Help, Help

I tended bar in a spot in the road between Wolf Point and Poplar, Montana. The couple that owned the bar were older. I worked days and it wasn’t very busy. I enjoyed that though as I could get to know some of the regulars that way. When I worked there the couple were good to me. I was young and I was trusted to use the bars money to gamble with customers. It was a pretty safe bet as the games favored the bar. I used to help myself to some bottles of liquor most weeks.

I thought of all the experiences I had while working for the couple. One day I went to their door and I heard someone yelling “help, help”. It turns out they had a bird. It scared me but I went to the door and knocked anyway. Dumb, crazy or what? It did not even occur to me that I could be putting myself in harms way. I guess maybe I was just young or maybe young and dumb. We had thanksgiving with the man of the house one year while she was away drying out. It was a good time and we agreed to do that again the next year when she would be home. Nice people and maybe just in the wrong business.

I remember how often it seemed the lady of the house would be sent to dry out and when she would get home, she would be fine for a while and all of a sudden she would be drinking large tumblers of water that would soon turn into large tumblers of vodka. I think she thought she was fooling me at first and later I realized that she didn’t care if I knew, as it was just important to fool her husband and it may have been his denial or maybe he really didn’t know but it took him a long time to figure it out.

One night in the middle of December I heard a noise that started outside and soon it was everywhere. Where was it coming from and what was it? I grabbed the only person there that day, a regular customer named Sally and told her to come with me as we needed to look for that noise. It is in the house, it has to be, where else could it be. She didn’t seem as concerned as I was but then again, she had been drinking and I wasn't.

We went from floor to floor and it was clear that it was loudest in the basement. As we went down the stairs, we almost went back up as it was the loudest and almost unbearable. We talked about where the owners were at and I really didn't know. What we knew for sure is that they were not anywhere we looked! There car was parked outside, so they had to be somewhere around. What could be going on? Where are they? What are we going to find? Sally finally said, “I’m scared and I think we should leave here, call for help or maybe just hide!”

As we entered the basement all of a sudden, we could see a door open from one end of the basement, and low and behold it was the couple in an old car that was loud, without a muffler and driving from a tunnel into the basement. The top was down and it was just a two seater, and they were grinning from ear to ear. As they saw us they smiled and stopped the car, closing the door behind them. Apparently they had a secret passageway underground that went who knows where and an old vehicle that they would drive whenever they wished I suppose. I don't know that they were as aware of the sound it made or how scary it was to hear and not have a clue what it was. That was the only time that happened while I worked there and I never spoke with them about it. I did talk to Sally about it again a few times.

Some years after leaving Montana, I sobered up and as part of my program I needed to make amends and pay back what I took from that couple. When I made the effort to contact the couple, I found out they were murdered. I could not believe it. Who would do that? It is possible I may have ran into someone that did them wrong while working there. I choose not to believe that. Now, how would I pay them back. After thinking about the amends, I decided to put in for her at meetings and to pay special attention to the older women that came into meetings. I adopted an older woman when I was about 15 years sober and so then did my children. We became close and I went with her to Arizona in the winter and Ely in the summer. My children took her to hair appointments and other appointments and treated her like a grandmother. As far as I know the murder was never solved. I thought that the bird may have been a premonition of the future as I only ever heard the bird yell, “help, help”.