Grand Opening Ch. 02

Chapter 1

Penny Eastman wasn't a neglectful mother. She wasn't a domineering mother. She wasn't a permissive mother. She tried her best to raise her daughter, Vickie Eastman right, tried to raise her to be respectful of others, conscientious, and courteous. Penny tried to teach her daughter the same morals and principles that her own mother had taught her.

From the moment that Vickie watched her father led away to begin serving a twenty five year sentence for second degree murder, though, Vickie resisted any and all attempts her mother may have made.

The good Sisters of St. Richard's, and later, of St. Thomas Aquinas also tried.

By age twelve, Vickie was sneaking drinks from her parents' bar. By thirteen, she was smoking marijuana. By fifteen, she was shooting heroin. By sixteen, she was shooting a mixture of heroin and cocaine.

The bikers that frequented the Dead End Bar were the skinny red head's source for the drugs. To pay for her drugs, Vickie would steal from the cash register. When Penny took to locking the drawer after every single transaction, Vickie turned to turning tricks to pay for her drugs.

When that didn't make enough money, Vickie would steal from the modest home she and her mother shared and when that source dwindled, she took to stealing from the neighbors.

Words and threats fell on deaf ears. Attempts at punishments were laughed off.

Soon, Vickie began to amass a string of arrests; aggravated theft, breaking and entering, possession with intent to distribute, solicitation, prostitution, armed robbery.

"No," Penny finally told Sheriff Ronald Monroe of Bender, Louisiana. "Fuck, keep her. Y'all got her locked up; can't be sticking needles in her arms, can't be robbing no one, can't be turning no tricks. Just keep her. And tell her I'm not bailing her out this time."

"Will do," Sheriff Monroe agreed.

X.X.X

Judge Henry Mouton did not charge Vickie Eastman as an adult; feeling a wave of pity for the frightened face of the child. He saw no parent accompanying the scrawny, unattractive red head, saw her youth, and decided that time served was good enough to set the wayward child straight.

X.X.X

"Miss me, Mother?" Vickie sneered as she slammed the door of the bar open.

"Nope, can't say that I did," Penny said calmly. "First time I'd been able to sleep the whole night through 'cause I knew where you were."

"Aw boo hoo, Mother," Vickie spat. "Gee, being a mommy is so fucking hard, huh?"

"Nope, being a mommy was fun; had a little girl that was sweet and loving. Being a mother? Now that's hard," Penny shrugged.

"Give me some money," Vickie demanded.

"No," Penny said and turned the burner of the grill on.

"I said give me some money, fucking dried up old bitch!" Vickie screamed, charging her mother.

"Come one fucking step closer and I will gut you like the little pig you are," Penny hissed, wielding a large knife.

Even coming down as hard as she was, Vickie could see the serious intent in her mother's face.

"Fine, bitch, fine, fuck you, don't need your shit anyway," Vickie spat, then walked away.

When the door slammed shut, Penny sank down to the floor and sobbed. One of the dancers, in early hoping to get a free lunch, quietly held Penny, rocking side to side.

Chapter 2

The six dancers were the girlfriends of the bikers that frequented the Dead End Bar. It was a very thinly disguised secret that the girls turned tricks in the Hurricane Room and quite often, drugs changed hands back there as well.

Up front, Penny tried to run a clean establishment, but her clientele seemed hell-bent to run the place, and run the place into the ground.

The lunch crowd was generally a quiet bunch. They came for the good, hot, reasonably priced meals and the cheap entertainment. But when that crowd left, the vermin would come crawling in.

Again, a raid shut the place down. Again, Penny had to pull together an exorbitant amount of money to pay all the fines.

She fired all of the dancers, closed the bar down for a week, gave the place a vigorous cleaning, inside and out, and even hired Scandurro Construction to resurface the parking lot.

Then, she hired four new dancers, explained the legalities to them, and held a grand Re-Opening.

Within three nights, two of the dancers quit, the other two were now girlfriends of two of the bikers, and Penny had to re-hire three of the old girls to dance.

X.X.X

Vickie showed up one morning, clutching an impossibly small infant to her bony chest.

"Roslyn," Vickie said in way of explanation, indicating the small red headed child.

"Oh my goodness; she's so tiny!" Penny gasped.

"Yeah; she's like three months premature or something," Vickie said. "Wouldn't let her leave the hospital until she was four pounds."

"When did you have her? Where have you been anyway?" Penny asked.

"Here, take her; I got to take a shit," Vickie said, thrusting the small baby at her mother.

Penny sat down on her couch, cooing and clucking over the infant.

Ten minutes later, she went looking for Vickie.

"You God damned little fucking bitch!" Penny screamed.

Her jewelry case lay on the floor of the bedroom, anything of value gone. The bedroom window was wide open.

With a heavy heart, Penny called the police and reported the crime.

"Fuck, Vickie; you're a mom now; when the fuck are you going to grow up?" Penny spat in bitterness.

X.X.X

Roslyn Penelope Eastman (Penny smirked at her daughter inserting her name into the child's name) went with Grandma to the bar.

Unlike when she raised Vickie, Penny did not have Jack there to help. Penny did not have the dancers to help. The dancers that had helped her with Vickie had been her friends, her confidantes. This fleet of dancers were strung out whores that had no morals, no alliances to her at all.

So, she would come in, prepare the meal of the day for the lunch crowd, take care of the infant until six o'clock. Then, at six o'clock, Mrs. Ortego would come and fetch Roslyn and bring the infant to Penny's home. In exchange for a bed to sleep in, the widowed Mrs. Ortego would care for Roslyn.

"Bye," Rosy," one of the dancers called out, obviously already stoned.

"Say 'bye, have a nice day,'" Mrs. Ortego said to the baby.

Chapter 3

Rosy was the very image of her mother. If you put Vickie's kindergarten class photograph next to Rosie's class photograph, the only difference was in the hairstyle of the teacher. Mrs. Johnson had sported an impressive bouffant and Miss Abernathy had jelly roll bangs.

"Well, how do those other poor little girls stand it?" Penny asked.

"Stand what, Grandma?" Rosy asked, looking up from her coloring book.

"You being the prettiest little girl in the world?" Penny asked.

"You're so silly," Rosy declared. "Becky Green's the prettiest girl there; everybody knows that."

"Who? Her?" Penny said, pointing to a smug looking little blonde girl.

"Yep, see?" Rosy nodded.

"Sugar Boo, she is not prettier than you, not by a mile," Penny smiled and pinched the girl's nose.

"Hi Rosy," one of the dancers said as she stumbled in.

"Hi Miss Gina," Rosy politely said.

"You ready?" Mrs. Ortego asked, still dressed in her nurse's uniform.

"Yes ma'am," Rosy agreed.

Grandma got a kiss and Rosy waved to the three dancers as she and Mrs. Ortego left the bar.

Three hours later, a frantic Mrs. Ortego called, screaming, "They grabbed Rosy!"

"Who?" Penny screamed into the telephone. "Who crabbed her?"

"Her Momma and three guys; smelled terrible, said they were here for her daughter," Mrs. Ortego sobbed.

"Call the police! I'm on my way!" Penny screamed.

X.X.X

Mrs. Ortego had a black eye, a fractured jaw, and two broken ribs; she had not willingly allowed Vickie and the three bikers take Rosy.

The van carrying a hysterical Rosy, a stoned, angry Vickie, and three men, all with outstanding warrant was stopped just outside of Lake Charles, Louisiana.

"Fucking bitch's my kid! I got a right to my own kid, mother fucker!" Vickie screamed at the police officer.

"Uh huh," the police officer said, looking at the bruises on the child's face and arms.

"Fucking brat wouldn't quit screaming, 'you're not my Grandma, and I want my Grandma'" Vickie said in way of explanation.

"Uh huh," the police officer said.

X.X.X

Penny bit back her retort as a judge, a man that did not know her, sneered down at her. The man declared that, as far as he was concerned, Roslyn Eastman would fare better being raised in the Foster Care System, than by a grandmother that ran an establishment with as seedy a reputation as the Dead End Bar.

Legal custody of Roslyn Penelope Eastman was granted to Penny, but the judge made sure to put in the caveat that if Penny were to be arrested one more time, he would have the minor child removed from the home and the child would be placed in the custody of Louisiana Child Protection Services.

X.X.X

Jack was up for parole, again. And again, the family of his victim, Richard Breaux, showed up to make sure that he was not paroled.

"He says he's a changed man? Well, so am I," Richard's father growled, angrily. "My whole life changed the day this punk murdered my son."

Both father and mother went on to talk about how loving and sweet and gentle their son had been, how he'd had a bright future ahead of him.

Jack kept his face bland. The last time these people had confronted him, he had smirked.

"If your son was so sweet and loving and gentle, as y'all say, then why did he pull that knife on me?" Jack wanted to ask. "Yeah, I was fucking his girlfriend but believe me, she wasn't worth pulling a knife over; she damned sure wasn't worth dying over."

His lawyer had argued self-defense, but there were witnesses that claimed that Jack had stated he would kill Richard if Richard came anywhere near him.

Again, his parole was denied.

Chapter 4

Penny tried to sell the bar but no one wanted to buy it.

She knew if she 'cleaned house,' starting assisting the local and state police, the retaliation would be severe. The Kingsmen, the biker gang that frequented the bar were not the disillusioned, disenfranchised Vietnam veterans that had frequented the bar. The Kingsmen were ruthless thugs. If they even suspected that she was 'narcing' on them, they would not hesitate to kill her, Mrs. Ortego, and Roslyn.

One of the dancers had decided that she wanted out, out of dancing, out of doing drugs, out of selling drugs, out of turning tricks. She did not come into work one night, nor the next night, or the following night. Penny didn't report it; she was used to dancers pulling serious binges and disappearing for days on end.

Four days later, the dancer's body, or what was left of it was discovered, chained to a cypress stump. The Medical Examiner was sure she had been alive when the animals of the Atchafalaya Basin had begun to gnaw at her.

Penny did not want that fate for herself, or for her little Roslyn.

However, because of the harsh sentence the dancer had suffered, the other dancers seemed to straighten up a little. The bikers also seemed to clean up their act a little; they did not want undue attention directed their way.

X.X.X

"You a cop?" Candy asked.

(Her name was really Hannah, but Candy sounded sexier, so Big Rick told her that her name was Candy.)

"Why? I look like a cop?" the man answered.

"No, not really," Candy giggled.

"So, um, what you do here in the Hurricane Room?" the man asked.

"What you want, sugar?" Candy asked, leaning close, blowing sugar free bubble gum in his face.

"Um, I don't know, you tell me," the man shrugged.

"Okay, fifty for a blow job, a hundred to fuck me, hundred and fifty for anal, all three holes? That's two hundred," Candy recited, shimmying out of her panties. "But you got to use condoms, all right?"

"And, you're under arrest, sugar," the man smiled, pulling out his badge.

"Aw fuck!" Candy complained, pulling her panties back on.

"Shutting you down, Grandma!" Officer Dick Davis announced loudly as more police officers began filing into the bar.

"God damn it, Candy! What the fuck you do this time?" Penny yelled as Candy was led out in handcuffs.

A search of the premises revealed a fair amount of cocaine and marijuana as well. Even though she had no knowledge of the drugs on the premises, Penny found herself behind bars alongside her five dancers, and four prostitutes that had been busted outside of Club Fantastic, the local competition to the Dead End Bar.

She was arraigned the next morning, as were the nine other women. All were able to bond out; the judge set the amount fairly low. The three bikers that had been arrested, however, had bail set particularly high. "Show Pony Bail,' the District Attorney called it.

"Show Pony?" Candy asked, scratching at her face.

"Means he set it so high even a show pony wouldn't be able to jump it," Penny grumbled and began the two and a half mile walk to her home.

"Um, where you going?" Candy asked.

"Home; I'm tired, I stink, I'm going to take a shower then I'm going to bed," Penny snapped.

"Um, where'm I supposed to go?" Candy asked.

"Hell, I don't know; where do you normally go when you're not at work?" Penny asked, exasperated.

"Um, with Big Rick, but he got show ponied, remember?" Candy whined.

"Candy, go home," Penny sighed.

X.X.X

"Mrs. Eastman, you were warned," the judge sneered as he banged the gavel.

"But, but, I didn't?" Penny wailed as a clerk from Louisiana Child Protection Services began to pull a screaming Roslyn out of the courtroom.

Her lawyer promised to file papers with the court that afternoon.

Because Penny was paying the tuition for Roslyn to attend St. Richard's, and because all charges had been dropped against her, the court did allow Penny supervised visitation with her granddaughter.

Over the next nineteen months, Penny never missed a visitation. After a while, she was even allowed to have the child overnight for Roslyn's birthday and for Christmas. She could see the scrawny red head become even skinnier and could see the quiet child become severely withdrawn and fearful.

X.X.X

"Mrs. Eastman?" the voice asked.

"Yes?" Penny said sleepily.

She looked at the clock; Five nineteen blinked at her.

"Mrs. Penny Eastman?" the voice persisted.

"Yes, this is she," Penny agreed.

"Ma'am, I'm sorry..." the voice continued.

Penny made the six hour drive to Little Rock, Arkansas to identify her daughter's remains. Her boyfriend/pimp/drug dealer had gotten tired of her, so he ran over her with his pick up truck, backed over her, and then ran over her again to make sure that the job was done.

Penny was dry eyed as she made the arrangements to have her daughter's body shipped to DeGarde, Louisiana, then drove back home.

X.X.X

Big Rick's fingerprints were discovered on the length of chain that had bound the dancer's body to the cypress stump, so he was not getting out any time soon.

Without their leader, the biker gang was easier to handle, easier to persuade to adhere to the letter of the law, and not quite as intimidating.

Penny was able to 'clean house' slightly and even had a few serious offers to buy the bar.

From his jail cell, though, Big Rick authorized a large shipment of cocaine. His cell mate was a plant and gave the information to Sheriff Ronald Monroe of Bender.

"God damn it!" Penny screamed as the police busted in the front door and rear door of the Dead End Bar.

She had just been given provisionary custody of the now eight year old Rosy; any kind of trouble at all would jeopardize her custody of her granddaughter.

It would also jeopardize the sale of the bar. She had a serious offer on the table. It was for seventy nine thousand, an amount she would have considered an insult two years earlier, but she was now desperate to get out from under the bar.

Penny could see both custody and sale flying out the busted front door as the police officer pulled a large plastic bag of white powder from behind the juke-box.

*Author's Note: This is Part 2 of a series of stories involving the Dead End Bar.

**Author's Note: I write these stories for my pleasure. I post them here for your enjoyment. Thank you for reading my story.