Bret Calvert

Jesse-Lee always folded his napkins before he threw them away. Carefully placing each edge in perfect symmetry while double and triple checking his work until it was immaculate. Then it went in the trash. It amused him to think that somewhere in a giant pit of the discarded and flawed there were hundreds of his perfectly folded napkins. Part of his legacy, he supposed. Future generations would discover and ponder his napkins and wonder who had the presence of mind to organize their trash just so. Principles like erosion never entered his mind because he never knew of them. Science was a fairy tale he had overheard at the Outpost Saloon. He didn’t understand half of what other people were saying but he figured anything he didn’t understand didn’t apply to him. So, as far as he knew those napkins would still exist in perfect symmetry 1,000 years from now…although he wondered why anyone would go picking around 1,000-year-old garbage…but if they did, boy were they in for a surprise. He loved this thought. It made him smile every day and every day he had it at about the same time.

 

He kept his smile on as he made his way to his feet. He tried not to think about a time when getting out of a booth was not so much of an ordeal. He tried not to think of anything that had happened before now. That was not easy. He had a lot of time to think and now is only so interesting. Eventually a mind will wander into predicting or reminiscing without the mind’s bearer even knowing its happening. But, when he could help it, he kept his thoughts in front of him so they couldn’t sneak up and attack.

 

He gathered his refuse, including his perfect napkins, and threw them away. He took a new napkin from the dispenser, ran some water from the soda fountain over it and wiped clean the spot where he had sat. Always leave things better than you found them, he thought. That way someone might notice you were there and be happy about it. Making people happy was his favorite thing. It hadn’t always been.

 

Used to be, it didn’t even occur to him to try. But now he measured his wealth in smiles…of which he received dozens daily. He had been the “the old man in town” for as long as anyone can remember. Everyone knew his name. He never paid for coffee and donuts at Neutze’s Mini-Mart. He had lunch every day at the Ingram high school and attended every baseball, football and basketball game the Fighting Warriors played. He went to every track meet. He saw every school play free of charge and could be found at nearly every community event. Everything from snooty Chamber of Commerce parties to pancake suppers in the elementary school cafeteria. No one really talked to him for longer than a few minutes and he couldn’t recall ever telling anyone his last name. He didn’t think that was too important because if someone said “Jesse Lee” he would turn around and if they happened to be talking to someone else he could pretend he was looking for a clock. So far, however, they had always been talking to him.

 

He waved goodbye and smiled at the young man working the counter at Neutze’s.

     “Thank you, kindly.”

     “ Anytime, Jesse-Lee. It’s our pleasure.”

     “I’ll see you tomorrow.”

     “You have yourself a good day, alright?”

     “I’ll do my level best.”

 

   This was the extent of most of his conversations. He’d never minded. He didn’t have much to say and felt no need to listen to people ramble on about things he wouldn’t understand anyway. No one ever struck up a conversation about football or anything interesting and he didn’t know how to start a conversation himself. He wouldn’t know what to say. He knew everyone thought he was just a harmless old man and he didn’t ever want to say anything that might make them think otherwise.

 

   A man from Johnson City had been in Neutze’s one morning when Jesse-Lee came in for his coffee and donut. Out of nowhere, he began talking about dinosaur footprints that had recently been discovered in the Guadalupe River, just a few miles west on Highway 39. At first, Jesse-Lee thought the man was talking to himself until he looked up from his coffee and found himself eye to response-expectant eye with Mr. Johnson City.

 

     “So, what do you think?” The man asked

     “I don’t have an opinion, really. Never put much thought to it.” Jesse answered. The perfect response when you have no idea what someone is talking about. It was a response Jesse-Lee used often.

     “Well, if you ask me.” The man continued even though no one, especially not Jesse-Lee had asked him “some genius with some dinosaur T-shirts and a shovel faked the whole thing. I mean someone with ideas. I’m here myself to take pictures of the damn footprints for my postcard company….” The man went on and on. Talking about this and that and his wife and his beautiful daughter and his greek Olympian of a son. Jesse-Lee thought that staring at his donut would get the man to lose interest and go away to no avail. The man kept talking. If this is what conversations are like nowadays, Jessie-Lee thought, I can continue to do without them. This made him laugh a little. He was trying to stifle that laugh when he realized the man from Johnson City had asked him a question.

 

     “So…can I?”

     “Can you what?”

     “Take a picture of you. For my postcards.”

     “Who’d buy a postcard of me?”

     “You’d be surprised. My best seller in ’86 was a picture of a monkey taking a shit in his hand.”

     “What kind of business are you runnin’?” Jessie-Lee wasn’t sure he wanted to be in the same business with a monkey that didn’t know any better than to not make in it’s own hand.

     “It was just a gag card. Yours would be very serious. A nice picture of an old man in small town Texas. That cowboy hat of yours is just too perfect. I’ll give you…three hundred dollars.”

 

   Jesse didn’t have much use for money. He had tried to pay for things years ago, but no one would let him. The whole town took care of him. He hadn’t paid for a meal in 18 years at that time (it’s been over 30 now). But his boots were worn thin and were held together with duct tape that Mr. Neutze had given him years earlier.

 

     “Cash?”

 

   The man pulled three one-hundred dollar bills from his wallet and lay them on the table.

 

     “You throw in a ride to and from Keton’s shoe store in Kerrville and you’ve got a deal.”

     “Deal.”

     “Well, lets get this show on the road. They start serving lunch up at the high school in just two hours.”

 

     The man took only a few minutes to get his pictures and then took Jesse to Keton’s where he purchased a pair of snake-skin name-brand boots for $95. He’s still working on spending the rest of that money to this day.

 

   He found out after Mr. Johnson city had dropped him off at the school that they were probably the most uncomfortable shoes in the history of man. They were gorgeous but felt like they had been made for little girls. He put his old boots back on and carried the new pair around for the rest of the day. He put them in the corner of his room that night and didn’t touch them for nearly 13 years. He would have taken them back to Keton’s but he didn’t want to ask someone for a ride and he didn’t dare walk that far. Kerrville was not nearly as familiar to him as Ingram and he didn’t want to walk back in the dark. This was the longest he had conversed with another person since Mary left and all he wound up with was a pair of pinchy boots and $205 dollars no one would let him spend.

 

   A few months later Neutze’s got a postcard addressed to Jessie-Lee with his picture in black and white on the front. Jessie-Lee always kept it with him and once told Mr. Neutze it was like “carryin’ around a mirror that got stuck.” Neither the boots or the card convinced him of the value of extensive human contact. He kept making the people of Ingram smile and they kept feeding him but that was all and that was fine with him. That’s the way its been ever since.

 

He stepped out of the store and walked across the parking lot to the shoulder of the highway. He turned right and made his way towards the high school…whistling to himself.

  

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   The sun winked at Jesse-Lee off the guardrail. He was leaning with his hands on the warm metal, looking into the creek bed. He always seemed to find himself on this bridge. It was never on the way to anywhere he was going, but somehow he just ended up here. He would sort of realize that he was peering down on to the rows of white rocks that had been polished by a mighty stream that no longer existed. He wondered why they still called it Goat Creek when he hadn’t seen any water in the darn thing for 12 years…except for the floods.

 

 Every three years or so, the heavens would open up and dump so much rain on this land that the normally lazy Guadalupe would swell with such girth and force that all surrounding life would cease until the flood would run it’s course and the river would retreat to the confines of its muddy banks. Until then there was water and chaos everywhere. Trees uprooted and floating down Old Ingram Loop. People on roofs praying for their lives. All manner of destruction and loss at the hands of a river that had drawn everyone here in the first place. Jesse didn’t mind the floods so much. He would walk to the Outpost in the rain and from then on he wouldn’t have to get back out in it. Sheriff Wheymeyer would come and pick him up there as soon as they opened the high school gym for shelter. He enjoyed staying in the gym. It was always full of families who were so happy to be alive and together. When the waters receded and they had a chance to see what the river had done to their homes…they changed their minds. But, for the time being, most feelings were of relief and community. He liked seeing happy families and they always seemed pleased to see that Jesse-Lee was OK. They would come up and shake his hand and make idle comments about whether this flood was stronger than the one three years ago or not and thank God its not as bad as the one 9 years ago. Jesse-Lee never paid much attention to the aftermath of the floods. The schools always reopened, Neutze’s and The Outpost were on high ground and hardly ever damaged. He never really worried about anyone except for Mary. Only God knew where she was, but Jesse-Lee was sure it was far from rivers and creek beds and floods.

 

   Sometimes the flood would take someone from the community. This always touched Jesse-Lee deeper than most anything. He would notice the lack of a particular face or would see a headline about someone’s death. He never knew who we was supposed to tell how sorry he was. Drowning must be the most awful way to die, he thought.

 

   Just Awful.

 

   He must have been standing there for at least an hour. The sun was only a little ways above the tree tops that lined the base of Boot Hill. He wanted to get going to make sure he made it to The Outpost before dark, but once he made that decision it always took him a few minutes to pull his eyes from the creek bed and get his body to move. He ran his hand along the guardrail as he walked. He stopped where the sloped bank met the road at the end of the bridge and turned around. He looked at the creek and thought about all that had washed over the rocks when Goat Creek was actually a creek. How much water…how many fish…and how many memories had lazily drifted under this bridge? Too many, he thought, I’m glad it’s dry. It can never take anything again.

 

He turned left and walked alongside the road parallel to the creek bed. Up ahead he could see the river. Most of the time it was the most beautiful river God ever created. Gently sloping, grassy banks surrounding lazy wandering clear/green water. Wide and deep in some parts…shallow and narrow in others. Perfect for swimming, tubing, fishing or anything else you can imagine using a river for. This was the only part of the river Jesse-Lee saw anymore. He used to lay on the banks and kiss Mary and swim in the cleansing arms of the Guadalupe. He didn’t want to touch it now. Nothing could ever be that good again and he didn’t want to remember it. The river always made him think of her and he found himself fighting that memory this time every day.

  

He turned right on the near side of the road running alongside the river. He always walked on the opposite side of the road from the river to give it some space. Once he turned he could see the Outpost’s giant deer-antler billboard that towered over the tiny bar at the top of Boot Hill. He liked to watch his feet when he walked here so every now and then he could look up and surprise himself with how much bigger the sign had become. He could tell, depending on the size of the sign, how much farther he had to walk. It was very small at this point and he had a long way to go. He trained his eyes to a particularly frayed fold of duct tape on the top of his boots and kept walking. It was warm and clear and perfect as the sun tinted the crust of the sky a hazy orange/pink. He could see the sun setting just to the left of the Outpost sign. He would check it when he looked up to make sure he could make it to the Outpost before it got completely dark. He always beat the sun. Always just barely.

 

 

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     Jesse sat and looked out the window at the end of the bar. He had just finished a bowl of stew that Jeannie had brought for him. It was stew three times a week, clam chowder three times and on Fridays Jeannie would make him two chili dogs at her house and bring them in for Jesse-Lee. His dinner was always brought out by Jeannie herself and she always had a broad smile on her face.

 

   “Here you go, Sexy.” She would always say. That made Jesse-Lee feel good even though he knew she didn’t mean it.

 

   He was looking at the wooden bench in front of Jim’s meat locker. Jim owned the Outpost and used the locker to store the deer meat he collected from visiting hunters each season. He was sitting on that same bench with Mary when she told him she had to leave. He didn’t argue with her. He knew she was right. He could only stare at his boots as she told him how sorry she was and then, with a tragic kiss on his cheek, she was gone. He never sat on that bench again…but he always sat here so he could see it.

 

   Jeannie came and replaced his empty bowl with a glass of beer. This was his only vice, he thought, and certainly the good Lord would allow him a glass of beer everyday. He never had more and he always had one. He thought it sat well on top of his dinner and it made his head swim a little bit. It took him all night to drink his glass of beer. He would just sit, sip and look at the bench. Every now and then he would shake someone’s hand or wave across the bar to someone who called out a hello. He heard a lot of conversations and was clueless about most of them. He knew everything he needed to, he thought, so he would make a point of not remembering the things people said…although sometimes he couldn’t help it.

 

   Many years ago, before Jim bought the place, Jesse had overheard a conversation he couldn’t forget. A man from San Marcos was drinking two stools down from Jesse-Lee and talking to Murray, who owned the Outpost at the time. He was telling Murray about something that had been found at the bottom of the river in San Marcos. There was a particularly level section of river bed about 10 feet deep down there and the city of San Marcos had a fleet of glass-bottom boats. They built a giant observation tower for guests to climb up and trained a pig to swim. They threw up a sign and designated it an “attraction.” You wouldn’t believe how many people came from all over the state to climb that tower, see that pig and ride in those boats. During one particular boat trip, the man said, one guest made an awful discovery. At the bottom, under a rock, was a tiny skull. The tour guide convinced everyone it was a prop. He dropped the tourists off back at the dock and went to find his manager. The manager sent one of his aquatic technicians in after the skull and then took it to the local police department. All they could tell was that it was a human baby. How long it had been in the river or where it was put in or who put it in were all mysteries. It could have been there for years, the man said, and could have been put in anywhere upstream. Murray figured the baby was taken in a flood. The man said that the police thought the same thing and since there were no outstanding reports of missing babies, they never did any more investigating.

 

Jesse-Lee never forgot a single word the man had said and always thought about it at this same time every day.

 

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 Two o’clock had snuck up on Jesse-Lee, as it always did. Jeannie came over and tapped him on the shoulder.

 

     “Finish your beer, sexy. We got to shut ‘er down.”

 

     Jesse took the last swallow from his glass and set it on the bar. “Thank you”

 

     “Anything for you, Jesse-Lee.”

 

   He blushed and turned to the door. “Good night” he managed.

 

   He liked Jeannie. She had been bringing him his dinner for seven years. Before that, Jim brought it himself. Before that, it was Murray. Jeannie took over when she married Jim. She was very nice to look at, Jesse-Lee thought. Her blonde hair adequately framing her barely round face. Probably the prettiest lady in town…at least to him.

 

“You ready, Jesse-Lee?” Jim yelled

 

   “Yes, sir”

 

   “Well, let’s go.” Jesse-Lee walked outside with Jim, offering another awkward good night to Jeannie as they left. He slowly climbed into the passenger seat of Jim’s truck and fastened his belt.

 

   “What’s new?” Jim asked as he started the car.

 

   “Nothin’. Same old same old”

 

   “ I hear ya”

 

     That was all that was said on the ride over to Neutze’s. Jesse didn’t know how to tell Jim how grateful he was that he gave him a ride every night. He hoped that Jim already knew. He had always been a good friend to Jesse. Ever since he bought the bar. Jesse had drank the first beer poured under the new owner. Jim and Jeannie and Mr. Neutze were the closest thing he had to family and he didn’t know much about any of them.

 

“Here you go, Jesse-Lee” Jim pulled the truck alongside Neutze’s store and stopped next to the old restroom Mr. Neutze had renovated for Jesse-Lee. He had taken all the fixtures out, laid down some carpet and cut a small window into the back wall. He gave Jessie a key to the room when they opened the indoor restrooms back in ’82. Mr. Neutze said that as long as Jesse-Lee was going to be there when he opened up every morning he might as well sleep nearby. Truth is, every morning when he saw Jesse-Lee he worried a lot about where he had slept the night before. No one ever knew where Jesse-Lee spent his nights before Mr. Neutze gave him the room but he accepted Mr. Neutze’s key eagerly.

 

   “G’night, Jim”

 

   “Good night, Jesse-Lee” and with nothing more Jim drove back onto Main Street and turned back towards the bar. Jesse took off his hat and pulled a key from the band. He opened the door and closed it carefully behind him. He hung his hat on the doorknob and turned off the light. He laid down on the blankets that had been given to him over the years and closed his eyes. He tried to think about Jeannie as hard as he could so that he might dream of her…but, as always, he dreamed about Mary.