Beer Drinking And Hell Raising

It was supposed to be just a quiet night out.

Well, okay. Maybe not quiet. A dozen of the younger Tumbling-A employees going out to anything, up to and including a monastic retreat, probably wasn’t going to be all that quiet. But no one anticipated it ending in a good old fashioned knock-down, drag-out bar brawl either.

Parker and Aurelia had masterminded the night out, dragging J.R. into the planning. Summer was coming to a close, a lot of people were going to be heading back to college soon, and everyone had been working their asses off. Dead Man’s Hand (one of the bigger-deal local bands) was playing at a popular bar halfway up the highway to Amarillo, and everyone had looked forward to an evening of bonding and blowing off steam, with good music, good food, and dancing.

Parker had had no idea that some of the guys, in particular, could cut such a rug—amazing what a couple of beers and high spirits could do. Aurelia had to drag J.R. out onto the dance floor, but Parker noticed that once out there, he seemed in no hurry to leave, fast song or slow. Even shy little Christa, one of the ranch kid wranglers, wasn’t sitting out more than a handful of songs. Parker alternated between dancing with whichever of the guys lacked a partner and taking at a breather at one of their cluster of tables. The bar was packed to the point that fire codes were probably being violated, and people had to shout to make themselves heard.

But it wasn’t until around midnight that things started to get wild.

Parker just happened to be facing in the right direction, and more or less saw how it started. One of the other patrons, a less than sober looking guy in a Texas-flag western shirt, grabbed Christa while she was on her way back to the tables. When she tried to pull away, Flag-Shirt pulled her into his lap. Two of the Tumbling-A guys, Chad and Troy, immediately leaped to her rescue, sending Flag-Shirt over backwards in his chair, crashing to the wooden floor.

As it turned out, Flag-Shirt had friends. Large ones. All of them at the same basic level of sobriety. Within seconds, it was the Tumbling-A Ranch vs. the Home Team, and there wasn’t even a question that things were going to end peaceably. The next few minutes were largely a blur.

Chad flew past Parker and into a table, but had rebounded to his feet again before Parker could even check to see if he was hurt. A.J. and Shawn had another pair of the guys backed into a corner, and Parker saw Christa trip one of Flag-Shirt’s reinforcements who was about to dive in to upend the odds. Troy tackled another one around the waist, plowing them both into a wall with enough force to send half a dozen stuffed animal heads crashing down. Parker was pretty sure she actually Aurelia bean one guy with a beer bottle. And J.R. had managed to work his way into the middle of the melee.

Where he was on his hands and knees, about to receive a second haymaker to the head from Flag-Shirt himself.

Parker grabbed Flag-Shirt by the arm, dragging backward as hard as she could. Unfortunately, he decided to cooperate, and the elbow he drove backward into her face would probably have been enough to stun her if it hadn't also so thoroughly pissed her off.

Flag-Shirt abandoned J.R. for the moment, turning to see who he had just nailed. A look of horror briefly crossed his face when he saw Parker, and she was fairly sure he was imagining what his mama would have to say about this turn of events.

Which was all the distraction Parker needed to regroup and bring her knee up with enough force to introduce Flag-Shirt’s testicles to his tonsils.

Flag-Shirt crumpled to the floor, and Aurelia appeared, holding up a woozy looking J.R.

“One of the waitresses called the cops,” she said. “I’d like to suggest we get the hell out of here?”

They grabbed people on their way to the front door. Jenny, to Parker’s extreme gratitude, was already just outside, having rounded up all the girls’ purses. By the time the Sherriff’s office arrived on scene, the small caravan of cars was already sedately making its way back south to the Tumbling-A.

Of course, they didn’t manage to get off entirely scott free.

When they pulled up to Summer House, all the lights were on and Jerry and Karen, in their nightclothes, were waiting on the front porch.

“Oh, shit. Mom and Dad are up,” J.R. groaned from the backseat of Parker’s SUV.

Jerry and Karen watched with folded arms and raised eyebrows as they all sheepishly climbed the porch steps.

“My cousin bartends at the place y’all went tonight. He called me,” Karen said, as Jerry held open the door so that they could make their way, single-file, into the house. “Troy? Is the nose broken or just bleeding? Shawn, you’d better put some ice on that lip. Parker honey, you’ve already got a shiner—I don’t want to think about what that’s going to look like by tomorrow. J.R., I’m of half a mind to drag your butt to the emergency room. Can you even see straight? I don’t know what we’re going to do with you kids.”

Fortunately, Jerry and Karen opted to go light on the lecture and heavy on the TLC, and already had a first aid kit the size of a suitcase set out on the kitchen table. And didn’t even look too askance at the fact that half of their employees were simultaneously bleeding and as wired as preschoolers on Pixy Stix.

While Karen was busy stuffing cotton up Troy’s nose and Jerry was checking to make sure all of J.R.’s teeth were intact, Christa leaned over from her chair to whisper to Parker and Aurelia, who were sharing the loveseat.

“Guys?” She was grinning gleefully, as if she had just come to a delightful conclusion. “We kicked ass, didn’t we?”

Parker glanced at Aurelia over the bag of frozen peas she was holding to her face, and broke into a grin.

“You know what?” she replied. “We really did.”

The night had served its purpose after all.