The East Cut

Last winter, I did a seagrass survey in front of the remnants of the old Redfish Inn up at Port Mansfield. On the way through the town I looked for old familiar landmarks, like the Windjammer restaurant, which had been moved and is now in a sterile steel building on a back road in a field, instead of it’s traditional location guarding the entrance to the harbor where you could have giant margaritas while watching the boats returning with drunken fishermen at the end of the hot summer days. I looked for the East Cut Bar where I used to drink with my friends R and the Faceman, but it too was gone, replaced with a family Barbeque joint. I thought about my friends and fondly remembered many nights in that bar in a town I consider to be the least friendly in all of Texas.

I get email forwards now from my old friend R. We used to hang out quite a bit together about fifteen years ago. But then he got married and settled down, became a God-fearing man, his new wife wouldn’t allow him to play with me anymore. Today, I’m thankful for those emails, because at least it keeps a thin thread of connection to someone I consider one of my dearest friends in life.

Back when I was learning to fish the Laguna Madre, we used to stay in a fishing shack in Port Mansfield on weekends, a place we called the clubhouse. The clubhouse was an abandoned run down 1960’s vintage flat roofed shack with minimal comforts, a window air conditioner that barely worked, but gave the impression of doing so by periodically belching clouds of wet air like a horizontal old faithful or something, a few pieces of rickety furniture in the process of shedding upholstery, a toilet that would only accept liquid waste, and a kitchen best left to the cockroaches and scorpions that lived in the dark, dank recesses of the place. It was a place to kick back after a long day of fishing from the Land Cut, down to the Saucer, maybe blacken some redfish filets out in the yard on the grill. The clubhouse was about two streets from the bay, and wasn’t much used for anything other than passing out in after drinking the evenings away at the East Cut Bar.

Sometimes we’d fish with our mutual friend, the Faceman, these sessions would generally turn into a combination of matches and gasoline. Faceman was pure crazy in an explosive and chaotic manner. Once we were drinking in a bar in downtown McAllen when he suddenly turns to two ladies at the table next to ours. These women were minding their own business and were obviously enjoying a quiet evening of good conversation. So Faceman casually remarks to one; “Hey baby…I got five minutes if you’ve got five minutes….Why don’t we go out to R’s van and fuck like a couple of rabbits?”. The women promptly left, rather indignant. The Faceman turned to us and said with a leer; “Well, it never hurts to try…”

Those guys could fish. Our trips into the bay were always filled with drinking and carousing but were also always serious, focused events. We were all transformed into predators in the water, relentlessly stalking our prey. Few redfish, trout or flounder were safe from our lures and lines.

At night we’d drink at the East Cut Bar, one of the few true scoadholes left on the coast. A dingy, dark fishermen’s bar, about the most exotic drink that you could order was a cuba libre, which we drank by the gallon. A pool table and a jukebox completed the scenery along with the ever present neon beer signs and cigarette machine. There was one purpose of the East Cut: To get drunk. And most nights that’s just what we did. Sometimes we’d score the phone numbers of women who happened to be there, serious women with the scars and baggage to prove it, promising to call them later. The scraps of paper adorned the walls of the clubhouse like wallpaper. Other nights we’d stagger out, and drunkenly drive around the little town, tearing up flowerbeds and front lawns in Facemans truck.

One night, we were in the East Cut late. The scene turned surreal. I think it was during the infamous “no name fishing tournament” where just about anything goes. The place was jammed with a sea of writhing bodies, and a cacophy of voices obscured the sound of country music wailing from the distant jukebox, ensconced in a dim corner. Yuppies mingled with rednecks and some of the strangest women I’ve ever seen were there. Women with great piles of buffant hair and wild crazy eyes. There was an old woman we just called “the wrinkleneck” at the bar. Rumor has it that she had been the snatch on the side of R’s father in law, back in the old days, the heyday of the clubhouse, long before we started our tenure there. History does in fact tend to repeat itself.

I was in the back of the place staring through the yellow smoky lighting, watching the Faceman cavort on the floor with a young Mexican woman who he was trying to convince of the fact that he was a professional dancer. I think this night he might have been, as he slid his flipflops around the floor in a perfect samba with her. On each pass, he’d look out over the crowd with that maniacal leer, knowing that he had this one in the bag. Over at the bar, R had his head down, cradled in his arms, in an apparent attack of narcolepsy, rum still clenched in his right hand. The wrinkleneck was sitting next to him, and it appeared as though she had her withered old claw of a hand down his pants. I knew he was in trouble, so I sauntered over toward the bar intending to steer him out of there, along with the jitterbugging Faceman. When I got to the bar, the barmaid caught my attention and sternly nodded toward R. “Your friend can’t sleep in here” she insisted. I knew she meant business, as she glanced toward one-eyed Jack, the crooked Sheriff. One-eyed Jack was the only law in town and he had a mean reputation. He had a dollar sign tattooed on the palm of his right hand, and worked during the season for the El Sauz unit of the King Ranch too. He was later stripped of his constabulary when he drunkenly entered the house of a friend and discharged a shotgun, blasting through the ceiling into the second floor and shattering a porcelain commode causing great volumes of water to destroy the entire upstairs of the house. I shook R awake and he regained consciousness for a moment, a thin line of drool escaping from the corner of his mouth. The wrinkleneck looked surprised as she detached her hand from his pants. One eyed Jack, was watching the scene with blithe interest, ready to get his bribe if any trouble ensued. I hissed in R’s ear…”We need to leave….now”….

By now the Faceman had caught wind of the situation and we escaped like the three stooges, and as the door closed behind us, outside the thick hot August air revealed the glassy water of the harbor reflecting a million stars in the black Texas sky. I’m not sure how we made it back to the clubhouse that night, or what sort of catastrophe we left in our wake, but early the next morning over raw oyster sandwiches somewhere along the real East Cut, in a spoil bank pass loaded with cow tongue sized sweet oysters, and tailing redfish we laughed about that evening in the East Cut Bar.