The Legend of Karma Sue & Esmerelda, two like-minds boldly intent on making their mark on the world…
by: Roger D. Hicks
Neither of them was beautiful. Both of them were smart. They were also bold, reckless, self-destructive, and committed to making a mark on the world. They met purely by accident in a little town in West Virginia which has otherwise always been totally forgettable. They had both been broke, bored, and seeking a friend or a free lunch when they met. The little bar and pool room was not intended to be a place for nice ladies but they did not particularly seek to be viewed in that light anyway. They came in the door separately less than a minute apart and each of them began to size up the male occupants to see who the most likely victim might be. Karma Sue was hoping to con someone into playing pool with her if she could get the game started without having to prove she had the money her victim would think he was about to win. Esmerelda was hoping she could just talk some gullible man into buying her a meal without having to give him anything more than a slight brush by.
Karma Sue slid up toward the front pool table just as Slick Stone, the owner, realized he had women in his establishment. “You need to read the sign behind the counter here, Honey. We don’t allow women in this place except to pick up orders to go. Have you got an order called in?” Karma Sue just kept walking but Esmerelda, who was closer to the bar, thought Slick was talking to her and answered, “No, I was just looking for my brother. Have you seen Smooth Smoot in here today? He’s about yay high and got a wart on his nose.” She kept walking in the hope that Slick would eventually give up. She didn’t know a thing about Slick Stone. He had run this pool hall since he had been able to steal enough copper from a local coal company to buy it from the elderly former owner who was trying to put his affairs in order, as he had put it, “Before some undertaker gets to gut me and stuff me.” Slick could not be deterred from an immediate goal. He raised his volume about ten decibels and shifted to his bouncer timbre. “I said I don’t let women come in here except to pick up orders to go. If you don’t have an order to go, you need to go, both of you.”
Karma Sue was closer to the half dozen men hanging out in the vicinity of the only table with players and quickly chose the one she thought most likely to fall prey to her charms. She just kept walking in his direction and hoped that the woman behind her had sense enough to distract the owner. Esmerelda hadn’t decided yet that she was actually working with the other woman but turned to Slick with a hurt voice, “Mister, I have to find my brother, Smooth Smoot, so I can get a ride home. I just need to ask these men if any of them know where he is.”
Slick Stone hated resistance with a passion. “Woman, I told you what the answer is, GET OUT! And, if you’re not both gone in about one minute, I’ll throw you out like last week’s garbage.” As Slick turned around the end of the bar, he decided that since Esmerelda was closer to the door he would remove her first. That was a serious mistake because he underestimated Karma Sue who had already decided that since he was attempting to remove them both she must be aligned with this strange little woman who had walked in the bar simultaneously with her. When Slick turned his back on Karma Sue, the only warning he had of his error was the unique whistle of air passing over an eighteen ounce Brunswick cue stick she had grabbed from the rack by the small end. The handle struck Slick just above his left ear and he folded and dropped to the floor exactly like a precisely shot hog on Thanksgiving morning. Karma Sue whirled to face the men with the stick still in her hands above her shoulder in a baseball grip. She saw the men huddled behind the pool table and realized instantly that she would meet no resistance from that quarter. Turning back to Esmerelda, she laughed and said, “Well, woman, I reckon me and you must have an order to go back there.”
Karma Sue walked quickly behind the bar while the men were trying to decide what to do about Slick who had begun to groan softly on the floor. She quickly found a warming pan of precooked hamburgers, slapped four on buns with all the fixings she could see, and snatched a twelve pack of cold Schlitz Tall Boys from the cooler, bagged it, and tossed it all across the bar toward Esmerelda and said, “Let’s go find a shady place to eat lunch, woman, and we can learn more about each other over vittles and beer.” As the women left the pool hall, the men regained their confidence and began nursing Slick, called the sheriff, and asked for an ambulance. They also grabbed one cold Schlitz each from the cooler before the sheriff arrived and began taking turns drinking and holding a dirty bar towel on Slick’s bleeding head.
By the time the sheriff and ambulance arrived, Slick had been propped up against the front of the bar and was mumbling something which sounded like “…nine ball in the far corner two rails”. Sheriff Bob Vedder walked in and took a somewhat surprised assessment of Slick and turned to the pool players to ask, “Well, which one of you finally figured out how to whup Slick?” He was unable to hide his utter surprise when one of the Dewberry Twins told him it had been accomplished by a woman nobody knew. “Hack Dewberry, don’t lie to me boy. I’ve known Slick Stone since I was a boy. He ain’t never been whupped before now and I’m not dumb enough to believe it was a woman.” The sheriff was even more surprised when all five of the pool players insisted that Hack was telling the truth.
The paramedics brushed Hack’s brother Ham and the dirty bar towel aside and began to check Slick’s vital signs and ask him the typical questions intended to assess a semiconscious person. One paramedic placed a blood pressure cuff on Slick’s left arm and listened to his heart and lungs with a stethoscope while the other began to question the groggy barman. “Slick, do you know what day this is?”
“It’s the day I need to find somebody and whip their ass,” Slick responded.
“No, Slick, I need to know what day of the week this is?”
“What does the special of the day say, buddy,” Slick returned. “If it’s a chicken breast sandwich, it’s Monday. If it’s a hamburger and fries, it’s Tuesday. How the hell am I supposed to know? And I don’t give a shit anyway. Why is everybody bothering me?”
“Well, Slick, it looks like somebody might have hit you in the head. Your friends here were worried about you and called for an ambulance. Do you know who the President is?”
“I reckon it’s that sorry SOB Ronald Reagan, ain’t it? Who cares who the President is? I just want to know why half the town is in my bar and nobody is ordering any beer? Do you need a beer?”
The EMT smiled but didn’t laugh. “I’m working today. I can’t have a beer. Do you know who the governor is, Slick?”
“I reckon it’s that crook Arch Moore or Lyin’ Louie Nunn. Depends which side of the river you live on. Who gives a shit?”
The EMT was tempted to give up on the questions but policy required him to determine if his patient had a serious head injury. He persisted. “Slick, I just have a few more questions I need to ask and if everything goes alright I can go off and leave you alone. Are you having any trouble breathing?”
“Hell no! Does it sound like I’m having any trouble breathing?’ was Slick’s quick answer. ‘What are you doing in here, Bob Vedder? I thought I told you to stay out of this joint unless somebody gets shot or cut. You’re bad for business.”
Sheriff Vedder laughed and turned to question the pool players about the incident. The EMT kept pressing on with his questions, “Do you have any ringing in your ears, Slick?”
Slick was becoming more and more himself as the cobwebs left his head and gave a typical Slick Stone response, “Yes, I do! All of your bullshit questions keep ringing in my ears. I’ve got a pool hall to run and somebody to find so I can whip their ass. When are you two leaving?”
The paramedics exchanged glances and silently agreed to end the assessment. The first EMT placed a bandage on the goose egg above Slick’s ear which he immediately removed with the words, “I don’t need no damn bandage. I’ve had worse knots than that on my pecker. Get out of my way and let me up. I’ve got a bar to run.”
The paramedics allowed Slick to sign off on the refusal of medical services form and packed up their supplies and left with both grinning from ear to ear. Sheriff Vedder had learned what he could from the pool players and knew that the attacker had been a small black haired woman whom none of the men knew. He also knew that her companion had been a slightly smaller brown haired woman who was also unknown in the establishment. Finally, the Sheriff returned his attention to Slick Stone who had managed to stand up and walk behind the bar where he was attempting to work but still seemed a bit unsteady on his feet. “Slick, can I ask you a few questions too?” the sheriff asked.
Slick said, “I thought I told you to get the hell out of my pool hall. Why the hell does everybody in the country want to ask me a bunch of ignorant questions?”
Sheriff Vedder assumed his most official manner and responded, “Slick, I believe you’ve been assaulted and a crime has been committed. I need to finish my investigation and then I’ll leave you alone. What do you remember about the fight?”
“I don’t remember nothing. I was knocked out. As I recall, the last time that Thompson boy knocked you out you didn’t remember nothing either and he’s still walking around town and you won’t try to arrest him. So why do you want to ask me a bunch of stupid questions and then go off somewhere and not do your job again? I’ll figure this out myself and take care of it just like I always do. Get the hell out and leave me alone. I told you, you’re bad for business.” Slick turned back to his work behind the bar, counting the diminished hamburgers, closing the lid on the beer cooler, and suddenly realizing his beer count was off. He whirled toward the pool players and yelled, “What the hell happened to my Schlitz? I’m short about a case of tall boys and every one of you is holding a Schlitz Tall Boy. Did you sorry hounds steal my beer while I was on the floor?”
The pool players all exchanged guilty looks before Hack Dewberry finally stepped up to answer. “Well, Slick, we were all just standing here after that woman knocked you out and she went behind the bar and got about a half a case of Schlitz Tall Boys and a bunch of hamburgers and left. Does that make your count right?”
“Hack, you know damn well that don’t make my count right when every one of you is drinking a Schlitz and I only sold two this morning and I’m a case short. Who the hell told you all you could drink my beer when I was knocked out?”
“Slick, I’m sorry,’ Hack apologized for the group, ‘That woman just jumped behind the bar with that pool stick in her hand and started throwing beers at us and putting a bunch in a poke for her and that other little hussy. I was afraid to not take one after the way she treated you. When she hit you, you went down like you was shot. I’m ashamed to admit it, but I was afraid of her and if these other boys will tell the truth they was afraid of her too. We didn’t have no choice, Slick, we had to drink it if she was offering it.” The others all nodded in agreement, refusing to offer verbal admissions of their alleged fear, but acquiescing to Hack’s attempt to save them from Slick’s anger by nodding much like a pack of toy bulldogs in the rear windows of a convoy of Hudson Terraplanes.
Slick roared, “I don’t care who was throwing my beer to you every one of you knows better than to steal anything from Slick Stone. I ought to whip every one of you but right now I need to find out who that woman was and take care of this myself. I’m putting two dollars apiece on a tab for every one of you and none of you get another drop of anything in here except air until you give me my two dollars. Did either one of them say anything that might help me figure out where to find them?”
While the pool players tried mightily to remember what Karma Sue and Esmerelda had said and done, Sheriff Vedder was trying mightily to eat his lunch and wrap his arms around the new waitress at The Coney Island Diner just around the corner from Slick’s pool room. He had not made a move to find whoever had knocked Slick out. Instead he had gotten in his cruiser and driven around the block, whipped into the only handicapped parking space in Wide Spot and walked in The Coney Island to have the special for lunch. The Coney Island was Slick’s biggest competitor in town although they did not sell beer or have pool tables. Instead, they sold better hamburgers with more fixings for a quarter less, allowed women to enter the building and sit anywhere they chose in chairs with sturdy legs at tables which were level and clean. Slick Stone was still trying to learn why he hadn’t been able to “put that foreigner out of business.” The sheriff ate and harassed the waitress with what he mistook for attractive banter just below the level which might cause the owner to confront him.
A mile away under the new concrete highway bridge which crossed the river and the railroad, the two women were arranging a few rocks and slabs of driftwood into a dining area after having slid surreptitiously down the railroad tracks to the stream and following the rails to the bridge. They had climbed up the concrete drainage pad to the shady, shielded area under the bridge abutment and opened two of the Tall Boys before they ever began working on the rocks and slabs. As they sat down and opened the bag of burgers, Esmerelda asked “Who are you, anyway? I don’t remember ever seeing you around here before. But then I never had been in that joint before. Boy, you laid that man out like he was a biting dog.”
Karma Sue laughed and answered, “My name is Karma Sue Mixmaster. Most of my friends just call me Karma Sue. My mother was a hippie and gave me a name she thought was very new age. Then she OD’d on cocaine when I was a baby. My grandma raised me in Saint Mary’s down next to the chemical plant. I think either my mother’s dope smoking or breathing that stuff from the plant made me a little unusual. I’m not crazy and I’m not mean but the bad don’t mess with me. Who are you, Little Woman?”
“My name is Esmerelda Smoot but I ain’t got no brother named Smooth Smoot. I was just trying to stall that old man for you until he started chasing me to throw me out. Thank you for taking him out of the picture. I hope you didn’t kill him.”
“Kill him, ha, you can’t kill that old goat. That’s Slick Stone. He’s meaner than a rattlesnake and crooked as a barrel of fishhooks. He’ll live,” was Karma Sue’s answer.
The pair kept talking, getting acquainted, eating, and drinking Schlitz Tall Boys while they listened to the traffic rolling over their heads on the bridge. Finally, Esmerelda asked “Where do you live? Are we going to have any place to go for the night?”
“Well sometimes I find a good clean man to sleep with,” Karma Sue answered, “And sometimes I just get in a fight and get myself put in jail for a few days. Don’t worry! We’ll figure it out.”
At the edge of dark, they had nearly finished the twelve pack and had eaten the hamburgers long before. Karma Sue seemed to have vastly more experience at being half drunk and on the lam than her new friend. She finally said, “Well, Esmerelda, I reckon as soon as it gets good and dark we ought to head back to the railroad and see if we can’t slip out of town for a few days. Maybe we can catch a freight or just walk to the edge of town and hitchhike if we have to.”
Esmerelda was taken aback by the idea of hoboing a train and said so. “I haven’t ever rode a freight train. How would we know where we are going to end up?”
“Well, we’d know for sure we’d be dropping off in a town somewhere. I haven’t ever rode a freight train either. But I never have knocked Slick Stone out with a pool cue before. He’s after us sure as fire, sister. We need to get out of town for a while,” was Karma Sue’s response. “It’s about dark. Let’s start walking.”
Back in the pool hall, Slick Stone was on the telephone trying to find out where Karma Sue Mixmaster lived and who her new partner was. He called every pawn shop owner in three counties plus a few thieves, drug dealers, and minor miscreants. No one could tell him where Karma Sue lived or who the other woman was. Slick was both baffled and angry. He had never been bested in his own establishment and considered it a matter of pride. He was steadily becoming more determined to spend every spare moment, “finding that pair so I can wrap my fingers around their skinny little necks.” The pool players had departed as soon as they were certain that Slick was more focused on the women than on retribution for his filched beer. The Dewberry Twins climbed into the remnants of their father’s old 1960 Ford pickup and turned the big white grill toward home in a cloud of smoke and an uproar of unmuffled exhaust. Suddenly Hack, who usually did most of their thinking, asked his brother, “Where do you think them two little things went to drink that beer?”
Although Hack did not expect an immediate or rational answer, Ham gave him one, “If I was running from Bob Vedder, I’d go down the railroad track and hide under a bridge. Bob is too lazy to walk that far on the railroad.”
Hack was completely surprised by his brother’s immediate and lucid response. “Ham, let’s go to the end of the new bridge and get out and walk that way down the tracks. I’d like to meet that new little woman and sometimes you and Karma Sue have been able to get along overnight,” Hack nearly choked laughing at the prospect.
Ham had never been strong or thoughtful enough to present his brother with opposition or a better idea in his life. “Let’s go. Me and Karma Sue gets along sometimes. It’s been over a year since she whupped me at that pasture party.” In less than three minutes, Hack brought the old truck to a halt on the shoulder at the out of town end of the new bridge and the brothers jumped over the guardrail to inspect the railroad tracks. They had just enough light left to find the empty Schlitz cans and hamburger wrappers under the bridge. Hack stood quietly, looking in both directions and thinking prodigiously as his heart raced with anticipation. Finally, with a feeling akin to a good blue tick on the trail of a prime young coon, he said, “Let’s go the out of town way. Come on, Ham, I believe we can find them two and give them a ride somewhere till this cools down. I bet they’ll be grateful we found them. I like a grateful woman.”
Less than half a mile down the tracks, Esmerelda and Karma Sue had taken a breather to drink the last two beers and work on their plan. They nearly spooked when the brothers hove into view behind them in the rising moonlight. But Hack saw the women nearly as soon as they saw the Dewberry Twins and yelled reassuringly, “We just want to talk to you. We ain’t got nobody else with us and we can give you a ride. I always wanted to meet the person who could whup Slick Stone.” The women were too tired and mildly intoxicated to run so they waited.
After a brief negotiation and introductions which the twins believed was a successful seduction, the foursome decided to walk back to the truck and adjourn to the Dewberry home for an evening of mutual entertainment. The twins had a significantly different opinion of mutual entertainment than the women. As they walked, Ham made a half-hearted attempt to hold Karma Sue’s hand. She brushed him off with the same gesture she had been using earlier to keep flies out of her beer. Hack was wearier in his approach to Esmerelda and made a valiant attempt to be a conversationalist without appearing to be too much of a gentleman. Karma Sue tried to convince the twins that the evening would progress more smoothly if they could afford to furnish a fifth of Old Stag. Hack laughed at the idea and said, “Hell, honey, I’ve got a quart of the best moonshine in the world at home. It’s as smooth as a baby’s butt and got a kick like a mule.” The women agreed to try the shine instead of the whiskey and the old truck pulled back onto the highway out of town with all four jammed across the bench seat with a closeness which convinced the twins that better times were coming.
In about fifteen minutes, Hack pulled off the main road into Lick Skillet Holler and in another fifteen of jolting, jarring progress they pulled into the muddy yard of the old slab house the twins called home. The evening progressed quickly and the moonshine was actually present and made available to the women who feigned ladyship and sipped as if they were at a finishing school commencement party. The boys, under the assumption that no woman could outdrink either of them, made sturdy attempts to prove their manhood with the jar tilted back and Adam’s apples dancing merrily under their chins. Before the stroke of midnight, both Dewberry boys had succumbed to the shine and the women began their work in earnest.
They raided the kitchen for all the stable groceries in the closet and took the time to shower since the brothers were both snoring on the floor. Then with a smile Karma Sue found the keys in Hack’s pocket and searched both brothers for the remaining money in their jeans. Just as the moon began to sink toward the ridge, the old Ford pulled out of the hollow for parts unknown. As the jolting stopped and the old truck pulled back onto the hard road, two untrained and unrestrained sopranos broke into “I’ve laid around and played around this old town too long, Summer’s almost gone, winter’s coming on, I’ve laid around and played around this old town too long, And I feel like I’ve gotta travel on.”
Roger D. Hicks is an Appalachian writer and auctioneer living in West Liberty, KY. He has published work in numerous venues including True Christmas Stories From The Heart Of Appalachia, Seeds-2021, Mush, Wingspan, Mildred Haun Review Journal, and Bryant Literary Review. His short story collection “Route 7 Stories” is scheduled for publication in late Spring 2026.
