Thirty Women Walk Into A Bar

Sheriff Tom was leaving Jackie’s Cold Day Inn just as I was arriving. “Don’t go inside,” he said. “Women Only Night starts in half an hour. No men allowed. If you wanna drink let’s go to my office. I got some Kentucky bourbon I took offa the Johnson boy. He said it was for his daddy but I know his daddy don’t drink bourbon. Too mild, he says, no substitute for white lightning.”

Tom served up two fingers of bourbon in a glass for me and two in a cup for himself.

“So what’s the story on Women Only Night?”

“Ask around you’ll hear all kinds of doings that just ain’t true. The women won’t say and the men plain don’t know. I don’t know all of it for sure. My wife never misses a meeting. After the third meeting I asked her what they talked about, she says, ‘space, time, and the immutability of the soul’. We been married a lotta years. She answers like that it means ‘none of your business, sweetheart.’ I’m smart enough to let it go."

He rolled his chair back and put his feet up on his desk. I settled in for a story.

“You know why men like me become law enforcement?”

He didn’t wait for an answer.

“We do it because we’re curious, always wanna know who, what, when, where, why, and how. My wife says I’m just nosy. Fact is, we hafta know everything about everybody, can’t help it. We just wanna know. Being on the job we get to know what everybody’s up to, good and bad.

“Now, a good sheriff won’t ever tell what he knows about somebody to anybody else. He’ll just keep it in his mind, helps him decide when to hammer somebody down or just let something slide. Anybody knows me will tell you I don’t spread gossip. Oh, I might tell a thing or two, but I never hurt anybody with it. Bottom line, people trust me with things they won’t tell their minister even when they’re dying.

"You’re curious just like me. Sometimes I think you shoulda been a cop instead of a traveling salesman.

“You wanna know about Women Only Night and I’m inclined to tell you what I found out by asking questions here and there. When I had most of it figured out I asked Jackie. She told me enough to put it all together and now I owe her.

“If you ever let out what I told you, you better hope you see me before Jackie sees you. Keep in mind, mercy’s just a word to her. And trust means as much to her as it does to me.”

I promised not to repeat what he told me but I filed it away for some future date in some other town; someplace where nobody knew Tom or Jackie in a galaxy long ago and far, far away.

Jackie thought it would be nice to give the townswomen a place to get together away from their daily cares and tasks. She would serve coffee, tea, wine and cheese. So it was official.

Jackie announced that henceforth Tuesday night Happy Hour was cancelled at Jackie’s Cold Day Inn. In its place, Jackie’s would host Women Only Night. 

Men had their clubs, bars, bull sessions at Les’s General Store or at the post office where they congregated whether or not they were expecting mail. But the women were mostly alone, seeing each other by one’s and two’s at the market or after church on Sundays. The Ladies’ Auxiliary met every Thursday in the basement of the church where the minister praised them endlessly, the holy women of his congregation; hovering over them like a shepherd and his sheep, keeping them in line. Now at Jackie's they could meet with no kids or men underfoot. They could talk about anything at all.

Some of the men weren’t happy about the end of Happy Hour or the prospect of Women Only Night. They feared that the women would probably take the occasion to speak plainly about them, and they were right about that except that they greatly overestimated how much of the evenings’ talk would actually be about them. Women had other things on their minds besides the men in their lives.

  

Jackie was disappointed but not surprised when only three of her friends came to the first Women Only Night. She never expected the church ladies to show up at a bar for goodness’ sake, but still. In the following weeks the attendees grew to six, then seven and eventually twelve women became regulars. Becky and two other churchwomen showed up, apparently prepared to pass judgment on the other women. Jackie welcomed them anyway.

At the sixth meeting the women talked about the kids or some everyday things like before but little by little they relaxed and sipped more wine than tea. Then one of the women literally let her hair down. She loosened the bun that pulled her skin tight against her skull and her hair cascaded over her shoulders.

It was an epiphany. Everyone gaped at the transformation. No one had ever seen her hair any other way except in a bun atop her head. Then another woman unbuttoned the top button of her blouse, releasing the tight collar on her neck. She ran her hands furiously through her hair, grabbed her wine glass and downed it one luxurious swallow.

Jackie laughed at the two rebels and offered more wine. The other women raised their glasses for refills. Cheers all around.

Becky, the leading church lady and her companions sat wide eyed, hands clutching the edge of the table, looking like they were going to stroke out. Then Becky passed gas – long and loud -- the laughing stopped abruptly. Everyone stared at her.

Becky, whose piety and correctness had never faltered, who had never been known for anything but prim propriety, said the only thing that came to her mind at that instant, something her grandmother said to her when she was just a little girl.

“That was an upside down hiccup.” A tiny pause then she burst out laughing.

The gossip about that sixth meeting spread among the women of the town like a grass fire and the membership soon grew to more than thirty women. The men groused among themselves but there was nothing they could do about it. They still thought the women were talking about them, probably making comparisons.

By now the group was too large to hold at one table so they broke up into several small groups, some women moving from one group to another until they found a table where the talk interested them. They scratched where they itched, kicked off their shoes; some loosened their bra straps, told dirty jokes, talked about truth and justice; a book they read, beauty tips, dreams both pending or broken.

What they’d done was break out of the roles that their gender and history created for them from birth. One day a week they weren’t anybody’s wife, girlfriend, or mother. They were just themselves, whoever they were. It was heaven.

The novelty of their freedom didn’t wear off in the subsequent weeks but once they’d blown off much of the steam they’d held in for years, they became more unified. They formed voting blocs to cancel out their husbands’ votes when they agreed a political issue was better to pass or fail for the greater good. They set up teams of volunteers to visit shut-ins, give them company, cook some meals, make them feel wanted. They discussed problems common to many of them, the means to solve them or simply to commiserate if no solution was available. They told jokes and recounted ancestral stories real and fictional.

One evening Becky and the other church ladies were talking about the Bible. No one joked about religion. It wasn’t a hot topic anyway. There is a time for prayers and meditation. Women Only Night isn’t one of those times. However, the question Becky asked made the women think in imaginative ways.

Becky taught Sunday School, had for years. Though she had read and studied the Bible, discussed it with the minister for hours on end, she was stumped for an answer when one her students, a little boy, wanted to know where Caine and Abel got their wives.

Fortunately, the bell for services rang before Becky answered her inquisitor. She was literally saved by the bell. The question bothered her and she was loath to tell the child that the brothers had married their sisters. The child was just six, for heaven’s sake, and the thought of marrying his sister would make him retch. The minister left town to visit the bishop before she could consult with him so she put the question to the women at the next Women Only Night.

Well, anybody who’s read Genesis and thought about it for five minutes can conclude that Adam and Eve had more kids, including daughters who are rarely mentioned or named in Bible stories. Adam and Eve lived for 930 years, lots of time for making babies. Logically, the brothers must have had to marry their sisters in order to bring about the human race.

Some of the women became thoughtful. They’d never considered where Caine and Abel’s wives came from. They’d read the Bible but didn’t think another step past the words, like some people roll through a stop sign never thinking what it means.

No, not this Caine

After some back and forth Becky decided to wait for the minister’s return for an answer that wouldn’t frighten the children.

But the question wouldn’t go away just like that.

Jackie said maybe there was more than one Garden of Eden, you know, East Eden, West Eden, North, South, each with its own Adam and Eve. Each producing children after they were tossed out of their respective gardens.

Actually, anything was possible, Jackie said. Could be there was a Garden of Eden in North America, another in Asia, one in Africa, Australia even.

A woman sitting at the next table wondered how do you account for different races if all the Edens were near each other?

The answer came from Table 7: Some newlyweds didn’t get along with each others families so they packed up their stuff and moved to Africa where over millennia, their skin got sunburned, each generation got darker and darker. Other couples moved to China where the sun was so bright that they had to squint. Over centuries the shape of their eyes changed.

All those notions sounded too far-fetched for the women at Table 3. After much talk and lots of wine, they judged that Jackie’s first idea was more practical. There were several gardens close enough to each other that the families could intermingle and marry. With four gardens the gene pool would be deep enough that genetic distortions would be minimal.

They proposed:

Adam and Eve in the East Garden

John and Helen in the West Garden

Brad and Angelina in the North Garden

Ken and Barbie in the South Garden

Table 1 drained and refilled their wine glasses and objected.

With all these weddings, they said, who planned the ceremonies and made the decorations? There had to be a Garden that had gays. They would pick the colors and themes, make seating arrangements, hire the caterers, design the wedding dresses, and book the honeymoon destinations.

Steve and Lance in the Hidden Garden, they said, couldn’t wait to get started.

The women cheered and toasted Table 3’s five Garden invention.

The women at Table 4 suggested the Handyman Garden featuring Larry, Darryl and Darryl. It was rejected (eeew). 

With the Caine and Abel question settled, the women went on to talk about next week’s meeting.

At 9:30 Jackie announced last call. She and Wendy began collecting the wine glasses, empty wine bottles and serving hot coffee. Closing time was 10:00 o’clock sharp.

The women touched up their hair, smoothed their dresses, slurped coffee, and prepared to go home. A few of them asked for a second cup.

Becky was among the last to leave. She helped Jackie clean up and said, “I just know that child is gonna ask me next why Caine killed Abel. I’ll just tell him what the Good Book says.”

As Jackie gently pushed her out the door she said, “Becky, careful now, you had a lot of wine tonight. Don’t tell that kid the real answer: God likes a good barbecue and He hates veggie burgers.”

Abel's OK

Caine, not so much