Thursday Inspiration 29 — Pancho Needs You

I swore I would never go back again. Each of us knew some element of divine grace allowed us to walk away from each other back then, and at the time each of us were thankful for a blank slate.

Then Lefty walked into my joint one afternoon. Although his once smooth baby face was now covered by a long beard, his piercing green eyes were a dead giveaway. Lefty sat in a quiet corner of the saloon, his companions a shot glass and a bottle of Beam. The sunlight from the window bounced off of his spurs and lights danced on the stairwell leading up to the girls’ rooms.

I became the proprietress of this establishment when my lover, Tall Jax, succumbed to the fruits of his foibles; namely syphilis he caught from Marilu, one of our best moneymakers. Marilu had to retire and became a hairdresser for the rest of ’em.

You shoulda seen Lefty’s eyes when he recognized me. Like he’d never seen a woman dressed in a floor-length blue velvet dress before.

“What are you doing in these here parts, Lefty?”

“Belle, I was told you had your own place now and where it was. He needs you.”

“Lefty, you know how it was when he and I parted. Now he needs me? It must be bad.”

“Belle, it is. He doesn’t know I left to get you. He’s got too much pride. The train leaves in 2 hours for Juarez. He doesn’t have much time.”

I knew I could waste time squeezing every last detail out of Lefty then, but that would mean less time getting arrangements made to keep things operating well while I was gone. I trusted Lefty and knew he was telling the truth. There would be plenty of time to learn details on the 8-hour train ride to Juarez.

“See you at the train station in 2 hours, Lefty.”

Paula Light is the host of Thursday Inspiration.  Paula says:
This week’s theme is train and the picture is [above]. Here is the song snippet from “Runaway Train” recorded by Soul Asylum in 1992:

Runaway train never going back
Wrong way on a one way track
Seems like I should be getting somewhere
Somehow I’m neither here nor there