Walter In Denver

The Valley Part III

This is a true story. All names have been changed, except mine, because it's a little late for that.

The bar I tended in South Texas had more than its share of characters, which sounds quaint and Cheers-ish, but in reality it was just a pain, and sometimes a little scary.

(Telling question; 'Is that a bullet hole in the ceiling?')

One of our more annoying regulars was old Bill. Bill was in his sixties, I think. Stringy white hair, missing teeth. He looked and smelled as though he slept outdoors, and for all I know he might have. He would come into the bar in early afternoon and start ordering Old Charter, and continue ordering until he had no money left. Frequently he would keep ordering after he had no money, and we would ban him from the place until he found some cash to settle the tab. That might be when the next month's pension check came in.

Another regular customer, David, surprised us all one day by hiring old Bill as a handyman. David was in construction or some such business, I was never sure exactly what. He was always neatly dressed, polite, and seemed reasonably intelligent. I saw his act of hiring Bill as pure charity, because Bill was often in no mental state to contribute much effort into anything. I knew David was taking a risk.

Pretty soon the risk became clearly visible. David told old Bill to change a tire on a trailer, and when he was done David hooked it up to a truck and took off down US Highway 83 toward Harlingen. About halfway there the wheel on the trailer gained its independence and bounced down the road.

David pulled the truck and trailer off the highway and set off to retrieve the wheel. It had come to rest a few hundred yards behind him, and he was going to have to roll or carry it up to the truck. He was relieved when a pickup stopped at the wheel, the driver put it in the back of his truck, and drove it up to where David was. David started to wave in gratitude...and the pickup kept on going down the highway, David's wheel still in the back. The good Samaritan turned out to be a rather brazen thief.

When David finally made it back to his garage he found the lug nuts right where the trailer had been parked. Old Bill had simply forgotten to put them back on when he replaced the wheel.

David was in the bar a night later telling all about how old Bill had caused the whole mess. I was amazed that he kept Bill in his employ after that but it seemed David's charity knew no bounds.

In fact, it wasn't long after that incident that David gave old Bill a task requiring more responsibility, driving the truck and trailer up to Corpus Christi to deliver supplies for a project.

As noted in part I of this series, the highways leading North out of the Valley are crawling with law enforcement. Sure enough, old Bill was pulled over while en route. I doubt he could drive a straight line even while sober. That being a a major drug smuggling route the officers asked Bill if they could look in the trailer.

Why not? It was just construction supplies.

No one was caught more off guard than old Bill when the officer hit the jackpot. The trailer was loaded with dope, and Bill soon found himself behind bars.

Old Bill was back out of jail just a few weeks later. That's pretty fast considering the size of the haul, but I'm sure he told the cops everything he knew, and they had to figure he wasn't anything more than the driver. As for David, I never saw him again, and last I knew he was never caught. He had picked a perfect mule, since old Bill was too addled to make a very good witness.

Charity isn't always what it seems.

Posted by Walter at May 1, 2005 01:31 PM