Art: shapes2 by Nathan Johnson
THE BUM STEER
The Bum Steer is a bar tucked in a strip mall parking lot off a country road only a few miles from civilization. Light years. Decades. Enough distance and time hollowed from the living to melt reality when you walk through the door to find yourself here.
Wallpaper hulled like corn, the bar top spread like an almanac. There is no winter here. Damp nicotine burrows itself into the wood, following the grains like a road map. You’re driving the car, its erecting street signs as you steer. You can’t be sure, but you think you hate it here. The scene a pornographic photograph that you can’t stop staring at. Familiar and wretched, it makes you feel dirty.
It makes you feel home, accepted. There are bar flies in the pour spouts, bar flies drinking whiskey out of coffee cups. A stage in the back corner is plastered with posters of someone’s idols, their mother’s memories. Hank Williams III played here once, the bartender tells you. Her skin is stitched together with basement tattoos and she walks with the bowed knees of a biker. A Harley, in fact, parked right outside, leaned against the liquor store where you picked up eight-dollar smokes. There aren’t any ashtrays, but the old men are using shot glasses. It isn’t legal. Neither is the powder you spot pushed between the cracks in the wood, the plaster, between bathroom sink cabinets. Befallen crystals, caked residue, a quick upper to get you through the dim light peeking through painted windows. It’s the high desert sun getting to you, but maybe you like it here after all. Maybe you can taste the dust recycled with aluminum rolling into the corners of your mouth like a tumbleweed out back, ashing your lips with paper cut sized incisions you’ll regret later. This place makes you regret everything. You can’t leave— your body parts are selling for bartered goods like a hostage in crisis. What was it called when you fall in love with your captor? Stockholm syndrome. A siege of your pirated morals crawling wounded out the back door. There was no time for sympathy. But with every sip, the notion becomes you. You’re painting the scene with every sip as if it was your destiny. You’re no longer removed from the photograph.
A skeletal, old cowboy with missing teeth sits at the curve of the bar with bottle-bottom glasses and a twitching wrist. His mouth curls upward in a smile that argues with narrowed eyelids. Another old man drinks straight vodka, flirts with the seasoned bartender, calling her barmaid while placing greasy coins in the pits of her palms. She was beautiful once. Now, she wears rhinestone bedazzled jean shorts that bulge out her slim thighs into meat casings. Now, she walked with a slight limp and spoke in scratchy grumbles between smoke breaks. Reeks of menthols and dirt fields. You miss your mother. You wonder if she’s ever seen the ocean.
Night falls and you nurse another cocktail. With the shift change comes several replacement clientele, thirty years younger, enjoying a stiff drink after a long day’s work. They are passing through, the same unpaved route every day. Highway litter. The ceiling is dripping with brown liquid—you’ve stopped noticing the details. Pool balls clunk into one another in the foreground of your ears and a green glow envelops the sound of it. In 4th grade, your math teacher showed a video of Donald Duck playing pool to demonstrate geometric shapes. You tell this story too often in bars. A young man with concrete-stained cheeks buys you a shot. He smells like your brothers would have if they went into the family business and it makes you nauseous. It’s a protective feeling—over this place, the dirty windows, the broken ATM machine. The kitchen with an ex-con fry cook flipping burgers in 100 degrees. An inheritance you were written out of. An epitaph.
It’s nothing of yours: the way they all slink silently into the stools like a performance. You’ve now sat through three matinees. It’s been heating up outside since the man with the taco cart parked out front, selling elote with sweet chili powder, making you wish you could stay here forever. They’re digging up graves, you can smell it. There’s a dust storm on the horizon. False guidance that leads you astray.
About the author:
Erica Hoffmeister was born and raised in Southern California and earned her MA in English and MFA in Creative Writing from Chapman University’s dual degree program. She has both poetry and fiction published or forthcoming in FreezeRay Magazine, So To Speak, Rag Queen Periodical, Toasted Cheese, Rat’s Ass Review, and Literary Mama, among others. She has been shortlisted for the Kingdoms in the Wild Chapbook Prize, was a runner-up for the Janet B. McCabe Poetry Prize, received an honorable mention for the Lorian Hemingway Award for Short Fiction and has been nominated for Best of the Net. She currently lives in Denver, with her husband and daughter, Scout, and perpetually misses home–wherever that feels at the time.
Art: shapes2 by Nathan Johnson
In the artist’s words:
I’m Nathan Johnson, collage artist and Illustrator. I was born and raised a military brat. And don’t have one place that I can call home base. I was lucky enough to live all over the U.S.A. I also lived in Sasebo Japan and the beautiful Vancouver Canada. I currently live in Northern VA. My influences are vast, but some names that come to hand are well known artist like Pollock, Warhol and Escher. I try and find my inspiration through what I see every day in life. It could be a sunset, a certain color combinations I see in a book, or images that just pop in my head. I find so much satisfaction in exploring the medium and letting it take me on a journey. I did my schooling at Ringling College of Art and Design. I earned my BFA in Illustration. I was lucky enough to meet lots of interesting people and companies. I did workshops with Hallmark and American Greetings. And met artist like Mary Grandpre. I have had my work displayed in some art shows and hung in some locations. My work was seen at the FCPS faculty art show. I had my work hung in the Northern Virginia Community College art department and Busboys and Poets. I was excited to participate in the DC Pancake and Booze art show last summer. I’m currently working on building a new body of collage art to have a solo show.