Closing Time
It had been a long Wednesday night for Tessie Cal because Ann had called in sick. Tessie had been working since two o’clock that afternoon, and now it was two o’clock in the morning. She was sure ready to close up. It had been a busy day, but the crowd that she had all seemed to be in a good mood since there hadn’t been any arguments or fights. There was a full moon that night, and Tessie really believed that whenever there was a full moon things out of the ordinary happened.
“Hey, you missed a good laugh today when One Beer Tom was in. His joke was pretty good.” said Tessie.
There was a fly buzzing around a barn one day when he happened on a pile of fresh cow manure. Due to the fact that it had been hours since his last meal, he flew down and began to eat. He ate and ate and ate. Finally, he decided he had eaten enough and tried to fly away. He had eaten too much though, and could not get off the ground. As he looked around wondering what to do now, he spotted a pitchfork leaning up against the wall. He climbed to the top of the handle and jumped off, thinking that once he got airborne, he would be able to take flight. Unfortunately, he was wrong and dropped like a rock, splatting when he hit the floor. Dead. The moral to the story is: Never fly off the handle when you know you're full of shit.
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As Tessie made the last call for a drink before coming out from behind the bar, everyone seemed to want one for the road. She made the drinks for the customers, poured three shots for herself, and began to turn off the lights and lock up the door. Seven of the customers were regulars, but one man whom Tessie had never seen before seemed to be taking his time with his last drink. A few of the guys began to leave, and Tessie asked Steve and Johnny to hang around until the stranger had left. DUI Dee woke up and got a ride home from Stinky Sam. What a lovely couple they were as they staggered at the front door!
Tessie was tired and wanted to close up, but she was giving everyone a few more minutes to finish up their drinks. Then Tessie said what she said at the end of every night, “You don’t have to go home, but you can’t stay here. Drink up ladies and gentlemen!” She went to let Bouncer out the back door. Bouncer let out a growl and a look of something is wrong, but Tessie ignored the warning from her dog and thought nothing of it.
Everyone finished up and headed towards the door, all except the man down at the end of the bar that Tessie had never seen before. Johnny and Steve usually got off work at midnight and then stopped by to see Tessie. They always made sure that no one gave her a problem at closing time.
The stranger seemed to be falling asleep, and Tessie told him he should go home to bed or go out and have some breakfast for himself. The man jumped off the barstool and began throwing glasses, ashtrays, and hundred dollar bills all over the place. He must have had about ten thousand dollars in hundred dollar bills. Johnny and Steve were picking up the money as fast as the man was throwing it. Tessie was shaken up at the way he was destroying her bar. After he finished with the ashtrays, glasses, and hundred dollar bills, he began throwing barstools at all of the whiskey bottles. Tessie, Johnny, and Steve could not believe this was happening.
The men tried to stop the stranger, but it just seemed to make him worse. It was now twenty after two, and Tessie thought for certain that a cop would drive by and notice all of the action going on in the bar. Suddenly, the man finished his drink and went towards the door. The three spectators were in shock and didn’t know what to do. The man walked out the door, leaving a trail of hundred dollar bills behind him.
Johnny, Steve, and Tessie gathered up the money, which totaled eight thousand dollars. As they counted the money, they each had another drink to calm down their nerves. Tessie figured that the man did about one thousand dollars worth of damage, so she took that much from the pile of money he had left behind. Steve declared, “We should split the rest.” Johnny agreed and Tessie agreed, but Tessie decided, “With the seven thousand left we should each take $2,000, and take the left over grand to the track tomorrow.” Steve and Johnny nodded their heads, “Why not? We just might win.”
They cleaned up the bar as much as they could, and the three of them went out for breakfast (steak and eggs) of course. As they were sitting in the restaurant eating their food, Tessie said, “Why don’t we hop on a plane to Vegas?” Steve and Johnny weren’t really big gamblers, but they figured that since they got the money this could be their big chance to really make some “big bucks”.
Tessie got a hold of the other barmaid, Ann, and arranged for her to run the bar for a few days. There was a plane leaving at seven in the morning for Vegas, and Tessie, Steve, and Johnny would be on it.
It was an hour drive to the airport, so they headed out in a taxi. They figured that they would just buy some new clothes when they arrived in Vegas, since they had so much money. When they got to the airport it was six in the morning. They had not slept, but they were all having a great time trying to figure out what was wrong with the man who went crazy throwing money all over the bar.
There was an announcement stating that the flight scheduled to depart at seven to Vegas would be delayed for one hour. While sitting in the airport terminal waiting, the three of them fell asleep. When they woke up it was eight thirty, and Steve said, “Hurry up or we will miss our flight!” A lady that overheard Steve and explained, “If you’re waiting for the flight to Vegas, they just announced another two hour delay because of the weather.”
By nine o’clock all of the people that were waiting for the flight were getting anxious. They all had a pocket full of money, and they were all in the mood to gamble. Before long, everyone got to talking to each other as they waited for their flight to finally depart. They went and had a few drinks at the bar, and then they heard another announcement, which was news of a further delay.
The next thing you knew, seven or eight men were gathered around in a circle off in one of the terminals. Tessie was curious and went over to see what was going on. She ran back over to Steve and Johnny explaining, “There’s a big poker game going on over there, let’s get in on it.” Each pot was about a thousand dollars. They had two decks of cards going on the poker side, and off on the other side of the terminal was a blackjack game going on.
They got in on the poker game, and Steve seemed to be on a lucky streak. In just fifteen minutes he was about six thousand ahead. Tessie was losing fast. She only had about a hundred bucks left. Johnny was still about even. The last hand took a hundred dollars to get in: five cards, no draw, and there would be fifteen hundred for the winner. Steve drew four kings and collected the pot. Tessie dropped out of the game and asked Steve for twenty dollars so she could go to the airport bar and get drunk. Before long Johnny was broke and went to join her at the bar.
Steve was really on a roll. By now there were only three men left in the game, and Steve had about twenty thousand dollars. Just then an announcement came from the loud speaker, “Flight 204 to Las Vegas is now boarding at gate six.” Most of the people that were getting on the flight were sitting in the bar, not only broke, but also drunk. Johnny asked, “What’s the use of getting on the plane now that we’re broke?” A lot of the other passengers felt the same way, and out of the sixty people that were scheduled to go on the flight, only thirty boarded the plane. Steve was happy with his twenty thousand, and paid for the taxi home for himself, Johnny, and Tessie.
It was about noon when they arrived back at Tessie’s bar; Ann was surprised to see them. This was the break that Steve really needed because he always wanted to open up his own hardware store. Now, with all of the money he had won he finally had the chance to do it. Tessie and Johnny were disgusted with loosing, and proceeded to get drunk while Steve went straight to the bank to make a deposit. Tessie and Johnny were glad for Steve; at least one of them had won instead of all three of them coming back broke.
As Ann poured a drink for Johnny and Tessie, she said, “I found this wallet on the floor this morning. Do you know who it belongs to?” Tessie looked at the wallet, and sure enough it belonged to the man with the hundred dollar bills. As a matter of fact, all that was in the wallet was a driver’s license, a picture ID, a picture of the man with his family, and one hundred dollar bill. The man’s name was on the license: Andrew James Nelson.
Ann said, “That’s the man that I saw in the newspaper about a month ago. He won fifty thousand dollars…” her voice trailed off as a police officer came into the bar holding a picture. “Do any of you recognize this man?” It was a picture of Andrew Nelson, but before they could answer the officer added, “we found him dead this morning in the parking lot next door.”
Tessie told the cop that he had been in there the night before, and that he went a little crazy at closing time, but she didn’t mention anything about the money. The cop said, “I got a hold of Andrew’s wife, and she came down to identify him at the morgue. According to the coroner it was suicide. His wife told me that he had won fifty thousand dollars about a month ago, and she hadn’t seen him since. She said it made him crazy. It sees that he spent all of the money on drinking, drugs, gambling, and women. It was a drug overdose that killed him. His wife has no money at all. She doesn’t even know how she will bury him.”
Steve had come into the bar in the meantime, and he had heard the story that the cop was telling. Steve went over to the cop and asked, “Can you give me Mrs. Nelson’s address?” The cop gave him the address and phone number. After the cop had left, Steve went over to talk to Johnny and Tessie. “I think I’ll go over and talk to the woman.” He asked Tessie and Johnny to drive him over there.
As they got in the car, Steve kept looking at the picture of Andrew Nelson and his family. In the picture he was standing next to his wife, and had his arms around his four children. The kids seemed to be about three, five, six, and ten.
Steve asked Tessie to stop at the bank on the way. He went into the bank and had a check made out for twenty thousand dollars in the name of Mrs. Andrew Nelson and family. Then he went to her house and rang the doorbell. One of the Nelson children answered the door, and Steve asked, “Is your mother here?”
Mrs. Nelson came to the door, and Steve said, “I’m sorry to hear about your husband.” He handed her the check for twenty thousand dollars, and added, “Your husband wanted you to have this. He asked me to bring it over to you when I saw him last night.” The woman began to cry as Steve walked away. Steve, Tessie, and Johnny drove back to the bar. “I guess I’ll get my hardware store some other time,” said Steve, “money only makes people crazy anyway.”
Shortly after this happened Tessie wrote this poem:
Treasure
Surrounded by riches and diamonds and gold
I held them in my hand
Before long they had to be sold
I did not understand.
Far beyond the glimmering stars
in a far off distant land
I traveled by air, sea and car
I walked and then I ran
For the moment in the future
and a glance back at the past
Finally made me know for sure
I had reached for the moon at last
After reaching for and finding success
I lost all the things, I once possessed
Material things can never measure
what I have today, life’s richest treasure.
Simply because I now possess, peace of mind & happiness.
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