The Honk and Holler Opening Soon (3 page)

“Molly O, what the hell are you yelling about?”

“Caney Paxton!” Molly O clutched at her heart while she worked to regain her breath. “I think you’ve gave me a thrombosis.”

“Well, if your heart stops before you close that door, then I’m pretty sure my pecker’s gonna freeze off.”

“Oh,” she said, noticing for the first time that Caney was naked.

“Honey, you ought to have something on your feet.”

“My feet? It’s not my feet I’m worried about.”

“What in the world are you doing out here without any clothes on? You know what time it is?”

“No, but if you’ll shut that door . . .”

“Caney, are you okay?” she asked, her voice registering concern.

“That kidney infection’s come back, hasn’t it? I knew I should’ve refilled your prescription soon as—”

“My kidneys are fine! My feet are fine!” Then Caney glanced down at his lap. “But this little baby here is about to ice over.”

“Well, I don’t wonder. It’s freezing in here.” Molly O slammed the door, snapped on the lights, then fiddled with the thermostat until the heater kicked on.

“You started coffee yet?” she asked as she peeled off her coat.

“Nope.”

“Good.” She hung her coat on a rack in the corner, then bent to a cracked mirror propped on a low, narrow shelf. “I can’t abide a naked man in the kitchen.” She smoothed her hair, then wiped at a smudge of rouge on one cheek. “Dewey O’Keefe, God rest his soul, thought he couldn’t cook a lick unless he was naked.” Molly O

ran her tongue over her teeth once, checking for lipstick.

“By the way,” Caney said, “what are you doing here so early?”

“Couldn’t sleep.”

“Those dreams again?”

“No. Everything’s fine.” Molly O shot him her top-of-the-morning smile, but not even Merle Norman could help her pull it off. Lips shiny with Wild Poppy, cheeks flushed with Woodland Rose, skin dusted with Perfectly Porcelain . . . none of it could hide the lines that webbed her brow or the dark half-moons beneath her eyes or the tightness that pulled at her mouth.

“Feeling all right?”

“Great,” she said as she slipped into her cheerful Christmas apron, the skirt too tight across her hips, the bodice too narrow to cover her Maidenform double D’s. But this morning, the apron fit her better than the Christmas cheer.

“Insomnia?” The question Caney intended sounded more like an accusation.

“Too excited about Christmas, I guess.” She tried to put some sparkle into it. “Still got so much to do.”

“Well, I hope to God you’re all finished decorating.”

“Yeah, at least I’m done with that. But I haven’t wrapped not one gift and I’ve still got to—”

“Look, you want to take the day off, that’s fine with me. I mean, it’s not like we’re overrun with business here. Nothing I can’t handle.”

“Oh no!” she said too fast. “I’ll get it all done. Always do. Matter of fact, I been thinking about helping you out this weekend.

No sense in having Wanda Sue come in.”

“This weekend? Christmas?”

“Well, yeah. But you know what you can expect from Wanda Sue. Sitting on her butt, drinking coffee. And you know for sure Henry Brister’s gonna show up for Christmas dinner. Can’t get a fork of mashed potatoes in his mouth, let alone the rest of it. You think Wanda Sue’s gonna cut up Henry’s turkey? You think she’s gonna do that?”

“What about Brenda? Thought you were going to Nashville.

Thought you two were going to spend Christmas together.”

“That’s not going to work out the way we planned.”

“You mean—”

“See, Brenda’s got some auditions coming up. . . .”

“On Christmas?”

“And she’s having new head shots made. Same photographer who shoots Tanya Tucker’s pictures.”

“But why can’t you go on to Nashville? I can’t figure out why you—”

“You don’t know nothing about show business, Caney. Nothing at all.”

Caney knew Molly O wasn’t telling him the whole story, not by a long shot. But when she stepped behind the counter and began to spoon coffee into a filter, he knew the conversation had come to a close.

“Now,” Molly O said, “we gonna get this place opened up or what?”

M
OLLY O HAD long ago given up trying to help Caney get dressed each morning, so she stood by and watched as he rocked back on the bed, then wrestled his way into a pair of Wranglers by rolling first onto one hip and then the other.

About the most she could do was make sure he had matched socks, clean jeans and a fresh denim shirt every morning. If she didn’t, he’d simply slide into whatever he’d worn the day before and the one before that. Clothes held no more interest for Caney than food or the weather or the time of day.

When someone began to bang on the front door of the Honk, Caney shook his head in disgust.

“Why the hell can’t he wait till we’re open?”

“Guess he’s hungry,” Molly O said as she peeled plastic off a shirt just back from the cleaners. “Life don’t like to wait long for his breakfast.”

Life Halstead, the most regular of the regulars, was always the first customer of the day and nearly always the last.

“He’s hungry, all right,” Caney said. “But it’s not food he’s after.”

“Then why does he show up here for breakfast, dinner and supper, seven days a week?”

“No mystery there.” Caney popped his head through the neck of an undershirt, then worked his arms into the sleeves which strained against his biceps. “You know he comes to see you.”

Molly O took a few seconds to consider Caney’s remark, then she pitched his shirt at him. “You ought to be ashamed of yourself, Caney. Why, Reba’s not been in the ground more’n six months.”

“Well, I doubt Life’s spending much time checking the calendar.”

“He’s just lonesome, that’s all. Sold off most of his land and some of his cattle, so he doesn’t have much to keep him busy.

That’s why he comes here . . . to eat, have a little company, read the morning paper.”

“Life doesn’t read the paper. He just props it in front of him so you won’t know he’s watching you.”

“You’re beginning to sound like Wanda Sue. Biggest gossip in town.”

“Not gossip. Fact.”

“Caney, you know how old Life is?”

“What’s that got to do with it?”

Molly O stepped closer to the bed and lowered her voice, though there was little danger Life could hear her above the racket he was making out front.

“The man is old enough to die,” she said.

“Hell, we’re all old enough to die.”

“Yeah, but some’s older than others.”

“Looks to me like Life’s still got some kick left in him.”

“I doubt it. He’s had two heart attacks. Gallbladder’s gone bad.

And he’s about half-deaf.”

“Too many damaged parts, huh?” Caney hauled one leg onto the bed, then stuffed his lifeless foot into a stretched gray sock.

“Well, that’ll damned sure take a man out of the game, won’t it?”

The question hung between them long enough to fill the room with silence. Even the banging out front had stopped.

“Honey, I—”

“You’d better go open the door or we’re gonna lose our first customer of the day,” Caney said as he reached for his other sock. “And we can’t afford to let Life get away from us, can we?”

*

By the time Caney had finished dressing and rolled into the cafe, Life Halstead was hunkered over his second cup of coffee and a greasy plate streaked with cold egg yolk. Though his face was half-hidden behind the morning paper, his eyes were firmly fixed on Molly O’s bottom as she bent to swipe at crumbs on a tabletop.

“Morning, Life,” Caney said.

“Yes, it is.” Life cut his eyes back to the paper, but he was clearly not as engrossed by the print as he was by the way Molly O’s skirt stretched across her hips. “A fine morning.”

But Caney could see little evidence of a fine morning. A steady rain had started to fall, and the wind, straight out of the north, scattered scraps of yesterday’s garbage across the parking lot.

“Raccoons got into the trash again last night,” Caney said. “We got crap blowing from here to Texas.”

“I wouldn’t worry about it,” Life said. “A little more crap in Texas ain’t gonna make much difference.” Obviously pleased with this contribution of humor, Life smiled.

When Caney heard the old Plymouth pull up and park, he didn’t even have to turn to know who was coming in.

Soldier Starr and Quinton Roach were always the first of the coffee drinkers to arrive, settling in at their regular table just before seven, the same table they had occupied every morning since the day the Honk opened. The third member of their group, Hooks Red Eagle, usually showed up at seven-thirty, the galvanized tub in the bed of his pickup teeming with catfish. Hooks, always on the lake before dawn to run his trotline, sold fish to Caney from time to time and gave the rest to his neighbors, having no taste for fish himself.

All three men were Cherokees, all in their late sixties . . . friends from boyhood, and all veterans of World War II, the one subject they never discussed, their conversations centering instead on tribal politics, weather and women. Though they had long suspected the three topics were connected in some mysterious way, they had yet to discover it.

“Hey, Caney,” Soldier said, “I figured we were going to have to go down to the Dairy Queen to find a cup of coffee this morning.”

Caney looked puzzled. “Dairy Queen’s not open yet.”

“Looks like you’re not either.”

“What?”

“You forgot to turn on the sign.”

“Oh.” Caney stirred a spoon of sugar into his coffee, then reached over the cash register and flipped a switch on the wall.

The sign out front, once the biggest and brightest in the county, tilted and trembled against the wind. Pelted by too many BBs and battered by too many storms, it attracted no more attention now than a dozen others along this stretch of highway. Now, even the brilliance of the neon had faded.

But twelve years earlier—when the awnings were bright, when the stainless-steel kitchen gleamed, when the countertop and tile glistened—Caney hadn’t had to be reminded about the sign. Then, when even “Opening Soon” had been a fresh joke, Caney’s fingers would tingle with excitement as he reached for the switch that would turn it on. And when the first bright neon blazed in the morning sky, he would stare wide-eyed with the wonder of a boy watching his first Roman candle explode in the air.

*

The day the sign had been delivered and installed, Caney turned twenty, still young enough to laugh about mistakes. But after eighteen months in a VA hospital, he was not as familiar with laughter as he had once been.

Caney had designed the building with the help of Wink Web-ster, an amputee in the ward who had done some drafting in high school. And from the day the foundation was poured, Molly O made sure they got to “watch” the building going up by sending them snapshots she took of the construction site each week.

Then, the morning before Caney’s discharge, he called Leon’s Neon in Tulsa where he had the sign made. He told Leon exactly what he wanted: THE HONK AND HOLLER in ten-inch letters, red neon against a white background. After all the details were settled, Caney wrote a check for the deposit and put it in the mail.

That might have been the end of it if the guys in the ward hadn’t smuggled in some beer and bourbon that afternoon to give Caney a “getting-the-hell-out-of-here” party. And the sign might have been perfect if Caney hadn’t drunk half a case of Coors and if he hadn’t listened to Wink, who drank the other half.

“Hell, Caney,” Wink said, “if you’re going to put that sign up now, you ought to add ‘Opening Soon’ to it. Then everyone who drives by will know something big is going to happen.”

“You think so?”

“Sure. They’ll figure there’s going to be some kind of grand opening. Prizes, free food. That sort of thing.”

“That’s not a bad idea.”

“Maybe a band. Have a dance out there on the parking lot.”

“Yeah. I like that,” Caney said, his entrepreneurial spirit fueled by a dozen cans of beer.

“You’ll draw a big crowd, too, if you’ll tell those carhops you hire to wear short skirts.”

“Real short!”

“And halter tops.”

“Those stretchy kind.”

“Go call that guy. . . .”

“Leon?”

“Yeah. Call him before it’s too late.”

“Well . . .”

“Look. Just tell him you’ve decided on a little change in design.

Tell him you want to add ‘Opening Soon.’ Now how he does it is up to him, of course, but if it was me, I’d hand-letter a sign to hook on the bottom of the neon. Then, once you’re open, just unhook it, toss it in the trash and you’re in business.”

“Okay! Soon’s I finish this beer, I’m gonna call Leon.”

Three weeks later, Leon delivered and installed the sign. THE

HONK AND HOLLER OPENING SOON. Mounted on steel, anchored in concrete. Six hundred dollars of red neon. Nonrefundable.

At first, living with the sign was easy. While Caney was doing the hiring, ordering stock, having menus printed, “Opening Soon”

made sense. And the grand opening
was
grand—free hotdogs, a rock band and carhops in halter tops.

But as soon as the hoopla ended and the Honk and Holler was in business, “Opening Soon” gave the locals something to laugh about.

Caney didn’t mind, though, not in the beginning. Not when old pickups and new Firebirds and jacked-up Camaros circled the lot, waiting for a parking spot. Not when knots of teens in tight jeans fed handfuls of quarters into the jukebox. Not when long-legged carhops juggled trays of chili cheeseburgers and frosted mugs of cherry-pickle-lemon-lime-orange until two o’clock every morning.

But all that had changed.

And now THE HONK AND HOLLER OPENING SOON was just another tired old joke.

T
HE LUNCH CROWD at the Honk wouldn’t have filled a Volks-wagen van. Two checkers from the Piggly Wiggly; a telephone re-pairman out of Muskogee; Cash Garnette, who auctioned livestock at the sale barn; a kid cutting classes at the high school; Wilma Driver, who sold real estate for Century 21; and, of course, Life Halstead.