I ordered a beer, spoke to everybody in general, lit a cigarette.
I felt quite at home. I had on a clean shirt and my teeth had been brushed. I saw by my wristwatch that Mildred would be pulling into our driveway in about five more minutes. My beer arrived and I held it up high in the air and, saluting, said, “Here's to Mildred.” Several people looked at me funny.
This particular bar had a lot of red velvet in it. It also had numerous mirrors that looked like they had been splattered with gold paint. It was quite classy, particularly for a place that had so many people with so little or no class come into it.
After I drank a little, I went over to the jukebox and put some money in to help pass the time and help take my mind off thoughts of Mildred. They had fourteen Tom T. Hall songs, and I played every one of them. It seemed to put everybody in a good mood. I noticed several people looking at me kindly, as if to say thanks for playing all that Tom T. I knew that, by then, Mildred had seen my dead dog. I didn't want to think about it, and I didn't know what she would think about it. I knew that she would be unhappy with me for not going ahead and burying the dog, and also for being out late drinking and riding. We had been over this thing many times before, and we weren't getting any closer to a solution. I just couldn't do anything with her big Tunnel of Love. I could hit one side at a time, but not both sides. I didn't feel like this was my fault, since I, like many other men or nearly all men, played high school basketball and football and baseball and hockey and have taken many showers with naked boys and know by casual observance that I am adequately hung. Perhaps even well
hung. I have seen boys whose peters looked like acorns. Mildred would not have even known one of those boys had it inserted. I would have had to be the Moby Dick of love to adequately satisfy Mildred. But I had sworn before God and Church to always cherish her and I supposed I would always have to. I did not cherish my first, other wife; I threw her over for Mildred. But it did not keep me from wanting something a little different from the feeling of sticking my equipment out the window and having relations with the whole world.
I got back on my stool and drank a little more and thought about the time Mildred and I discussed corrective surgery for her deformity. Mildred, I should point out, had the most wonderful ass. That was the original point of interest that attracted me to her. I have seen men pant, looking at her in a bathing suit. Mildred was always naturally hot-sexed. I knew it had to be frustrating for her to be like that. But she said she would be absolutely mortified to have to undergo an operation of that nature or even discuss it with a doctor or nurse. So, sitting there on that stool, I didn't know much other way to turn. I knew she wasn't going to like that dead dog lying in our front yard. I thought, Hey, baby, what about your cruel cats?
By the time I'd had my second beer, I'd thought about going home and hauling the shotgun out and killing every cat on the place. The last time I had counted them, there were lots of them. Rats and mice were no longer a problem. I was sure those rodents came up on the edge of the yard, took one look at all those cats, and said: No way, José.
Often people in bars don't speak to one another, and often this is what happens to me. I am extremely friendly. I just don't know what to say to people. I didn't know what to say to Mildred the first time I met her. I met her in Destin, Florida, and saw that wonderful ass she had. She did all the talking. I was down there recuperating from my divorce that was almost pending. I was separated from my first wife, but divorce was not pending. It was just almost pending, and I was trying to recuperate from that and was going home to try and patch things up in a few days. When I saw Mildred, everything went out the window, good intentions, everything, the divorce became pending. Mildred represented herself as a virtuous woman with naturally hot tendencies and told me sincerely that she was technically a virgin, but on our wedding night I quickly formed the erroneous opinion that this was simply not the case. As a matter of fact, I thought on our wedding night that Mildred's puss had simply been worn out from numerous encounters over a period of many years with some enormous number of men, which caused me and Mildred to almost divorce the next day, until she broke down crying at the Continental breakfast and confessed that I was only the first and one-half person to ever penetrate her. I took that as a compliment to mean the other person had only made it in halfway.
By the time I started drinking my third beer I had thought a lot about Mildred's womb and had begun to wonder if by some lucky chance she ever got pregnant would the baby fall out prematurely. I wondered if any of the other men in that bar were facing that particular problem and didn't figure they
were. What I figured was it was a unique problem but not quite out of line with the rest of my life. It seemed for some reason or another I had always been given the short end of the stick. I knew that it had nothing to do with my nature or character and was just an unlucky streak of fate, just like when I had fallen off the persimmon tree limb four feet off the ground at my grandmother's house and broken my arm and missed my own birthday party, then got back later with the cast on and there were only crumbs of cake in puddles of ice cream that flies were walking over on the picnic table, with all my little friends gone and all the toys and presents unwrapped and already played with.
By the time I started drinking my fourth beer I did not give much of a damn whether I ever got any more of Mildred's puss or not. I knew that she had been home for quite a good while by then and was probably wondering where I was. I knew that she had probably already fixed supper and had noted my dead dog in the yard and was probably sitting out on the front porch looking for me to come in. I began talking to some young women shooting pool and took up a stick myself and shot about three racks of eight ball with them, losing all three for a dollar. I was merely hustling these young ladies and trying to get a line of trash going. I thought I could lure some of them off with the promise of a cold sixer in my truck later.
By the time I started drinking my fifth beer there were several long-haired tattooed muscled young men who had come into the place and they had scabs on their arms and boots and overalls on. They didn't appear jocular and they
looked like they had been out in the sun all day, working very hard. My skin was milk white and I had seven dollars left in my pocket. I knew it was about time for me to get in the road.
I went outside and got in my truck and got out of town quickly. I hated to think about my old dog lying there in the yard, unburied. I thought I might ride around for a while and think about him, and Mildred, but I didn't know what good it would do. I had considered sending off for one of these pump-up penis deals but I thought they might be dangerous or at the least would not work.
Within ten minutes I was away from town and out on a back road that didn't have lawmen patrolling it and I felt free there to open another suds I had iced down earlier. I knew that Mildred would want me in the bed beside her as soon as I got home, and I wasn't looking forward eagerly to that. I felt like all our ministrations to each other were headed to a dead end and that nobody would care fifty years in the future what we had gone through. It left me feeling a little bit depressed and fearful, and I kept drinking, faster.
I rode for quite a while. I saw some cows loose from a pasture and weaved in among them. The locusts had crawled out of the ground after thirteen long years and when I stopped to pee on a bridge I thought my truck was still running because of them. They were beyond any loudness of bugs I had ever heard.
I had put away about eight beers by that time. My blood alcohol content was probably in the .10 range or maybe a little lower or higher. It didn't actually matter. Squeezing her legs together didn't help matters any at all. It was hopeless. I
didn't know what to do and I didn't want to go back home. I kept riding, drinking, riding. I thought maybe I might run into somebody. I knew I'd eventually have to bury my dog. I knew she was sitting out on the porch, waiting on me. Watching all the lights coming down the road, wondering if each one was me. I felt sad about it and bad about it. I opened another beer and realized the folly of not stopping by the liquor store while I was in town and purchasing a half pint of peach schnapps to go along with my nice cold beers. I deliberated for several minutes over this dilemma and found it was probably an oversight on my part. I did not want to go home, neither did I want to be indicted by the Mississippi Highway Safety Patrol for Driving Under the Influence of alcohol. I observed that I was driving fairly straight and I had not slurred any words yet to my knowledge. Quite the opposite, in fact, and my eyes were not red and my blood pressure did not feel elevated. I felt that a short run back to town would not have astronomical odds in favor of my being overtaken after a highspeed pursuit. I turned around at a small place on the road and began to retrace my route back to civilization.
I returned to and from town without incident and once more resumed my erratic wanderings over country roads near my home. The evening hour had begun to wane and it was nearly dark. I knew if I stayed out much longer there would be some dramatic scene with Mildred upon my arrival home, and I wished to postpone that as much as possible. Mildred could never understand my wanderlust and my anxiety over her never-ending overtures of love and affection and requests for sexual gratification, which she constantly and at all hours
of the night pressed upon me while I tried to sleep. However, I knew that however late I was, Mildred would probably only raise a token protest in lieu of the fact that I
was
home and could begin once more plunging fruitlessly into the depths of her passion. The only defense available to me was to guzzle quantities of alcoholic beverages that would allow me to arrive home in a state of lethargic consciousness in which a stupor might then be attained.
I did not know what I was going to do with Mildred or how I was ever going to be able to come to a life of harmonious tranquility where matrimonial happiness was a constant joy. The only good thing about it was it gave me a subject of regular worry that I was able to slide endlessly back and forth in my mind during my various ruminations and ramblings over blacktopped back roads. We were not social people and were never invited to parties, nor did we give parties where we invited people to them. We basically lived alone with each other on ten acres of land that was badly eroded in a house of poor quality. I was not drunk but I did not feel sober. The needle on my gas gauge was pointing toward E and had been pointing that way for quite a while. There did not seem to be anything else to do but return home and face the prospect of burying my dog/dealing with my wife. I could see her face just as well and her small ears, and I could see kissing her nose and her chin and her cheeks and the small hollow place inside her soft little elbow, and I felt like disaster was on the way, since it felt like one of those evenings that I'd already had too many of. I wanted to do all I could for her, but it didn't seem like I could do anything for her at all.
Upon entering my yard, I saw there were no lights on at my house and my dog was lying just as I had left him. Mildred's car was not in the carport, which was a most unusual sight. I was not extremely steady entering my house but stumbled around only a bit before I found the light switch and turned it on. There on the coffee table, held down by an empty beer bottle, was a note that was addressed to me. It said:
Dear Leroy,
I have met another man and I have gone away with him. He has the equipment to take care of my problem and we have already “roadtested” it, so to speak. Forgive me, my darling, but he is the one man I have been searching for all my adult life. I have taken the cats but of our house and property I want nothing. My attorney will be in contact with you but as for me I must bid you adieu and wish for you that you will some day find your own happiness.
XXX,
Mildred
It took a while for the words to sink in, for the reality of what I was reading to hit me. Mildred was gone, apparently, with another man with a huge penis. The reality sobered me up some, so I went out to my truck and got another beer and walked back over to my dog. He was still there, still dead, only by then he had begun to stiffen a little as rigor mortis set in. I knew I needed to get a shovel and bury him but I decided it could wait until morning. I looked at my house and I could feel the emptiness of it already. I went up on the porch and
sat down. I could imagine Mildred in a hotel room somewhere with the man she had taken, and I could imagine them moving together and Mildred's happiness and total fulfillment and joy with her newfound sexual gratification. I hated that I had never been able to give her what she wanted. I knew that I would just have to try and find another wife. I didn't know where to start looking, but I decided that I would start first thing in the morning, as soon as the dog had been given a suitable burial. There were plenty of women out there, and I knew that somewhere there was one that was right for me. I hoped when I found her, I would know it. I felt like one part of my life was over but that another, just as important part, was beginning. I felt a lot of optimism, and I knew I could get another dog. But I was already beginning to feel a little lonesome, and I could feel it surrounding the house, closing in. I tried not to think about it, but I sat out there on the porch for a long time that night, doing just that. I looked around for the cats, but it was true, she had taken every last one, looked like. It would have been nice to have had maybe just one, a small one, to sit and pet and listen to it purr. I knew they could be cruel and vicious, but I knew they needed love also just like everyone else. I thought about Mildred in that other man's arms, and how fine she looked in a bathing suit. Right about then I started missing her, and the loneliness I have been speaking of really started to set in.