Bartle Clunes - Chapter 37

Meeting Eli's mother, Merlene.

Photo by Alex Bierwagen at Unsplash.com

Previous chapters are listed in the Bartle Clunes archive - Click here .

If you are new, please start here - Introduction to Bartle Clunes .

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Bakersfield, California 1952

Len's Tavern was quiet Tuesday afternoon. Not many people were off work yet in Bakersfield, California. Two old ranchers, wearing Mexican palm straw hats with tassels hanging off the back, sat at the far end. They were shaking dice in a large leather cup and slamming it upside down on the bar. Whomp!

“¡Hijole!” one shouted.

“¡Ya ves!” said the other.

Merlene Flounder sat on her usual stool in front of the taps, the one with the torn red vinyl held together with an “X” of silver duct tape. She was working on her third glass of lager, staring at the Hamm's beer sign, its electric waterfall rolling lazily round and round out there in the Land of Sky Blue Waters.

No matter what time it was, Len's Tavern was always night-time dark, as if Len didn't want his customers to get a closer look. It smelled strongly of bottled red cherries and cheap brandy. Intermittently a faint whiff of pine-scented urinal cake wafted from the men's room in the back. On the jukebox, Ernest Tubb, the Texas Troubadour, was Waltzing Across Texas. Chester was wiping down the bar with a large white rag, polishing glasses, holding them up to the light to make sure there were no traces of lipstick left behind. Merlene noticed he had extraordinarily large bags under his eyes. A hazard of his profession she guessed.

“What's on your mind there, Merlene girl? You look a little down in the dumps this afternoon.”

Timothy Barlin at Unsplash.com

“Same old thing, Chester,” was all she said. Merlene got off work at the Tropical Paradise Motel about four o'clock every day. The work was less than fulfilling, as you might imagine - cleaning sinks, changing sheets, putting plastic bags in the little flip-top waste baskets, vacuuming peanuts and cigarette ash off the fossilized green carpet. Hardly the stuff of dreams, not exactly what she had hoped for when she came west.

When she was a girl, living in squalor in New Cordell, Oklahoma, folks would bend down and ask, “What do you want to be when you grow up, Merlene?” She always answered, “A movie star.” But, as destiny would have it, she'd had to take whatever job a woman with no high school diploma could find in the Great Central Valley of California. Bakersfield was as close to Hollywood as she'd ever been.

The Troplcal Paradise Motel

What she did have was a room to live in at the Tropical Paradise and a minimum wage. It was just temporary, of course, but she had been there for two years and, as yet, had no other plans.

The most compelling and ever-present worry on Merlene 's mind was her sweet little boy, Eli. She thought of him every morning, missed him every night. Eli had no father, at least not one that Merlene would be willing to acknowledge. The boy was hers alone. “I took good care of him for six years all by myself,” she said to Chester, “and I know I can do it again. I am a pretty darned good mom. I made sure he was fed and clean and had clean clothes, and I taught him good manners.”

But, in fact, Merlene was worried most of the time raising her boy. Will we have enough money? Enough food? What if I lose my job? What if I can't get him to his school? What if I fall even further down, and can't get myself out? What if I die? She was afraid of everything, all the time. She really wanted to stop drinking, but she didn’t know how.

Eli was safe with Eizer

Eli was at least safe for now with Eizer Griggs, up there in the foothills. Eizer was her only relative, a good man, if a little unusual, and he would see Eli was taken care of until she could come for him. Every week she told Chester, “I am going right up there to get him next week.” Or she would say, “One a these days I'm gonna get married, get out of this mess, and make a good home for my boy.” She had been saying that for a while now.