her ashes in an urn on a shelf above the juke box; he felt that was where she would feel most at home.
Dad always was a sucker for a woman with a sad story. Thelma had shown up in the bar one day looking for a job. Her husband had kicked her out of her house, and moved his girlfriend in. Thelma had everything she owned in a beat up old suitcase.
Dad took her in, gave her a job, and let her move into the guest room in our house. Thelma was 32, about ten years younger than Dad. She had shoulder length brown hair and brown eyes. She stood about 5'4, almost a foot shorter than Dad. She had ample breasts displayed in a plaid shirt tied under her breasts with about three buttons undone, a small waist and a flat tummy. She had nice legs, even in her cut-off denim shorts and worn out, dirty white sneakers. Even though I was ten at the time, I knew Thelma was an attractive woman.
After three weeks, Thelma moved out of the guest room and into Dad's bed. She became the substitute Mom for TJ and me.
I grew up working in the beer joint, sweeping floors, collecting empties, carrying in cases of beer from the walk-in cooler out back. By the time I was 16, I was serving beer behind the bar. It didn't matter that I wasn't old enough to legally serve beer; we didn't have a license anyway.
If you are standing behind the bar, loading beer into the cooler, and someone says "Jack, hand me a beer", what are you supposed to do? You hand them a beer.
Whenever the county deputy sheriff would stop by, he'd have a cold beer and some boiled peanuts, spend some time talking with Dad, and then go on his way. Dad and Deputy John Howard had played football together down at Clarksdale High School, back in the day. Dad made sure that Becky Howard always got a venison roast every year at deer season, and Sheriff Johnson could always count on a donation to his election campaign.
I was 18 when I graduated from Clarksdale High School. My dad's picture was on the wall with the football team for all four years he played there. His senior class picture included the only picture I'd ever seen of my mom. Annabelle Lee was a pretty eighteen year old Southern Belle, a year before I was born. Of course my pictures would always be there as well, with my senior class and with the football teams that I was on. I was never very athletic, so I was the team trainer for four years.
The day after graduation, Dad left Thelma running the beer joint, and he and TJ and I rode in the old pickup down to the bus station in Clarksdale. I got on a Trailways bus to Memphis, and then to the Great Lakes Naval Training Station. I had never been outside of Mississippi, and hardly ever out of Coahoma County.
The Navy trained me to be a Pharmacists Mate. I guess they heard about my background serving alcohol. I expected to be in a nice clean infirmary on an aircraft carrier or a guided missile cruiser. I ended up humping the boonies with the Marines as a corpsman. So, I was still the trainer, carrying the Band-Aids and bandages for the team. I got shot at just as much, but couldn't shoot back. After six years, I did look a lot more athletic.
When I turned 24, I was stationed with the Marines in Okinawa. I was actually working in an infirmary with other corpsmen and a doctor, but if we went to the field I would be assigned to a Marine company. I decided that when my hitch was up, I would take my discharge in country, and take the opportunity to see the world. Well, part of it anyway. I had already been to Tokyo and to Bangkok on R&R from Okinawa, so I decided to hitch a ride to the Philippines.
For two cartons of Marlboros and a fifth of Johnny Walker, the Navy put me on a cargo plane to Subic Bay. From there I learned how to use the native means of transportation to get myself to Manila. I found the Saigon Bar was popular with American and Australian sailors, and I convinced Dennis, the Aussie owner, he could use another English speaking bartender. I was provided a room over the bar, and all the bar food I could eat from the kitchen. In return, I was expected to work about eighteen hours a day. I served beer from the bar, cleaned tables, swept the floors, restocked the beer coolers -- it was just like being back home.
Back home though, we didn't have bar girls. Except Thelma, but she didn't take customers upstairs. These girls, mostly 18 to 22 years old, having grown up on the streets, could take care of themselves, but in case of trouble I was expected to back up George, the bouncer. George, not his real name, was 6'3", and 300 pounds, a former professional Sumo wrestler. Not much got past George. But just in case, I kept a Louisville Slugger behind the bar.
Dennis had an old Kawasaki motorbike that he let me buy. It took some work to get it reliable enough to get me where I wanted to go. I took a week off from the bar, and traveled north just to see the country. I spent a week going to the Lingayen Gulf, where the US Sixth Army landed in 1945. On another trip, I went down to the Bataan Peninsula, and then took a boat to the island of Corregidor, General McArthur's headquarters in 1942.
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Elaina
Elaina was one of the Filipino girls that worked in our bar. She had just turned twenty. A bar girl's job was to attract customers off the street to come inside to buy drinks. She would sit with the customers and get them to buy her drinks. Of course the girls were only given Cokes or fruit juice, but we charged cocktail prices to the customers. The girls had access to rooms upstairs where they could take their customers for sex.
The bar closed about 2 o'clock in the morning, and by 3 I was in my bed, totally exhausted. The girls, for the most part, had their johns back on the street by 3. I had been working behind the bar for two weeks, when I woke up one morning to find I wasn't alone. A naked girl was sharing my bed, spooned up against me. I had one arm across her body and her breast in my hand. Her butt was firmly pressed up against my morning wood.
I squeezed a nipple, and I felt her butt give a wiggle and press back more firmly against my crotch. I pushed my knee between her legs, and she raised her leg allowing my cock access to her pussy. With a little push, I was in. We lay there entwined, rocking slowly against each other until our emotions took control of our bodies, and forced us to begin moving more intensely. I flipped this still unidentified girl onto her back, and mounted her. I proceeded to fuck her with all I had. I growled as I shot my cum into her body. She wrapped her legs around me, hugged me to her tightly, and squeaked.
That's right, some women scream when they orgasm. Elaina squeaked.
Elaina shared my bed most nights for the next six months. This was not a relationship; there was no love or affection between us, not at first. We barely spoke the same language. This was just companionship between two people who enjoyed having sex that was not a commercial transaction.
I learned that Elaina was not one of the bar girls, but worked as a maid for the other girls, cleaning their rooms every morning and doing their laundry. Rita, the bar girl's mamasan or supervisor, told me that Elaina watched me working around the bar every day and had a crush on the big Americano, her Senor JohnWayne.
After six months, she left Manila and went back to the village where she lived with her family.
Elaina's cousin worked at the Thai restaurant up the street. About a month after Elaina left, Maria came to see me at the bar one afternoon while I was cleaning up the place. Maria looked a lot like Elaina, same height and figure, same long black hair. She was wearing red capri pants, riding low on her hips, and flip flops. She wore a black Metallica tee shirt, with the arms cut off and the bottom cut back to show her midriff, and her cute little belly button. She was apparently not wearing a bra, but it didn't really matter since she had no tits anyway. I could tell from her appearance that she would be a waitress, not a bar girl.
She said she had a message from Elaina. Elaina wanted to see me, wanted me to come visit her village. So, as soon as I could convince Dennis to give me some time off, I was on my bike and headed out into the Philippine countryside. In other words, jungle.
