last call before the quake
Bakersfield, July 21, 1952
1:32 a.m.
Henry Nalbandian
had been honkytonkin’
at Trout’s in Oildale
when the brawl broke out.
He’d just plunked down
a quarter for last call.
It was Sunday night,
and he was squeezing out
the last few minutes
of the weekend with
the oil field crews.
Didn’t see what started it
or who. Might have been
somebody steppin’ on
somebody’s boots,
could have been
somebody lookin’ at
the wrong gal’s boobs.
Didn’t matter anyway
once the fists and bottles
started flying. Didn’t see
the one that caught him
right above his eye.
When it nearly knocked
his glasses off,
he started swinging too.
Too few greenbacks
in their pockets
and too many brews.
When the ruckus was over,
there were a few ol’ boys
who needed fixin up,
some stitches here or there
and one poor bastard
with a busted arm.
They piled into Henry’s
hopped up tracknose coupe,
headed down to Kern County
General Hospital in Bakersfield.
It was a busy night,
casualties were pouring in
from all the joints in town,
looked like the fights might
start up again right there in the ER.
The wait for getting patched up
stretched on and on,
the booze was wearing off
and the pain was setting in,
so everybody’s patience
was getting kind of thin.
Ruthie Brown worked the graveyard shift
cleaning up the rooms of folks who hadn’t
made it through the night, sweeping halls
and mopping floors, changing the sheets
of the newly deceased, whatever needed
doing. If it wasn’t all she wanted,
at least it was a start.
The waiting room was downright nasty,
a lot of booze-infused blood
and cheap bar room snack-infested puke,
and one old snoring geezer
had pissed his pants and dribbled on the floor.
She rolled her mop and bucket,
started cleaning up the mess.
As she bent to her tasks,
Augustus Smith, a Tulsa shitkicker
if ever there was one,
stuck his oil-stained paw up her dress,
yanking on her underwear
trying to reach her ass.
Ruthie stumbled, trying to slip his grasp
but the bucket blocked her way.
Gus had the hem of her dress firmly in hand.
She don’t say nothin, knowing what
these white boys are like,
specially when they’re drunk,
mean as skunks, and twice as nasty.
Gus sneered, where you going, girl?
your black cooze too good for me?
Ruthie said, please sir, let me go.
I’m just trying to do my job.
She risked a look at his face,
a dead-eyed mask of lust and hate,
then quickly looked away,
but it wadn’t soon enough for Gus.
What’er you lookin’ at, nigger bitch
You don’ look at a white man like that.
I’m go’n teach you some respect.
He pulled her closer, pythoned one arm
around her waist, scrabbled a filthy
crack-nailed claw up her drawers.
Henry Nalbandian
saw the fuss across the room.
He don’t cotton to anybody
treating a woman that way,
even if she’s a colored girl.
sides that asshole Gus
was always on his back,
givin’ him stupid racist shit.
Henry ain’t a roughneck,
he’s just the oil company payroll clerk,
counting out the greenbacks
at the end of the week.
And Gus was always saying
that Henry shorted his pay.
Not an ounce of truth to it, and Gus knew it.
It was all just bullshit anyway.
The real reason, besides the rattlesnake
living in Gus’s brain, was Henry’s name.
Nalbandian. Goddamned foreigners.
Hardly even qualify as white.
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