THE MOMENT I posted the signs—one for the dining room, one for the bar—I had no idea how many sirens it would set off. I was trying to alert the diners and cocktail crowd to the fact that Herb’s would be closed to the public for a private party on the day and night of August 21.
The regulars knew about it, as did the staff, and I had bought an ad in the papers which mentioned that it was by invitation only. But that didn’t keep half the population on the globe from inquiring about invitations, or maybe they were interested in something else.
People who had never dined at Herb’s even once showed up and as casually as possible would ask about an invitation as they paid the lunch or dinner check. I guess if you’ve never known a celebrity, or breathed the same air as one . . . oh, well.
It was necessary for the early arrivals from out of town to entertain themselves for a while. They were informed that Olivia and I would be occupied. We would be settling on decorations, arranging a place to put a service bar in the dining room, and finding a spot for a mic and podium for those I would ask to speak, as in entertain us with songs, dances, and snappy patter.
I told the visitors by email that they might need maps to negotiate the roadwork taking place in the old hometown. It caused detours and traffic jams all over town. A dozen freeways were under construction going nowhere in every direction. That didn’t particularly fill me with a sense of civic pride.
Bobby Downs came in the bar with Dorito Bracy and Everywhere Red Fuqua to tell me they realized they wouldn’t be invited, but they offered to provide security. Hang outside in case any car-jackers or party-crashers paid a visit.
Bobby said, “Everybody knows there’s gonna be people here who is rich and famous.”
I said I wasn’t worried about it. I was continuing to work on which locals to include and which ones to cull. I couldn’t invite everybody, and I hoped I wouldn’t leave out somebody who might want to get even with me by puncturing the tires on my sparkling black Lexus.
Bobby and Dorito asked on behalf of Montana Slim and Boots Dunlap if the bookmakers could buy invitations.
Bobby said, “Slim used to come here for the chicken fried steak when Herb was alive. It was usually in football season when Herb could test his brain against the six-point teasers.”
Red Fuqua said, “Circus Face invented the six-point teaser.”
I said, “He may have. I know it was either Circus Face or Al Capone.”
Bobby said, “Herb never learned that teasers are for suckers, like the stock market.”
“Both have ripped my heart out enough times,” I said.
Bobby said, “Slim says only five people understand money, and they are all in New York. They can make the market do whatever they want it to do. I ask him how you get to be one of the five guys. He said you start by being a crook.”
Dorito said, “Boots came here for the fried shrimp.”
I said, “Boots Dunlap ate here for the fried shrimp? What? He thought Herb caught them out of the Trinity River?”
Bobby looked surprised. “There’s shrimp in the Trinity River?”
I turned to Red Fuqua. “Does Circus Face want to buy an invitation?”
Red said, “Circus Face don’t do public . . . only when he goes to Railhead or Angelo’s for barbecue.”
I said I’d seen Circus Face at Carshon’s on chocolate pie day. And I’d seen him in the Paris Coffee Shop going after a slice of the egg custard.
Red Fuqua said, “I didn’t know we was talkin’ about deezerts.”
I said the guys could tell Slim and Boots they would receive invitations in the mail. They were local celebrities, after all.
*****
LOYCE EVETTS showed up with a problem. He was currently keeping up Yasmin and Renata, and asked if he could bring one of them to the reunion.
I said, “Loyce, I’ve lost count, but I recall a Heather and an Amber . . . an Ashly and an Angel . . . and wasn’t there an Andrea and a Tina?”
He said, “You skipped Dawn and Dagmar.”
“You never mentioned Dawn and Dagmar.”
“They didn’t last long. Skanks, is what they were. They stole rugs, lamps, plates, silverware, and blankets from the apartments when they left. Trust in this life is becoming a thing of the past, Tommy Earl.”
“Which one do you feel the strongest about. Now. Today.”
“Can’t decide. They’re both knockouts.”
“I’ll help you out. Which one speaks English?”
“They’re Americans,” he frowned. “I don’t fool with foreigners anymore. Your foreigners don’t bathe regular. That was a bitch of a thing to find out the hard way, if you want the truth.”
“Which one is most likely to sue you for sexual harassment?”
He gave it a moment’s study. “That would be Yasmin.”
“Okay. Go with Renata.”
“Even though she’s got some tramp in her?”
“Jesus, Loyce. Is it that complicated? Are Renata and Yasmin their real names?”
Bursting into laughter, Loyce spread his arms in a gesture, and said:
“Who cares?”
*****
HOYT NEWKIRK stopped in the bar to buy a round for everybody. He was celebrating. He’d met a lady, Denise Satterwhite, who helped him land a job. He planned on bringing Denise to the reunion. Everyone considered it good news that Hoyt landed a job, but their enthusiasm tapered off when they discovered he would be selling burial plots.
Hoyt is a man with a fixed smile under his Stetson and he sports a huge silver belt buckle. He’s a Texan, but he’s never known whether he was born in Fluvanna or Strawn. His mother could never remember either.
Moving to Fort Worth after eighteen years in New Mexico, Hoyt became fascinated with Texas history. He didn’t have to tell me that no other city in the state offers a more engaging Old West history than Fort Worth.
I’d studied and read about most of it. The Chisholm Trail, other cattle drives, especially those led by Charlie Goodnight moving his longhorn herds out of the Panhandle. I’d watched longhorns corralled at the stockyards. I’d read about the Swift and Armour meat-packing plants opening here around the turn of the century—they transformed Fort Worth into a city. And before that, Fort Worth introduced the first world championship indoor rodeo.
This was a town that welcomed the occasional visits of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, the town where Miss Etta Place opened a boarding house after Butch and Sundance bit the dust in Bolivia.
In that wild and crazy era most of downtown was known as “Hell’s Half Acre.” There was a moment when you could have totaled up the number of sin parlors and found that the town offered its residents precisely 273 saloons, dance halls, gambling dens, and brothels as opposed to one church.
As stats go, I call that a keeper.
Hoyt’s job was selling burial plots in Pioneer’s Rest and Oakwood, the two oldest cemeteries in town. Samuels Avenue was making a comeback with condos and apartments replacing the old Victorian homes in the town’s first well-off neighborhood. Even Pioneer’s Rest cemetery on Samuels was being spruced up. Hoyt could sell me a plot close to where Major Ripley Arnold was planted.
He said I might prefer Oakwood at the south end of Grand Avenue. That’s where Olivia and I could rest near two of Fort Worth’s legendary cattle and oil barons, Samuel Burk Burnett and W. T. Waggoner.
Or perhaps we might be more interested to own a plot near Luke Short, the gambler and gunslinger, and “Longhair Jim” Courtright, the US Marshal. They’re buried in Oakwood, not far apart.
“You know about the gunfight?” Hoyt asked.
I said, “Hoyt, everybody but a metal head knows about that gunfight. Bat Masterson, a Wild West character himself—buffalo hunter, Army scout, lawman in Dodge City, friend of Wyattt Earp, gambler—was an eyewitness. He wrote about the gunfight in a story for the Police Gazette. That may have been what convinced him to change his major.”
Jim Tom Pinch gets a kick out of knowing that Bat Masterson would spend his last twenty years as a popular sports columnist for the New York Morning Telegraph.
I said, “Luke and Longhair met in the street outside the White Elephant on the afternoon of February 8 in 1887. The marshal drew first, but Luke shot first. He hit Courtright in the thumb of his gun hand, and before the marshal could switch the gun to his other hand, Luke shot him four more times to finish him off.
“If Longhair Jim had done his homework he’d have known that Luke Short was not to be messed with. Luke had spent some of his own years in Tombstone and Dodge City. It was in Tombstone that Luke had outdrawn another gunslinger, a fellow named Charlie Storms, and put him on a slab.”
Hoyt said, “I hear they stage a reenactment of the Fort Worth gunfight every year in front of the White Elephant Saloon on Exchange Avenue at the stockyards. I’ll go next time they do it.”
I said, “The White Elephant Saloon was on Main Street downtown when their gunfight took place. Now it’s out on Exchange Avenue in the stockyards area. But like I’ve always said, it’s better to have a reenactment somewhere than not have a reenactment at all.”