Red Baker Read Free

Dog with my cigarette, our old high school trick. He jumped back and laughed.
    “Fucking broke Romeo,” he said. “Shit.”
    He pounded me on the back while I sulked some. I don’t know why it is, but friends do love to see one another suffer.
    Crystal kept right on prancing about, shimmying and shaking and then coming real close to me and reaching down and kissing me on the forehead while whispering, “Hey, Red Baker,” and I reached up for her, but she stepped back and danced down the other end of the bar, trying to cheer up the grim guys down there. Looking at her I thought of those USO girls. It occurred to me that she was kind of a welfare worker of the body, using her natural delights to keep the whole, burned-down, wasted town afloat.
    And thinking that made me love her all the more.
    “Buy you a drink, Red?”
    I turned and saw Billy Bramdowski, who worked up above me in his glassed-in pulpit. It was up to Billy to move the big tables I worked on from side to side, guiding the molten steel into the right pass while I turned it with my tongs. Just like Dog, he was part of our team, and I trusted him completely. He was a real pro up there, something like an artist the gentle way he moved all that red-hot steel, and he better be too, because if he jerks the table too hard I got a hot bar of steel flying off the table onto my legs. Just last year Tom Chenowith lost his right leg when one of the other pulpit operators showed up with the shakes from too much booze. But Dog and me didn’t have to worry about that with Bill, because usually he was a sober, mild-mannered guy. Only tonight he looked about as down as the rest of us, his face red from drinking and his blond hair matted to his head.
    I put my arm around his shoulder and gave him a hug.
    “Look like you been doing a little drinking tonight, Bill.”
    “Well why not?” he said. “Celebrating some.”
    “Celebrating what?” I asked.
    “New baby, Red.”
    “You had another kid. Nobody said anything to me …”
    “No, not yet. Just found out. Jennie’s expecting. Number four.”
    “Hey, that’s great Bill,” I said, thanking God it wasn’t me.
    “Yeah, real timely, huh?” he said, laughing and calling Deena over.
    “Hey, you hear that, Dog? Billy’s wife is having another kid.”
    Dog gave me a look like this guy should be packed out to the farm but managed a couple tinny congratulations.
    “Four kids,” Billy said, staring into his beer. “Right on time.”
    “Hey, we’ll be back in there soon,” I said.
    “Hey, I know it,” Billy smiled. He winked at me and started to push his money at Deena, but I grabbed his hand and reached for my wallet.
    “Tonight, I buy you a drink.”
    But Billy pulled away from me and waved his arms.
    “No way. We’re having the kids, and I’m buying the booze. What the hell, Red, this is the last night I’ll get out in a while. Two o’clock feedings, you know?”
    “If you say so, Bill.”
    “I say so,” he said in a voice that was too loud and hearty for him.
    “Hey,” he said, pointing to the stage. “Look at that woman dance!”
    Billy started waving to Crystal, who saw him, waved back, and began to get all inspired, touching the inside of her hard thighs and darting her sexy tongue in and out of her mouth like a snake.
    “Alll riiight!” Dog yelled, pounding the bar.
    “Do it Crystal,” Billy said, taking ten dollars out of his wallet and throwing it up on the stage. Crystal winked at him and ever so sexily picked it up without missing a beat. She stuffed it into her bikini bottom and pranced on down the bar and began slithering around the fire pole that was in the center of the stage.
    This sent Billy and Dog and some of the other boys over the edge. They were screaming and yelling, and though I joined them, I was miserable as hell.
    “Good times,” Billy yelled. “Good times … Have ‘em while you can!”
    He pounded me on the back and walked down the bar toward the men’s