Texas heat lay on the patio like a wet dog. The boards sweated under bottles. The fans pushed the air around and it came back the same. The men at the next table were young and spoke in proud voices that carried, the way voices do when paychecks are new and the night is cheap.
They had lemon wedges and salt and tequila in short glasses. They slapped each other on the back. They wore caps with fish on them and boots too clean for dust yet. One had a fresh tattoo, red around the edges like meat. I had bourbon in a low glass and it held the room’s heat like a secret.
The owner came out with two UV lights on cords. He set them by the fence and plugged them in. They woke blue and steady. He said, this’ll keep them off you, and walked back inside with his shoulders high and the towel like a flag stuck in his back pocket.
Beyond the fence the highway lifted and dropped. Off to the right a wash of pink showed on the low clouds where a sign flickered by the frontage road. You could see it through the Sugarberry if you looked. Just color, no letters at this distance, a soft blush that did not belong to the sky.
The lights hummed. The mosquitoes came anyway, like they had read the sign and liked the place. They drifted in with the dusk, thin as nails, patient. They chose the soft places: wrists, the meat of the forearm, the soft under of the knee. They landed and the night bent its head with them.
One of the boys said, pour it, man. Another said, hell yes, it’s Friday. Another told a story about a girl in Katy who had left her shoes in his truck. They laughed like dogs bark at the moon, loud and sure the moon is listening.
The mosquitoes spoke too, if you can call it that. Not words. A thin wanting. But if you leaned into the hum and the wet air, it was there: Brother, says one, you see the river? I see it. Warm red river. Take your fill. Little pump, little straw, sing it out, suck and be saved.
The boys held up their glasses and drank. They wiped their mouths with the backs of their hands. One said, you ever think how this stuff makes you brave? The others said, hell yes. Another said, it doesn’t make me brave, it makes me honest. They laughed again.
A mosquito rode the vein of the boy with the tattoo. He filled until he hung fat as a seed. He rose crooked and slow, with the weight in him, and the dark smelt of grass and hot rubber and onion rings. He said, I love you, brothers. Another said, I love you too, you big fool. They laughed in their high wires way. The blood worked on them. It turned their tiny heads as liquor turns a man’s. They grew brave, or honest, or both.
There was more tequila. There was beer, cold and cheap and sure of itself. The young men argued about a quarterback and a fight that wasn’t a fight. The mosquito council met over the lip of a sunburnt neck and passed a vote with their legs. Another round. Another vein. The world is generous tonight.
The boy with the fish cap said, we should go. Where, said the others. He said, girls. Strip club. You know the one off the highway with the pink sign. He made a motion with his hand that was not a prayer. They nodded like cows nod at flies.
Around the blue lamps the mosquitoes turned their faces, if they have faces. Not their light, not their bait. Tonight they went anyway, full of us. To the lights, one said. They are calling. They’re for us, can’t you hear. The lamp sang: come, little brothers, come little drums, come little spoons, stir yourselves, be bright, be blue. They lifted their heavy bellies and made for the cold star. Drunk on men, they flew to neon like men fly to promise.
The boys stood and knocked the legs of their chairs on the boards. One paid the check. One said he couldn’t feel his face. One said that was the point. The owner watched through the door window with his towel still in his pocket. The lights hummed. It was a church without saints.
I sat with my bourbon and let the sweat go where it liked. The glass left a small ring on the wood. Somewhere a jukebox was trying to remember a song from another summer. The men went down the steps and into the lot and got in the truck with the long bed and the flag decal, and the red brake lights took a breath and let it out. They turned left toward the highway and the pink sign beyond the Sugarberry and the billboard with the lawyer smiling like a man who had found money in the road.
By the fence the mosquitoes ticked in the blue like sparks off a wheel. Some turned back at the last second, looping, then remembered their courage and went ahead. It is a simple thing, the drinking of what is at hand. The glass. The arm. The light. It goes in and it changes the body and the body believes for a while. Then the road opens or the lamp calls. Then you go.
The night pressed its hand on my shirt and left it there. The lights held steady. The owner flipped them off and on again and they steadied more. The last of the men’s laughter thinned out over the gravel and was eaten by the road. The mosquitoes, small priests of appetite, made their offerings, and fell, soft, as ash falls. I finished my bourbon. The air moved. The hum went on.
