Paul Lewellan
The State of Discourse at the Big Boar
Dr. Henry Simmons stepped out of his atomic silver Lexus LC into the thick night air. He unbuttoned his Hugo Boss sports coat, loosened his tie, and inhaled the blues spilling out of Big Boar Bar and Grill. Opening the frosted glass doors, a wall of sound assaulted him while a full-figured woman with short-cropped pink hair belted out Bessie Smith’s “Down Hearted Blues.” Hank inhaled the lyrics and all of life’s complexities blew away.
He last visited The Big Boar a marriage ago with Millie his podiatrist. That was before the new fermentation tanks. His most recent ex-wife Ramona (the Heidegger scholar) didn’t drink beer, hated the blues, and like Heidegger was a Nazi. Unlike Heidegger, she was double-jointed, oral, and monogamous.
The Boar’s walnut bar and brass rail ran twenty-five feet to Hank’s right with thirty-two craft beers on tap. Five years ago, they’d served Bud, Bud Light, and Corona. The band launched into “Hesitation Blues.” The singer wore baggy jeans, a sweat-drenched tank top, and beaten down blue Justin boots. Her eyes reminded him of his first ex-wife, Elizabeth, the Existential Nihilist. “Can I get you now,” the singer moaned, “Lord, must I hesitate?” The crowd moaned with her.
When a tattooed redhead in a sun-bleached Bo Diddley concert-tee got up to find the gender-neutral bathroom, Hank eased into the empty barstool. The bartender was from his graduate seminar on Wittgenstein. “A pint of Spotted Cow, please, Heather.”
“I’m Alysce. Heather dropped the class.”
“My apologies.” He took a second look. “You wrote the paper on “Wittgenstein’s Beetle Box and the Language of Social Media.”
“You remember that?”
“A nice piece of work.” She beamed. “How long before the band takes a break?”
“Any time now.”
“What are they drinking?”
“You know bands,” she shrugged. “They’ll drink what you’re buying.”
“Well, don’t let them go thirsty, and put it on my tab.” Hank handed her a twenty. “For your trouble.” Alysce slipped the twenty into her apron pocket instead of the tip jar.
At the break Hank followed the band into the back ally. They were drinking pints of Raging River IPA and Bent River Stout from the pitchers Alysce provided. The lead singer drank Perrier.
Hank didn’t intrude, choosing to listen to theirs lively discussion of the merits of Popeye’s chicken versus KFC, followed by a critique of the cramped condition in the band’s Winnebago, and despair over the unlikelihood of getting laid tonight.
As the muscular Hispanic drummer reached for a pitcher to replenish his glass, Hank pulled a stainless-steel flask from his sweat-stained sport coat. “Anyone interested in something stronger?”
Only the young base guitarist—caramel skin, kinky black hair, and a rail thin body—reached for the flask. When he took a sip, his eyes widened. “What is this stuff?”
“Twenty-one-year-old Glenfiddich single-malt scotch.”
“It’s older than you are, kid,” the drummer scoffed.
“Never had anything like this.” He took another drink.
The lead guitarist with long gray hair nudged the boy aside and reached for the flask. “That’s because it’s $170 a bottle.” He eyed Hank skeptically before taking a drink. “Son-of-a-bitch,” he sighed, “Isn’t that something?” He took another drink, savoring the scotch. “Was a time I could afford this stuff….” He tried to hand the flask back to Hank.
Hank shook his head. “I’ve got more.”
The lead guitarist passed the flask on to the corpulent keyboard player, then wiped his sweaty palm on his ancient Levis, and reached out to shake. “I’m Wally Shepherd. No relation to Kenny Wayne Shepherd, though I toured with him back in 2013.”
Hank thought about that statement for a moment. “You played guitar with Kenny Wayne Shepherd?”
Wally patted Hank on the back. “I might have served in a backup capacity…” They shook hands. “You, my friend, are not a casual blues fan.”
“I am not.” He glanced in the direction of the lead singer who stood away from the band, sucking on an e-cigarette, and drinking another bottled water.
“Recognize her?” Wally asked.
“Should I?”
“Elizabeth Wilkens. Everyone calls her Betty. Used to be married to Orlo Beaks.”
Hank’s eyes widened. “Betty Beaks!??”
“She’s come out of the rabbit hole.” He nudged Hank in her direction. “Go pay your respects.”
As he approached the blues legend, Hank struggled for an opening line. “Vaping sucks,” he blurted out.
Betty Beaks gave him a disgusted look. “If I wanted a lecture, I’d….”
Hank raised his hand to stop her. “There are better ways to kill yourself.” He reached into his shirt pocket and pulled out a pack of unfiltered cigarettes.
“Camel Straights?”
“Been smoking them since I was twelve.” He fired up his Zippo lighter and lit the cigarette. “Interested?” She snatched it from his mouth and took a drag. He tapped out another for himself.
They smoked in silence while they studied each other.
“Haven’t seen you here before,” she said finally.
“I came in a lot in the early days, before it became a craft brewery.”
“I wasn’t around,” she said, glancing at his empty ring finger. Back then Betty was in federal prison. “Now we play this joint every few weeks. Always a packed house.”
“I wouldn’t expect anything less.”
She took a deep drag and held it. After she exhaled, she added, “It’s part of our extended Midwestern tour.”
“I’m Henry Simmons, friends call me Hank.”
That amused her. “Have many friends, Hank?”
“Precious few.”
“Why is that?”
“I’m Chair of the Philosophy Department at the University.”
Betty laughed a deep throaty laugh. “Which makes you the biggest asshole on campus.”
“I’m in the Top Five.”
“Impressive. The U is a large institution.” She took a final drag before pitching the cigarette into the alley. “My son attended briefly, before my release.” The drummer caught her eye and pointed to his Apple Watch.
Hank pulled out a second flask. When Betty declined the offer, he passed it to the drummer. “Twelve-year-old Glenfiddich. My personal favorite. Smoky with peat undertones.”
“Well aren’t you a traveling liquor store?” she scolded.
“I was provoked.”
“I bet.” She tossed the empty water bottle into the dumpster and reached into his pocket for another Camel.
“I teach Introduction to Philosophy in an auditorium filled with 373 hormonal and tech-obsessed twenty-year-olds. My seminar on The Continental Tradition and Philosophical Hermeneutics has five thesis candidates, none a native English speaker, unless you count the aboriginal Australian woman. And the revision of my popular textbook, Philosophical to the Core, is due in five weeks, but I haven’t started the final chapter on Hot Young Philosophers, basically because I don’t give a shit about any of them.”
Betty pointed a scolding finger at him. “That chapter is what makes your textbook better than the rest.”
Hank stared in disbelief. “How would you know that?”
“I served thirteen and change. I had time on my hands, so I took online classes. Fans sent me books.” Betty raised the cigarette to her lips. “Your text was not a personal favorite, but I read the last chapter three times because it wasn’t about old dead white guys. Still, you came up short on black women.”
Hank snorted. “There are 11,000 members of the American Philosophical Association. One-hundred-and-twenty-five of them are black.” Betty waited. “Thirty of those are women. There wasn’t a large pool to choose from for the chapter.”
“And whose fault is that, Mr. Tailored Suit, Mr. Privileged White Guy, Mr. Department Chair?”
Hank held up his hands in surrender. “Guilty as charged.”
“Any bright spots in your seminar? The aboriginal woman…?”
“Bindi shows promise.” He looked around uncomfortably, wondering where his flasks landed.
Betty handed him a Perrier. “I’ve got a Fifteen-Year Chip in my pocket, Hank, and I know where there’s a meeting after the bars close. You game?”
“Best offer I’ve gotten all night, but I’m going to decline.”
“Sobriety is an acquired taste.”
“Can’t be easy playing in bars every night.”
Betty pointed to the young bass player. “Ricky helps: a hand to hold; a shoulder to cry on.”
Hank raised his eyebrows. “You two an item?”
“Definitely. I’m his mother.”
Hank remembered the story. The boy had been five when Ricky witnessed his father’s murder at the hands of his abused mother Betty. Hank tried a different conversational track. “Your band rocks.”
“We’ve got an album climbing the blues charts. Ricky says there’s ‘buzz on social media,’ whatever the hell that is.”
“It means you’re famous with the millennial set, as well as with old blues hounds like me.”
Betty raised her eyebrows. “So, you’re not intimidated by my fame?”
“Never.” When she appeared skeptical, he added, “I once shared a vegetarian pizza with Christie Brinkley in the Green Room of the Dr. Oz Show. She was reading the Cliff Notes on The Gay Science. I helped with the difficult parts.”
Betty sloshed a mouthful of water and then spit. “Isn’t that the book where Nietzsche maintained that ‘God is dead’?”
“Yes. ‘And we have killed him.’ As an aspiring philosopher, Christie struggled with the concept.”
The back kitchen door flew open and a voice bellowed out. “Crowd’s restless! Break’s over.”
The guys filed back into the bar: Nestor the drummer, Ricky the base player, Vince the corpulent keyboardist, and Wally the lead guitarist. The often-married philosophy prof paused at the doorstep with the road-weary former felon, featured singer, and single mom. “Staying for the next set?”
“Wouldn’t miss it.”
“The band drank you out of scotch.”
“I know the bartender. I won’t get thirsty.” He hesitated. “If you skipped the AA meeting, we could get acquainted.”
“If I skipped the meeting, I’d flush fifteen years of sobriety down the toilet.” Betty could hear the band playing softly, quieting the crowd, giving her a moment with Hank. “I read Nietzsche hated alcohol.”
“He did, for the same reasons he shunned Christianity. They both numb pain and reassure people that things are fine while sapping them of the will to change.”
“But you don’t agree?” Hank shrugged. “If you came to the meeting, we could debate that.”
“You’d doom me to a life of sobriety?”
“It is a risk….”
Hank thought about Alysce the bartender and her dismal paper on Wittgenstein. He didn’t relish the mess he’d make if he gave into that temptation. “I’ll switch to coffee and join you after your last set.”
“We can walk to the meeting from here.” A smile spread across Betty’s lips. “You realize, after my first husband, I’m not a fan of most men.”
“All my exes can testify, I’m not most men.”
She laughed and gave him a hip bump. “The band sleeps in the Winnebago. We’ll park in the Walmart lot and load out in the morning for Racine. It can get crowded.”
“I own a condo on the Mississippi River with a spectacular view of the sunrise from the master bedroom.”
“Tempting….” Inside the Big Boar, Betty’s band cranked up the opening bars of Willie Dixon’s “Spoonful.” That was her cue.
“Gore Vidal said a person should never pass up a chance to have sex or to appear on television.”
“Let’s talk about that after the meeting.” Betty kissed him before retreating into the bar.
The bitter taste of tobacco lingered on his lips.
“Time to sober up,” he told the empty alley. “Again.”
Paul Lewellan retired from education after fifty years of teaching. He lives, writes, and gardens on the banks of the Mississippi River. His muse is his wife of forty-two years Pamela. He has recently published in Close to the Bone, Brown Bag, October Hill, and Coffee Ring Review. In all things he’s advised by his 18-year-old Shih Tzu, Mannie. Find archives of his stories at www.paullewellan.com.