My brother laid out the size of his new club by scratching
out the outline of the building in the dirt with a hoe. He called a concrete
company, and they came out with a backhoe and gouged out the foundation. A
couple of days later a plumber came out and ran some plastic pipe for the
bathrooms and bar area only minutes before the concrete trucks arrived.
The building turned out to be hundred feet long and fifty
feet wide and had three levels. The entrance to the place was on the lower
level where the pool tables were. The boss, my brother’s wife, had her chair
and a little desk by the door and collected the cover charge when they had a
band on the weekend.
I walked in on a Saturday night, and she handed me a pair of
brass knuckles.
“There’s a bunch of drunken idiots in here tonight. I’m
expecting trouble,” she said.
Drunken idiots were no big deal in the Big Tube Club. That
summed up about ninety percent of the club’s customer—maybe a hundred percent
counting the owners and their relatives, me included. I slipped the brass
knuckles in a front pocket of my Wranglers and stepped up to the bar and
ordered a fortifier to get ready for the predicted trouble.
My little brother had coined the phrase ‘big tube’ which he
used to describe girls who were overweight. As a joke, my brother’s wife
decided Big Tube was a perfect name for the club.
Tonight the club was full of its namesakes. Most were stuffed
into jeans two sizes too small which did nothing to hide how big their butts
were. Didn’t matter much. Whiskey is better than cosmetic surgery when it comes
to beautifying. Keeping the lights of the club turned down low also played an
important role. By midnight there would not be any ugly women in the house. All
the Yahoos would be handsome too. Even I might have a chance at getting lucky.
The band started at ten o’clock. At first, the flow to the
dance floor in front of the band stand set up on the second level was a trickle.
A couple of hours later the floor was over flowing with couples bucking and
sawing off beat to the country music blasting from the stage. My brother and I
were standing at the edge of the second level watching the action down by the
six pool tables on the first level. A big group of a party from a local
electrical company was playing pool against a bunch of oilfield hands.
“I bet it don’t last another twenty minutes,” my brother
said.
“Ten bucks says you’re right.” I laughed.
A big, fat guy swung his pool cue and hit a tall guy wearing
a cowboy hat across the back of his head knocking the hat flying like a
Frisbee. The melee was on. Didn’t look like it mattered much who was fighting
who or why. Everyone went to swinging, but mostly with not too much effect.
“Let’s give ‘m a minute to wear themselves out, and then
we’ll break it up,” my brother said.
“I owe you ten bucks,” I laughed. I reached into my pocket
and slipped one of the brass knucks over the knuckles of my right hand.
