“Mama & Papa” is a silly little short story that appeared in my book, Both Ways Home. I hope you enjoy this weird tale of bravado, bruised egos, and a lucky bet.

Mama & Papa

Hemingway’s Poolhall on Wurzbach Avenue became a regular haunt in my final days in San Antonio, but I never expected to meet the man himself in that nefarious establishment. His reputation solidified into a thunderhead force within minutes of his arrival. Every time he shoved someone out of the way to get another beer, his buddies laughed and egged him on as he mugged and posed and talked in a loud, clean baritone about the men he’d seen die in Spain and Africa and how he’d outlasted them all. He shouted “Bully!” whenever someone played Foreigner or Bad Company on the jukebox. The little song the electric dart machine chirped out from the corner every five minutes made him roar with delight and he’d sing back in imitation. His beard and teeth glowed blue in the neon of the bar.

Hemingway was king shit on a Thursday night until Mama Fratelli hustled through the door. The crowd parted for her as she prowled her way to the bar, her meaty arms crossing as she leaned forward and called for three fingers of Evan Williams. Hemingway noticed and called out for four fingers of the same, and he ordered the bartender to “make those fingers all thumbs.” He laughed at himself in an echo of sycophantic applause.

Mama Fratelli adjusted her black beret, spat on the ground, and slugged the glass back before slamming it on the counter. People nearby nudged me to watch Hemingway, and he did the same, finishing with a theatrical, lip-smacking AHHHH as he slammed his glass down.

Mama Fratelli glared at Hemingway and told him to piss off. She said she’d just dealt with a bunch of asshole kids and had spent the afternoon drowning them one by one in some goddamn pirate’s cove, or some such nonsense, and she didn’t have time for another little boy’s antics. She was always saying crazy things like this, and we avoided her for the most part, but today we all leaned forward to watch and listen.

“Mama,” Papa said, “I do believe you’d make a son out of me. After all, you have a face only a son could love.”

Silence struck the bar, and after a long beat the dart machine chirped its little song. Hemingway chuckled, a low assured thing, but I got the feeling somehow that he didn’t like how quiet it got.

Mama Fratelli squinted at Hemingway and then at the bartender, who rushed to refill her glass. She slugged it back, pointed to a table in the rear, and flexed her arm, saying, “Over the top—one go. And when we’re done you pack up your little boy scout troop and get the hell out of my bar.”

“Your bar?!” Hemingway charged forward with such force he knocked over three stools. The crowd parted and the two hulking forces of nature stomped their way through the bar to the table. We swiftly gathered around. Hemingway threw himself into a chair and began rolling up his khaki shirt sleeve as Mama Fratelli spun her chair backwards and dumped herself down, her elbow hitting the table, ready to go.

“God damn,” Hank the old postal carrier said. “Fifty bucks on the old man.”

That started a flurry of bets. Tom Waits tipped back his pork pie hat and began collecting, shouting figures and names, licking a pencil he pulled from behind his ear and scribbling each in a notepad. Yeah yeah, he heard Hunter Thompson call out for a tenner on Papa. And yeah yeah, he heard Sam Shepard call out for a sawbuck on Mama. So did Plath, Bradbury, and even McCullers, who then doubled it because, as she cackled over her Southern Comfort, “Bad bitches stick together.”

That got me thinking. I pulled on Tom’s elbow and he narrowed his eyes at me.

“Ten grand on Mama Fratelli,” I said.

“Christ, kid, you got that kind of bread just lying around in a place like this? Don’t ask me to walk you out later, that’s all I’m saying.”

“Just gimme ten large on the lady.”

“Uhhh, can you prove you’re good for it?”

I pulled a stack of bills wrapped with a fresh band from my inner pocket, then tucked it back.

“Since when are you so hog high? You ain’t gonna ask me to help ya bury nobody, are ya?”

“Look, am I good for it or what?”

“I’ll sing at your funeral if it makes you feel better,” he muttered, writing it down, then he shouted, “Ten large for Jimmy. Done and done. All bets are closed!”

It was time to start. Tom began giving both contestants an introduction before Hemingway bellowed “Stuff it, skinny,” and then Mama and Papa gripped their hamfists in a meaty slap.

Papa said on three. Mama said two. He said one.

They heaved into each other, straining, sweat beading on their foreheads. The crowd roared, shouted, pleaded, clapped, howled, and stamped their feet in manic rage and desire as both arms wavered upright, barely moving for almost a full minute until Hemingway’s brawny forearm, though it bulged and strained, fell inch by inch as Mama Fratelli stared into his eyes, boring a hole right through him. And then—BAM—his arm bounced off the table in defeat.

The crowd erupted with laughter and jeers, but through the din I heard Mama tell Hemingway to get the hell out. She tossed the chair aside and disappeared through the ravenous mob. I pushed my way through to the back, looking for Tom to collect, and I found him jiggering an Addams Family pinball machine. When I asked him for my winnings, he smirked at me sideways and said, “Ahhh, jeez, kid, ya really want to call that in now? In front of God and everyone?”

He damn well knew I did, so he relented and exhaled a ring of cigarette smoke as we left the pinball machine flashing and ringing behind us, begging us to return. The back hall led us past reeking bathrooms then turned right and right again before the stairwell down, where through a door Tom greeted Ernest Borgnine playing solitaire at an old steel desk that looked like something someone had hauled out of a Navy destroyer circa Iwo Jima.

“What’s this? You ain’t supposed to bring anyone down here,” Borgnine said, indignant to the world.

“Kid won twenty thou-shekels when Mama went over the top.”

“Over the top? On who?”

“That beefy elephant gun who broke the toilet on nickel-shot night.”

“Hemingway? That asshole? Jeez, if someone woulda said something I woulda got in on the action. Nobody tells me nothing!” Borgnine stood and turned, producing a key from his pocket, and opening a safe behind him. “Twenty grand on a bet. Fella can make a nice living that way.”

Borgnine handed me four stacks of cash, loosely wrapped but it was all there.

“Now beat it, kid,” Tom said. “You’re making me nervous standing there counting it like some sorta bank clerk high on his own product.”

I thanked them both but Borgnine was already asking for details and Tom was lighting up a stogie so I closed the door behind me and made my way upstairs. I almost went to go buy a round, but I thought about what Tom said earlier, about walking out of there with all that dough, so when I got to the top I opened the back service door and slipped into the broken night, shards of moon falling through dead palm trees and telephone wires. I kept a close watch over my shoulder the whole way home, a long walk through apartment complex mazes and back streets. When I got there I saw Cruz was still awake, rolling his week’s worth of cigarettes in the dim glow of a kitchen lamp.

“You okay?” he asked, a cigarette stuck in the corner of his mouth. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

“I have,” I said, slapping the money down on the table, all four bundles. “A whole bunch of dead presidents.”

He leaned back, staring at the pile. “You’re not going to ask me to help you bury someone, are you?”

“No.”

“Are you going to ask me to help you spend this?”

“I just might.”

He exhaled a ring of smoke and laughed to himself. “I always knew one of us would ride the other’s coattails into the sunset. I just didn’t think it would happen on a Thursday.”

“Let’s get the hell out of this town, once and for all. You in?”

“No, I’m out, already gone, way past the horizon,” he said, reaching for the money, cradling it with a smile, “and you better go pack your bags and catch up or you might never see us again.”

So that’s exactly what I did.