Pull Tab Night
Driving up to the Hyatt, Jack spotted The Lucky Shamrock across the street. Perfect. After unpacking and freshening up, he headed over for a drink. Well, several drinks. He was tense from the long drive. He’d hammer down a few beers and maybe a shot or two so he could sleep, then head out early. He wanted to make Los Angeles by Friday.
Descending the brick steps to the dark entrance, he noticed the red banner hanging in a narrow window: Warning: Wednesday is Pull Tab Night! Properly warned, Jack pulled open the heavy wooden door.
He stood on the stone floor, letting his eyes adjust to the dark tavern. The battered wooden bar was backed by dusty Guinness mirrors. The walls were decorated with travel posters showing the Doors of Dublin and the Cliffs of Moher. A mirror behind the pool table was mottled with autographed shamrocks for muscular dystrophy. It was like a thousand other Irish dives. They were the same from Maine to Michigan, Ohio to Oregon.
Jack walked to the bar and ordered a Harp. The bartender nodded and slid the cold bottle toward him. He was young with gold-rimmed glasses. Reaching under the bar, the kid handed him an orange pull tab.
Jack hadn’t seen one of these in years, then looked around the bar. “Nobody here?”
“Wednesday’s usually dead.”
“People afraid of getting a free beer?” Jack asked, tapping the card on the bar.
“Something like that I guess.”
Jack glanced down at the five horizontal tabs, each pleading Pull Me! He ran his fingertip up and down and pulled back the center panel. FULL PRICE. Smiling, he slid the tab and a twenty to the barman.
“Been here before?”
“Oh, no,” Jack smiled. “Just passing through. Heading to LA. Been on the road all day. Texas is one long state. Crossed the border at two. Just got this far. I figure tomorrow it’s gotta be eight, nine hours to El Paso, right?”
“About that,” the bartender smiled. “Then figure twelve, thirteen hours to LA. I drove it last year.”
“I don’t drive much. I work online at home and fly to sales conventions. Tucson. New York. Chicago.” Jack twisted his neck. “Just not used to sitting behind the wheel. My brother moved to Los Angeles. I’m taking his car out, spending a week, then flying back. He got a job with a film studio. Does CGI special effects. Sits in a cubicle with a computer and never sees a movie star but can tell chicks he works at Paramount. Has the logo on his jacket.”
“Whatever works,” the bartender chuckled.
Jack downed his beer and pointed for another. He took a sip, then picked up the orange pull tab, and, with a theatrical flourish, tore off the top panel. Smiling, he showed his card to the bartender. FREE.
“Well, boyo, your lucky day!”
Jack tapped the bottle on the bar. “If I only got this lucky at the casino. Not good to have one in the neighborhood.”
“So, where you live?”
“New Orleans.”
The bartender nodded. “My girlfriend loves the French Quarter. Napoleon House. The carousel bar at that hotel.”
“Monteleone.”
“Yeah, that’s right. We last stayed at the Royal Orleans, not too far from there. Must be crazy during Mardi Gras.”
“That’s the week I go to Dublin,” Jack said, pointing to the travel poster behind the bar. “Ever been to the Old Sod?”
“Two years ago. Got cousins in Cork.”
Jack tapped his chest. “We’re from Monaghan. My folks left in ’47. From the Famine to Five Points.”
Jack took a long sip of Harp, stretched, then tried his luck at a slot machine. He slid in a twenty and then a ten. He was about to give up when he hit four shamrocks and scored fifty. Twenty ahead, he decided to cash out and took the barcoded slip to the bartender.
“Might as well give me another.”
The kid smiled and handed him a twenty and a pull tab. Not expecting to score two free drinks in one night, Jack casually peeled off the bottom panel. He looked at it twice.
“What’s it say?”
“Says a hundred dollars.”
The bartender leaned over the bar and smiled. “Green ink. This is your lucky day.” When Jack looked up there was a crisp hundred-dollar bill on the bar.
“Really? I never heard of getting cash on a pull tab.” He looked around the empty bar. “Think more people would take advantage of this.”
“Well, you got green ink on that one. If the numbers are red, you owe us a hundred.”
“Guess I did luck out,” Jack sighed. “How high do they go?
“Five hundred.”
“So, it’s high stakes here.”
“None higher,” the bartender said quietly.
Looking at the crisp banknote, Jack pushed it back. “Say take a shot on me. In fact, get me one, too.”
The bartender poured two shots of whiskey. They held their glasses high, then downed them in unison.
Utterly relaxed, Jack pocketed his winnings. “Glad I stopped in. Eight… nine hours to El Paso tomorrow,” he mused, shaking his head. “You guys gotta get a smaller state.”
The bartender laughed. “I once crossed Rhode Island in forty-five minutes. Smaller thaan a Tex-aas county,” he added with a cowboy drawl.
Jack pointed to his shot glass. “One more, then I gotta crash. Hey, you take AMEX in case I hit a red five hundred?” he joked.
The bartender laughed. “Those are few and far between. But not the rarest,” he said seriously, his voice suddenly deepening to a concerned whisper. “Not the rarest.”
Jack watched the bartender pour his whiskey. He was feeling loose and happy. After this, he’d go to his room and crash….
He picked up the orange pull tab and peeled off the top panel to reveal two words in bold red. YOUR LIFE.
Then there was a sound he only heard when duck hunting with his grandfather.
Jack looked up as the bartender aimed a shotgun at his chest. “Sorry,” he said with a smile, “but it’s pull tab night.”
Mark Connelly’s fiction has appeared in Peregrine, Möbius Blvd, Indiana Review, Change Seven, Bristol Noir, The Berlin Review, Third Wednesday, Altered Reality, Cream City Review, Cerasus Magazine, and 34th Parallel. He received an Editor’s Choice Award in Carve Magazine’s Raymond Carver Short Story Contest in 2014; in 2015 he received Third Place in Red Savina Review’s Albert Camus Prize for Short Fiction. In 2005 Texas Review Press published his novella Fifteen Minutes, which received the Clay Reynolds Prize.
