Doing The Hopi-Dope

*** Note: This is an excerpt from Harley Leathers, Man of Distinction

No one knew Harley's politics. For that matter, neither did Harley, most of the time. If you caught him on one of those rare lucid moments before he started force-feeding Grand Marnier, he might give you a glimpse into his psyche if the sudden dyspeptic effect of the liqueur didn't bring on a spasm of projectile vomiting and all of the unpleasantness associated with it. More than likely, though, at some point, it would become a rambling diatribe of clichés, designed to show you that he had enough short term memory to recall Rush Limbaugh's most recent spate of verbal diarrhea; and he felt no compunction whatsoever about arguing both sides of a political debate, often simultaneously.

Although he would have been the last to admit it, Harley Leathers was a drunk, or at least a quasi-drunk. His habit had started innocently enough, while he was still in grade school. Mom hadn't been in the picture for most of Harley's young life. Harley’s after-school routine consisted of fixing the meals, taking care of any chores that simply had to be done, and short of the bedroom, generally serving as a surrogate mother to his father and siblings. He and his father would share a glass of wine at dinner, and after the old man passed out, Harley would grab the remainder of the hooch and head for his tree. On more than one occasion the police had rudely awakened Harley’s father after a concerned neighbor had called and told the officers they’d heard a loud thunk and a moan outside. Dad would then accompany the policemen to the back yard, where they would invariably find young Harley laying under that big oak tree, sleeping like a baby. Usually, if there were no broken bones, they'd just carry the sleeping lad up to his room, where he would remain until he woke up, sometimes even in time for school the next morning. If the authorities had ever gotten suspicious and run a blood alcohol test on the boy, poor Harley would likely have become an orphan for all intents and purposes, as he spent his weekdays in foster care and his Saturdays visiting his father at the State Penitentiary.

Daddy passed away shortly after Harley’s seventeenth birthday, leaving no will, no insurance and no hope for Harley to ever develop a sense of family. After a makeshift funeral of sorts held at the mausoleum where Harley had Daddy cremated, the local mechanic who worked on Daddy's car showed up, proclaiming that Daddy owed him for a short-block overhaul he'd done about two or three years earlier, and would Harley mind if he took said car in payment of the debt. There was not any real decision that Harley could have made, other than to say yes, considering that the mechanic was a brother-in-law to the mausoleum proprietor who had agreed to torch Daddy in return for the Browning 12-gauge pump shotgun he’d borrowed several years earlier and forgot to return, but the gold plated brass urn would be another fifty dollars, of course. Harley had opted for the economy model, a plain brown lunch bag. After the "service" he had carried the sack down to Hack’s Pond, where he dumped Daddy off the dock. Harley kept the bag as a keepsake.


A hard rain battered the building’s tin roof, providing a staccato cadence and intensifying the muted drumming of the droplets upon the pavement. As usual, the front door to the Plainsman remained open; April weather in Colorado, neither hot nor humid this year, demanded no air conditioning. The shower served two purposes. First, the wind blew all the notices off the bulletin board posted by the front door. Second, the thunder woke up Harley Leathers about an hour before he usually got up from his afternoon nap. When Ruth, owner of the Plainsman and Harley's faithful bartender/friend saw him stir, she thought to herself, 'oh, shit'... If he became aware that it was raining outside, she knew it would be difficult to stop him from stripping buck-naked and doing his Hopi Fertility Dance in the parking lot. This had been a ritual Harley started about six or seven years previous. Harley had been romancing Quickie Delgado, the AT&T operator/escort entrepreneur and both of them were getting pretty wasted. Ruth disappeared into the walk-in to check a beer keg and returned to find the fifteen or so patrons standing around the front door, and a quick glance showed Harley's stool holding nothing but an untidy stack of clothing. Judging from the war whoops of encouragement offered by the appreciative onlookers, Ruth knew that it wouldn't be long before the police arrived, so she stomped outside and attempted to retrieve the amorous duo before they got so far out of hand that she'd have to bail them both out of the hoosegow.

"For Christ sakes, Harley, act your age! Good God, look at you! Who the hell you trying to impress? Quickie has seen your ass more times than your proctologist, you damned fool!" she screamed out the door. The frolicking couple continued to bunny-hop across the parking lot, trying to jump in the middle of any puddles formed in the potholes. Once in a while, they'd look up, see Ruth, and wave and smile. Soon, watching those two lunatics doing the hokey-pokey in the rain, even Ruth was laughing out loud, hiding her face in Charley Connerly's shirt every time Quickies's boobs bounced.

"Oh, to hell with both of you, get your ass thrown in jail, see if I care!" she muttered, walking back inside and shaking her head in disbelief. Ruth looked up at Charley and asked, "Charley, if you saw any serious signs that I was going off my rocker, you'd say something, wouldn't you?"

Charley grinned and replied, "And just exactly how the hell would I be able to tell?" Both friends laughed as she walked behind the bar and poured him another beer. It was going to be a long night...