In Old Moab

A DESERT ROADHOUSE CAN BE A LITTLE

In old Moab, long ago there was a roadhouse called the Canyon Club, which you couldn't find today with a road map. It isn't there. It isn't anywhere really. The building was used to store tires for some years after the bar failed and then was destroyed in a famous fire, and the road it was on up back of the highway is no longer a road but subsumed as part of an abandoned construction yard of which there are plenty at the south end of that town. The Canyon Club with its red and blue neon sign thrived in the years after the uranium boom in Utah had burst but before the mountain bikers had come in to make red rock country the new center of gravity sports. Moab was just a town where the road crossed the Colorado River; there were a dozen hopeful motels, all ma-and-pa deals, and two supermarkets and a hardware, and Friday nights the town swelled as the ranchers and wildcatters from up and down the line came in to recharge or discharge or just buy two weeks' groceries and take a minute and get drunk.

I was in the Canyon Club on one occasion, the kind of night diat has made me look for the place every time I drive through that town, which is about once a year now. Finally, I asked the barman at the new brewery on Main Street what happened to it, and he told me the short history. I'm always in Moab in die afternoon and it's always hot, and though as I drive north I always think about jumping in the river, I have only jumped in the river once on a blistering afternoon and I let the heavy river take me downstream about 100 yards, real slowly, while I blinked at the red rocks and smelled the willows. It is a wonder to me that I don't more fre-quendy jump in rivers; it is something that can make

you feel more like yourself than any of your other plans. I'm a strange locked-up soul that way. I know what's good for me, and I do it about half the time. More now, but still.

Thirty years ago one October, I saw the beer lights in the windows under the dark rocky cliffs there, and I drove into the gravel lot of the Canyon Club determined, I see now, to do something I'd have to lie about. I was going to get drunk, certainly, because that was my way. and 1 would do whatever else was occasioned by that state. The reasons I was going to get drunk don't matter, although it would be wonderful in such a story to have some. It was what I did once a week, certainly every two, and I thought I was young and strong and could go on that way dropping the ball because I had the energy and wherewithal to pick it back up. The bullshit we live in without complaint is astonishing.

It was cold that night and crisp, and the lights of town were crisp in the new desert dark. I like a strip of roadway in a small town when the motel lights are coming on and the traffic is slowing because people are not grinding any­where else tonight. The lot at the Canyon Club was full this early, which I thought odd, but I was determined to stand

it, even crowded. A roadhouse had a sort of magic for me, which is to say: I loved to drink and anyplace would do. I was divorced from my wife and daughters and I had the next morning free, which means I imagined a deeper hole than I'd usually jump into.

I see now that I was hurting, but who can see that at the time? 1 had been injuring myself steadily for some time, and I wanted that hurt. Isn't that strange? You look back later and you sort of see that you could have got in your car and driven on through the night, listening to absolutely anything on the radio, talk or music or a ball game from far off, and it would have healed you a little. Oh shit, I did not think in terms of healing. At all.

Inside I saw the secret to the mystery: It was 60 women all drinking and playing pool and moving through clouds of smoke with mugs of beer under the big back bar banner:

DEER WIDOWS WALTZ—HALF OFF ALL WEEKEND. I mean it was

crowded. I then remembered it was the first weekend of the deer hunt. .-Ml these husbands were oH'in the hills with their rifles. The place was a little smaller on the inside than it appeared from out, and I bumped through this assemblage and found the one seat at the end of the bar. under the tele­vision. I had to move two phone books to the floor, but I sat down, and the bartender came down, a young bald guy with an earring and blond muttonchop sideburns, and I ordered the tap pint with a glass of |ack Daniel's. It was loud in there; the women had come to whoop it up and there was literally a whoop or two every minute, and the laughter was so loud I thought they were making it up.

Seeing me squeezed in the corner like that, not talking to anyone, the bartender slid me the television remote when he brought my second round. The women were jammed in, half of them in hunting caps, orange and red, and flannel shirts, a sort of costume. They were all walking drunk. There was a big gang of them plaving pool, some kind of three-ball tournament with a blackboard, and a slug of them were dancing, and there was always one of them reaching over me to get a beer. It took me a minute to see how strange it was, one of the few men in a bar lull of women, but it was too late to be intimidated, and thev didn't care that some tourist was sucking down his beer.

After 20 minutes. I saw there was another guv down the bar, facing forward like me, not coming and going, and he caught my eye and nodded up at the television. 1 forget what was on, some cooking show or the like, but the guy leaned forward obviously talking to me and he mouthed World Series, and made like to click the remote. I lifted it up and pointed and started going through the channels. The guy would point and I would change the channel, and then two women saw him and they were asking him

how he did it with just his linger, and the laughing women started pointing their fingers and trying it. but I would wait until he pointed and then advance the channels. It was funny there at the bar for a while. The women were bumping his shoulder and saving. Come on, what's the magic, like that, and he wasn't kid­ding around at all and wanted them to go away; and even after I showed them the remote, they wouldn't leave him alone. He was a handsome guy in a white dress shirt. You knew there was a coat and a tie in his car. Then they wanted him to dance and he was laughing, like ho no and they were hauling at him. Meanwhile, I found the World Series, all green grass and bright lights, and it was a huge relief and a comfort on such a night to find the ball game. Far away

in a big city a lot of people were still up. It was early in the game. When 1 looked back clown the bar, the women had moved off and the guy was stone still over his beer, hunched there, and I think he was crying. I guess they'd picked on him until he started crying.

Who's not lonely? When 1 saw him like that. 1 felt it all in my body and the good part of the ball game and the drinks I'd had went away for a while. It was October, and I hadn't made much of the year. It was early but it fell late, and all I could do was have another round and pretend I hadn't seen.

Crying is tough. It's tough on me, and 1 cry more now than I used to, but then I realized to start crying would be a big mistake because I then would need a reason to stop, and those reasons were in short supply.

I was a failure, though a man never uses that word about himself. I failed or I was a failure. You say, you're moving on or the next thing will happen. The word failure is for other people, and I was somebody else in those days and so I'll say it truly, I was a failure. All the things I had done I had done halfway and halfway in any league is failure. There was little I liked and there was little I hoped for, and for a while I thought it was luck, bad luck, that is, but it wasn't bad luck. My heart wasn't on straight, and I didn't think enough of my efforts as a branch manager or a sales rep to make them worthy efforts. I think a lot of people have this, and the way out is to decide you like what you're doing and you like (concluded on page 1 111

(continued from page 72)

There was a noise. The man's eyes opened wide and he went down in front of me like an armfid oflaundiy.

yourself and stop looking for big magi­cal change. Change is everywhere wail­ing; you can't stop it. You don't have to run into the street and call out for it like a taxi. You'll get run over.

I liked the women in the bar. There was energy there that would go on all night. A couple even asked me to dance, grabbing my shoulder first and then putting their faces up close laughing and let's go partner, but I smiled and nodded at my drink, indicating my priorities, and they said things like, you're missing out on some very fine wild women, and I would have laughed at that, but I didn't have a laugh left.

When there was a chance, I slid down the bar in the Canyon Club, bringing along all my glassware and the ashtray, for smoking was required in there. I went five stools and pulled up next to the guy and said howdy, sliding him the clicker, and he said directly to me, "You should sit away from me, partner." I looked back the way I'd come and every seat was filled with a woman or two now. their hands out for the barkeeper and so I was trapped there. I had thought we'd watch the ball game in the women's party, but I had made a mistake, so I just stared up at the screen. It was easier to see the television now, not being directly over my head. It was a one-sided game, something you hate to see when you need company, but at least it was something. I felt empty again and sort of out of gas there.

After a minute, he spoke again. "Can I buy you a drink?" And he got the barman's sleeve and we had another round right there. He was drinking gin and tonic and there was a line of lemon slices on the bar, six of the things. Then he went on, "Where you from?" I told him and he said, "I just come over from Vegas tonight." I looked at him and he was neither young nor old, and he needed a haircut and there was a line of sweat up over his forehead. He was warm from the drinks but I could make out a big hangover in his face, deeply, something you don't wash off. There was the varnish of booze on him too, something at the time I didn't think was too bad.

"These women are something," I said. "You ever deer hunt?"

He looked at me with a stricken look, and I saw he didn't know what

I was talking about. I don't know why I said that about hunting. I had been out with my dad years before and I had one deer-hunting story. It just seemed like something to say. 1 was trying to come up with a com­ment about the baseball game next, when he said, "You want to help me with something?" I said 1 would try, and then he didn't move for five or 10 minutes. The pretzel baskets were about worn out on that bar, but I got hold of one and ate a few of the stick pretzels, and finally a woman came up and took us both by the shoul­ders and said, "You boys are going to dance right now, whether you favor it or not."

He looked at her and I saw his bright drunk eyes clearly two miles gone and he smiled, and he said, "Lady, we are going to. We will be right back. ' He tapped his hand on the bar and told the barman, "Another round. We'll be back." He turned on the seat and found his feet and I followed him through the noisy room, a forest of women, through the tiny vestibule of the Canyon Club and out the paned door into the night. The air seized my neck instantly; fall was here double. It had been warm in there and this was a mean cold. I walked with him over to a blue Ranchero, a car that looks like a truck, and he leaned against it and started fishing in his pocket. His trousers were the ones that come with horizontal pockets and a belt built in, and 1 thought he was reaching for a cigarette so I offered him one of mine, but he said no. While I was lighting up, he said, "Look at this," and he squirmed a little pistol from his pants, a shiny silver .38 caliber, brand-new it looked.

I didn't have much for that, so 1 said, "Yeah, well." He was cold now. I could see and his face had plated up in pieces.

"I was going to rob that place."

"The hell you say," I said.

"Yeah, I saw it driving through town this evening and went all the way up to the river and back looking for another but no, this was going to be it, up here by the hill all alone."

I'd never been in such a conversation before. "And those women surprised you?" I said. "They sure surprised me. I just wanted a few drinks."

"Those women are just having fun," he said. "They came in like a stampede."

"Maybe saved some trouble," I said.

"Probably," he said.

"Did you ever have some small thing that you knew you could do. but you couldn't do it alone? I mean some deal where a little company might make it possible?"

"I feel that way about making my bed," I told him. It was true some davs.

"Right," he said. "Here."

Now he reached in the change pocket of those trousers and fingered out a business card and handed it to me. "That's me," he said. "If anybody wants to know."

"Okay," 1 said. 1 couldn't read it in the dark. How much can a business card weigh, part of an ounce? I can't see the future, though I'm better with it now than I ever was, but I knew that card was trouble and it felt heavy as a book.

The man pushed the pistol back into his pocket, keeping his hand there, and then there was a noise like someone hitting a car trunk with a hammer and the man's eyes opened wide and he went down in front of me like an armful of laundry.

I knelt and he was all blood in my hands, and I didn't even try to find the injury. I went back into the Canyon Club and told the barman what had happened and he called the police.

I was not in trouble with the police, and so I stayed, and it was strange because I was alone out in the park­ing lot with two kitchen hands. The women never came out and made a scene or like that. They didn't even know what had happened.

He had shot himself fatally in that artery in the leg and he was dead. The one policeman who interviewed me asked if he had shot himself and I said as far as I could tell. 1 told them the whole story as well as 1 could. I showed him the business card and he took it, and 1 told him I was going to need it back. I've often wondered about wanting it back. Like I should have it or something. He wrote down the information and then handed me the card again, and it was still heavy.

On the card was just his name, which I won't put here, and his business address and information in Las Vegas. When I called the number, it had been disconnected. When I was in Las Vegas the following year, I didn't go by the address. I still have the card.

Places have magic. I believe. We claim the magic by acting decently or with good purpose. The Canyon Club is long gone and so is the man I met and so is the man that I was. Moab is a beautiful and severe place and in the years since, as I travel through I pay attention and work to get it back.