LITMIR.BIZ

      gigawabamin, Jim—

      see you the next time,

      the next time

      and the next time around.

      Contents

Fargo, the North Dakota side of the Red River

Moorhead, the Minnesota side of the Red River

      Author’s Note

      Acknowledgments

       Fargo, the North Dakota side of the Red River

      Sun-drenched wheat fields. The refrain ran through Cash’s mind as she pulled open the Casbah’s screen door. She stood still. Momentarily blinded, she waited for her eyes to adjust to the darkened barroom. Outside, the sun rested on the western horizon. Inside the Casbah it was always night. The wooden screen door thunked shut behind her. The bar smells—stale beer, cigarette smoke, sawdust and billiard chalk—welcomed her to her evening home.

      Sun-drenched wheat fields, healing rays of god’s love wash gently over me. Cash didn’t like the word god. Even in her own mind it was written in small letters. What had he ever done for her? Sun-drenched wheat fields, healing rays of sun’s love…nah, didn’t work. Healing rays of god’s love—now that worked.

      Her mind was always composing songs or stories. The long days in the field gave her plenty of time to think of things to write. If she ever found the time to put words to paper, that would be a different story. Words in her head didn’t pay the rent. Or buy a beer. Maybe with her next paycheck, she would get a guitar. She could sing in the cab of the truck and wouldn’t need to write things down. Maybe.

      Ole Johnson sat on a stool at the twelve-foot-long mahogany bar. The Hamm’s Beer Bear danced on cool sparkling waters over his head. Ole slid fifty cents to his brother Carl, seated at his right. They had a nightly bet on whether Cash’s hair, which just grazed the bottom of her butt, would get caught in the screen door. On the nights when that happened, she would kick back at the door with her right foot and jerk her hair into the bar after her.

      Tonight, her hair escaped the trap.

      Like every evening since she first walked into the Casbah a year ago, Cash put a couple quarters on the pool table before going up to the bar and ordering two Budweisers.

      Without a word exchanged, Shorty Nelson, the Casbah’s bartender, popped the top on a Bud and slid it across the wooden bar towards her. She rolled the cool sweaty bottle across her forehead. A cold jolt shot through her skin to the bone of her skull. It reminded Cash of the ice cream headaches she used to get as a kid.

      She took a drink and felt the coolness soothe her parched throat until the fizz hit her empty belly. Ahhhh. She picked up the other bottle and held it against her left collarbone as she walked to an empty booth by the pool tables, her cue stick case slung over her shoulder. It was a leather cue holder, one she had made herself sitting in the cab of a beet truck waiting to unload at Crystal Sugar a couple summers ago. It had leather fringe that swung with her walk.

      She could smell wheat coming off her cotton blouse. She had changed clothes before coming to the Casbah, but she supposed even her Ranchero, which sat at the end of the field all day, smelled like wheat too. Her whole world was wheat and chaff and stubble and the drone of combines and Ford trucks with clutches that stretched her short frame to the max. Sometimes, if she was lucky, the truck would have a radio she could tune in to some country music.

      Gol’ dang, if ol’ man Willie wasn’t already passed out in one of the booths. He was wearing field clothes. His stubby German mustache, cut in the same style as the salt and pepper bangs that hung over his forehead, drooped over slack lips. Cash fought off an involuntary shudder. The Hamm’s Beer clock behind the bar said 9:35.

      Willie must have left the fields early. That is, if he ever went to the fields anymore. Cash figured his son did all the farming for him these days. Old drunk. She couldn’t help but glance to see if the front of his pants were still dry. They were. She shook off the shudder again. Pitiful ol’ man. Every time she came into the Casbah, which was dang near every night, ol’ Willie already had a jump on her.

      She leaned against a booth to watch a couple farm boys shoot pool, playing at being hustlers. There were four quarters ahead of her. She had never left the Red River Valley, but she knew these two didn’t know jack about hustling. Once, a couple of guys had come in on leave from working the Montana ranches. They wore big silver belt buckles and Stetson hats to match, putting the farmers’ duckbills to shame. All the blond farm girls in the bar had been atwitter for the week those boys were in Fargo.

      Those two knew how to hustle. And another guy, home on leave from ’Nam, he had known how to shoot pool. But most nights, the only competition Cash faced was drunk luck.

      “You up, Cash?” one of farm boys asked her. She nodded, took a quick drag of her cigarette and gulped more beer.

      For the next two hours, against a background of quiet farm talk at the bar and and the occasional canned laughter from the TV set on the back counter, all that was heard was the click-clack of billiard balls and the clunk as one sank into a pocket and rolled down to the front gate with another clack-clunk against balls already in place.

      Cash held the table, drinking free the whole time. When she did lose, it was because Jim Jenson, a lanky farmer from Hendrum, came up behind her as she stood plotting the next run of five balls. He wrapped his arms around her waist and breathed into her ear. “Take me home, Cash.”

      Cash first met Jim at a pool tournament over at the Flame, a few blocks from the Casbah. She was shooting in their monthly singles’ tournament, women’s division, when the barmaid pointed out the tall, skinny farm guy who had sent a Budweiser her way. After she sank the 8-ball in the game she was playing, he ambled over and asked if she would be his partner in the couples’ tournament. Said his name was Jim and figured as partners they ought to have a chance at the tournament money. He wasn’t that much older than Cash and he didn’t seem to mind the fact that she wasn’t blond and

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