Drink

DRINK

WERE LINDON, UTAH, a large enough city to have its own Chamber of Commerce, the brochures undoubtedly would read that the community sits "nestled at the foot of towering, majestic Mt. Timpanogos." The brochures would further point out the warmth and friendliness of its citizens, the family-oriented atmosphere, the many linden trees, the economic opportunities, the prosperity--in short, the general perfection of the community.
It is unlikely, however, that those brochures would mention anything at all about one of the city's more permanent and long-standing business establishments: the New Yorker.
The New Yorker was a "lounge"--in truth, a bar; and, by local standards, a pretty rough one at that: home of the Sundowners, the county's most notorious motorcycle club--that is to say, its only motorcycle club. The mayor, the city council, and the county treasurer met often on the golf course to discuss the best way to deal with the problem, but their talks never led to anything. There was nothing they could do, really. No serious laws were ever broken, and the owners--for some reason ownership of the New Yorker changed hands about every six months--always managed to pay their bills and stay out of serious trouble.
Living in Orem, Utah, right next to Lindon, Utah, Joe Pancake had never before heard of the New Yorker until one Wednesday afternoon when some of his former roommates from college dropped by from out of town. Their music group, "Mountain Meadows," was the house band at the bar for the week. Joe's friends immediately made themselves a quick, easy dinner, and then with hardly time for a word of protest from Joe, they kidnaped him and his beat-up Martin and brought them along for the night.
Joe was used to this sort of thing and went along cheerfully. In college, he'd often tagged along with his friends on jobs. He=d never considered music as anything more than an enjoyable diversion for himself--which meant: he enjoyed it. He played and sang adequately and had even penned a number of forgettable tunes. In fact, at one time he was lead singer and song-writer for a four-piece unambitionless jug band that called itself--well--"Vomit and the Big Chunks." They played primarily at loose parties and risky dinners; and, occasionally, Joe, alone but for his guitar and kazoo, had taken to the streets to perform in front of movie houses for those waiting in the long lines. The tips were mediocre.
At the New Yorker this one particular Wednesday evening, his friends, after their first set, shoved him up onto the stage. Twenty minutes later the crowd loved him. And by the end of the evening, two short sets later, Al, the current proprietor of the place, told Joe to give him a call any time he wanted to come back and play between band sets. He said he'd even pay him.
A few months later, just before Christmas, Joe took him up on the offer. He needed the extra cash, and so, after a quick phone call, two hours later, Joe walked into the New Yorker just as the house band--no one he knew--was finishing its opening set. They left their P.A. system on for him, and Joe hurriedly stepped up to the microphone, strummed a few chords to get the proper volume, slowly worked into a rhythm, and then broke into the song he usually opened with: the old Carter Family standard, "Wildwood Flower." Playing just the instrumental version, he picked on his guitar and blew into a kazoo that was hooked onto an old, bent wire coat-hanger wrapped around his neck. Following this opening number, Joe briefly introduced himself to the crowd, thanked Al and the band for the use of the stage, and launched into his former band=s theme song, "The Dry Heaves":

Well, I woke up in the morning with a pain in my gut;
I knew if I ate anything, I'd throw it up. . . .

You can get away with a song like that in a bar. And Joe always found that the drunker a crowd got, the more they enjoyed his act. He belted out the first two verses and then leaned over to blow out a wild lick on the kazoo. Returning to the mike for the last verse, he wrapped up the song with a rousing final chorus:

Dry Heave! Dry Heave! Dry Heave! Dry Heave!
Remember Halley's Comet?
Hell, it rhymes with vomit.
Dry Heave!

Once again, Joe thanked the crowd for their kindness before easing himself into a slower, more encouraging and romantic number, John Prine's "Yes, I Think They Ought To Name A Drink After You."
By now, Joe normally would have been enjoying himself thoroughly--in the middle of a set, all apparently going well, loosened up, the crowd generally behind him--had it not been for one additional detail.
During the last verse of "Dry Heaves," Joe had noticed in the back--actually the front of the bar, but the back of the dance floor and away from the stage--that one of the Sundowners had taken a special interest in his performance. The biker had nudged his girlfriend a couple of times and motioned with his beer up toward Joe and the stage. Then suddenly, right after the song was over, he pulled out a chair from one of the tables and placed it directly in the center of the dance floor--not fifteen feet from Joe--and took a seat. And there he sat, staring up in a cold and expressionless face, chugging from the two cans of beer he held in his hands.
Joe tried ignoring him as best he could, but during the second verse of one of his own tunes, "I Don't Want Your Wife (More Than Three Nights A Week)," he heard something slap against his guitar and then fall away. He looked down at "Goldie"--that was the name stitched across his denim jacket--who was now laughing out loud.
What the hell, Joe thought.
A sweat already breaking out at his hairline and armpits and beginning to seep into his shirt, Joe tried as best he could to get through the set. Instead, he just became more and more aware of the presence before him. Suddenly, Goldie got up and disappeared into the crowd at the bar. But in a moment he was back at the edge of the dance floor, this time with one of his buddies, also in motorcycle garb. He kept pointing at Joe Pancake and then leaning over and shouting something into his friend's ear. His friend, who was about six-and-a-half feet tall, had the sleeves cut off his jacket to reveal a pair of arms that were corded like a rope, and he wore motorcycle gloves that looked as if they could, and probably did, double in their service during untidy brawls.
Joe hurried through his last song, "Breakin' Wind," and then jumped from the stage, heading for the nearest and darkest corner of the lounge. Finding a secluded, unlit table, he bent down behind it, taking as long a time as he could to put his guitar back inside the case, when he noticed that one of the strings was broken. Gotta fix that, he would like to have thought. But when he looked up, Goldie was standing over him, grinning from ear to ear and bobbing his head up and down. Joe looked longingly at the exit, a hundred miles away.
Without asking, and taking a seat at the table, Goldie spoke roughly, in a no-nonsense, authoritarian manner, "I'm gonna buy you a beer, man."
And he did.