Two Poems

James Higgins

August 20, 2023

Oasis Hotel

It sat there at the corner of Hwy 80 & Rose St.

painted dark green, not really a hotel & no one

would call it an Oasis.

 

Three or four second story rooms with

baths & an apartment with two rooms

& a bath where old Judd Sanders & his wife

lived on the west side, the east side was

just single rooms, where heat, reflected off

the black ground floor roof, poured

through always open windows.

 

Downstairs was the Dept. of Agriculture office,

men in straw cowboy hats who drove green gov’t

pickup trucks & helped farmers grow cotton &

varieties of grain. Storefront windows held photos

& dried wheat stalks, maybe a better kind for

the dry red soil of Taylor County.

 

My dad lived in one of those west-side rooms

for twenty years or more, ate all his meals at

local cafes. I shared it & those meals with him

on my summer visits, never calling Charlie Dad

though, can’t remember why.

 

Across the highway/main street & the wide

graveled T & P railroad right of way, was

West 1st Street & the Merkel Hotel, dark

yellow stucco, brown trim, wide porches

for evening shade, more hospitable looking

than the Oasis, maybe too expensive for

Charlie.

 

The Oasis had convenience though, Charlie’s

machine & auto repair shop was right across

Rose Street from the Oasis, behind the

Greyhound Station & domino parlor next

door to the Highway Café & the ice house

across the alley, a short commute for a man

with a lifelong limp.

Walking to the Oasis (in 1954)

 

Thunderheads had built

in the north all afternoon,

rising high above the plains.

Rain coming, maybe,

to ease the July heat or

just dry lightning to paint

the dark sky that night.

 

Ten PM, a walk back to the

Oasis Hotel after a John Wayne

movie at the Queen Theater. I’m

fourteen, Main Street Cafes

all closed, drug store too, a

few loafers parked across

Hwy 80 on the T & P railroad

right of way.

 

Town Marshal Fulton was

there earlier in his weathered

Ford coupe, red spotlights

ready to give chase to Yankee

speeders blowing through

Merkel’s two traffic signals.

 

Lightning flashes, too far

away to provide light, make

shadows around the recessed

storefronts deeper, darker. Scariest

corner is where the old Greyhound

station sits. Shadows loom among

the tall gas pumps, maybe hiding

scary men my mother warned me

could be lurking.

 

Jackknife open in my pocket,

sharpened against fear, danger.

Fingers linger too long near

the blade, blood soaks the pocket

of my new Sears-Roebuck jeans,

a half-block & a dark stairway

from safety. 


Born in Abilene, James Higgins spent the first fifteen years of his life in Texas, living in San Antonio during the school year, then spending most summers with his dad in the little town of Merkel, where both his parents were born. Two different worlds, city life vs. small town.

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