The Bartender Chronicles: Hogs North

Circa: NYC 1996.

It was 3 pm on a Wednesday when a lone customer entered the bar. I was working a shift at the uptown location. No one came in before 5 pm. Steve, the manager, who everyone suspected was stealing from the register but couldn’t prove it, and I did a double take as he walked through the door.

The guy was tall, alcoholic thin, and probably much younger than his haggard meat suit implied. I watched him from my makeshift perch of empty beer cases behind the bar. Steve continued to hover over his newspaper and greasy chicken wings at the end of the bar. We both followed the guy with our eyes as he sat down, a few stools shy of dead center.

“Bud,” was all he said as he threw a twenty onto the wood. He had the bill of his baseball hat low over his eyes and tilted his head down, making it clear he didn’t want a chatty bartender. I was more than happy to oblige.

I got up, grabbed a long neck from the cooler, opened it, and set it down in front of him. Grabbed his money, rang him up, and dropped off his change on the way back to my perch. It was the most work I had done in a couple of hours. The afternoon rush was over.

Twenty minutes later, Jimmy, the guy who serviced the pool table and pinball machines, sauntered in with his canvas tool bag. He positioned himself at the bar, two stools down from the guy. By the time his wallet was in his hand, I had a PBR in front of him and was pouring a shot of Bacardi 151. This had been his routine once a week for the past couple of months. Each time I watched him down his shot, it never failed to amaze me.

“Dude,” was all I could manage as I swiped Jimmy’s money off the bar and rang him up. In all of my bartending years, 151 was typically used as an add-in. Sometimes, bartenders used it as a cleaner to lift stubborn gunk or mildew. It smelled like gasoline, and I couldn’t imagine it tasting much better. I had yet to determine if Jimmy was an icon or just plain stupid.

Jimmy downed the shot and chased it with a couple of swigs of his beer.

“Fucking cast-iron liver,” Steve said, shaking his head, returning his gaze to the newspaper.

“Give me one of those,” the guy said.

“PBR,” I assumed.

“No, a shot.”

“Of 151?” Jimmy and I looked at him in disbelief. I didn’t have to turn my head to know that even Steve was gazing at him, too. I still had the bottle in my hand, and the guy motioned for me to approach. I shook my head before the words came out of my mouth. “No, you don’t want this.”

“Don’t tell me what I want. Give me a shot,” the guy insisted.

“This is one hundred and fifty-one proof. This is not a good idea. This is never a good idea,” I said.

“You gave him one.” The guy was Blue Collar, for sure. His tan, leathery face was a telltale that he spent a lot of time outside, roadwork, maybe. His eyes were a soft watery blue in contrast.

“Yeah, well,” I said, glancing at Jimmy. “I’m pretty sure he doesn’t have a liver or any enamel left on his teeth.”

“My money is just as good. Do your job and pour me a shot,” the guy snarled.

I weighed my two options. I could stand firm and not give it to him, or I could give in and see what happens. I shrugged my shoulders. “Well, if you feel that strongly about it.”

I grabbed a semi-clean shot glass, placed it in front of him, and poured the spirit to the rim. I grabbed a couple of bills from his pile and rang him up. The three of us watched him with anticipation, as if he would explode on contact or something. He downed it and knocked it back with a swig of beer and barely a wince. Finding it rather anticlimactic, Jimmy took to his task of emptying the coin boxes. I went back to being bored.

Fifteen minutes later, Jimmy was done with the machines and pumped credits into the pool table so he and Steve could play a few games. While Steve was racking the balls, Jimmy approached the bar for another beer.

“Give me another,” the guy demanded and pointed to the shot glass still in front of him. “And one for him, too.”

“Oh, no, thanks,” Jimmy was alarmed at the thought of having a second shot. “I’m one and done.”

“Pussy,” the guy growled. He was on his second long neck, and it was still unclear what was brewing under the surface. He pointed to the empty shot glass, lifted his gaze long enough to glare at me, and said, “Give me another, bitch.”

I looked at Jimmy and then over at Steve.

“Do what you gotta do,” Steve said with a smirk as he centered the triangle of balls on their mark.

At Hogs, a customer like him was typically dealt with in a dramatic display of hostility and aggression to entertain the crowd. But, including him, there were only four people in the bar. I could clear his beer and money and have Steve throw him out. I could drown him in a stream with the beverage of my choice from the soda gun. I could use a combination of the two but any mess I made I’d have to clean up. I decided to play the long game.

“Sure thing, darlin’,” I said and sauntered over with the bottle. The sides of my mouth curled into a smile as I filled the shot glass to the rim. “On me,” I purred and headed back to my perch in the corner. From over my shoulder, I heard the empty glass hit the wood. I grinned when I caught Steve and Jimmy’s mixed expressions of surprise and horror at my unexpected response. “Now, we wait,” I said casually.

After twenty minutes of barely any sign of life, the guy cocked his head towards me. “Bathroom?”

“Straight back, doll.” The bar was a long wide rectangle with three doors in the back. One door was to the office, one to the emergency exit, and the other was to the unisex bathroom. All clearly marked. No further instruction needed.

The guy got up, sidestepped to the right a few feet from his stool. He paused and then countered with three sidesteps to the left. Once he was back where he started, he focused and headed toward the back. Four steps into his forward advance, his left foot caught the back of his right ankle, and he pitched forward. He fell like a lone tree in a forest.

THWACK

The music from the jukebox had absorbed the sound of the guy’s forehead hitting the hardwood floor, preventing it from reaching Steve and Jimmy at the pool table. I got up from my perch and peered over the bar and stools. The guy was face down, motionless, arms at his sides. His hat had popped off on impact.

“Hey…Steve?” At twenty-five, I had already seen far more dead bodies than I should have. Desensitized by my bad social choices, my tone unintentionally lacked urgency.

“What,” he barked, bent over the table poised to take a shot but didn’t look up.

I patiently waited for Steve to make his shot. When he did, “A little help here,” I asked calmly as I pointed to the floor.

Steve and Jimmy’s initial annoyance of having to stop their game to pick the drunk guy up off the floor vanished when they approached. Something was disturbing about how stock-still he was.

“Is he dead?” Steve looked at me, eyes wide with astonishment.

“You tell me. You’re closer.” I remained behind the bar and watched with what could be perceived as an unsettling detachment.

“Jesus Christ,” Jimmy said with alarm as he went pale.

Jimmy and Steve carefully pried the guy off the floor. His head slumped forward into his chest. He mumbled incoherently, indicating he wasn’t dead, which came as a general relief. But his skinny limbs floundered and splayed like The Scarecrow from The Wizard of Oz. Jimmy and Steve abandoned the idea of getting him to his feet. Instead, they sat him up, and his head lolled back.

It was at that moment that the extent of his damage was displayed. A large gash stretching from his brow bone well into his receding hairline suddenly split open like a crevasse at least an inch wide. Blood gushed down the guy’s face and neck into his shirt like a river. All three of us stared directly at his exposed skull. The shocking white amidst the gore was mesmerizing.

“Fuuuck,” Jimmy said in a heavy whisper, panic in his eyes. “That’s a lot of blood.”

“Headwounds always gush like that,” I offered, attempting to downplay the scene but not dispute.

The guy’s head tipped to the side, and blood poured onto the floor like an open faucet, expanding into a crimson pool that glistened like candy in the fluorescent lighting.

“Call 911!” Jimmy’s voice suddenly shrill and angst-filled.

“No!” Steve yelled. “We’ll get shut down.” He looked at Jimmy, “We got to bring him to the ER ourselves.”

Quickly resigning to his forced participation, Jimmy nodded. “Alright. My van’s half a block away. I’ll pull it out front.” He shook his head and left.

While we waited for Jimmy to return, I unraveled half a roll of paper towels to place on the blood puddle. I stepped back and pondered what someone would see if they walked in the door. It looked exactly like what it was: a big wad of bloody paper towels in the middle of the floor. I put a barstool over it to hide it in plain sight.

Steve took the rest of the paper towels and mummied the guy’s entire head, ripping open a mouth hole with the assumption that he was still breathing. The white paper towels splotched with cherry red. The guy was drenched in blood which meant Steve was probably covered in it too, but it wasn’t noticeable. I would never again tease him about his hideous Hawaiian shirts.

It wasn’t until the door flew open that we realized one of us should have locked it. The sunlight streamed in on Steve and the guy like a spotlight on an active crime scene. Fortunately, it was just Jimmy returning. His van was double parked out front.

Steve grabbed the guy’s legs, but Jimmy hesitated. “I can’t get blood all over my work van.” It was a reasonable protest.

I watched them struggle with what to do next. “Wrap him in the cover to the pool table,” I enthusiastically advised like I was Martha fucking Stewart. “You can throw it in the washing machine later.”

“Great idea!” Steve dropped the guy’s legs and trotted to the office to retrieve it.

“Yeah, great idea,” Jimmy said, a little unnerved at how quickly I solved this unique dilemma. He avoided eye contact with me.

Steve returned with the cover, and he and Jimmy folded it to make a stretcher. As they lifted the guy onto it, I opened the door, and they awkwardly ambled outside and across the sidewalk to the back of the van. No one noticed. No one cared. It was just another day in upper Manhattan on the threshold of Harlem.

The nearest hospital was two blocks away. Jimmy and Steve returned in record time, even for a dump and dash. “Holy shit, that was fast,” I exclaimed as they walked through the door, the bar still empty.

“Yeah,” Steve gruffed. “Security guard wouldn’t let us leave until we filled out a report.” He smiled, “I was trying to figure out how we were gonna get out of it when Jimmy here asked for some towels to stop the bleeding. As soon as the guard turned his back, we bolted.”

Steve went to work cleaning up the blood on the floor, threw the towels, his shirt, and the guy’s hat into a trash bag, and took it out the back. Jimmy sat at the bar, silently staring at the row of bottles in front of him as he processed the event that took place.

I was afraid to ask but did anyway. “Was he alive?”

“He was when we left,” Jimmy said calmly.

“Good. You want a beer? On me.”

“No, thank you. I have to get to my next location.” Jimmy went to the back, retrieved his tool bag, and strolled out the door.

“See you next week,” I said with a friendly smile as Jimmy waved a hand before disappearing into the wash of daylight.

Shortly after, Steve reappeared wearing one of the bar’s T-shirts smelling of disinfectant. He returned to his newspaper and half-eaten chicken wings. I went back to being bored.