Story Excerpt

Farewell To Baytown
by William Bankier and Josh Pachter

My name is Luke, and I hustle trays of beer in the men’s beverage room at Baytown’s Coronet Hotel. I want to tell you about something that happened during the summer when the man who wrote the stories about Baytown died. I never read them, so I can’t say if they were any good. But a famous magazine published them, so they must have had something going for them.

The Banner printed the author’s obit and used a picture that showed a geezer with glasses, not much hair, and a sheepish grin on his face, like he knew the joke was on him. He was living in West Hollywood, California, when he died, and had been married for a second time. Cause of death was listed as a heart attack due to a burst aorta. He died instantly, which meant he had a free pass to Endsville, unlike many geezers who have to ride the slow train to the end of the line.

News of his passing split Baytown into two camps. His admirers thought he was an artist whose stories had made Baytown immortal and saw his death as a tragedy. “Nonsense,” replied his detractors. “He was a hack who wrote for the money.” They believed it was good riddance to bad rubbish, since he had often ridiculed our town in his fiction. Many of his characters, they said, were thinly disguised copies of local residents, who did not appreciate being portrayed as foolish or evil or both.

The only member of his family still living in town was his sister Lola, who got around in a motorized wheelchair and wrote poems she submitted to the Banner. The editor printed one now and then. Here’s one she wrote as her brother’s eulogy:

The trouble began in the beverage room on the day the obituary ran in the paper. It was a warm July evening—the kind of night when the tables are crowded and there’s a mist of condensation on the glasses of cold beer. The radio at the end of the bar was tuned to CBAY like always. Clement Foy was on the air with a special program devoted to the memory of the late author. I remember, more or less, what Foy was saying:

“Before he left for the USA, our late lamented friend worked here as a DJ. He was a lover of jazz, and there were times when I—as program director—had to scold him about his choice of records. I told him he was not supposed to play what he liked. He was supposed to play what our listeners like. Tonight, however, there will be no such restriction. For the next hour, I will play, without interruption, a selection of his favorites, beginning with Duke Ellington’s rendition of that joyful Billy Strayhorn composition, ‘Take the A Train.’”

Being an aficionado of the big bands, I was more than happy. But not everyone in the room shared my appreciation. A familiar voice raised in protest.

“Why do we have to listen to this garbage?”

That was my old friend Buddy Bristol. Middle-aged now, Buddy had turned sour and had forgotten the Saturday-night orchestra concerts at the Park Pavilion we had long ago loved. I date the change in him to the day Anita left town. . . .