Nathan’s by Donald Hubbard

Red-nosed Tommy St. James hit the deck within a second of being kneed in the groin by bar
owner Kate Powell.  She had developed deceptive moves over decades of keeping the peace, walking over to the combatants and breaking them up, then making them shake hands.  Pretty standard de-escalation stuff, then she smiled at the guy who started the fight and swiftly neutralized his crotch.

Observing tradition, one of the nearby pool players interrupted his game to place a dime in the juke box to play Pat Benatar’s “Hit Me With Your Best Shot.”
     On all fours and restraining tears, Tommy tried to grasp recent events.

     Kate obliged him, I know that you are new to this town, but no one fights in my restaurant.  Now take off your belt!”

      Writhing, Tommy grunted, “Why, why do you want me to take off my belt?  Isn’t it enough that I can’t have kids now?”

     “I did them a favor, they probably would’ve just looked like you.  Now take off your belt and hand it to me nicely.”

     His recent adversary, Gus Clatter advised, “take off your belt kid, it will all make sense in a minute.  Otherwise Kate will go in for the kill.”

     Snaking around the wooden floor, Tommy pulled off his belt, covered his crotch with one hand and gave Kate his belt with the other.  She smiled and walked across the floor to an old pipe, where she pulled out a chair to stand on, then hooked the belt around the pipe with dozens of other belts.

Walking back to where Tommy St. James was re-learning how to walk, she hollered, “anyone starting up a fight at Nathan’s gets kicked in the balls by me and loses their belt.  That’s for the first time you start a fight here, there is no second time.  Now apologize to Gus and finish your beer, the good news is that I feel so sorry for the guys who I kick in the balls that I usually end up sleeping with them.  Even the gay ones.”

     Tommy apologized to Gus Clatter, then Kate strode away past the swinging door leading to the kitchen where she informed her cook and her dish washer, “Any of you caught smoking weed on the job tonight gets fired and no pay.”
     Fight over.

     Back at his table with his co-workers, Tommy St. James asked, “Is she always like this, does she really do that to everybody?”

    Ray Gacy replied, “she told you she did, she did it to me almost twenty years ago once I started coming here after turning eighteen.  I pinched some broad in the ass and her boyfriend took a swing at me, and next I knew my nuts were stuck in my nasal cavity and I couldn’t breathe.  Kate did that, my belts been hanging on that pipe up there ever since.”

     “Did she sleep with you?”

     “Once.  Ever since then I behave myself. You’re new to the town, you couldn’t hold your liquor and you went after me thinking that all’d you get was a black eye.  I guarantee you, you won’t start a fight here again.” 

     Tommy gulped the rest of what was left of his fourth beer, watched Kate behind the bar talking to the four guys across from her, sitting on the stools.  He guessed her age as late 50’s- early 60’s, a nice figure but a lot of lines on her forehead and under her eyes.  When the music stopped, she took a bag of pretzels off the metal rack behind her and tossed them over to Tommy, striking him in the head.
“That’s on the house.”

      Tommy yelled back a thank you, opening the bag and spilling the contents on the wooden table for Gus and a few of his other co-workers to share.
     “That’s the last free thing you ever get from me.”

     “It’s also the first thing.”

     “No it ain’t, the kick in the balls was your first free one.”   
     Everyone laughed, then went about their business, playing pool or ordering the only item on the menu, cheeseburger steamed in beer with a side of fries.  Red plastic mesh basket.
     One of the other bumps on a log, Cool McGee, took over, “Kate runs a tight ship, look, this place is a dive, but Kate keeps it from being a sad place like the Blarney Stone.  After her husband died, she became even tougher, more determined to keep this a classy place.  That’s why we have paper place mats and ash trays with Nathan Hale’s face embossed on them, but it’s a dive.  She just doesn’t want it to turn into a shit hole.”

     Tommy said, “well kicking a guy in the cubes isn’t really classy if you ask me.”

     “You’ll get used to it, the pain will heal, plus she likes you.”

     “She has a strange way of showing it.”

     “Maybe, but the factories have all moved out of Hale and the yuppies started taking over the town years ago, you’re a bus driver who lives here just like the rest of us.  Her clientele is shrinking, you’re new blood.”  His pontificating complete, Cool took out a pack of cards and pounded them on the table and Gus cut the deck.  “Baseball poker, one pot limit, who’s in?”

     Hit me with your Best Shot, fire away!
     Her performance over, Kate returned to her office and plunked herself on a chair and fired up a cigarette, finally attending to the mail which sat on her desk all day unopened.  
     “Free trip to Orlando?  Garbage.”

     Bills from Anheuser Busch and Miller.  “They’re rich, they can wait.”
     Renewal for a sponsorship of a little league team.  She wrote a check for them and mumbled, “go team.”

     Lastly, she ripped open a notice from the Town of Hale informing her of an upcoming hearing before the alcohol commission, a group that did not exist until a few years ago when a huge developer started to try to force Kate to sell to them, so that they could knock down Nathan’s for an access road to a planned development in the acreage out back.  The developer owned the land behind Nathan’s but could not start construction of dozens of duplexes without access.  So the developers bought off the town fathers and a few real mothers and began to coerce Kate into selling to them.  By creating an alcohol commission, the town gained the ability to constantly harass Kate and constantly suspend her license for the least infraction in the newly drawn up town code regulating the sale of alcohol.
     Never mind that the other three bars in town ran far looser ships than Nathan’s did, she regularly received inspection notices and citations while the other joints served free booze to the selectmen and other high officials.
     After perusing the notice, Kate returned to the bar and summonsed Attorney Cal Keseick back to her office, and Cal obeyed, accompanied by his half-full Coors Light.

      “Sit down Cal, I want you to read this.”

     “The town fucking with you again Kate?”

     “Yeah, read it for yourself, this time they are claiming I served minors.”

     “Pfffft, that never happened.”

      “You know it and I know it and they know it but that never stops them.”

      “Well this is frivolous, you gotta fight this.”

      “Ya think?  I might as well put you back on retainer Cal.  I can’t pay you but if you get me out of this scrape, you get free beer, on the house for a month.”

     “Two months.”

     “One month and free beer nuts for two weeks.”

     “Deal.”
     Kate sobbed.  “Why do they have to be such cocksuckers Cal?  There’s plenty of places to build houses, why can’t they leave me alone?”

     “Because they’re pricks and that’s what pricks do, you know that Kate.  We will fight them like we always have, we will lose the commission hearing then take it to court.”

      “Yeah but some day they’re going to shut me down for good.  Even morons get lucky once.”               
     “So before they do, we have to develop a strategy to get them out of your hair once and for all.”

      “You have any ideas?”

      “Not right now, I’m shitfaced, but once I sleep it off, you come to my office and we will figure something out.”

     “Thanks Cal, you can drink on the house the rest of the night.  I just wish I had enough money to hire a real lawyer and not the drunkest one in the state.”

“You and me both Kate.”

     Alone, Kate reclined in her chair and regarded the folded up American flag on the wall facing her.  It covered her husband’s coffin, a nice gesture to a veteran, and she kept staring at it until she no longer heard any of the noises in her bar.

Town constable Cal Collins, half-Protestant and half-Catholic, honked his horn loudly and waved his hand outside the window to indicate to the other driver to pull over.  Cal’s car had no red light on top or any alarm, forcing him into verbosity just to get someone’s attention.  Instead of a service revolver, he carried a miniature baseball bat that his Mom had bought him at the Baseball Hall of Fame.

     “License and registration pleas.”

     “Come on Cal, said Fr. Stan, you know who I am, what did I do?”

     “Rear left reflector missing, that’s an infraction Father.”  The Catholic part of Cal wanted to let Father Stan off without a warning while the Protestant part of Cal tended to wish to throw the book at him.   

     Father Stan got out of his station wagon, the Catholic Cadillac and walked to the back of the car to verify Cal’s observations.

     “Why Cal, I’m not missing my reflector, there’s just some mud covering it up a bit.”  Father wetted his fingers and rubbed off the obstruction.  “There, good as new.  Anything else officer?”

     “No Father, you can go, but you might want to get your car washed more.”

      “Will do, now for your act of contrition.”

     “Why, what did I do?”

      “You pulled over a minister of the Gospel without cause.”  Pondering a fit punishment that observed Cal’s bi-religiosity, Father Stan ordered him to recite two Hail Marys and buy an Andy Williams record and listen to it from start to finish.

      “Okay Father, you be safe and remember that car wash.”

     Father Stan waved, then returned to his car and drove away, leaving Cal with no pending crimes to solve.  

He considered catching a few Little League games, a large percentage of the town’s people were there and every now and then a parent yelled at a coach, so “The Law” often had to intercede to restore the peace.  He also felt thirsty, so he drove to the Blarney Stone for a few beers.

     Inside the dimly lit shithole a stranger sat on a barstool gabbing to the bartender Mike.  Mike waved Cal over, “Cal, I want to introduce you to Bart Mitchell, Bart’s what they call a ‘bird dog scout’ for the Boston Red Sox."  
     Cal shook the scout’s hand, but before he said a nice to meet you, the scout embarked on his spiel, “What’s a bird dog scout you ask, it’s like I was telling Mike, I travel all around Connecticut going to American Legion games and high school ball and once a month I drive up to Boston to meet with the regional scout with my reports about the most talented kids I see.  Any time the Sox sign one of my players, I get a commission but even if I don’t score, they pay for gasoline and all of the free hot dogs and cokes I can down while watching games.”

      “Sounds like a dream job Mr. Mitchell.”

      “Bart, Mr. Mitchell is my old man and an old man he is, 97 years old if you can believe it and he still washes himself every day and has most of his teeth.”

       “That’s really great Bart, but I doubt you’re going to find much here in Hale, we don’t have that many boys and if there are any good ones, they are playing Legion Ball out of town.  All we got here is a few Little League diamonds and a Babe Ruth League park.”

     “Let me buy you a drink Cal, don’t worry, its on the Red Sox, Mike here is ringing it up like a soda pop.  You’d be surprised, there is a kid from Hale Catholic that I want to check out, bring the radar gun, I hear that he can throw 90 miles an hour.  Good curveball too.”

     “You sure? What’s the kid’s name?”

     “Tug Williams.”

     “Never heard of him, is he new to the town?”

     “He is, he played a couple years of schoolboy ball while his family lived in Schenectady, New York, he is starting his junior year of ball after he enrolls at Hale Catholic for the fall.  At the end of next spring, he will be 18 years old and if the Sox like him, they just might pick him up in the Amateur Draft.”

     Mike handed Cal his free drink, which Cal gulped down like a goony bird.  “Imagine that, a star ballplayer in Hale, we never really had anyone famous here except for Fatty Arbuckle.”

     “If this kids is as good as advertised, he will make the world forget about Fatty Arbuckle.  Say Cal, is it possible that you could give me a bit of an escort seeing as you are the town lawman?”

     Mike sniggered, almost blew his beer nuts through his nose.
    “I would be happy to Bart, hell, I’d like to see the kid myself, maybe get an autograph.”

    Bart took asked for his bill, which he paid out of his coin purse and dutifully grabbed the receipt and entered his libations and tip in his black expense book.  “I’d appreciate that Cal, it means a lot to parents to see that their son is in good hands, I’m a stranger here but having an officer of the law with me would make me look and feel like a million dollars.”

     “Be happy to, just tell me where this kid and his family live, and you will get a full police escort.”

     “1198 Hubbard Street.”

     “I know exactly where it is, its by the dog pound, I’ll have you there in five minutes.  Goodbye Mike!”

     “Yes, goodbye Mike!”

     “Goodbye gentlemen.”

      Mike cleaned the empty beer glasses off his bar and wiped it down, then turned to watch celebrity bowling on television.  He grinned at the thought of Cal Collins escorting a bird dog scout to some kid’s home, like the secret service transporting the President around.  

Donald Hubbard has written six books, one of which was profiled on Regis and Kelly and another that was a Boston Globe bestseller and Amazon (category) top ten.  Two books have gone into a second edition and he was inducted into the New England Basketball Hall of Fame as an author in 2015.  He has published thirty four stories in twenty magazines and had a chapter from one of his books published in Notre Dame Magazine.  He studied English at Georgetown and the University of Kent.