The Black Lizard bridge that leads folks into Anadarko County feels like it ought not be crossed unless your affairs are in order. What I hope waits on the other side is a skiptrace who is flirting with a felony vehicular manslaughter charge and ran home to Mommy like OJ, except no one cared enough to send the whirly-birds into the sky and call all cars.
I hope.
I hope the Filthy Thirteen motorcycle gang didn’t get too bent out of shape after they heard word two of their brethren died at highway speeds. And I hope they have not decided to track down the guilty party on their own.
What would Doug Llewelyn say?
The pulse of any municipality can be taken with eyes alone. Its degree of destitute can be measured by how pockmarked a place is by payday advance centers, pawnshops, pop-up nondenominational churches in otherwise abandoned strip malls, bottle shops, bail bondsmen, strip clubs, divorce lawyers, DWI schools, and assholes slinging as-is autos with no credit checks.
Never before has a town greeted me with a broke pawnbroker. Its neighbor, the Red Dirt Chop Shop, has a ’68 Chevy Custom Camper sans camper for sale parked along the shoulder of Sangre Road. How much they want for it is soaped on the windshield but blocked by a sign that cannot be read so well. It’s gone into disrepair—the sign, not the truck, like a family plot with no more relatives above ground. I know this because I wanted to know how much they wanted for the truck, and, since I already sat idling on the shoulder of Sangre Road, I took however much longer to look over the cast-iron historical marker, which reads:
THE LAST “BOOMER” TOWN
About 3/4 mi. east
Here 300 armed “boomers” made their last stand for
settlement of the Oklahoma country led by Wm. L. Couch;
and surrendered to U.S. Cavalry troops commanded by Col.
Hatch, Jan. 26, 1885. On this site, the “boomers” built log
cabins and dugouts for their town, founded on Dec. 12, 1884.
Considering how the town was established and surrendered in the span of six weeks and the site itself is now nothing more than a few acres of decrepit and wrecked cars, it all seems insignificant and extraneous, not warranting the casting of a marker. From what I remember, there wasn’t even one of the brown signs telling motorists a historical marker waits up ahead. Surrendered, like it wasn’t all that bloody of a battle, being there is no mention of a body count. But there is the matter of their naming the road Sangre, meaning blood en español. Figuring in how the Spanish-speaking population here seems next to nada, I’d wager it’s a roundabout way of covering up a bloody past while kinda-sorta acknowledging it without outright saying the boogeyman’s name.
Three thousand dollars firm is the price of the Chevy. It comes with a spider-webbed windshield and no bumpers, but every inch of it is primered black, which makes me think it’s either dinged to hell or comes with a full rust package.
No, thank you.
This way of thinking is what you get when you spend too much time alone in an automobile. Luckily, I won’t have to stay inside my head much longer. Sangre Road becomes a smorgasbord of signs and ads once I creep inside Lawson city limits.
A diner stands on the other side of the fifth church I pass. Its marquee reads: No one is perfect; Moses was once a basket case.
Don’t I know it.
I order a sweet tea as a show of faith to let the waitstaff know I mean to differentiate myself as a customer—rather than loitering and looking for a pot to piss in—before I make my hurried pilgrimage to the men’s room. Said trip to the bathroom does not lead me to believe the meal should come with a complimentary tetanus shot. So I come out in better spirits than I’ve been in since I realized where this latest paper trail was bringing me.
After I take a swig of their world-famous sweet tea, in walks a man who boasts all the physical attributes of a double-size soft-serve ice cream cone—the extra creamy kind with double the milk fat. Prescription glasses with lenses tinted the color of watered-down rosé cling to the tip of his nose. I say prescription because when he tilts his head back to find an open table, he looks bug-eyed. His dress shirt came with ruffles sewn into the chest, though it is not the bleached white you’d expect to see someone wear with an older tuxedo. I imagine it was sold as ivory, but it looks the color of a midmorning piss following an entire pot of coffee and some multivitamin with 1000% of the recommended daily values.
Both pockets on that shirt are packed with pens sans pocket protectors. Obviously, he’s a man who likes to live dangerously. The left side is chock-full of what I’ll call Easter or pastel colors, while the right looks like all primary pen ink colors: black, blue, and red, plus one that looks to be stainless steel, and another gold-plated.
Around his neck hangs a shoelace weighed down with no less than two dozen keys. A fist sits plopped atop a cane in which he lends far too much trust. I only say so because the floor lets out a muffled cry, announcing his presence a few short seconds before each footfall while other folks passed through the dining area without the floorboards offering a word of protest. It could be the light playing with the lacquer, but I’d swear the cane bows each time he hobbles this way and that while he negotiates his way to the table.
He swayed in through the side door, too, which makes his entrance all the more notable, seeing as how that door stands a little wider than the one out front to allow for deliveries on dollies that lead straight into the kitchen.
It embarrasses me to admit his pendulum gait hypnotizes me, which is how the waitress surprises me when she announces her presence by setting down a sweating glass of ice water and asking, “Are you ready to order, or are you going to need another minute with the menu?”
“Yes, I am,” I say with an embarrassed smile. “I am indeed going to need a few more minutes, please. Everything sounds so mouth-wateringly delicious.”
*
I went with a pecan waffle and what they called Huevos Mexicanos. The latter came with biscuits and gravy. I went with that coupling, thinking the gravy would add some sustenance. Without the drink, it came to ten bucks. Not too bad.
The telephone book I acquired from the phone booth outside of the Get-N-Go looks no thicker than a weekly edition of the TV Guide. From that alone, I surmise I’ll be on my way in no time, so I rent a motel room at a place that offers hourly rates, where no one wants to be seen or see who is coming and going, where I could shit, shower, shave, and get to work without anyone bothering me about when I’ll check out.
I’ve never visited this town before, but I know the place well enough. The public library operates on banker’s hours, there are as many adult bookstores as churches, and you cannot, no way, no how, buy a beer on the Lord’s Day. Atop that sits the conundrum of living in a city so small that every citizen shoulders the stress of celebrity. That’s to say, when everyone is bored, nobody is boring. There’s no minding your own business. Everyone is family. Not necessarily blood, but there’s a closeness that causes me claustrophobia.
Being so fresh a face in so small a town, I know I can’t set up and surveil someone without more eyes looking my way than will prove beneficial, much like that adage warning away from pointing a finger at someone because of how many others point back at you. That’s why I borrow the Bible from the bedside table, the one the Gideons placed in my room, and stand with it out on the corner closest to the Jefferson Lines station, where I preach the Word to passing cars and wait to see who pours out of the bus from Kansas City.
It’s the perfect platform to watch the comings and goings without worrying about being an unfamiliar face and drawing too much attention.
I call it tradecraft.
A curbside crazy is easy enough to ignore. And hiding in plain sight is much less nerve-racking when you’re a stranger in a strange land and do not know who you need to watch out for other than who you came to find. A panhandler holding a sign and begging for whatever change you can spare may draw the attention of the authorities, depending on local ordinances. But not a sidewalk preacher. Especially in a place where everyone is so afraid of coming off as a piss-poor Christian. I make such a speculation based on seeing so many bumper stickers mentioning Him that you’d swear He is up for reelection.
If I ever take note of someone taking too much stock in what I am saying or doing, I can always cook up a splash of misdirection.
The first instance I feel compelled to do so is with a gentleman who comes out of the hospital in a wheelchair, looking like he’s still getting the mechanics of it down. Poor man has no one to give him a push. Though he wheels himself into the package store with enough ease.
When that same gentleman later exits and comes across the intersection toward me, I do not hesitate to seize such an opportune moment and do what I can to divert the attention of every driver toward him. By God, by some miracle, he could stand and walk and navigate that wheelchair up and over the median without dumping the case of beer or any of the bottles of liquor hidden in the brown paper sacks.
I do not want a single soul to miss it, so I holler and proclaim, “It’s a miracle right before our very eyes, brothers and sisters! Just hearing the Lord’s message has helped this man to walk again.
“Rise and walk! Rise and walk, my son!” I scream above the knocking engines and the nauseating exhaust tightening my chest. “Rise and walk. You don’t need no wheelchair. Go on and tell your doctor how he has failed you, but it is the Lord who has healed you!”
If only there were cameras around to capture the moment.
The man puts his head down once he sees he’s being followed and judged by every eyeball inside every stopped vehicle. One searing gaze seems cause enough for him to lift his heels a touch higher than walking speeds to get as far from me as fast as his feet can carry him. Fortunately for me, a dozen and a half eyeballs lend me a helping hand.
Amen to that.
As soon as those glances drift back over to me, I juggle around words like judgment and abomination and His return until every last set of eyeballs fixates on the dangling traffic light and waits for it to turn green so we can all get on with our day.
__________________________________
From Coydog by David Tromblay. Used with permission of the publisher, DZANC Books. Copyright © 2025 by David Tromblay.
