This boy I knew walked in and asked me what in the hell I was doing in there when they had nickel beer up at Abbey’s Irish Rose from 7:30 to 9:30 after you paid a two-dollar cover charge upstairs. I told him I didn’t know anything about it. Squirrel leaned over right fast and in close to me and said, “Can you take me home?’’

There it is a lot of times. You go out somewhere, just planning on drinking a few beers, and you run into some drunk you’ve known all your life who doesn’t have a way home. You either have to take him home, refuse to, or tell him a lie. Usually I tell a lie. I told Squirrel I wasn’t planning on going on home for a while, which was the truth. He said he understood and wouldn’t think of imposing on me. I felt guilty, and I hated for him to make me feel guilty, but I hadn’t brought him up there and poured any whiskey down him. And he lived way back up in the woods on a mud road the mailman has to use a Jeep on when it rains. In four-wheel drive. With Buckshot Mudders.

I finished my first beer and got another one, and Squirrel bummed a cigarette off me. I lit it for him, and he started telling me how he’d lost all his money. I wasn’t listening that close, but it was something about them driving down to Batesville and unloading some two-by-fours and him asking the man he was working for to loan him a hundred dollars. The guy gave him five twenties, and when they got back to town, Squirrel paid for two fifths of whiskey. I know they were drinking when they went down there, he didn’t have to tell me that. He said that left him about eighty dollars, but he said he didn’t have it now and it was making him sick. And he wanted to go home.

“Sumbitches drug me off up here and got me drunk and now they don’t want to go home,” was what he said.

I hated to hear of his troubles, but I didn’t want to drive him all the way back to Old Dallas on those muddy roads in my Chevelle and more than likely slide off into a ditch. He said he wouldn’t think of imposing on me. His head was starting to droop. And I was wishing I’d never gone in there. There was no way I could leave without him. He only lived six miles from me.