Mike, Bobby, Pepper and Me.

And Everything Else
copyright 2007


So Mike and Bobby were thinking about getting good and drunk when I got there. I grab a pitcher of beer and a mug at the bar. Old Jinks, he slid my change across to me. I said hey and he just nodded like always . I slide a dollar back across the bar and pocket the rest of my change, before joining the guys who were sitting at our favorite table. Bobby, he’s kind of new in town, moved here about a year ago from some place out west. He’s in his late twenties, a decade or two younger than most of us. Bobby fits right in down at the shop. I walked up and sat down at the table. Mike was glad to see the fresh pitcher of draft. I filled my mug then slid the pitcher on over, it lightly bumped into his half full mug as the crack of the cue ball breaking the rack exploded from the pool table right over Mike’s left shoulder. Bobby said that was cool, he chuckled in that funny way that he does.

So Mike had his name up on the chalk board. Mike likes to shoot pool, he’s pretty good at it too. Bobby was feeding the juke box like always, he got up to stuff a fresh five dollar bill in the music machine. You get three songs for a dollar, twenty songs for five. Everybody at Murphy’s Tavern likes what Bobby plays. All the younger women check him out as he walks across the bar towards the juke box. We have all heard them talk, they all think he’s cute. They really like his slow and deliberate way of speaking, and his manners. Bobby says yes sir and thank you mam, that sort of thing. Mike is on the table, he’s got a game going with old Hank Orcheck. Hank works for the county, got a good job with the road department. Bobby got himself tangled up with some college girls, he smiled at me from across the room. He motioned to me that they were going outside for a minute. I knew what they were doing, smoking half a joint in Bobby’s van is what they were going to do. He asked me with his eyes, asked me if I wanted to join them. I smiled and passed on the offer. I’m getting too old for that shit. Besides, I don’t know those two girls and they seem a little too young for my company. I don’t care what Bobby does, it’s Saturday night and we ain’t working on Sunday.


Mike has a game, Bobby’s getting stoned and trying to score. I’m alone at our favorite table when Pepper strolls up and sits down. Her given name is Helga, after her mother but nobody ever calls her that. She’s been Pepper since her auburn hair started coming in when she was just a baby. Pepper, it fits her personality too. She’s kind of hot and spicy, not bad looking either. Me and Pepper go way back, known each other since grade school. My father and her father have been friends since we were kids. Everybody wonders, not if but when Pepper and me are going to get together. Everyone says we’d make a good couple. We both wonder too. Sometimes we joke around about it, guess we sort of flirt with each other sometimes. It’s fun, flirting with Pepper. She tells me that she passed Bobby and the two college girls on her way in. She laughs and says we should take a walk outside in about ten minutes, see if that big van of his is rocking in the parking lot. She knows how to make me blush, gets me every time. I look at her smile, the laugh lines around her pretty hazel eyes, she starts to blush some too. Yeah, me and Pepper, we go way back. I never said the words, but she always knew I liked her. We only kissed once, that was in seventh grade at the Halloween Dance. Somehow we just kept missing each other. She’s so pretty, she was always so popular I never had the guts to ask her out. Pepper and me, we both ended up marrying our teenage flames like you sometimes do. We both got burned by those flames.

I was in the army when I married a dancer down in Columbus Georgia. She was cheating on me from the outset. She came back here to Pennsylvania with me when I finished my four year enlistment. It was over six months later. We never had children, she went back down south and I never heard from her again. Pepper married a guy she met at college, he was from Boston. She was nineteen when their son was born in 1981. Just a few months later her husband punched her in the mouth. Her father made him go away. He went back to Boston and she never heard from him again. I still don’t know why, but that night at Murphy’s I had a feeling. As soon as I saw Pepper walk out of the kitchen and straight towards me, I had a feeling. We were staring at each other, we were both blushing. I remember my ears felt hot. All the Saturday night sounds of the busy tavern seemed to fade away and she dropped a bomb in my lap. She asked me to marry her, just like that.

I said yes. We both stood up. We kissed long and hugged real hard. Before either of us knew what was happening Mike let out a yell informing the whole bar that Jake and Pepper were finally getting together. Old Jinks came around from behind the bar. He hugged his daughter with tears in his eyes. Jinks had his arms around both of us when he announced that drinks were on the house. He said it's not often that his only daughter gets engaged. They said you could hear that cheer all the way down to the bridge. Nobody has heard a cheer like that since the Steelers won the Super Bowl, five times.