Six nights that month. She counted every one.
Neon Saint
A free short story from the 1980s small-town Texas world of Beyond the Goalposts. Mary Marshall knows what she smelled on his collar. Knowing it and proving it are two different things.
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“Sometimes the truth is enough.
You don’t have to stay for the explanation.”
Unknown
THURSDAY · MARCH 27, 1986 · 12:40 A.M.
SIX
The truck door slammed. Mary Marshall turned and stared at the red numbers. Twelve-forty in the morning.
She lay still. Boot heels clicked on the porch steps. The screen door eased open. Keys jingled. The front door opened and closed. Keys hit the counter. The refrigerator door opened and closed.
The bathroom light in the hall came on. The toilet lid clicked. The sound of urinating seemed to never end, then a flush.
She kept her eyes on the ceiling and breathed slowly.
Boots clicked down the hallway and stopped at the end of the bed. Tommy Ray Marshall undressed in the dark, dropped his clothes on the floor, and climbed into bed. The mattress dipped. The whiskey smell hit her a second later.
“You up?” he slurred.
She didn’t answer.
“Went a little long with the boys. We went to Rusty’s after our shift.” He patted her hip twice and let his hand fall away. “You’d have laughed. Dale got to tellin’ that story again.”
His voice faded into the pillow. A minute later, his breathing turned heavy and even.
Mary counted water stains.
Three brown-edged stains spread across the ceiling above the bed. She’d stared at them enough to name the shapes. One looked almost like Texas. The landlord kept promising to look at them.
Six.
Six nights this month he’d gone out with the boys. On Tuesday he came home smelling like cigarettes, though he didn’t smoke. On Friday the phone rang once and stopped. On payday he stayed out again. Last Thursday Darlene said her husband was home by six. Tommy said they worked extra hours.
Tonight was the sixth time. February had been five. In January she had been too tired to count anything but ounces and hours. Samantha had turned eight weeks old before Mary noticed how often he stayed out.
Tommy Ray snored.
She slid out from under the quilt. The wood on the floor was cold. He’d said he was going to get them a large rug. She’d given up on that last year. There was a loose board that creaked by the closet. She stepped over it.
Down the hall, the nursery door stood cracked. Most nights she woke several times to listen.
She walked in. Samantha slept on her back with both fists beside her ears. Mary tightened her grip on the crib rail. Two months old and Sam was right at eleven pounds. The night-light washed the crib rails, her little belly, and the blanket Mary’s mama had crocheted in a color she called robin’s egg and everybody else called blue.
The crib was the nicest thing in the house.
Tommy Ray had put it together in October after a couple of beers, cussing at the instruction sheet with a lock washer stuck to his thumb. He’d made her sit in the rocker and supervise. He kept holding up parts.
“Lookie here, Mary. Your old man's a carpenter now.”
When he finished, he’d shaken the rail to show her how solid it was. He grinned at her over his shoulder. Her eyes had watered.
Mary looked down at Sam.
Sam sighed and turned her head.
Mary tucked the blanket where it didn’t need tucking and went back into the hall.
His shirt lay on the floor inside the bedroom door.
She picked it up. The hamper sat two steps away. She balled it in her fist.
She started to straighten. Then she smelled it.
It wasn’t whiskey. This came from the collar. She inhaled again. The perfume smelled cheap. It was too sweet and too strong.
Mary wore Avon’s Sweet Honesty when she wore anything at all anymore.
She stood at the end of the bed with the shirt in both hands.
The window unit hummed in the bedroom. The refrigerator kicked on, rattled, and quit. Tommy Ray snored.
She raised the collar and smelled it again.
Six nights this month. Five in February. Cigarette smell. The phone that rang once and stopped. He always had an answer before she finished asking. Now she couldn’t get this cheap perfume smell out of her nose.
She took one breath, then another.
Down the hall, Sam made a small sound. Then nothing.
Mary could turn on the light and throw the shirt across his face. He would sit up squinting and ask what in the world was wrong. Before she finished, he’d say some woman from work bumped into him, or his cousin Tammy hugged him, or Dale’s wife spilling a wine cooler by last call. Some story with enough truth in it to make her the crazy one. She’d be standing there at one in the morning barefooted, screaming, and Sam would be crying with her, and Tommy Ray would be the calm one.
He always found a way to turn it back on her.
She wouldn’t do it tonight. Not at one in the morning with Sam down the hall.
Mary folded the shirt.
She folded it the way her mama taught her, squared the collar, tucked back the sleeves, and made one clean crease. She set it on top of the clothes in the hamper.
She walked back around the bed, stepped over the loose board, and lay down beside her husband.
Above her, the stain shaped almost like Texas.
Tommy Ray slept without stirring.
Mary stared into the dark.
SATURDAY · MARCH 29, 1986 · 8:00 A.M.
LET THE QUESTIONING BEGIN
Mary cracked two eggs into the skillet and listened to Tommy Ray whistle.
He sat at the kitchen table in his undershirt with his coffee, thumbing through the Saturday edition of the Port Lavaca Wave. Sam dozed in the wind-up swing by the window. The swing clicked at the top of every arc.
For two days she’d gone over what she wanted to say, folding diapers, nursing at three in the morning, watching him eat supper Thursday and Friday like nothing was wrong.
She slid his eggs onto a plate and set it in front of him.
“Darlene called Thursday,” she said.
“Yeah?” He didn’t look up from the paper. “How’s she doin’?”
“Fine.” Mary wiped her hands on the dish towel. “She told me Bobby was home by six.”
“Huh.” He salted the eggs.
“You said the whole crew worked late.”
Tommy Ray took a bite and chewed. He turned a page and snapped the paper.
“The whole crew did,” he said. “Bobby didn’t. Bobby got sent home before lunch.”
“Sent home?”
“Mary, that man almost took a guy’s head off with the forklift. Backed it clean into the racking with the forks up.” He laughed and shook his head. “Brought a whole rack of drums down. Foreman sent him home ’fore he killed somebody.”
He looked up at her for the first time, grinning.
“Darlene tell you that part? ’Cause it actually made a better story than I coulda thought up.”
Mary wiped the clean counter.
She’d heard his laugh the first time at an Emotions dance in Port Lavaca, October of her senior year. She’d gone with two girlfriends. He was leaning against the wall in a pearl-snap shirt, laughing at something with his head back, and when he caught her looking he didn’t look away. He crossed the floor with girls watching him, put out his hand, and said, “I’m Tommy Ray. Now who in God’s green earth let you come out here with no date?”
She was eighteen. Nobody had ever been that bold for her before.
They danced most of that night. He never stepped wrong. He always had something to say. That was a year and a half ago.
“You gonna eat?” he said, grabbing his coffee.
“I ate while I fed Sam.”
He went back to the paper. The swing clicked. She watched him chew on bacon. The words she’d practiced all week were ready. She made herself say them.
“Your shirt smelled like perfume.”
The fork stopped over the plate.
If she hadn’t been watching she would have missed it. His eyes stayed on the sports page. Then he took the bite, chewed, and swallowed.
“Which shirt?”
“Wednesday’s.”
“Wednesday?” He leaned back and looked at the ceiling.
He snapped his fingers. “Ted Kubecka’s retirement.”
Mary’s hand stopped on the dish towel.
Tommy Ray looked back at his plate. He cut off another bite.
Mary didn’t move.
He picked up his coffee.
“Half the front office was down at the Lamplighter.” He took a drink. “Me and the crew stopped at Rusty’s afterward. Karen and them was huggin’ everybody’s neck. You know how Karen is.”
“I don’t know Karen.”
“Sure you do. Heavyset gal, works the front office, wears about a gallon of it.” He waved his fork near his collar. “Ted put in forty-two years. They gave him a rod and reel.”
He smiled to himself.
“Old fool cried.”
“You smelled like her all night.”
Tommy Ray looked down at his undershirt and pinched the collar between two fingers. He gave it a sniff.
“Hell.” He smiled. “I reckon I did.”
He looked back at Mary.
“Karen hugs everybody.”
He picked up his fork again.
“You oughta smell my coveralls after a caustic leak. Count your blessings.”
“This ain’t funny.”
“I ain’t laughin’ at you. I’m laughin’ at Karen.”
“Stop it.” Her voice came up. “Stop doin’ that.”
“Doin’ what?”
“Turnin’ everything into a story. Every time I ask you somethin’ straight, I get Bobby and a forklift. I get Karen and her gallon of perfume. I get Ted and his rod and reel.” She twisted the dish towel tighter around her fist. “I ask you where you been and I get everybody in Calhoun County but you.”
Tommy Ray set his fork down. He pushed the plate an inch away and folded his hands on the table.
“Okay,” he said. “Ask me anything.”
“Where were you Wednesday night?”
“The Lamplighter. Ted’s retirement.”
“Till one in the morning?”
“Till about nine-thirty. Then Dale needed a ride ’cause his brother took his truck.” He shrugged. “That’s when we stopped at Rusty’s. You want Dale’s number?”
“Thursday?”
“Me and the crew worked late.”
“The crew was home by six.”
“Bobby was home by six.”
“Darlene said…”
“Darlene.” He picked his fork back up.
Her pulse beat in her ears.
“Six nights this month, Tommy Ray. I know ’cause I laid there and counted ’em. Five in February. You come home smellin’ like cigarettes and you don’t smoke. The phone rings one time and quits, and you’re gone twenty minutes later. You want me to keep goin’? I got more.”
Her voice had gone up and up, and somewhere in it she heard the shrillness, and she hated it, because he sat there with his hands folded and she was the one coming apart in her own kitchen at eight in the morning.
“You keepin’ a list?” He almost smiled. “On your own husband?”
“Don’t you dare.” Her hand squeezed the towel. “Don’t you turn this on me.”
“I’m not turnin’ anything, darlin’. I’m sittin’ here eatin’ eggs.” He opened his hands and showed her the palms. “You’re the one hollerin’.”
Sam stirred in the swing and made one small sound.
Mary shut her mouth. Both of them looked at the baby. The swing clicked. Sam settled. Mary stood with her jaw tight.
When she spoke again she kept it low.
“Look at me.”
He looked at her.
“Look me in my eye and tell me there’s nobody.”
She hadn’t asked that one yet. His eyes would give it up if his mouth wouldn’t.
Tommy Ray looked her dead in the eye.
“There’s nobody,” he said. “There’s never been nobody. It’s you and that baby and this house, and that’s my whole life, Mary. That’s all of it.”
He didn’t blink. He didn’t look down and he didn’t look away. His voice came out low and he sounded hurt, and he held her eyes the whole way through it.
Mary looked away first.
There was no right question. He’d answer that one better too.
“You’re tired,” Tommy Ray said, softer now. “You’re home all day with the baby, and Darlene’s got you stirred up. Come here.”
“Don’t.”
He got up.
He came around the table and she turned to the sink, and he fit himself against her back the way he had a hundred times, arms over her arms, chin on her shoulder. He smelled like coffee and last night’s whiskey.
“Hey,” he said into her ear. “You and that baby are my whole world. You know that.”
Her mama had buttoned her wedding dress in the back bedroom of the house on Brown Street last July. Neither of them said much. Her mama worked the buttons up her spine one at a time, and at the top she laid her hands flat on Mary’s shoulders and looked at her in the mirror.
“He better be who he says he is.”
Mary had put her hand over the front of the dress, where the seamstress had let it out an inch.
“He is, Mama.”
Tommy Ray kissed the side of her head and let her go.
“I’m gonna run into town,” he said. He carried his plate to the sink. “Truck needs a battery. You need anything?”
She didn’t answer.
“Diapers? We good on diapers?”
“We’re good.”
“Milk?”
Mary looked at him.
“You need me to stop for milk?”
“We’re fine.”
“All righty then.”
He scraped the plate and set it in the sink for her to wash. On his way through he kissed Sam on the head, soft enough not to wake her.
The screen door banged. The truck started. Gravel popped under the tires, and the road noise faded off toward town.
The kitchen went quiet except for the swing.
Mary stood at the sink.
Her hands shook.
She looked at them in the dishwater a long moment.
If she hadn’t smelled that shirt herself, she’d have believed every word.
The swing wound down and stopped. Sam stirred, worked one fist loose, and settled.
Mary washed his plate and set it in the rack. Then she dried her hands and picked up her daughter and sat down.
FRIDAY · APRIL 11, 1986 · 7:15 P.M.
GO GET HIM
Mary sat at the kitchen table across from a cold plate of food.
It was the third night in a row. She’d quit expecting him by suppertime, but her hands hadn’t quit setting his place. Pork chop, butter beans, a slice of white bread going stiff at the edges. The clock over the stove said twenty-three after four. Tommy still hadn’t changed the battery. Her watch showed five after seven.
Twice this week he’d come home after midnight, drunk. No Bobby story. Nor one about Karen. He hadn’t even given her a story at all anymore. He came in, went to bed, got up the next morning, and went out the door.
Sam fussed in the playpen in the living room. Mary got up and changed her. She gazed over at the phone on the kitchen wall. It was green. Tommy Ray had liked it but it didn’t match the wall. The spiral cord twisted into a few knots. Picking up Sam, she paced with her until she went back to sleep. Would that phone ring tonight?
Sam’s hair was still so soft. She inhaled deep through her nose, then laid Sam down in the crib. She came back to the kitchen, took the receiver off the hook, and dialed her cousin’s number from memory.
It was long distance. She didn’t care.
Two rings.
“Hello?”
“Nessa.”
“Hey, sugar!” Vanessa Foster’s voice dropped. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothin’s wrong.”
“Mary.”
Mary wound the phone cord around her finger and watched the road through the window over the sink. The light was going gold across the neighbor’s fence and the shadows were long.
“He’s out again,” she said, tightening the cord.
“Tommy Ray?”
“Third night in a row. And twice he’s come in after midnight. Drunk.”
“What’s he sayin’?”
“Nothin’. He doesn’t say anything anymore.”
The line hummed. Down the hall the house was quiet.
“Okay.” Vanessa took a breath. “I’m gonna ask you somethin’ straight out, ’cause you been dancin’ around it for a month, and I been lettin’ you. Do you think he’s cheatin’ on you?”
Mary looked at the cold plate on the table. She grabbed it and threw the food away.
There it was. She’d counted nights and smelled collars, and her eighteen-year-old cousin was the first one to just say it.
“I don’t know.”
“You don’t know, or you don’t wanna know?”
“Nessa.”
“I’m just askin’, Mary.”
“Two weeks ago I asked him straight out,” Mary said. “I had everything all lined out. The nights I’d counted. That his shirt smelled like perfume. I gave it all to him.”
“And?”
“He had an answer for everything. A retirement party. A gal from the front office that hugs everybody.” Mary pulled the cord tighter. Her fingertip darkened. “He even made up some story about an accident at the plant. Then I made him look me in my eye and tell me there’s nobody. And he did it, Nessa. He never blinked.”
The line went quiet.
“Maybe there is nobody,” Vanessa said. “I mean, men drink. Maybe that’s all there is to it, him and them ol’ boys from the plant closin’ down the bar every night.”
“Maybe. I don’t know. I feel like something’s wrong.” She leaned through the opening to the living room. “I can’t even tell you the last time we…”
Mary tilted her head down. Her shoulders dropped.
“But here you are callin’ me long distance. Sugar, your voice’s shakin’.”
Mary didn’t answer.
“I set his supper out three nights runnin’,” she finally said. “I sit at this table and look at that dang cold plate, and I go back and forth in my own head till I’m dizzy. Some nights I think I’m losin’ my mind. That’s the part I can’t live with, Nessa. Not the drinkin’. It’s not knowin’.”
“Then go.”
Mary went still.
“What?”
“I’m serious. Put that baby in the car and go find out yourself. Tonight, while you got your nerve up.”
“And if he’s just sittin’ there drinkin’ a Schlitz with Dale?”
“Then you go back home. But at least you know.”
“I don’t know,” she said.
“Mary. If you don’t do it. You’ll never know.”
Mary walked over towards Sam. The cord caught with the knots. Sam’s chest rose and lowered.
“Ok. You’re right.”
“And then you call me right after. You hear?”
“Nessa.”
“I don’t care what time. Momma won’t mind. I’ll be waitin’. Call me.”
“Okay.”
“Love you.”
“Love you too.”
Mary hung the receiver.
Her hand stayed on it. Then she grabbed the empty plate, washed it, and set it in the rack.
In the bedroom she packed the diaper bag. Diapers, wipes, two bottles, and a change of clothes all went in.
She zipped it.
Stopped.
Unzipped it.
She added two more sleepers and extra diapers.
Sam barely woke when Mary lifted her out of the crib. She got heavy again on Mary’s shoulder before they reached the car. Then she left.
The Lamplighter was on the highway on the edge of Port Lavaca. It had started sprinkling right after she’d left the house. Mary slowed coming past it and read the parking lot in one look. Half a dozen cars and two trucks, neither of them were Tommy Ray’s.
She kept going.
She talked to Sam as they crossed the bridge over the bay. It was the same run of nothing she used at three in the morning. The wipers brushed the rain off the windshield. The plant lights came into view along the far shore.
Rusty’s sat off the highway in Point Comfort, close to the county line. A low building with a gravel lot and a Schlitz sign buzzing in the window, and cars nosed up to the front of it in a crooked row.
Mary turned in slow. The gravel popped under her tires. She rolled along the front row reading the vehicles one at a time, and then she swung the car around the side of the building.
There it was. His truck sat against the fence behind Rusty’s.
She stopped her car and looked at it.
There was no mistaking the red and white two tones with the toolbox on the back. The Alcoa parking sticker sat in the corner of the windshield, catching her headlights.
Tommy Ray always parked where folks could see his truck, but there it was out back.
Sam sighed in the car seat.
She eased off the brake, pulled out of the lot, and turned north.
The road ran dark between the fields. She took 173 up to 111, and 111 carried her on toward Edna the way it had carried her the other direction a year ago, with everything she owned in the trunk and Tommy Ray’s hand on her knee the whole ride down.
Sam slept. Mary drove with both hands on the wheel and her eyes on the centerline and she didn’t turn the radio on.
The town lights came up as she crossed the city limits. At the light downtown she kept going straight. She turned at Stephen F. Austin School, looking over at the playground behind it. When she reached Brown Street she turned and saw her old home. Second one on the right. Her mama’s porch light was on the way it was every night she was growing up.
Her mama opened the door before Mary was up the steps.
She stood in the doorway in her housecoat and looked at Mary, and at the sleeping baby on her shoulder, and at the diaper bag hanging heavy off the other one. She stepped back and held the screen.
“There’s supper if you want it,” her mama said.
“I ate Mama. I can’t stay. I need you to keep Sam a little while.”
Her mama took the baby without one question. Sam fussed once at the hand-off and went back down against her grandmother’s shoulder like she’d been sleeping there all her life.
Mary set the diaper bag inside the door. Then she stood at her mama’s kitchen sink and worked the wedding ring off her finger. It hung up at the knuckle. She ran the tap and soaped her hand and it came loose, and she dried it on the dish towel and put it in her pocket.
Her mama stood in the kitchen doorway with Sam on her shoulder.
“I’ll be back tonight,” Mary said.
Mary buttoned her coat.
“Don’t let him talk,” her mama said.
Mary went down the steps to the car.
She turned south at the end of Brown Street and back onto the main road. She pulled a cassette from the console and pushed it into the player.
Bonnie Tyler came through the speakers as the words to “Total Eclipse of the Heart” filled the car.
Mary turned it up.
The rain was harder now as she reached the county line.
FRIDAY · APRIL 11, 1986 · 9:38 P.M.
IT CLICKED
The Schlitz sign illuminated the sidewalk in front of Rusty’s. Through the window she could see people but not Tommy Ray.
Mary sat in the car with the engine running and the wipers off, and the rain crawled down the windshield. She’d drove around the back first. His truck hadn’t moved.
The dash clock said 9:38. She turned the key off.
The rain got loud on the roof. Under it she could hear the beat of the music from inside, just the low end of it, coming through the cinder block.
She turned the key back on, put her foot on the brake, and pulled the shifter into reverse. The backup lights threw white on the gravel behind her in the mirror. Her foot stayed on the brake.
Her mom’s was thirty-five minutes north. Sam was asleep on her mama’s shoulder, and there was supper in the oven, and she could be at that table inside the hour and no one in this building would ever know she’d sat in this lot.
Except her mama had opened the door before she knocked. Except Vanessa was sitting by a phone.
Except her.
Mary put the car in park and turned the key off and got out in the rain.
She turned her collar up crossing the lot. The gravel was soft in the low spots and the rain was cold on the back of her neck. One deep breath and she pulled the door open.
Cigarette smoke hit her first. “Stairway to Heaven” was clear now, its soft guitar carrying through the door.
A pool game was going in the back and two men at the near end of the bar were arguing about the Oilers. Mary took the first stool inside the door, at the short end of the bar, and sat down with her coat still buttoned.
The bartender came down to her. A tall woman in a black shirt, forty maybe, dark hair pulled back with her sleeves pushed up and a bar towel over her shoulder. The name tag said GRACE.
“Get you somethin’, hon?”
Mary clasped her hands together on the bar. “No, I’m ok.”
Grace looked at her for a half second. “Ok, if you need anything just holler. I’m Grace.” She nodded and moved back down the bar.
Mary looked at the room through the mirror.
She kept her head still. Behind the bar the bottles stood in rows against a long mirror, and most of the room could be seen through it. The pool table. The booths along the wall. The men at the bar, a dozen of them, hats and caps, cigarettes going.
Then she heard the laugh.
She knew that laugh even over all the noise. She’d heard it on a dance floor when she was eighteen and across a kitchen table two weeks ago, and she found it now in the mirror, in the corner booth along the far wall, where he sat telling a story with his hands.
Tommy Ray had a whiskey glass on the table in front of him. He was loose and she knew his loose.
He raised the glass with his left hand.
The hand caught the bar light. There was no ring on it.
Mary squinted as she looked at his hand in the mirror.
Her face went hot. It ran down her neck and into her chest, and her heart was going hard enough that she could feel it in her hands.
Across the booth from him, a girl leaned into the light.
The red dress she had on fit her body. She was young with sandy hair. It was done up with curls. The girl reached over the table and put her hand on Tommy Ray’s forearm and said something. He leaned toward her without letting go of his story. The girl looked at the clock over the bar.
Mary sat still on the stool. Her eyes widened.
The heat climbed. Her breath quickened. She wanted to come off that stool screaming.
She breathed in through her nose. She let it out slow.
The jukebox changed songs. Grace pulled two longnecks for the pool players and rang them up. The rain kept on outside. Nobody looked at her.
Mary looked down at her hands on the bar.
They were steady.
She reached into her pocket and closed her fist around the ring. Then she stood and started across the room.
The men arguing about the Oilers went quiet as she passed. Then the next ones, and the next, until the jukebox was the only thing in the building still making noise. At the pool table a man stepped out of her way.
Tommy Ray kept talking until she stopped beside the booth.
The girl looked up at her.
He turned his head.
The smile he had disappeared.
“Umm. Mary?”
He slid out of the booth and opened both hands. “Hey, darlin’. What’re you doin’ here?”
Mary looked at his bare left hand.
He looked down at it. His right hand moved toward his shirt pocket and stopped.
“It’s not what…”
She turned. As she walked by the end of the bar she set the ring beside a whiskey glass.
The click of it was small.
“You can ride home with her then,” Mary said.
Then she turned for the door and smiled.
“Mary, hold on.”
He came around a table and reached for her arm. She pulled away before he could grab and kept walking. Past the pool table, past the Oilers men, past Grace behind the bar, watching her come the whole way.
“Mary.”
She pushed the front door open into the rain.
It was coming down straight and cold, and it hit her face and ran down her. She walked across the soft gravel to her car.
Behind her the door swung shut on the jukebox, and the Schlitz sign buzzed in the window, and whatever Tommy Ray was saying to that room, she never heard a word of it.
FRIDAY · APRIL 11, 1986 · 7:30 P.M.
TAKING IT OFF
Grace caught Dale’s beer bottle before it reached the edge of the bar.
Dale held out his hand. “I had it.”
Grace set the beer in front of him.
Wayne elbowed him. “You had half of it.”
“That still counts,” Dale said, lifting the bottle.
“Dale it ain’t even eight yet. Don’t make me cut you off.” Grace said.
Wayne laughed into his beer.
Grace wiped the ring of beer from the wood.
Headlights crossed the back window beside the ice machine. A red and white truck pulled through and turned behind the building. A minute later, Tommy Ray came through the front door.
Grace set a rocks glass on the bar.
“You’re early.”
Tommy Ray pulled off his cap and set it on the bar. “That how you greet your best customers?”
“My best customers pay.”
He laid three dollars beside the glass. “Keep talkin’ that way, I’ll take my business somewhere else.”
Grace reached for the whiskey. “Not likely. Your third night in a row says you won’t.”
Dale turned on his stool. “She’s got you there, buddy.”
Tommy Ray pointed his cap at him. “Nobody asked you.”
Grace poured whiskey over two ice cubes and slid the glass across.
Tommy Ray grabbed the glass. His ring clicked against the rim. He drank it all down.
“Fill‘er up, Grace.” Tommy slapped more money down.
He turned the ring around his finger, pulled it over his knuckle, and slipped it into his shirt pocket.
A pale strip circled his finger.
The register drawer hung as it slid out. Grace hit it with the heel of her hand and it popped open.
“You're late.” Wayne said.
“Yeah, Bill made me stay late to finish up some stacking.”
Grace pushed his change toward him and moved to the next customer.
The door opened as Rhonda Hawes walked in.
On Wednesday, Rhonda had been alone at the bar when Tommy Ray came in after work.
He stopped halfway down the bar.
“Rhonda Hawes?”
The woman looked up from her drink. “Tommy Ray Marshall.”
“Well, I’ll be damned. How many year's it been?”
“Five, maybe. And it's Owens now.” Her smile slipped. She turned the glass between her hands. “Divorce ain’t final.”
Tommy Ray took the stool beside her. “Jimmy Parker’s graduation party.”
“You remember that?”
“Hard to forget Jimmy fallin’ through his mama’s card table.”
He’d parked his truck right by the front window.
Thursday, Tommy Ray arrived first parking at a spot by the front door. Rhonda came in a few minutes later.
His ring stayed on while they sat at the end of the bar, talking about old teachers and people Grace didn't know.
Tonight the rain came on hard. Even over the music you could hear it on the roof.
Water ran beneath the front door. Grace folded a towel and laid it by the door. She pushed it with her foot.
A glass crashed to the floor in the front corner booth.
“Dang it, Harry. Why you wanna make me work harder on a rainy night?”
Grace took the broom and dustpan from the corner. Harry lifted his boots while she swept beneath the table. One piece had slid under the booth. She crouched, knocked it loose with the broom, and swept it in with the rest.
Her fingers tightened around the dustpan handle until the edge pressed into her palm.
One Friday night with a hot supper sitting in front of a TV. That would be something.
“Grace.”
Tommy Ray tapped his empty glass against the bar.
“Keep your panties on, Tommy Ray. I’ll be there in a minute.”
Grace dumped the broken glass into the trash, returned the broom and dustpan to the corner, and took his glass.
“Another one?”
He grinned. “Thought you’d never ask.”
Grace poured his third. “You know it’s only eight. Keep it up and you won’t make it to ten tonight.”
The front door opened.
Rhonda stepped inside and brushed rain from her bare shoulders. Her red dress ended above her knees and fit close through the hips. She wore black heels and carried a small black purse. Her hair was pinned up.
Tommy Ray lowered his glass.
“Well, hell, Rhonda. I sure didn’t expect to see you, tonight. That’s three in a row.”
She walked down the bar and stopped beside him. “That a problem?”
“Nope. It sure ain’t.”
His eyes dropped to the dress and returned to her face.
“Didn’t know you owned somethin’ like that.”
Rhonda looked down at herself. “I own two.”
“Now that would be worth seein’.”
She set her purse on the bar.
Grace reached for the Seagram’s bottle. “Seven and Seven?”
“You remembered.”
Grace put the scoop in the ice. “This is your third night.”
“Don’t forget the extra lime,” Tommy Ray said.
Rhonda turned toward him. “You remembered too.”
Tommy Ray leaned over bumping her with his shoulder. “Always had a good memory.”
Grace made the drink and set it in front of Rhonda.
Tommy Ray pulled out his wallet.
Rhonda put three dollars on the bar before he could open it. “I can buy my own.”
“I didn’t think you couldn’t.”
“Then put that up.”
Tommy Ray returned the wallet to his pocket. “Well now. If you insist.”
Rhonda took her drink and walked to the corner booth.
By eight thirty, every stool was taken. Grace leaned across the bar to catch orders over the music and the rain against
the roof. A man at the far end held up two fingers, then argued the total when she gave it. She pulled his tab off the rail and set it in front of him. Her finger on the total. He paid.
She opened two beers and pulled a draft while Tommy Ray gestured as he told Rhonda about Bobby losing a drum of solvent at the plant. He leaned back against the bar as he sat on the stool.
Grace walked to the back. She filled a bucket at the ice machine.
Bobby set down his bottle on the edge of the pool table. “I did not lose it.”
“Dude, you let that thing get away from you.” Wayne said.
“The forklift caught the pallet wrong.”
Tommy Ray looked toward Rhonda. “He took that whole rack out big time.”
Rhonda leaned out from the booth. “You still make every story bigger?”
Tommy Ray spread one hand. “Only the ones worth tellin’.”
“You made Jimmy Parker’s card table six feet tall on Wednesday.”
“It was a big table.”
“It came to like his knees.”
Tommy laughed. “Dude, got in major trouble though.”
Wayne shook his head. Dale threw a peanut at him.
Tommy Ray drained his glass and set it beside the money he had counted out.
Grace picked up both. “Four?”
Tommy Ray pushed the money toward her. “You keepin’ count?”
“I keep chargin’.”
She poured the whiskey and slid it back.
Rhonda’s eyes dropped to Tommy Ray’s hand.
“How’s married life?”
Tommy Ray shrugged and took a sip. “It’s married life.”
“That good?”
“You know how it goes. Just that simple.”
Grace wiped the bar down as a song came to an end. The jukebox dropped the next record and skipped twice before George Strait came on.
“Dale! What the hell you playin’ The Chair for?” Wayne yelled as he came out of the restroom.
Rhonda squeezed the lime into her drink. “How’s your baby?”
“Sammy’s good.”
“She sleepin’ all night yet?”
“Some nights.”
“And the others?”
Tommy Ray took a drink. “Those are harder than the others.”
Grace picked up two empty longnecks and dropped them into the crate beneath the sink. When she came back, she replaced the full ashtray beside Tommy Ray with a clean one.
Rhonda dropped the lime peel onto her napkin. “You always did need somewhere to go.”
Grace looked at the clock, nine. She sighed.
Harry came up for another and patted his shirt pocket. "Can I get you Friday, Grace?”
"It is Friday, Harry."
He set some wet dollars on the bar and she took them.
Tommy Ray ordered another drink.
Dale and Wayne carried their beers to the pool table.
Rhonda lifted her glass toward Tommy Ray. “You gonna keep hollerin’ at me all night?”
“You’re the one sittin’ way over there.”
“You know where this booth is.”
Tommy Ray looked toward the pool table.
Dale bent over his shot without looking up.
Tommy Ray picked up his whiskey.
He crossed the room and slid into the booth across from Rhonda.
Grace wiped his place at the bar, carried the money beside his coaster to the register, and opened a longneck for the man on the next stool.
She walked over to the table by them to clean off the glasses.
Tommy Ray leaned one arm on the table. “So how long you been back?”
Rhonda turned the glass between her hands. “Moved back three months ago.”
“That long?”
“You don’t get out much.”
“I get out.”
Rhonda looked at his whiskey. “Oh, I noticed.”
Grace brought the empty glasses to the sink and returned to the bar.
A few minutes later, she carried a clean ashtray to the booth by them.
Rhonda checked the clock above the bar. She reached across the table and put her hand on Tommy Ray’s forearm.
“What time you gotta get back home?”
Tommy Ray looked at the clock. “I ain’t in any hurry.”
“That’s not a time.”
He lifted his whiskey. “Didn’t say it was.”
Rhonda leaned back.
Grace set a clean ashtray on the table and took the full one.
“Grace, can I get another glass of Seven?”
“Sure thing hun, give me a minute.”
The front door opened at quarter to ten.
A young woman stepped inside with her coat buttoned to the throat. Rain darkened the shoulders, and wet hair pressed against one cheek.
Dale straightened over the shot. The cue slipped from his bridge hand and tapped the rail.
Wayne looked up.
Both men looked toward the corner booth.
Grace followed their eyes as she put ice in the glass.
Tommy Ray sat across from Rhonda, his back to the door and hand beside the whiskey glass.
Grace looked back at the woman as she poured the whiskey.
She hadn’t moved from the door.
Dale lowered his cue and stepped away from the table.
The woman crossed to the first stool and sat down.
“Get you somethin’, hon?”
The woman clasped her hands together on the bar. “No, I’m ok.”
Grace looked at her for a half second. “Ok, if you need anything just holler. I’m Grace.”
The woman kept her face toward the bottles, but her eyes moved across the mirror behind them.
Grace picked up a clean glass and ran the towel around the rim.
The woman’s eyes stopped on the corner booth.
Her fingers locked together.
Wayne set his beer on the pool table. Dale looked down at the cue in his hands.
Grace placed a glass beneath the bar. At a table a man raised his empty bottle.
“Hold your horses, Carl.”
Grace threw the towel over her shoulder and stood there. The jukebox clicked to load a new song.
Rhonda’s voice carried from the booth. Grace looked.
“I asked when you had to get back?”
Tommy Ray leaned toward her. “I heard ya.”
“And you didn’t really answer now did ya?”
Rhonda put her hand on his arm.
“Maybe I don’t have a time.”
The woman came off the stool.
Grace set the towel beside the register.
The woman walked past the pool table where they had stopped playing and watched. Dale stepped out of her way.
A man at the bar was arguing. “I’m tellin’ you. This is the Oilers...”
The guys at the bar turned. Wayne’s eyes went wide.
Everyone watched the girl.
Tommy Ray kept talking until the woman stopped beside the booth.
He looked up.
The smile disappeared.
“Mar…”
Tommy Ray slid out of the booth and opened both hands. “Hey, darlin’. What’re you doin’ here?”
The woman looked at his left hand.
Tommy Ray looked down. His right hand moved toward his shirt pocket and stopped.
Tommy Ray held out his hands towards her. “It’s not what…”
She reached into her pocket and pulled her hand back out.
Turning around she walked towards the bar.
Her hand reached out and she sat something down beside a whiskey glass. It clicked. A ring.
“You can ride home with her then,” the woman said as she walked to the door.
Tommy Ray stepped around a table. “Mary, hold on.”
He reached for her arm. She moved past his hand.
“Mary.”
Mary smiled and kept walking.
The front door opened. Rain blew across the floor before it shut behind her.
Tommy Ray followed her as far as the pool table.
Dale stepped into the aisle.
“Move.”
Dale planted the butt of his cue on the floor. “You ain’t drivin’.”
“Get outta my way.”
“You’ve had about six whiskeys.”
“That’s my wife though”
“And you’ll kill somebody chasin’ her.”
Tommy Ray shoved Dale’s shoulder.
Dale held his ground.
The side door opened behind them.
Rhonda left with her purse pressed against her stomach.
Tommy Ray turned his head.
Dale caught him by the upper arm. “Sit down.”
Tommy Ray pulled free.
He returned to the bar, picked up Mary’s ring, and sat on the stool. He set the ring beside the glass and took a drink.
Grace opened two beers for the men at the far end.
A pool ball struck the rail. Wayne asked who had the next game.
Grace came back to Tommy Ray and reached for his whiskey.
He closed his hand around the glass. “I ain’t done.”
“You are.”
Tommy Ray leaned over the bar. “Grace, you saw everything?”
Grace kept her hand on the glass. “I did.”
“Then tell her.”
“Tell her what?”
“That nothin’ happened.”
Grace pulled the glass from his fingers.
Tommy Ray flattened one hand against the wood. “You know damn well nothin’ happened.”
Grace wiped a drop of whiskey from the bar.
“I saw you take your ring off before Rhonda got here.”
Tommy Ray looked at his bare hand.
“That don’t mean I cheated.”
“Didn’t say it did.”
He pointed toward the front door. “Then what the hell you sayin’?”
Grace picked up Mary’s ring.
She held it out.
Tommy Ray looked at it before taking it.
He slipped Mary’s ring into his pants pocket, then pulled his own from his shirt pocket and pushed it onto his finger. It caught at the knuckle. He twisted it until it slid into place.
Grace turned to the man two stools away.
“Another?”
He lifted his empty bottle. “Yeah.”
Grace opened the cooler and handed him another.
Behind her, Tommy Ray said Mary’s name. A bottle cap hit the floor and rolled. She let it lie.
Grace took the man’s money.
“This dang register’s gonna be the death of me.”
She hammered it with her fist and it slid open. She closed the register, and wiped the place where Mary’s ring had sat at the bar.
SATURDAY · AUGUST 30, 1986 · 7:30 P.M.
HE DID NOT
The fluorescent light above the register buzzed.
Mary counted the drawer, wrote the total on the yellow sheet, and locked it beneath the tray.
The phone rang beside the cigarette rack.
She picked it up. “Corner Store Edna.”
“Your girl got up on both knees today.”
Mary leaned against the counter. “No she didn’t.”
“She did too.”
“What happened, Mama? I need details.”
“She rocked back and forth till she fell on her face.”
“Aww.”
“She laughed.”
“Put her on.”
“She can’t talk.”
“Put her on anyway.”
The receiver bumped against something. Sam breathed into it, then made a wet sound with her mouth.
“There’s my girl.”
Sam knocked the receiver again.
“You wearin’ Grandma out?”
Mama came back on. “She’s chewin’ on your brother’s old rattle.”
“Don’t let her sleep too long.”
“I did raise three babies, Mary Jo.”
“Just remindin’ you.”
“You should get back to work.”
Mary returned the receiver to its cradle.
The red Budweiser sign in the window had come on while she was talking. Blue light from the Schlitz sign covered the bottom half of the glass.
Three months behind the register. Long enough to know Mr. Pearce bought milk and Winstons every Saturday. Long enough to know Mrs. Shoemaker would put six dollars on pump three. Every single time.
Long enough to stop looking up every time a truck turned into the lot.
Saturday nights paid an extra quarter an hour. Mama kept Sam, and Mary brought home enough for diapers, rent, and a little money inside the envelope beneath her dresser.
The one-bedroom apartment across town was small, but Sam’s crib fit beside Mary’s bed, close enough that Mary could reach it without getting up.
The bell over the door rang.
Mr. Pearce came in for milk and Winstons.
“Told you that rain was comin’,” he said.
“You tell everybody that every Saturday.”
“Even a broken clock is right at some time durin’ the day.”
Mary gave him his change.
Two junior high boys spent five minutes deciding between candy bars, then counted pennies onto the counter.
“You’re short,” Mary said.
The taller one checked both pockets.
His friend pushed three more pennies across.
Mary rang them up and watched them run through the door.
The store cleared.
She wiped the counter, changed the receipt paper, and moved the Slim Jims closer to the register.
Headlights crossed the front windows.
The bass reached the glass before the car stopped.
It was a midnight blue Buick Regal.
Mary shook her head and set the rag beside the register.
Matt Garrett had been coming in most Saturdays since she’d started work there. Sometimes in his Stanley’s Grocery shirt. Sometimes showered and changed, hair fixed, car keys turning around one finger.
He bought a Coke or gum, leaned against the counter, and stayed until another customer came in.
He always asked about Sam.
He never asked why Mary had moved home.
Matt stepped out of the Buick.
Someone shouted through an open window.
He stopped with one hand on the door and looked back at the car.
Another voice called out. Loud enough to carry through the glass, but not clear enough for Mary to catch the words.
Matt shook his head.
The guy said something else.
Matt turned back toward the store. He squared his shoulders and opened the door.
The bell rang above him.
“Hey there, Mary.”
He came to the counter wearing the same grin he wore every Saturday.
For a second, she was seventeen again at the KC Hall, standing in front of him while the band tuned up.
He had walked across the floor right up to her. “You know how to two-step?”
“Course I do.”
“Can you teach me?”
Freshman, she’d thought.
He stepped on her foot before they made it once around the dance floor.
“That mine or yours?”
Matt looked down. “Yours.”
“Then get off it.”
He laughed, moved his hand higher on her back, and stepped on her again.
Now he stood six-two, broad through the shoulders, with his hair spiked on top. The freshman boy still showed when he
smiled too wide.
Mary rested her hands on the counter. “You buyin’ somethin' tonight?”
“I always buy somethin'.”
“A Coke and a pack of gum don't make you a big customer.”
“Makes me a payin’ customer.”
“Barely.”
Matt leaned one forearm on the counter. “You still mad I never paid you for those dance lessons?”
“You couldn’t afford what you owe me.”
“I was your best student.”
Her hand went to her hip. “You stepped on me three times.”
“Twice.”
“Three.”
“The third one was Jack.”
Mary laughed and tilted her head. “Jack wasn’t there.”
“Then I’m down to two.”
“Still two too many.”
He tapped two fingers against the counter. “How’s Sam?”
“Tryin’ to crawl.”
“Already?”
“She gets up on her knees and falls over.”
“Takes after her mama.”
Mary pointed at him. “Careful.”
Matt laughed.
Then he looked toward the Buick.
Mary followed his eyes. Three heads faced the store.
When she looked back, his fingers had stopped tapping.
“You need somethin’ else?” she asked.
“Maybe.”
He pushed away from the counter and walked toward the coolers.
Mary picked up the rag.
He passed the soft drinks.
Passed the milk.
Stopped in front of the beer.
The manager had taped a white sign beside the register in June.
CARD EVERYONE WHO LOOKS UNDER THIRTY.
On Monday, the number on the beer cooler would change from nineteen to twenty-one.
Matt was a junior in high school now.
She knew his mama. Knew where his house sat. Knew how old he had been when he spent half a song staring at his boots so he wouldn’t step on hers again.
Matt opened the cooler.
He took out two twelve-packs of Budweiser.
Mary set the rag beneath the register.
The cardboard was damp when he placed both packs on the counter.
He pulled a twenty from his wallet and laid it beside them.
Mary looked through the front glass.
The boys were still facing the store.
She looked at Matt and raised both hands.
“You’re kidding, right?”
His grin stayed in place. “Come on, Mary, just ring it up for me.”
Mary looked at the Budweiser.
Then at him.
He pressed two fingers against the twenty.
He kept smiling, but his jaw tightened.
The grin he wore most Saturdays came and went while he talked. This one had stayed in place since he walked through the door.
At Rusty’s, Tommy Ray had opened both hands before he started explaining.
Mary pulled two large paper sacks from beneath the counter.
Headlights moved across the windows. A truck turned into the lot and stopped at the pumps.
Matt looked toward the glass but did not turn around.
Mary lowered the first twelve-pack into a sack. The bottom sagged beneath the weight, so she slipped another bag over it.
Then she doubled the second one.
She rang the sale and counted his change onto the counter.
Matt pocketed it and reached for the sacks. He took both bags and headed for the door.
“Tell your mama I said hi.”
He stopped at the door and faced her.
“Next time, you could just buy it and I’ll pick it up at your apartment.”
Mary looked at him. “Matt Garrett, you could barely handle dance lessons. Don’t get ambitious.”
Matt backed out the door with both bags. He cocked an eyebrow.
“Oh, I’m a way better dancer now.”
The bell rang and the door closed.
Her mouth dropped open.
She let out a slow breath.
“Lord, that boy…”
Mary looked down at the counter. She picked up the rag and wiped it.
The red Budweiser sign glowed in the front window. Blue light from the Schlitz sign crossed the glass beside it.
The bell over the door rang.
A man stepped inside carrying an empty gas can.
Mary folded the rag and laid it beside the register.
“What can I get ya?”
A NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR
When I made the song "Neon Saint," I knew Grace was behind the bar watching all of it happen. She's the one who saw the ring come off. She's the one who wiped the bar where it had been. The song is her side of that Friday night, and you can hear it at the end of this page.
But I couldn't stop thinking there was a bigger story hiding inside that song. Grace saw a woman come through the door at a quarter to ten with her coat buttoned. She didn't know what it took to get her there.
That's Mary's part. And Mary's part didn't end at Rusty's.
Three months later she was behind a register in Edna, and a junior in high school walked in grinning.
I'd written that scene already.
In Beyond the Goalposts: Junior Year, Matt Garrett walks into that store, walks back out with two twelve-packs, and cranks the music up feeling like the world belongs to him. It's a fun night with his friends. It's a story he'll tell for years.
He has no idea he walked into the last chapter of Mary's story.
He doesn't know what she left, or why she came to Edna, or what she was building for her daughter. To him she's just Mary behind the counter, the girl who taught him to two-step. To her, he's proof she can laugh again.
That's what I love about writing these stories. It's like when a wreck happens at a stop sign and four people tell four different versions. Put them together and you finally understand what happened.
This isn't a "what if." It's a "what you didn't see."
It would be good for you to see his side of that story. His side of it is in Beyond the Goalposts: Junior Year.
Thank you for spending time with Mary, Grace, and the people in this world.
And don't forget to check out the song Neon Saint.
Listen To Neon Saint
Grace keeps everybody's secrets at a county-line bar. One night, that secret got out and here's the fallout.
Country-rock storytelling · driving · big sing-along chorus
Copyright © 2026 by Jason Curlee
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the author, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Published by Jason Curlee
First Edition: 2026