Magical Beer

Chase Steggall

"God damnit Shaun what the hell is taking you so long?" Ben blurted, "

Hold on I gotta brush my teeth."

"Why? You're not going to get any tonight from a girl so why should it matter if you have bad breath or not, dumbass."

"You don’t know that," replies Shaun.

"Yes I do, you’re too fat to get a girl to come home with you."

"Shut up Ben."

A few other guys come down to Shaun and Ben’s room so they could all walk over together to the bar. As the sun starts to set in the Midwest farm town a group of about six men walk towards the bar talking about how drunk they're going to get and how they're gonna get laid.

"Shaun, how long's it been since you’ve got laid, a year?"

"... pssh no…," Shaun replies rapidly with a laugh.

"Oh yeah, you had sex with that fat girl from Warsaw, didn’t you?" Shaun puts his head down and gives a little embarrassed smile.

The group arrives at the bar and gets their usual six pitchers of Pabst blue ribbon. They sit and talk about the day's work and how much they hate their boss. Another group of locals walks in and the noise in the bar doubles as the two groups join two tables so they can all sit together. The two groups talk about the glory days of high school football, baseball and the old days of partying. There was a new bartender on duty who seemed a little weird but the crew somewhat took a liking to him. Shaun being the type of person who talks to anyone went up and made small talk with the newcomer to the town. The bartender who was named Bob told Shaun he makes some beer of his own.

"I make this brew on my own. I guarantee you’ll like it," Bob says to Shaun

"How do you know that?"

"Well do you want in on a little secret, my man? This beer will get you laid if you drink it; I only give it to a few of my friends, and of course I drink it occasionally."

"No way, your full of shit." Shaun says, shaking his head.

Bob goes in back and brings Shaun out this glass of beer which had a distinct color to it, but Shaun being very desperate took the beer and started to drink it at the table. One beer and impatience set in and Shaun called the bar tender a liar. Bob slowly walked to the back and got Shaun another beer. About halfway through the second beer that Bob gave him, a group of about fifteen ladies come into the bar for a bachlorette party. They were all being loud and rowdy; the group of about ten men were licking their chops hoping to take a lady back with them tonight. Shaun got a little smirk on his face thinking, "maybe this guy isn’t so full of shit after all."

Being the talkative person he is he walks up to one of the ladies and makes conversation with her, small talk to say the least. Shaun who is used to getting the cold shoulder was actually getting through to her. They talked, Shaun bought her a drink, and everything seemed to be going well.

"Well cutie, we're going to head to the next bar, nice meeting you though."

The party leaves and a dejected Shaun puts his head down in disappointment. The bar tender and him make eye contact. The bartender gives him a shrug and Shaun mouths a dirty name at him. About twenty seconds after she’s gone she runs back in and gives Shaun her number.

"I’m going to be home at around one if you want to give me a call tonight, and by the way, my name is Brianna"

A smile rolls across his face like a kid opening a Christmas present. The table of co-workers look at Shaun with shocked faces, all them thinking how the hell he pulled that off. One of the men at the table blurts out , "hey, Rico Suave, why don’t you come join us since that girl gave you a fake number."

"Shut up, I haven’t got a fake number in a long time, I only got those when I was fat."

"You got one last week, dumbass."

The bar closes at 12 on weeknights. The group leaves and opens the door to a glimmer of colorful beer signs which light the street. On the walk back they talk about how they hate work and want to walk off tomorrow. It’s the main topic of conversation every night when they walk home from the bar, but come next week they will all be there working the fields just like they had the week before.

Being a union field hand meant they were contracted out to one of the biggest farms in America. If they would walk out of this grueling work they would loose all their benefits and perhaps their union card. Shaun had come from a long line of people who worked on farms, for he was a third generation field hand. There were 16 men contracted out to this farm and the only thing they liked about it was going to the bar at night. But Shaun had this new beer which gave him a little hope to maybe get some ladies. When they got back to the living complex Shaun decided to give that lady a call.

He dials the number sitting in the hall with anticipation, afraid that this number she gave him might wake up an elderly man who’s sleeping in Canada.

"Hello" a cheerful girl answers, Shaun excited to the point where he’s almost speechless and doesn’t respond.

"Helloooo" she says again.

" Katie, this is Shaun from the bar, you gave me your number tonight."

"Oh, Shaun, I remember you. What are you doing?"

"Oh, just sitting in the hallway... thought I'd give you a call and see what you were doing."

"Well, I just put my pajamas on... would you like to come over for a little bit?"

Shaun gets all excited while he looks at Ben and gives him a thumbs up.

"Yeah sure, where do you live at?"

"I live in the house on corner of 1st street and Johnson avenue. My house has the big wrap around porch."

"Sure thing, I'll be right over."

Shaun quickly hangs up the phone, throws on some deodorant, brushes his teeth and is out the door. Eager to get over there he picks up the pace to a slow jog. Fast enough to get him there in a shorter amount of time, but not fast enough where he will break a sweat. After about 200 yards a bead of sweat drips off his forehead and into his eye.

"Shit, I gotta slow down," he murmurs under his breath.

As he comes around the corner he sees the house sitting one block away. The porch light glowing bright says that this person is expecting some kind of company Shaun thinks to himself. He walks up to the door and knocks. No reply, he knocks a little more. Same result. He begins to wonder. He then sees a bedroom light come on. An elderly lady in her pajamas comes to the door.

"What in the hell do you want Sunny? Do you have any idea what time it is?"

Shaun speechless at what he sees apologizes to the old lady as much as he can without getting down on his knees and begging for forgiveness. He gets back on the street and gives Brianna a call.

"Hello"

"Brianna this is Shaun I just knocked on the wrong door and woke up some old lady"

"Oh no, your on the wrong side of the street, cross the street im across the road, sorry about that."

"Oh no that’s alright, see ya in a few seconds."

Shaun walks up to the door to find it cracked half open, he knocks and slowly goes in.

With the sun beginning to rise Shaun’s phone alarm also goes off. Knowing he has to be on the job at 6:00 in the morning he knew boss wouldn’t like it if he were late. He rounds up his clothes and heads back to the quarters to get his work clothes. As he gets back everyone is just beginning to wake up.

"There's the ladies man himself, how did last night go buddy" says one guy from down the hall.

"Well well well aren't we gonna have some interesting stories today on the job thanks to Shaun, hopefully it’s a good one so it makes the day go fast." blurts in another worker.

As he walked out to the field he kept getting a lot of pats on the back and big smiles from the other guys that he works with. A few of the guys were even paying each other money. There seemed to be a wager on weather she would call Shaun back or not. Some of the guys thought she gave him a fake number, but this was the real deal. Seemed like a few of the guys didn’t have much faith in ol’ Shaun coming through with this lady. He proved them wrong, some of the guys laughed about it, some were jealous, and others just didn’t care.

"Hell if I would have known she was going to take home anything in the bar that was breathing I might have half way tried with her. Seriously just look at him, does anyone know if she was blind." Says Chuck, a hard nosed cussin, spittin, redneck from Texas who would fight anyone that looked at him wrong.

While eating lunch the crew went over and ate in the machine shed that had 4 cattle fans to blow on the men. After five long hours out in the sun the men would need to be cooled off before they would go battle the afternoon heat. In these parts the heat index in the afternoon had been rumored to reach around 120. A few years back one of the workers went into a full fledged heat stroke from being dehydrated. After a few days in the hospital he died. That was when the crew started to get more water breaks and better cooling fans.

The supervisor walks up behind Shaun and grabs him by the top of his shoulders. "I thought you might be too tired to work today after your big night. Sounds like you were quite the ladies man downtown tonight, is that true?"

Shaun looks over his shoulder half laughing half smiling as the other guys at the table laugh and make crude remarks. "Well what can I say, ladies see a husky fella like myself and they just can’t say no." Now the guys at the table are about to fall over from laughing so hard, some even coughing up food and drink from their nose.

"Yeah, Shuan, I always thought you were full of shit, now I know for sure you are. How did she not see that pillow you hide under your shirt everyday, or I mean your beer gut? Christ that thing grows faster then the corn I think"