The woman rolled her eyes dramatically. “Those old geezers couldn’t keep up with me.”
Sharlene frowned. Amos could out-two-step and outdrink any of the young cowboys. “Be careful. Those old fellows know more about how to treat a woman than the young bucks can learn in a decade.”
“Maybe I got a mind to teach the cowboy, rather than them teach me. Grab ’em young and raise them up to suit me.” The woman smiled.
Sharlene set the martini on the bar. “If you are interested in quantity rather than quality, then take a look at the door. Those three all look teachable.”
The woman wet her lips and stood up straight. “Yum, yum!”
Sharlene leaned on the bar and watched the woman paint an imaginary red laser dot on the prettiest blond cowboy’s belt buckle and head that way with an extra wiggle under her tight jeans and a smile on her face.
Toby Keith had a song on the new jukebox called “I Love This Bar,” and it described the Honky Tonk along with every other beer joint in Texas and Oklahoma. He said that it had lookers, hookers, all-nighters, preppies, and bikers among other things. Well, the lookers had just walked through the doors and the pseudo-hooker was marking her territory. Bikers would be Amos and his crew of retired businessmen who rode up from Dallas a couple of times a week to drink and dance. Preppies came from all four directions to listen to what they called vintage country music and learn to two-step in their loafers with tassels and pleated dress slacks.
Since it was Monday night the new jukebox had been turned off and the old one took center stage. Three songs for a quarter just like in Ruby’s first days had become the Tonk’s trademark. When the last bar owner, Larissa Morley, came to Mingus, she’d been instrumental in putting the news out on the internet that there was a quaint little beer joint just over the border separating Erath and Palo Pinto Counties. It didn’t take long for the word to spread and for Luther to have to count customers to make sure they stayed under the maximum quota for their space.
“Trip to Heaven” by Freddie Hart was playing when the woman stuck her fingers through the young cowboy’s belt loops and led him to the dance floor. Freddie sang about not needing wings to fly and said that he just took a trip to heaven and he didn’t even have to die. If that greenhorn got drunk enough to let her pick him up that night, he’d think he took a trip to heaven, got rejected at the door by Saint Peter, and been sent straight to hell come morning time. He’d have a hellacious hangover and a nasty taste in his mouth when he figured out the sweet young thing he’d gotten lucky with was as old as his mother.
A blushing sting crawled up Sharlene’s neck. What did Holt Jackson think when she passed out cold as a mother-in-law’s kiss in his pickup truck? And if he hadn’t been a gentleman, where would their business relationship be? Lord, what a tangled mess!
The music changed to a slow Alan Jackson song, and the middle-aged woman kept her cowboy on the dance floor for another round.
“What are you smiling about?” Tessa asked.
“Chigger,” Sharlene said.
“Yep,” Tessa agreed.
“What’s a chigger?” a blonde woman asked from a barstool right in front of them. She’d been nursing a beer for the past half hour and brushing off every man who approached her.
Tessa leaned on the bar and explained above the noise of the jukebox and the bootheels on the floor as the dancers did different versions of a fancy two-step. “A few years ago a woman used to come into the Tonk every weekend. Her nickname was Chigger.”
“Was she a hooker?” the girl whispered behind her hand.
Sharlene laughed. “No. Hookers charge and Chigger said sex was too much fun to make a dollar on. She said she could put an itch on a man just like a real chigger, and only a weekend in bed with her could make the itch disappear.”
“What happened to her?” the woman asked.
“She got married, had a baby girl, and is expecting another baby by Christmas. She’s happy as a kitten with its nose in a bowl of warm milk. You’d never guess that she used to try to put the make on every good-lookin’ cowboy who walked through the doors. The Honky Tonk charm worked for her,” Sharlene said.
“I heard about that charm. That’s why I’m here. I heard that more people have met and gotten married out of this beer joint in the last three years than on those internet dating services,” she said. “I’m Loralou, by the way.”
Tessa motioned toward the packed dance floor with a bar rag. “Don’t see anything you like yet, Loralou?”
Loralou shook her head. “Chigger woman got the one I might have liked.”
Tessa patted her hand. “Don’t give up, darlin’. See that big old bouncer back there?”
Loralou glanced at Luther standing in front of the door with his arms across his chest. He was as big as the broad side of a barn. His hair was cropped short and his round face serious. She shivered. “Don’t tell me that he’s interested in me, please. Just looking at him makes me want to run home and hide under the bed.”
Tessa laughed. “He’s harmless unless some idiot starts something in here. What I was about to tell you is that he belongs to me. You get a Chigger itch for a big man, you just remember that you got to go through me to get at him. The rest of the peacocks in here are free territory. You don’t like the way that Chigger woman is trying to superglue her boobs to that cowboy, you go out there and tap her on the shoulder. She creates a problem, Luther sends her out the door and lets the next one in.”
Loralou shook her head. “I’m shy.”
“Shy don’t cut shit in the Tonk. We got charm, darlin’, but you got to make your own miracles. You like the cowboy, then you make a move,” Tessa said.
“Hey, could I get a bucket of Coors, Tessa? Merle just whipped me and now I got to buy a round for all the boys,” Amos said.
A black leather do-rag covered up his bald head with a gray rim showing around the edges. His black vest covered a T-shirt, and black leather chaps covered the front and sides of his jeans. When he went to work the next morning in one of the biggest oil companies in Dallas, he’d be dressed in a three-piece custom-made Italian suit and few people would believe that he rode Harleys a couple of days a week. He’d been Ruby Lee’s best friend and possibly her lover for many years.
Tessa crammed six longneck bottles of Coors into a galvanized milk bucket, shoveled two scoops of ice on top, and handed the bucket to Amos. Sharlene filled an order for three quarts of Miller. When they looked down the bar, Loralou tossed back the rest of her drink, took a deep breath, and plowed right out into the middle of the dance floor. She tapped the Chigger woman on the shoulder and stood back.
The cowboy smiled at Loralou and wrapped his arms around her.