The bar was just off the frontage road, out front of the dog track and next door to a dive motel. It was a cinder-block building that struck anyone who saw it as that rare example of architectural intent: the above-ground bunker. It had particularly struck the new owner this way, and so he had it painted the boldest, brightest shade of pink that was legal for purchase and use in the state of Arkansas. Then it struck the new owner, and those others who straggled over to see and comment upon this fresh eyesore, as a completely other sort of establishment. And so next, the new owner, having intended the sort of bar where a dog-track bettor might celebrate his winnings or drown his defeat, where a working man might go to drink alone and brood, or bring a certain type of woman, or maybe even get into a good, old-fashioned scrap, if it came to scrapping, cast about for a solution that wouldn’t cost him any more paint.
Maybe it was the architecture of the building that inspired him, or maybe “The Bunker” was the least pink name he could think up, but The Bunker it became. He had the name painted in black, block letters over the steel door.
There was a smatter of crowd inside. There were two men in gray, dog-track work shirts sitting at the far end of the bar, drinking beer from bottles. There was a man, three stools down, solitary and silent, drinking bourbon, neat, in a black suit so rumpled you half-expected to see a tire track or boot prints down the back. He just nodded at his empty glass in a way that was, somehow, both profound and off-hand. He seemed not to care what color they painted the building or what they called the bar, or who came to drink and get drunk there, so long as all he need do was nod and his glass would be replenished. And so now it was. He looked up and smiled solemnly at the bartender, as if to say, Let others have magic and religion, loose women and the arts; this will do for me, yes.
Two stools away sat another man, with white hair in a high-quiff pompadour style; he had the air of one who might have been famous, for a very few seconds, a great many years ago. He, too, wore black—old but not rumpled: a silk-looking shirt with a silver rocket-ship design up one side and down the other, with two cigarette holes near the tail of the ascending craft; black pants in a stretch fabric that had been asked to do too much, for too long; and red-dyed snakeskin loafers that needed a shine but would still turn heads anywhere west of Memphis or north of hell. He was working on a Gin and Sin cocktail and wagging a cigar to some song in his head, oblivious to all around him.
Elsewhere about the place there were tables, arranged haphazardly on a smooth, dark, concrete floor, with space set aside for dancing, or a fight, should either break out. There were rows of booths along two walls, and an old jukebox, a Wurlitzer 2800, a steel giant from 1964, in the far back corner. Across one table, three old men played knock poker over highballs, and at another table not far away, another old man sat alone with his beer in a short glass, holding a Daily Racing Form at arm’s length and frowning at the thing, as if reading unfortunate news in an unfamiliar language. There was a couple kissing across the table in a booth near the door. She had frosted hair—or was it a wig?—and he wore a ballcap with the cartoon legend of a local logistics concern. They were well into their latest pitcher of draft, for it was a good night of him being her and her being him, and no one the wiser in this dimly lit dive. Their row of booths was otherwise empty, as was the other row, running along the back wall and ending at the jukebox, which was crooning yet another country weeper. Busted hopes, broken hearts. Fiddles and twang and the skirl of steel guitar.
A new patron of indiscriminate age, whose mussed and dusted clothes seem to have spent some recent time in a ditch, stood before the jukebox, staring at the contents of his pockets: snot rag; three split-shot sinkers that looked like nothing so much as industrial-strength rosary beads; and a scatter of slugs and coins, only one of which would prompt the jukebox to sing.
He stared now at the song selections, all those sad familiars. He wondered if there was here some harder stuff. Something to rouse and arouse. Maybe early Elvis. Or better yet, some Sonny Burgess, or that flying saucer song by that other fella. Or maybe, he thought, they have an old one by that pompadoured man sitting at the bar. He looked like he’d made a record, way back when, and had been living ever since on the memories, if not the royalties.
~
The pompadoured man seemed to be floating in space. He sipped his Gin and Sin, waved and wagged his cigar and then brought it close to his face, as if to confide or commiserate. Maybe duet on a sad number.
He smiled at the thing, eyes closed, and now he floated for real, lost in rockabilly dreams from long ago, when he was briefly a sensation, nigh a star—Eddie Majestic, Meteor Records recording artist, out of Memphis, Tennessee.
Well, anyway, he cut one record, with an A‑side that was two minutes, thirteen seconds of flying fur and ruction called “Show Me Everything (But the Door).” The record made the jukes and the radio played it into heavy rotation, and then … and then nothing, because … because why? Because it scared the kids? Because it was about sex and not love? Because he could not summon a follow-up?
Because of that night in Tyronza, Arkansas, when he was top-billed over some young Louisiana cartoon named Jerry Lee Lewis who called him “Two Thirteen,” because that’s all the long his career was gonna last, seemed like to this Jerry Lee, and he drunk-rushed the stage during Jerry Lee’s show and slashed at the cartoon rooster, going for his comb and feathers, hackle and wing, as the tender youth of Tyronza watched, horrified?
It was all of that. All of that and more besides. But still he floated, for the song was playing over and over in his head. His song. When his mood got right, just so, those two minutes and thirteen seconds seemed like they might last all the day and well into the deep murk of the dark night.
Show me some love
Show me some skin
Show me what all
You showed him
~
Eddie Majestic sat behind the wheel of his gold and white, nineteen fifty-six DeSoto Adventurer. He had been there a good while. The keys were in the ignition. He had not cranked the engine but the big car was in motion, in his mind. He could feel the gruff rhythm of the engine, a suggestion of song.
Now he dreamed. He dreamed of times long past and well spent—good times, even when they were not. He dreamed of gold records, and of his great, old DeSoto—about the only thing he had then that he had still, along with maybe his id, and a pair of silver lamé socks.
He dreamed of his name in lights, or anyway spelled right on the sign; dreamed of sweating bodies, mostly female ones, squeezed into bandboxes and gymnasiums just to see him—one time even a proper nightclub, and a gangster’s moll making eyes at him all night. A six-foot blonde who could throw back bourbon like she was the gangster and the man was her moll. Yeah, but she had nothing on the nun that night at the Catholic Club in Helena, Arkansas …
Now he awoke inside his dream. The radio was playing. It was playing one of his songs, one he didn’t even recognize, perhaps had not yet written. The song was writing itself. It sounded to Eddie’s ear like a damn hit.
He saw himself, in the studio, cutting it. But this was not Meteor Records, where he’d gone begging after Sam Phillips at Sun—Sam Phillips, so-called father of rock ‘n’ roll, the man who discovered Elvis and Jerry Lee, Johnny Cash and Carl Perkins; hell, who first recorded Howlin’ Wolf and B.B. King—had said to Eddie Majestic, “You just ain’t got it, Eddie. Almost, though. Maybe try over at Meteor. The Bihari Brothers might put something out on you.” Sam Phillips, that son of a bitch. Like Eddie Majestic was somebody’s sloppy seconds. Like he didn’t have it. Whatever the hell it was, Eddie thought, he had it in spades and gallons and peacock feathers.
No, this wasn’t Meteor. This wasn’t that skinny little brick building over on Chelsea Avenue. This was Sun, 706 Union. He recognized the tiles on the walls and the ceiling. He recognized that cartoon rooster, Jerry Lee, sitting at the piano, and that son of bitch, Sam Phillips, in the producer’s booth. He didn’t see Elvis. Maybe they’d sent the boy king over to Taylor’s restaurant next door for coffee.
“You ready, Eddie?” Sam said.
“Need a piano player.”
“You got the best. Just ask Jerry Lee.”
They looked at Jerry Lee, who raised his hands for all to see. His fingers were outstretched. He was turning them, slowly, like they were jewels that changed in the light. He let this moment linger. “Hands uh God, boys,” he said. “Hands uh God.”
Sam Phillips burst out laughing, glad to have a wall, a door, and a pane of glass between him and the young blasphemer.
Eddie just shook his head, said, “Move yer ass, ya cartoon rooster. I’ll show you some piano playing.”
Jerry Lee did as he was told, for perhaps the first and last time in his life. This was Eddie Majestic’s dream, after all.
Eddie was dressed in black, but for his sport coat and his socks; both were silver lamé. He took off the coat, held it out for Jerry Lee, who let it fall. (Even in another man’s dream, Jerry Lee could only be tamed for so long.) Eddie sat and began to play.
The first notes stepped quietly, on tip-toes, like a big man dancing with surprising grace. Then a pause—a master of the pause, was Eddie Majestic. And then something like a song, sad and stately but with a rumor of something else up around the bend, being kept at bay. The right hand played a somber romp, the left dropped hints of a new age to come. Those tip-toeing feet had planted themselves, one in the past and the other in the now. The song was wisdom, truth, and knowing.
It had everything except a wild streak—and then it had that, even. This new time, the Second Age of Rollick, had begun.
He played on. Sam rolled tape. Jerry Lee picked up the silver lamé sport coat and draped it over his arm.
Eddie Majestic could sound like an explosion down at the fireworks plant, like the world was ending in ways to make the Bible blush. He filled the sky with sparks and hellfire, scraps of scripture writ blue in a neon blur. That was when he played it fast.
Then he could slow it down. Then his fingers were wicks; candle flames slinked unbidden, smoke curled and swirled.
By now, Elvis was in the studio, spilling coffee because he couldn’t keep his leg from twitching. Johnny Cash was there, too, just grinning. Johnny Cash, grinning? And a reporter from the local rag, writing almost as fast as Eddie played.
Eddie sang,
Dark was the night
Cold was the beer
The devil couldn’t make it, girls
But Eddie’s here
One note still was ringing out when Eddie Majestic raised his right hand to run it through his pompadour, which was especially glorious this day, a silken cloud of blond. He stood and held out a hand for his silver lamé sport coat.
“Got-damned,” said one, said all, even the reporter from the local rag, and Jerry Lee Lewis, too.
Eddie walked past them, took a coffee for the road. He paused long enough to say, “I just dabble at the piano, mind you. More of a guitar player, really, boys.” And then he was through the door, shouting back that he’d see them all again, someday, on the flipside.
~
David Wesley Williams is the author of the novels Everybody Knows (2023) and Come Again No More (forthcoming, 2025), both from JackLeg Press, as well as Long Gone Daddies (John F. Blair, 2013). His short fiction has been published by the Oxford American, Kenyon Review Online, Museum of Americana, and such journals as The Common and The Pinch. He lives in Memphis with his wife and their retired racing greyhound.