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The Blind Pig
a short story by Tom Mabe
As has happened to many young and burgeoning cities before and after it, Seattleonce burned to the ground. In 1889, on a warm June day, a glue pot in a downtowncabinet maker’s shop was accidentally knocked over, starting a fire. The fire grew quicklyin the dusty and wood-chip strewn shop, engulfing a nearby paint store before spreadingto the surrounding buildings, feeding on the mostly timber construction of Douglas fir and cedar hewed from the Cascade Mountains. The fire burned smoky and hot allafternoon and when the day turned to night, a soft orange glow, like a sunset, could beseen from as far away as Tacoma, 30 miles south. When at last the final ember wasextinguished sometime the following morning, nearly 30 city blocks were destroyed and,thankfully, so said residents of the time, countless rats and other vermin were dispatched.At once, atop the smoldering ruins, construction began on a bigger and sturdier,and most importantly, more fire-resistant city of brick and stone. New buildings went upwith zeal and keen city officials wisely required that all new structures be one and twolevels higher than the previous street level - the better to ensure toilets wouldn’t back-upduring high tide on Elliot Bay. The handful of buildings that survived the fire for a timecarried on their trade as the streets enclosed above, but eventually they were forced tomove their ground floor businesses to the second floor, abandoning the now hidden lower level to vagabonds, prostitution and repopulated rats.Today, one of the few remnants of that time is the occasional square of downtownsidewalk with small glass blocks embedded in the cement, literal skylights to the ruinedcity below. Another, less known remnant, is the Blind Pig Tavern. It occupied one of the below ground rooms for a period as a speakeasy during prohibition years. Then, after women got the vote and the Suffragettes vacated their campaign office, the Blind Pigmoved up from the basement and took over the street level store to distribute alcohollegitimately. In headier times the Pig was the place to go if you were Irish, broke your  back making a living and wanted a good glass of whiskey to end the day. Now, it isdilapidated, seedy and the place to go only when there is no where else to go. It is all butforgotten, except by a small contingent of old-timer regulars.It can be said that, aside from its survival of the Great Seattle Fire, there are buttwo remarkable features about the Blind Pig Tavern: the big oak bar and the twotournament quality pool tables in the back of the room. The big oak bar is perhaps themost striking, as it cannot be ignored: dark-stained and ornate, it juts out from the far walllike the prow of a vast ship that has run aground, dividing the interior space nearly inhalf. The requisite array of bar stools, beer taps, hard liquor bottles and dusty upside-down hanging wine and cognac glasses adorn the perimeter.Jimmy, the owner of the Pig, sat on a stool behind the big oak bar with a grimexpression on his face: like an embittered captain of a once great ship, now rusting and barnacle laden and about to ram an iceberg, yet foolishly steaming ahead. Judging by thesparse number of patrons on a Friday afternoon, the ship has already hit the iceberg and begun taking on water. Two hardened-looking guys with blackened hands sat at one endof the bar talking in harsh whispers over beer. A very large man reading a tattered biblesat alone at a table, his rear-end wrapping over and around the thin wafer of a chair seatas if it were a large pile of sourdough resting atop a bread maker’s scale. A fourth man,1
 
with stringy unwashed hair hanging loosely off his forehead, was seated on a crookedstool, muttering, only a few spots down from where Jimmy sat.Jimmy looked up as the front door opened and sent a glare of late afternoon suninto the bar. Two men and a woman entered. They were clean-cut, preppy types andJimmy grunted at their sight. They were young and they looked like they wanted to play pool.One of the men came up to order some drinks, bringing the girl with him. Shereminded Jimmy of the girl that ran off with his boy, J.J. Her breasts pulled tightly againsther shirt and there was too much black shit around her eyes. She smiled a lot and her  perfume made him think of teenage sex. He looked to the man and waited.The man, with a scrub of stubble along his cheeks and chin, and thick, but trim,eyebrows, asked for whiskey and two glasses, with ice. The man’s hands wereridiculously clean to Jimmy’s eye; the skin looked smooth and seemed to gleam even inthe dim light of the bar, each nail ended in a perfect edge. Young professionals, thoughtJimmy, and remembered a time when a group like this stayed the hell away from a jointlike the Pig. Now they came looking for some local color, hoping to go back to work thenext day with a story to tell. Jimmy got the man a bottle of Jameson’s and two shotglasses. He didn’t bother explaining about the lack of ice. Nodding toward the back where the third person of the group was looking over one of the pool tables, Jimmy said to leave some ID if any rounds were to be played. “If you fuck up one my tables, I want somebody to pay for it.”“Yeah, of course, no problem,” said the man as he dropped a credit card on theflecked bar top. Jimmy caught that the man’s name was Ted. “We’re just looking to play afew games. We won’t damage anything.”Jimmy didn’t care what the man said; they all said the same thing when they camein: they want to play some rounds and drink. And lately more and more of these types had been showing up, wanting to see his tables. And laughing at his regulars.“Hey, you got a menu or something? My mom used to make good corned beef. Icould go for some right about now.”Jimmy looked him over, suspicious. He figured they were already screwing withhim. The man had a big smile that showed too many teeth. Looking around, and probablynoticing that where the kitchen once stood was darkened and empty, the man, Ted, said,“That’s cool. I was told somewhere this place had good Irish food.”Jimmy shook his head. “I shut the kitchen down a few years ago.” Then he sat back down on his stool and picked up the paper.The girl spoke then. “Can I get a dirty martini? With extra olives?”Jimmy looked at her but didn’t move.“Please,” she added, looking right at him and smiling.Jimmy couldn’t remember the last girl that could hold his stare: his boy’s wifemost likely, though they weren’t married back then. The girls, the young ones anyway,were the worst about it, he thought, and it made him shake his head in disgust. A hard-liner and coarse, Jimmy looked as if he’d been through hell and back but forgot to takehis shit-kickers with him – his nose was mashed and hung slightly to one side and he hada glass eye that filled the soft pocket of flesh where his left eye once nested. Staring at thegirl, he could feel a remnant of irritable muscle in his cheek popping around and knew2
 
the glass orb was jumping a bit with it. To the weak of mind, it made a person take aninvoluntary step back, but this girl didn’t move, or look away, and it pissed him off.Jimmy looked at the man instead and told him he wasn’t a bar monkey and didn’tmix drinks like that. At this, the girl smiled knowingly, like she just got what she wanted,then shrugged her shoulders and asked for a Killian’s Red. Jimmy got up and gave it toher without saying anything more.The man laid down some cash and turned away with the girl and liquor. Jimmy satdown again on his cracked vinyl stool and sighed.“Mother fuckers,” said the stringy haired regular seated nearby.Jimmy laughed, it was a deep-throated laugh, and dry, like a diesel engine in idle.“At least they can pay for their drinks, unlike you bastards.”The regular had stupid eyes and couldn’t keep a job for more than a week, so hewent silent and stared again at his beer. Jimmy thought about his eye. How it was pokedout and his nose was busted when a big chunk of fir tree fell off a logging truck andcaught him across the face in ‘67. It took a while to recover but he got a real good glasseye and claimed to have reset the nose himself. Then in ‘68, when a man could dosomething with 15G’s in his pocket, he used the money the timber company gave him for his mutilated eye and he bought the Blind Pig Tavern before a bunch of hippywoodworkers could turn it into some kind of crafts gallery. Anybody willing to listenknew one of Jimmy’s fondest memories growing up was hanging around the downtownwaterfront, waiting for his Pops to come out of the Pig smiling and smelling of corned beef and whiskey after a shift stamping sheet metal for Boeing. He’d be damned if hewas going to stand aside as some sawdust-sniffing fringies buried his Pops’ drunkenmemories under their hand-fashioned wares. Times were good for awhile, until his boyJ.J. fucked it all up.Jimmy looked up from his paper and watched the two men play pool. The onecalled Ted reminded him of J.J. He held his stick and lined up his shots in the samemanner, loose and casual, like he wasn’t worried about anything, then he would nail thecue ball with confidence. The kid played the angles too, like J.J., over the easier straightline shots. Jimmy liked that this guy seemed to take pride in the game.The other boy, a red-headed fellow, looked troublesome. He had an overall floppyappearance that tried to hide the fact that he had a softening physique. His sagging button-down shirt was barely tucked in and his gray khaki’s hung loosely off his ass sothat Jimmy could see the top of the man’s undershorts. He had on a pair of scuffed andworn brown loafers that looked a size too big for his feet. His hair was more ambitious. Itwasn’t long, finger length maybe, but it was thick, a deep red, and he brushed it up in akind of wavy coif that made Jimmy think of hot steam rising.The guy was still wearing sunglasses too. The kind Jimmy imagined pro-athletesliked to wear when kicking back. This guy wasn’t a pro though. He didn’t know how tohandle the stick, letting the tip come dangerously close to gouging the felt on his hits and bumping the table as he moved. It was agonizing to watch him play and he wanted to slapthe sunglasses off the man’s face.The girl sat off to the side drinking her Killian’s, occasionally holding the bottleup and examining the label. Between sips her interest seemed to lie on the pool tables. Nodoubt, Jimmy figured, she wondered why the tables were here, like a clean spot on thecheek of a child just in from playing with mud.3
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