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.