Previously Titled: Summer Moon: Stout, Whiskey, and Luther Watts
The thermostat was pushing a hundred and so was the humidity. Luther had poured concrete from dawn to dusk. If he ever saw another commercial handicapped ramp again he would throw away his keys! At least he had gotten to handle the hose, and he was already headed home from the site. The poor finishers were still there, on their knees, trowel in hand, the foreman sleeping in the air-conditioned cab behind them.
He stepped off the Five Line in front of Bohanan’s Pub. He’d be the only brother in the joint, but Granddaddy had been an Irishman, don’t you know and Luther had never given up that taste for black stout. The white boys would just have to get over it. This black man was thirsty.
The game was still on, the stout was milky thick and cold, and some old woman was playing Al Greene on the box. He was feeling like three, and carrying a six home, to get himself to bed. Dawn would come early tomorrow, which put him on the bus to the yard at Five a.m.
Luther sometimes had fainting spells at night, and suffered from belly cramps as well, so did not trust himself to drive in the dark. He only took his car out—an old El Camino—on the weekends. He needed to be in bed before midnight—just knew it, had that ache in his guts that always turned into a restless nightmare-fraught sleep if he did not get in bed early enough.
“Yep,” he mumbled, foam on his lips, “this old boy needs his bedtime sleep, he does.”
A sleek, sensual voice whispered from the distance of a barstool into his ear, “Old no, bed yes, sleep when it comes.”
He all of a sudden had the creeps. He turned and looked to his right to see a beautiful, red-headed, white woman sliding up onto the barstool in a leather skirt and leather jacket-vest. She was perhaps forty, fifteen years his younger, and smiled with nice full cheeks.
“I’m Veronica. How are you this evening?”
He was no troublemaker, liked his peace and quiet, and did not fancy ending up behind that dumpster on the lot where they found Old Sam. There was no way he was buying this beautiful white lady a drink in this Irish bar—her being the most Irish looking girl of them all and there not being enough to go around as it was.
“Hello, Veronica, I’m Luther—pleased to meet you.”
He made sure not to look at those breasts, but caught a hip stretching a skirt seem out of the corner of his eye and lingered, before he looked back up at the game. He was hoping that darned handsome Greek fellow would hit a homerun and get everyone cheering so he did not have to talk to this beauty with Orlin and Josh glaring at him from across the bar—two big mean white boys they were.
He nodded to them and looked up to enjoy the three-and-two pitch. Just as the Greek marvel was called out looking, a soft warm hand came to his arm just below the elbow, and her luscious voice spoke past him to Annie the barmaid, “Sweetie, please bring us that bottle of Jameson. Luther and I would like to fortify our barely wine.”
Her scent was as intoxicating as he knew his must be offensive, after sweating for fourteen hours under the sweltering city sky. “Miss, I only drink whiskey at weddings and funerals.”
As she handed over a plastic card to pay for the bottle, and Annie began to spike their stouts, Veronica hummed low in her pretty throat, and the voice came up out of that pretty mouth with an innocent quality, “Then Luther, you may decide, which occasion this most resembles, and enjoy yourself accordingly.”
She was uncomfortably close and he mumbled, “Miss, I don’t drink whiskey when I have to wake for work in the morning.”
She was under-powering, sweeping his stubbornness from beneath his hardhead with a mere shoulder bump, as he drank.
“You sure know how to get a man whooped miss.”
“If you call me miss again I will walk away. You don’t want me to walk away, do you Luther?”
He looked at her, with her pretty pale skin, and looked at the back of his leathery coal-dark hand, and knew that the answer was ‘no’ despite his reasonable nature. He looked her in her cool green eyes and said, “No Veronica, I want you to stay.”
He then looked across the bar to Orlin and Josh, raised his glass, and downed the entire spiked pint. Veronica then placed her drink before him and ordered another round. “That’s right, Baby, a working man needs to drink up.”
The night spiraled out of control as she questioned Luther about his life, his work, and even his home. He was really looped only a couple hours on and made to leave, reaching into his pocket for tab money. She pinned his hand.
“It is my treat. Don’t leave Luther.”
“Miss, I need to leave when I can still walk.”
“Nonsense Luther, I will give you a lift.”
“I can’t accept, Miss. No offense, but if I let myself get to know you I’m sure I’d have a terrible crush on you.”
She winced playfully. “Look up crush in the dictionary, Luther, it is not a good thing; to constrict, smother, strangle…let’s never use that word between us.”
He placed a twenty on the bar and walked out, barely keeping his feet. When he hit the curb and began to cross he saw the full moon high in the blue summer-night sky, looking all bright and milky, like Veronica back there.
