Texas Tenderfoot

On my second day on the job selling farm and ranch equipment in Panhandle I was arrested for assaulting a man with a wooden club. According to the Sheriff it didn’t matter if the blow was intentional or accidental. The victim’s skull was fractured and the concussion made him see double. No choice. I was under arrest.

I wasn’t alone in jail. Jorge Washington De La Cruz was in the same cell. My new friends Jim and Milo were in the next one. Everyone else arrested in the brawl ended up in a jail in the next town. There was room for all of us in the Panhandle jail but feelings were high and the Sheriff thought it best to separate the warring parties until the formal hearing before the circuit judge. He wasn’t due to show up for three days. I felt like a kid sent to sit in the corner to think about what I just did.

My first day hadn’t gone too badly. I was the replacement for Mac McCarthy, the sales rep who’d died suddenly. I’d spent five years in the Amarillo home office taking phone orders from the field and now I was on the road where I thought I belonged, driving the backroads all over the Texas Plains, taking in the arid land and the electric blue sky above it.

Sitting in the cell I tried not to think about getting fired. Instead I thought about the previous day when I found Jackie’s Cold Day Inn. The bar is in a old building showing its age, the foundation settled just a little askew like an old man past his prime sitting on his porch with enough light in his eyes that it made you want to sit with him for a spell; hear his stories about the times before you were born. It was my kind of place, a little shabby but I still wiped my shoes before going in.

The word brown was the first one that came to mind. The walls, floor, tables and bar seemed to be made from the dark brown lumber of a single tree. Half dozen scuffed, square tables, big enough for a four man poker game or if you don’t mind sitting too close, six polite players who minded their feet and elbows. The seven beer clocks above the backbar, each displaying a different hour and minute, banished all thoughts of time and provided muted neon light.

I was temporarily blinded after coming in from the Texas sun. I heard a voice say, “Just stand there a minute.” It took a moment for my eyes to adjust to the dim interior.

“Are you lookin’ for directions or a drink? It’s mighty hot out there. You look like a Jack and beer man. What’ll it be?”

I gestured at the row of bottles behind the bar with my map. “How about directions and a drink? Or do I have to choose?”

She ignored my question and said, “You’re the man’s takin’ over Mac’s territory. Heard about it.”

I gave her my name and said, “Yes, I’m the new sales rep.”

Then rapid fire, “I’m Jackie. This is my bar. Welcome to Panhandle. Pull up a chair. Beer and Jack, right? This your first time in outside sales?”, she asked. I nodded yes.

She set my beer on the table, put her fingertips to her lips, looked me over and said, “I thought so. You got new boots, new hat, and no tan like you been locked up in… prison or an office for years.  And your boss called, told me to let Mac’s customers know you’re comin’.

“Just so you know, Mac was like family to us. Some folks are grievin’ like they lost a favorite uncle. But Mac won’t be hard to replace. All you gotta know is a thousand corny jokes (some of ‘em dirty), a few hundred stories, model and make of each piece of equipment the ranchers and farmers own, how old the stuff is, what a new one will cost, some harmless gossip. That’s on your first day.

“And don’t fret if you don’t know everybody’s name or how they could be related to each other, family feuds, the kids’ names, grandkids. That can wait for the second day.”

I gulped half my beer.

Then she slowed down, reached across the table and touched my arm. “I’m not tryin’ to scare you, mister. You’ll be OK. If you stick around a while I’ll introduce you to the Sheriff and a coupla his friends. Good folks. They’ll be here by and by.”

I glanced out the window and saw three men walking towards the bar. The tallest one wore a uniform and a Sheriff’s badge on his chest. A shorter man next to him was in a baggy suit, a wrinkled tie loosened around his neck, a fedora apparently rescued from a Goodwill donation box. He carried a doctor’s black bag. The third man was dressed in jeans and a snap button shirt.

So there I was in a Twilight Zone version of Gunsmoke. A no-nonsense Sheriff, a rumpled doctor, a woman saloon owner and who knows which other characters would pop in.

Jackie said, “You’re sittin’ in the Sheriff’s chair. Give it up when he comes in. He likes it ‘cause he can see the front and back doors, the bar or look out the window at the street.”

I asked about the other chairs and Jackie shrugged. “Sit any place you want.”

The men came in and stood at my table giving me a once-over. Jackie introduced me as Mac’s replacement and said, “Okay, the man with the gun is Sheriff but I figure you guessed that. Name’s Tom. The one in the bad suit and needin’ a shave is Doc Harris, and this is Les, he owns the General Store a coupla doors down.”

Doc Harris and Les tipped their hats, sat down but Sheriff Tom remained standing, thumbs looped over his gun belt. “Son, I’m gonna need you to come to my office and leave your fingerprints before sunset today. If you’re carryin’ any weapons, hand ‘em over now.”

Something made me raise my hands in the air, surrendering to whatever crime I’d committed. Maybe because I was sitting in his chair?

Jackie looked out the window and said, “Oh, oh. Tom, that’s D.C.’s truck in the middle of the street. Looks like trouble, smoke comin’ out of it.”

We rushed out to the street. Smoke was billowing from the engine. The driver opened the hood and flames shot up. I ran to my car and grabbed the fire extinguisher I keep in the trunk, pulled the locking pin and smothered the fire. Tom, Doc Harris and the driver leaned over the smoking engine. Les said he'd get Mike's tow truck from the Conoco on the corner and trotted off.

The driver had the fierce look of a man who if you wanted to ask what time it was, you’d better have a damn good reason for asking. I looked him over. Plaid shirt, jeans, steel toe work boots, thick mustache, not tall or short. If you took off the mustache, the cowboy hat, and put on a headband, let his black hair grow out, it was easy to imagine him or his grandfather riding with Geronimo. He put his hand on the fender and looked at his truck as though it were his pony gone lame. He turned to me, said thanks, and followed the tow truck.

Tom said, “Fast thinkin’, son, it coulda gone south right quick.  Let’s go inside. I’m buyin’.”

Jackie already had our beers on the table. We sat down and I listened to the men speculate as to why the truck caught fire. Les and Doc praised me again, man of the hour. I asked about the scary driver, the one Jackie called D.C.

Les was the first to speak. “The Mexican guy. That’s Jorge Washington De La Cruz. We call him Washington D.C. Good guy, looks mean but ain’t. He’s the kind you want on your side, steady as a rock. Got a little spread out near Shamrock.

The Sheriff pulled a small notebook from his shirt pocket, glanced at it, put it away, and said, “I talked to your boss yesterday. Says you been in his outfit five years, you know your stuff, never been arrested.”

I allowed that what he said was true and asked what else was in his notebook.

“Oh, nothin' much ‘cept where you went to Kindergarten, ex-girlfriends, names, addresses, military records, stuff like that.” He pulled the notebook out, opened it and gave it to me.

The only entry on the page was my name and my boss’s phone number.

“Relax, son. This ain’t an interrogation, not now anyway. What reputation you’ll get around here is the one you make. You had a good start on that today, puttin’ out that fire like you did. No questions, no hesitation, did what needed to be done right quick. Mac was among us eleven years, as straight up a friend as anybody’d wanna have. If anybody knows what he did before that, where he came from, it’s news to me. He never said, nobody asked.”

He stood up and motioned to Les and Doc, “I’d like to stay longer but I just remembered we hafta go see the mayor. Gotta bug up his butt about graffiti on the gazebo in the park. I guess he don’t remember carvin’ and writin’ his name everywhere he could when he was a kid. Nice meetin’ you.”

They left just as Jorge Washington was coming in. They stood at the entrance for a minute talking about Jorge’s truck. Jackie busied herself in the stock room rearranging boxes.

Jorge saw me, took the chair across from me and signaled Jackie for a drink. He introduced himself and thanked me again for putting out the fire in his truck. I nodded you’re welcome.

I said, “I don’t think the Sheriff likes me. It’s like he’s trying to read my face and my mind at the same time. He looks at me the way my father did when he thought I was lying to him.”

He studied me for a moment while we waited for his drink. “Don’t take it too personal. And don’t worry about it. Tom’s a good lawman. Figuring people out is his job. He’s gotta know who everybody is so he knows what to do if you get crossways with the law. And he wants you to know that. Did the same thing to me and still does it sometimes.

Jackie ambled over with drinks for Jorge and for herself. She settled into a chair, took a tiny sip and said, “He’s not the only one. When a stranger like you turns up he might not notice anything except the feelin' that everybody’s staring. What’s happening is whoever you are, they’re thinkin’ how to describe you in a few words, tell their friends what they think. After a while they’ll agree on three or four words.

“Everybody’s seen you today’s done it already. Me, I’m thinkin’ Tenderfoot. Some smarts. Not Mac. The Not Mac part’s gonna be hard to beat. Trust is hard to come by.”

Jackie stood and drained her drink. “Wendy told me she won’t be able to go to your fiesta tomorrow, Jorge. She’s gotta go to a baby shower for a friend of hers. I can’t come either, gotta keep this place open.” As she walked away Jorge said, “I feel like I owe you for what you did today. You saved my engine. Why don’t you come to my fiesta tomorrow?”

I told him I didn’t want to intrude on his family but he just laughed. “I have a fiesta before each harvest then another after the harvest. My ‘family’ is the migrant workers and their families. A lot of them. We have music, good Mexican food, some beer, and a lot of fun. You and a few others will be the only gringos but you’ll be welcome. I’ll draw you a map to my ranch. ”

He motioned to Jackie for drinks and lit a cigarette. “You’re wondering who I am. I’m nobody special. Born and raised in Southern California. Settled here when I met my wife. This fiesta is in honor of my mother and father. They were migrants almost their whole lives. It’s lonely work. Years go by without seeing your relatives and as they die off the connections to their lives and hometowns are lost, usually forever. The ones that stay here like me become orphans eventually. The fiesta is for making connections, being a family, at least for a little while.”

We talked for awhile, finished our drinks and went our separate ways. I spent the next day paying courtesy visits to a few of my customers and visiting the local businesses. On the way I met Milo in his crafts store. Jim and his wife, Angel, were shopping there. When I told Milo I was invited to Jorge’s fiesta he told me he was, too, and so were Jim and Angel. We agreed to ride to the fiesta together that afternoon.

There were more than a hundred people at the fiesta. Music poured out from Jorge’s stereo on the porch. There were tables set up buffet style with a row of mamacitas laughing and joking as they prepared tamales, tacos, enchiladas, rice, beans, and something called mole. Off to the side another group of women made tall steaming piles of corn and flour tortillas. Two large bowls of red and green salsa rested on each end of the buffet line.  There were dozens of kids playing tag or hide and seek. There were smiles and laughter everywhere.

The Jolly Green Giant's mom

Jim and Milo headed for the beer kegs. Angel went to help Jorge’s wife take party pictures while Jorge took me around introducing me to his friends. It seemed like every time I stopped moving someone offered me a plate of food. I took one and went searching for Jim and Milo. They were sitting on a bench chowing down on enchiladas and beer under a large cottonwood tree by the barn.

We talked about the fiesta and Jorge for a while. Turned out that Milo and Jorge, being war veterans, bonded over that. Jim and Jorge had rescued each other in mismatched bar fights. Jorge’s wife, Jenny, came by and took pictures of us swilling beer and stuffing our faces with red enchiladas.

“The thing about Jorge,” Jim said, “is that he don’t look, sound, or act the way some folks think he should. Now, he does look dangerous to some. That mustache and the way he looks pissed off all the time? Well, hell, what you look like ain’t something you can do much about. As you can see, I’m good lookin’ as hell. I just can’t help it.” Milo and I rolled our eyes.

Milo said, “Yeah, and that oversize Buck knife of his doesn’t help either.”

Jorge found me and said, “The piñata is ready. You’re my guest so you go first.”

Well, about piñatas... The best way I can describe it is that it’s like Pin the Tail on the Donkey except you use a club to smack a moving target. And you’re blindfolded.

Not actual size

How it actually happens

Jorge handed me a club, blindfolded me, and spun me around so I didn’t have a clue where the piñata was except that it was nearby, suspended on a rope about 6 feet off the ground and that Jorge held another rope that would move it horizontally and upward.

Screaming kids hovered around the edges hoping I would break the piñata and spill the candy in a clay pot hidden inside. Jorge said to listen to the crowd for directions on when to swing. I listened to the crowd but it didn’t help... They were yelling in Spanish.The noise was deafening.

I found out what happened next while I sat in jail with Milo, Jorge and Jim.

There’s something about Jim aside from his impressive size and brawling skills. He seems to know when there’s trouble coming just before it arrives. A bunch of roughnecks tried to crash the party and somehow Jim sensed trouble so he and Milo went to meet them. One of the six crashers ran across the yard to grab a beer keg. Me, I was trying to make sense of the yelling when somebody yelled “swing!” in English. I did and smacked the beer thief across his forehead with the club. In the meantime, Jim, Milo, and Jorge worked at forcefully disabling the others.

The Sheriff pulled up a few seconds later. He’d been following the party crashers who’d been speeding and weaving all over the road.

He saw Jim and Milo beating on the crashers and one of them bleeding at my feet. And me, holding a club, the blindfold around my neck like a bandana. He arrested the lot of us.

We spent Saturday night in jail. Sunday morning Sheriff Tom rousted us out of our bunks banging on the cell bars with his nightstick at 5:00 AM.

“You fellas kept me up half the night interviewin’ witnesses which, by the way, did not include any of Jorge’s Mexican guests. They ran off the minute I showed up. Can’t say I blame ‘em. Law enforcement ain’t kind to ‘em most times. So all I got now is some witnesses with stories that don’t match up just right. Rise and shine. Coffee’s comin’ up in a bit. And I wanna talk to each of you before you can match up your stories.”

He unlocked the cells and told us we could move around, stretch our legs if we wanted. But no talking. Jorge was the first to be questioned. I was last.

Three hours later the Sheriff told us we were free to go except for me. We went into his private office. He pointed me to a chair across from his. There were several 4x6 photos scattered on his desk.

The Sheriff lit a cigarillo and picked up a picture, studied it for a moment and said, “You ever play pro ball?” Where was he going with this question?

Before I could answer he said, “Jenny takes pictures of the fiestas every year, makes albums she and Jorge keep. They take pictures of each family, write the names on the back. They give copies to anybody wants some so they can send them to relatives in Mexico, Guatemala, or wherever."

Tapping on the pictures on his desk he said, “These pictures were taken last night. Jenny and Angel drove to Lubbock this mornin’ to a 24 hour photo place and paid extra to have the film developed right away. Jenny got pictures of the roughnecks breakin’ up the fiesta. Pictures of Jim, Milo, and Jorge takin’ care of business. And she took these pictures of you and the killer piñata.”

He handed me a short stack of pictures. I was in each one looking clumsy and confused, swinging wildly at a piñata that was bouncing in the air, several feet behind me. The kids were laughing hysterically.

He held up another picture. “Now, this one could get you 10 to 15 in Huntsville except for the two pictures showing the crasher runnin’ towards you, beer keg in his arms. It’s lucky you still got the blindfold on when you took that home run swing at his head. Lucky, too, it was a broomstick and not a Louisville Slugger.

“Jenny snapped it just right. Good form, swing from the hips, push off with your right leg. Only seen that in ball players with natural talent. Now, I ask you again. You ever play pro ball? I’m needin’ somebody to bat cleanup on my softball team. Looks like you could be him.”