Alice

A Fourth of July in Texas

 “Alice”

        I hadn’t seen Alice since we met in Mexico.  She lived in Austin; which was just down the street but my car was giving me s**t and the price of gas had tied a noose around my wallet.  It’s rare that I allow the boundaries of money to determine  my “maneuvers.”  Traditionally, I deal with the numbers during the aftermath of misadventure.  But this time I tried to attack the finances with surgical precision; but in the end I said screw it and drove to Austin with a few disguises, some cash, and the familiar hunger to go to a seedy horse track hidden in the hill country of Texas.

        It was Fourth of July weekend.  While the Fourth is not Texas’ most celebrated holiday, the fact that it fell on a Friday added to the level of leisure for everyone.  This made me realize that I had to have a plan of some type even if it didn’t take into account “costs”.  I couldn’t very well show up on Alice’s doorstep and simply ask her to come out and play.  So I stopped at a gas station on Texas’ 71.  It had a rather homestyle convenience store.  I inquired about horse tracks near Austin.  The kind old lady sold me a map but gave me the directions for free.  God bless her.  Esther, her name of course, mentioned the Gillespie County Fairgrounds, two miles south of Fredericksburg’s Main Street.  An hour and a half west of Austin- it was perfect.

        Some of you may disapprove of such an activity- horse racing.  But I don’t go for the sport.  I go for the timelessness.  The people.  The setting.  The savagery.  I picture men in their seer sucker suits; the women in dresses and parasols; and everyone’s holding some stately drink in their hand.  That’s why I go to the horse track.  That and the off chance that I might win some money on a horse named Alabaster Chupacabara (never happened).  Either way, now I have a compelling reason for Alice to join me on an outing.

        After arriving at her castle of a house, trekking up her rain forest of a front yard, and banging a gong with a mallet- she answered the door.  I was caught off guard- and sweaty from all the trekking.  She pretended to be surprised: a good sign.  Then, four guys much taller and leaner than I walked out the door clearly dressed in their yuppie uniform from the night before: a bad sign.  I decided on sarcasm.

        “I take it you’re about to shower.”

        “Ha Ha, I have six roommates.  Those are some of their boyfriends.  And one random guy.  But not mine.”

        “Seven beautiful women live in this mansion?  It’s like a sorority house on Olympus.”

        “Shut up.  Why are you here?” she asked with sincere impatience.

        “Alice, I have shown up here on your front door step on this Fourth of July to ask you to- (I went with my instincts) come out and play.  No more. No less.”

        She leaned against the doorway like it was a stripper pole.  She pondered the question deeply.  I was not reassured.

        “Well, Mr. Mills-McCoin, you have a very enticing offer but I kind of already have plans,” she said as she plunged the dagger straight into my heart.

        I was inspired.  So I pulled the dagger out with, “But your plans do not include horses.”

        “No they don’t.”

        “And your plans do not include strange games of chance.”

        “No they don’t.”

        “Costumes?”

        “Nope.”

        “I can smell your intrigue; so let’s waste no more time,” I said with the confidence of Zeus.  She obliged with a smile.

        We were on the road to Fredericksburg after an hour of trying on costumes.  Right off the bat I chose “College Professor on a Safari”, also known as “Ernest Hemingway”.  Maybe it was me, but Alice and I simply couldn’t decide on a costume for her.  First she tried on “Naughty Nurse” and then she tried “Sexy Auto Mechanic.”  After that was “Naughty Nun” then back to “Naughty Nurse”.  No time was wasted.  Seriously.  Alice finally settled on (at my suggestion) something to the liking of “Mary Poppins at the Horse Race in the Drawing”, complete with large hat, umbrella, and gloves.  It was patchwork but it was haute.

        I kept up the small talk in the car.  The more we talked about meaningless crap, the less likely she was to ask questions about important stuff- like, “where the hell are we going,” or “what the hell are you going to do with your life if, by chance, you happen to grow up?”  But eventually the small talk broke down and she asked, “Where the hell are we going?”

        By then we were almost halfway there, so I decided on honesty.

        “Alice, we are going to the Gillespie County Fairgrounds two miles south of Main Street in Fredericksburg.  I have a map.”

        “Why are we going there?”

        “There’s horse racing.”

        “What?!  I thought we were going on a picnic or something.”

        “Then why do you sound upset?”

        “Is this a re-enactment of a famous horse race circa 1923?”

        “Zev V. Papyrus.  No ma’am but that’s where I got the idea,” and obviously that wasn’t true.

        “Do a lot of people have a love/hate relationship with your imagination?”

        I laughed and said, “Yes, it’s not uncommon.”  Despite being a positive double negative, that was true.

        The rest of the car ride was filled with winning conversation and stories of Mexico.  We made it to the fairgrounds in no time.  I was more than a little excited.  Alice was not.  Understandably so since she was wearing what Cyndi Lauper might wear if she was going to a horse race in 1923- or ’83 for that matter.  I told her not to worry and that in my mind she was reticent, which was not the word I was looking for but something I read in a George Bernard Shaw book.  In any case, she didn’t know what it meant, it worked; and after parking we walked to the ticket booth.

        I don’t remember the last time I bought a ticket for five dollars and it be worth a damn.  So I bought two and we walked in.

        All the sobriety began to annoy me.

        “Drink?” I asked.

        “F**k yeah,” she replied.

With fury, we got in a line for alcohol.  The decision to stand in said line was based on the fact that I saw some people walking away from a line with beers in their hand.  This turned out poorly-ish.  I didn’t notice that it was a beer only line and approached with, “A Belmont Breeze please.”

        They guy shook his head.

        “A mint julep then.”

        Unwavering stare.

        “Whiskey?”

        “We have Lonestar,” those were his only words- that he seemed to know.

        “Two, please,” I said slowly.

        I can safely say we walked away from that situation really glad to be alive... but a little sad that there was only beer.  Shrugging it off, we ordered two more then headed for the Grand Stand to partake in strange games of chance- involving horses.  Aye.

        From then on, the afternoon was just as satisfying as a really good, wooden roller coaster- that you can’t get off of.

        Upon entering the Grand Stand area, I realized that what I had hoped to see (seersucker and elegance soaked in whiskey) was actually drowned in Fourth of July nostalgia and more Lonestar.  At first, I stood there down trodden in the heart; but then Alice appeared, in all of her strangeness and beauty, with the relief of two tall whiskey sours.

        “I found a bar,” she said unaware of her heroism.

        “Well done, darling.  I’m assuming you got these for free, didn’t you?”

        “That’s impressive.  How did you know?”

        “Well, everyone seems to have brought their own beer in coolers, Lonestar of course.  And so I’m thinking that there was no one at the bar that you found, except a young male bartender more than happy to oblige such an intoxicating woman as you.”

        “Weird,” she said calmly.

        “Me or the theory?”

        “Definitely both.”

        “Aw, thank you.  You didn’t have to say that,” I said sincerely.

        We walked down the stairs on the far side and found some bleacher seats near the bottom.  These turned out to be the best seats in the house.  All of the people sitting around us were bona fide Texans that probably lived in Austin during the late sixties.  The crowd was elderly.  The other side of the Grand Stand seemed to have much more of a family vibe; so we picked the better of the two.

        As soon as I finished the whiskey sour, the local sitting next to me nudged me; and offered to replenish my drink with whatever the hell was in his flask.  I said, “Thank you,” and watched as he poured an amber elixir into my cup.  It smelled of whiskey.  So I took a swig, then remembered I had whiskey in there earlier and that could’ve been why the cup smelled so.  I was worried for a moment but it passed as it was in fact, bourbon.  I had found someone I could trust- which seemed strange because I was dressed like a weirdo and everyone else was wearing jean cutoffs and gray hair.

        Before I could turn and introduce Alice, she leaned over me, looked at the old man and finished her drink.  He laughed with the joy of twenty sailors.

        “Hi, I’m Alice.  What ya got there?”

        “Kentucky’s finest,” the old man said with a smile and the voice of a young Jack Palance.

        “That better not be fried chicken in there.”

        “Nope, Maker’s Mark.  Hi, I’m Greg and this is my wife Martha.”

        And we “made friends.”  We “made friends” like you “make friends” in your dreams.  It just happened; because of some strange hippie bullshit called “energy”; and on that day, “strange hippie bullshit” was exactly what we were looking for.  I say “we” because by that point Alice was sold on the idea of 24 hours of uninhibited adventure.

        After some riveting then monotonous chatter, I decided to place a bet.  I bet twenty dollars on a horse named Buttonhook Johnson.  The horse didn’t finish the race on account of blah blah blah so I cursed the horse profanely.  So did Alice, but what she said was disgusting and had nothing to do with horses or competition.  Everyone around us was silent for a moment, then Greg and Martha laughed like deranged clowns and the rest of the Grand Stand followed suit.

        My mind- exploded.

        Fighting laughter, Greg said, “Oh my God!  That was funny!  Let’s barbeque!”

        And as though he was the leader of some strange tribe of hippies (and he very well may have been), everyone sitting on our side of the Grand Stand stood up and filled out.

        My mind- exploded.

        We followed the mob of strange, wrinkly patriots.  I say “patriots” but damn it, I mean TEXANS.  The men looked like Willie Nelson and the women looked like Emmylou Harris.  We were on a safari inside of The Museum of Austin During the 1960’s

        As we walked alongside the king and queen of this weirdness, Alice and I discovered that Greg and Martha were a lovely couple.  And they lived in a lovely home- in a lovely neighborhood- in the lovely town of Fredericksburg.  The debauchery was picturesque.

        In the front yard, there were children running around screaming profanities and trying to stab each other with lit sparklers.  All of their neighbors sat in lawn chairs in the front yard, occasionally spraying their sailor-mouthed children with the hose (possibly just trying to put out the sparklers).  On the side of the house was a long table, covered in every paper product Dixie makes.  Everyone sat at the table except the children, who continued to make me blush with their tongues and chase each other with sharpish objects.

        After dinner, Greg and Martha told us that they enjoyed our costumes and figured us for hippies- so they offered us moonshine out of a mason jar.  It was a little romantic when Alice and I unconsciously said “Yes, please,” in unison.  Then things got awkward.

        I came to and realized that Alice was making out with the dirty old man that was married to the dirty old lady I was making out with.  I broke away and stepped outside for a cigarette.  Alice freed herself from Greg and joined me outside.  We stared at each other with happy bewilderment in our eyes, then realized it was still light out.  We ran off the porch, jumped over a yard nome and started the car; we drove away at top speed.  And then there was yelling.

        “What hell is wrong with you?” she screamed- with excitement.

        “I’m not sure yet.  The moonshine is weird,” I said loudly but maintained “College Professor on a Safari” character.  I could taste the residue of the moonshine on my lips.  It was an alarming taste that made my spine shudder.  Oddly though, I wanted more.  “Liquid Courage,” I thought to myself.  

        The sun had set by the time we made it back to her castle.  I felt slightly sober but Alice still looked pretty looped.  And I’m not one to take advantage of drunk women; so I figured our adventure had come to a close and the remainder of my evening would be spent meandering about Sixth Street.  But when I stopped the car in her driveway, Alice uttered words I didn’t expect to hear.

        “Park next to the Land Rover and come in,” she said softly with the unmistakable hint of, “This ain’t over yet.”

        I parked my car and walked in the front door.  Alice disappeared up the stairs.  I waited in a living room with a twenty foot ceiling.  She returned with her six bombshell roommates, all clad in two-piece bathing suits (including Alice).  She walked over to her handbag and reached in.

        “Girls, this is Mills-McCoin.  He took me on the most amazing adventure to Fredericksburg.  And I stole this,” she said as she pulled out the familiar mason jar filled halfway with moonshine.  Alice had yahooed the jar right before we made our getaway.

        “Let’s drink this while we tell you what happened. And then go swimming.”

        “Is that moonshine?” the blonde roommate sporting the red bikini asked.

        “Yes.”

        “Then what are we wearing bathing suits for?”