Last Ride

It all started out six winters ago in the Mud Trail Grill & Bar, located right on the southern tip of Texas. Being just a twenty minute drive from what they call “The South of Freedom”, you used to see lots and lots of Hispanics passing through, ’til 9/11 when it started getting way too hard to get past the border just for a good bite to eat and something nice to drink. Still were always a lot of folks heading to Mexico the next morning, though – lots of travelers, and that sort of thing.

So it was about ten o’ clock at night, a cold, lonely one in February. What was odd was that the bar was completely empty except for the tender and me myself. Tender said it was because the bar had seen better days, but I always thought something might've been up. Little did I know.

Now, I’ve never been married; have one daughter, though. She was fourteen at the time, about to go on twenty, now. Lila’s her name – and God, I love her so much. But it wasn’t my week to have her, and I had a sister living in Mexico that I was going to go visit. I’d been to this bar many of times, but it’d been a few years, still though, same people working there as I remembered them being. I’ve always told people that I drink, but I don’t get drunk. I hadn’t gotten drunk for fifteen years at that point. When you have a kid, I don’t care if you see them once a week or once a month or once a year; you don’t get drunk when you have a kid. Because they’re alive, and you never know if they’re going to one day show up at your doorstep, and you don't want to be drunk for if they do.

Anyway, so I know my limit, I already had two glasses of ten-year-old bourbon, and it’s always about the third when I start to feel a little bit tipsy. By four, I’m drunk, always have been. So, the bartender, man named Mikey asks me if I want to try some shots. And I told him straight up; no way. Shots will make me drunk. I’m done for the night.

So I reach into my back pocket to grab the wallet to pay off my tab, and that’s when I heard it. It was the noise that brings terror to even the biggest, baddest men on the planet – gunshots. I heard ‘um, alright. The next thing I knew, blood was spurting out of Mikey’s head like a geyser. He just stands there with his eyes wide open, his mouth hung down like he’s ready to talk, but blood is just spewing right out of his head -- all over the counter, and all over me. He collapses over the counter, his head right next to my empty glass. Right in front of me. Dead. I jump out of my bar stool and look behind me, and there’s a bald, Mexican son of a bitch standing there, pistol pointed right at me. He winks once, then I feel someone grab me from behind. I fight, but the damn thugs got his arms wrapped around my throat. I can’t breathe anymore, I can’t see anymore, and soon enough, I’m out cold.

Next thing I know, I’m chained down to a hospital bed with cops all around me, wrapped nice and tight in handcuffs. Fast forward six years later, and here I am, gobbling up my last meal before they take me into a quiet, dark room, stick a needle in me and then I will be dead. So this is my “last ride” so to speak. In thirty minutes, I will be dead, and no, I didn’t kill Mikey. I still don’t know who it was that killed Mikey. I’m not the best human being I possibly could’ve been, but I'm not a murderer. It doesn’t even matter anymore, I'm dying. I’m dying because nobody believed in me. I’m dying, and I’ve come to terms with that fact. Just make sure Lila knows that daddy loves her, and he’ll see her again someday.