The Weird Stories Series: When Crying in a Bar Turns Into a Whiskey-soaked Appalachian Time Travel
Odetta Hartman is the perfect soundtrack to
a Weird Short Story for Your Soul.
I hate calling these “Weird Stories”, but that’s what they are, and that’s what people type on Google. Yeah, I’m a sellout - get over it! I call them hyperdrama, and this new beauty is written as an interactive experience with “Widow’s Peak” by Odetta Hartman.
Odetta Hartman is a singer and multi-instrumentalist from Manhattan, but with West Virginia roots. Yeah I know, the classic cliche of a Manhattan West Virginian who plays folk music with 808 beats.
Odetta Hartman’s voice and sound are incredible, and she’d for sure be my entrance music for an 1880’s Deadwood saloon.
Just like the weird story set to Daffodils by Mark Ronson, the reader cracks a beer, or more apt for this story, a jug of shine, and reads up to the music player. That’s your cue — press play and read on.
The music mated with the weird short story = hyperdrama.
Sound good? Headphones in. Bass up. Enjoy.
Reading Time: One beer with a side whiskey
“Dude, she cheated on you. With seven men. In five months. From the internet.”
My best good friend chuggled his draft beer next to me at a country bar near the Blackwater River, West Virginia (this is a post-Corona fantasy – in this story, you’re allowed to whine about relationships in country bars). “You just have to get over her.”
“Why?” I lamented and threw my arms to the ceiling. “Why must the gods taunt me so?”
My buddy on the other side patted me on the back. “The only logical thing for you to do is move back home and live on the couch, as you slowly slip into an abyss of 3 AM Showtime movies and morph into a stubbled mouth-breather with cheesy Dorito dust fingers.”
“But WHY?” I cried out, as I sobbed into a basket of chicken fingers. The bar folk looked over and shook their heads at my pathetic display. “She was perfect.”
“Welp, if perfect means politely asking to borrow your car so she can use it to meet up with the guy she met on Tik Tok…”
The humiliation was enough. Where was my dignity? I looked across the bar at a man with a nine-inch Chris Stapleton beard, jet-black cowboy hat, and aviator glasses,
staring bullets into my soul.
That’s what dignity looked like. I had not seen this man when we came in, and it was odd he seemed to have simply appeared. Nor did I acknowledge behind him the angelic haze of Marlboro smoke.
We drove out for a weekend of camping from PA, found our way to a backwoods hobbit-hole of a shanty pub. I barely even cried on the way in.
Photo of the Blue Ridge Mountains by food4thejourney0 on Pixabay.
“Dude, you just need to get back out there,” said my left-side nameless bar friend. We’ll call him Chet. Chet and Ranger. The two worst names of friends you could ever know in a bar. Nobody wants to hear the opinions of guys named Chet or Ranger.
I was over it. I’m a strong man. I’m a big boy, with my big boy pants. An outlaw. Don’t need no woman. I wiped the tears off a buffalo chicken finger and dunked it in blue cheese. Outlaw. Yes. No woman needed.
And then she happened. A gust of supernatural wind threw the door open and sunbursts of radiant light flashed and faded behind the most gorgeous of all gorgeous women. In red flannel and blue jeans - an angel of Appalachia . Two friends followed her in. There were three of us.
Chet licked both fingers and ran them through his eyebrows. He adjusted the Sperry’s on his feet and wiped the sweat from his palms on his salmon-colored shorts. “They’re coming this way.” He breathed heavily, like a milk cow in labor.
God, Chet, can you just leave our weird story already? Why haven’t the locals ridiculed you yet?
The girls sat down and something came over me. “Quick, she hasn’t seen me yet.” I nodded. “I need outlaw confidence, and it’s right in that whiskey-soaked bar corner.”
I pointed to the area of the bar shrouded in a cloud of smoke and mystery. I ducked down and scrambled over to the magnificently bearded Chris Stapleton fellow.
“Two hundred bucks right now for your hat and glasses.”
I was emboldened, the way I addressed a man who looked like he drank his women straight and made love to whiskey standing up.
He nodded, pulled the hat and glasses off, and whistled. A waitress appeared from nowhere with a tray. On it was a fresh hat and pair of glasses. A mystique fell over the room, a supernatural thundercloud. The smoke thickened and swirled.
“Keep your money and set over there, broken-hearted brother.” He spoke like all the pains of the world lived in his words. “Let the jukebox heal your soul.”
I did as he told and a song clicked on.
I placed the cowboy hat on snug and pulled on the glasses. All the lights in the bar dimmed. The men playing pool stood tall and those walking the room stopped where they stood. There was a hush and the air smelled of wood smoke and diesel, of mountains and fresh rain on a coal bed.
My face felt weird and I ran a hand down it. I had just shaved that morning. I combed down through a handful of bushy beard and caught my reflection in a bar light. I jerked towards the chair of the Magnificent Man.
He was gone.
I felt a monologue coming on. My voice was thunder-poured gravel, like all the pains of the world lived in the words. The pint glasses on the bar trembled to a distant whistle and the words rumbled along the rails of my mouth:
On the tracks is where I traveled a ways
’Cross coal-bred Appalachia in pouring rains
On the tracks where my soul lay its head
And I cleared a path with not silver but lead
The flanneled embodiment of all things beautiful sat rapt with attention, hunched over the bar. Ranger was entranced. Chet was on his iPhone. Damn you, Chet.
The room gravitated to me. It was no longer a part of me, the man that had 30 minutes prior literally sobbed into a basket of buffalo chicken tenders.
Tendrils of smoke curled along the wall and through the crowd, and the men in jeans and flannel now were men with faces blacked in coal dust and time, and the women sat stern and upright, like a black and white photo from a different era. And I felt another verse welling inside, like a tidal –
“Hey man, wake up.”
I shook open. My head was in a basket of buffalo chicken tenders. I was groggy – drugged by outlaw sorcery. Nobody was wearing mining gear or looked like they had seven children in a mountain holler.
“What happened to the pretty girls?” I asked.
“What girls, dude?” He suckled a glob of blue cheese off his fat thumb. “Come on, we’ll head back and I’ll drop you at your mom’s couch.”
The smoke-shrouded corner where the Magnificent man sat was now just that – a corner. A friendly couple ate fish tacos and conversed over drinks in that exact spot.
I wiped buffalo sauce from my face. “I’ve got to walk the tracks to find my way.”
“Ha, yeah,” said Chet, “like Moose Tracks ice cream.”
Shut up, Chet. Please go fall down a well.
The guys dragged me up off the stool, and I caught my reflection in the bar lights. Staring back was a man in a jet-black hat with dark glasses, bearded, and he nodded in the direction of the ancient music player.
The bar door swung open by a bold gust, and I looked back once more. A single tendril of smoke wafted up from where sat the Man.
I turned and in the distance, aloft in the mountain wind, I heard the faint whistle.
And the jukebox played on.
End.
Artist Links
Odetta Hartman Insta
Odetta Hartman Bandcamp
More songs by Odetta to get you bothered:
…And this sweet chunk of lightning bug glow which is her Widow’s Peak performance for Sofar Sounds…
Upcoming Shows:
None scheduled — 2020 is hurting for live music!