by Taylor McKay Hathorn

There’s only one bar in Tutwiler, Arkansas, and most of the frequent fliers are men who work construction or for the power company, coming in after work to have a beer. They leave terrible tips and don’t bother to take off their wedding rings when they flirt with Christine. When they bring their wives in, she politely pretends not to recognize them, and she gets a chance to make interesting things: cosmos, mojitos, moscow mules. All o-sounds that roll off the tongue. The women usually confess, later, that the drinks are too strong for them and ask for something sweeter. A mai-tai, maybe. A daiquiri, please. Harsh i- and e-sounds that let her know she needs to get the blender out.

Becky, the only divorce lawyer for two counties, judges them silently over her Manhattan when they ask for something sweeter. Becky comes in every night after work unless it’s a Wednesday. Wednesday is, of course, church night, and Becky’s the only person brave enough to teach a Bible study class to the junior high boys at the Methodist church. Becky’s Boys, the plaque outside their classroom door reads simply. The other religious education classes have kitschy little names: the Spiritual Warriors, the Higher Strivers. Becky has no time for such nonsense.

Sometimes, the fathers of Becky’s boys will buy her a drink. “Kept my boy out of juvie and on the straight and narrow,” they’ll say tearfully over their third can of PBR, even though they themselves have never walked the straight and narrow a day in their lives.

Those same men scowl at her when their wives inevitably leave them for their violence or their affairs or their various other hard-drinking, mean-living ways. Becky takes them for all they’re worth, which isn’t much, but it’s always enough to get a woman a few months’ rent on an apartment or a down-payment on a single-wide trailer.

They usually aren’t brave enough to say anything to her about it, but once, a man threw his glass of beer in her face. Becky hadn’t said anything, had just gestured for Christine to bring her a dishtowel. She’d pulled a clean one out from the drawer beside the dishwasher, had tossed it to her and watched as Becky dried her cat-eye glasses and then her face. Christine would have thrown the man out of the bar, but she didn’t need to, because two other men had dragged him into the parking lot by the tail of his ragged work shirt. There, they’d proceeded to beat the living daylights out of him. They had once been, as Christine discovered later, Becky’s boys, and Becky’s boys never forgot.

Becky had finished her Manhattan before she left. She hadn’t paid the tab, but it was covered ten times over, plus tip.

Photo by Drew Beamer on Unsplash