The Last Resort by L.I. Henley

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The men’s competition came first, and now it’s our turn. I’m the woman in the red paisley summer dress and impractical sandals staring directly over the lip of my stein, past the crowd into the glossy leaves of oak trees. It’s possible I’m not blinking. My right arm is held straight out, parallel to the ground, my fingers wrapped around the stein’s glass handle, thumb resting on my other fingers. I made sure I heard the rules twice. Do not raise your arm above ninety degrees, do not put your thumb on top of the handle, do not spill a drop. Perfect form is key. 

The only rule for the audience is not to touch the contestants—if you’re going to spit, spit from a distance. Same with throwing your beer. 

What’s at stake? All of us are vying for the $100 gift certificate to the resort’s farm-to-table restaurant with its dark, oak siding, oil paintings, and dim lighting. Here, in Cherry Valley, after church or a long shift, people gather at places like the BBQ Pit next to the gun store, or Flo’s, which is awkwardly set in a residential neighborhood littered with junk cars. The lavender fields, ancient oaks, and gourmet restaurant make the historic resort feel like a mirage—a fairyland. 

An imposing man with an eye patch, a wooden cane, and a permanent case of bed-head, is the competition’s referee and overlord. His handwritten nametag says, “Hawk-Eye Bob,” and there’s no doubt that he is. Hawk-Eye’s been organizing the Highland Springs’ stein-holding contest as part of the Annual Beer and Sausage Festival for over a decade, and you can bet he waits all year for it. When it was my turn in line, I paid my entrance fee (a hefty $25) and commented on the hot weather. He hooked his thumbs behind his star-spangled suspenders and said I looked familiar. Was I here last year? Yes, I tell him, I was. You place? No, I didn’t, I tell him. He chuckled to himself, just to bridge the moment, then looked up and said, “Lotta ghosts on this property.” His good, green eye scanned the shaking oak leaves and acorn cups, and then he added, “Einstein hung around here, you know.” No, I said, I didn’t know. I drifted away from the booth with my stein of frothy beer held close to my chest, my eyes searching the trees for Einstein’s ghost. 

We’re at the forty-five second mark now, and Hawk-Eye is living up to his name, casting out through a megaphone the badge numbers of moms and grandmothers whose arms betrayed them. 

“Number Two with the Daisy Dukes, yer done!” 

“Number Five—are you kidding me? Get out of here!”

Some of the competitors he knows by name. This is, after all, a scene for locals. 

I’m from a place about fifty miles east of here—a small, rural California desert town with one main artery in and out. But Cherry Valley is one of those places where if you don’t share the same zip code, you might as well be from Mars. There is very much a feeling that if you aren’t from here, you ain’t from around here. 

“Trudy, you think John’s gonna let you come home tonight without that gift certificate? Sorry, hun—yer done!”

Trudy and Hawk-Eye know each other. Probably they are neighbors, bridge partners. Trudy has an ankle in a medical boot. She lowers her arm and stomps her boot in mock disappointment then waves the act away to show she’s just kidding. Sipping daintily at her beer, she limps away from the lineup, squinting in the glaring sun. 

“Grandma Ester! Looks like you’re cooking supper tonight after all. Give it up, Granny!” 

Grandma Ester is sweating buckets from her skull-and-cross-bones do-rag. Her pink t-shirt says, “Fuck cancer.” Relieved to be done, she lowers her shaking arm and takes a well-deserved drink, letting some of the beer run down the front of her chin. 

Though I was here last year, the only person I somewhat remember, besides the unforgettable Hawk-Eye, is Grandma Ester, for she and I had given up around the same time. 

To my left and my right, women are lowering their steins to the sounds of their family’s audible boos and jeers. The fewer of us that remain, the more fervently the sausage-munching crowd screams and pumps their fists into the hot August air. 

Hawk-Eye goads and harangues the audience, too. “Is that your second or third spicy dog today, Mark? How’s the pacemaker? Can you believe this place used to be a health spa? You ever have a high-colonic, Mark? Well, you’re about to with that third spicy….”

And Hawk-Eye is correct. Juice fasts and high colonics were the primary treatments. While perusing the oak paneled lobby of the restaurant earlier, I saw the photos of the white-linen clad patients milling about the property, circa 1930. The health spa was called, no kidding, The Last Resort—a title that carried with it the desperation of its clients.  

“Two-minute mark, ladies! Keep those arms at ninety-degrees! Remember—second place gets nothing!” 

It’s surprising how heavy a stein of beer can become after just two minutes. The dimpled glass weighs about three pounds and the liter of beer adds another two pounds or so. How much the hot southern California air mixed with the harassment of drunken onlookers weighs is unknowable. I try not to remember that it was at the two-minute mark that I gave up last year. 

Number Ten, to my left, is called away from the line by Hawk-Eye for placing her thumb on top of the handle—a cardinal sin in stein holding. Number One is told to quit bending her back or her ass is grass. Number Twelve’s tattooed arm drops without warning like a demolished bridge, and suddenly I’m standing in a puddle of cool beer. Two red-headed boys in the audience point and laugh hysterically. A disappointed husband grumbles, loudly, “Damn it all to hell, Cheryl.” 

I allow myself a few seconds to look at Number Twelve’s tattoo as she splashes by. Taking up her left shoulder are two baby feet, a dark dash between a set of dates, a name looped in cursive. 

One gets the feeling that the gift certificate is beside the point, that all of us have our reasons for being here, for paying good money to try something we will almost assuredly fail. The women’s competition has grown, Hawk-Eye proclaimed as part of his pre-contest spiel. “Started out with just a handful of brave women, and now we’ve got nineteen this year. Women want to prove themselves, too!” I wondered, fleetingly, if there was a Mrs. Hawk- Eye in the audience, or maybe in the lineup, and if she thought women brave to hold a stein of beer under the crushing weight of physics.

From across the grassy stretch of the Highland Springs fairgrounds, more and more people stumble over with their bratwursts and sloshing pints and mustard-stained children to both cheer on and berate the diminishing line of female competitors. 

And that’s my partner, JM, calling out to me in support though I don’t know what he’s saying. He doesn’t lay on the shouts like everyone else. He’s tactful about it. He was last year’s winner among the men, and he was tactful then, too—giving his stein of beer to the young guy who came in second place. Granted, I had to pull the car over at least once on our drive home so the winner could hurl into the weeds. But today, a sober JM came in second place, meaning, he lost. After the winning man chugged his beer in victory, JM shook his hand. The guy pulled JM in close and said hotly into his ear, “You would’ve won, pal, if I hadn’t been here. I have no feeling in my right shoulder. I could’ve held it the rest of the day and night.” 

I let my eyes fall from the trees to check on Grandma Ester who sits slumped under a nearby oak, her mostly full stein growing warm in the sun, a couple of kids jumping around her. I can’t imagine that Grandma Ester thought she had much of a chance. 

Maybe the biggest difference between the men and women’s competitions is that the men go into the contest believing that they will win, and the women go into it knowing they won’t, but that they are going to try regardless. Maybe it’s the men who are brave (i.e. fearless) and the women who have courage in that Atticus Finch, “see it through no matter what” kind of spirit. When the badge numbers of the women are called, that’s when you can really see that winning was never the point. They look less angry or disappointed than relieved—relieved that the charade is over and they can rest in the cools of the oaks. 

“Don’t it hurt so good, ladies? Don’t it hurt so GOOD?” 

Oh, god, I think to myself, I hate all of this. What am I doing here? 

Pain, pain, pain. Burning, tearing, pain. It hits me suddenly that I might not ever be able to raise my right arm again, never raise a pen or wave hello or brush my teeth. 

Were you here last year? Yes. Did you place? No. I gave up when it felt like I was being stabbed in the pelvis and bellybutton at the sites of my three laparoscopy incisions. My post-surgery instructions told me I had to wait three weeks to drive and six weeks before sex, but it didn’t mention anything about stein-holding competitions. When I stood in the line last summer and held out my $25 pint of beer that I could not drink, I was not only healing from surgery but from two years of sickness during which I was so weak I could barely walk, barely raise a pen or wave hello or brush my teeth…So, again, I ask myself, What the fuck am I DOING? 

I am not a frat boy. I am not being hazed. I am not— 

Hawk-Eye roars into the microphone, “Three-minute mark, ladies! And only five of you left standing!” 

Men, women, and children are hollering at the top of their lungs in a kind of Huxleyesque, trailer park “orgy-porgy.” All I hear is a great roar, though I am aware that now there are people screaming specifically at me, Number Eleven. I hear someone sneer that Number Eleven is arching her back—the girlie in the red dress—so I force myself straight. Pain, pain, pain. It is all pain. 

“A little history here folks while we watch. Among the frequent visitors to the resort were Wyatt Earp, Albert Einstein, Elizabeth Taylor, and Lassie the Dog….”

Number Fourteen is sent away under a halo of laughter when her wrist comically, cartoonishly, spins 180 degrees to the right as though she is made of melted taffy. The puddle of beer grows into a swamp. 

Number Twenty is lambasted for stumbling backwards in a partial fainting spell. 

Number Seven pukes up her $10-dollar pretzel dog. 

Other numbers bellow through the megaphone until there is only me and Number Nineteen. Now the crowd is divided—screaming my number and hers. There is a group of particularly rambunctious women directly in front of me who have been inching closer and closer with their belligerent shouts and elbows and pointed fingers. I noticed them earlier with their matching “Beaumont Bitches 4Eva” tank tops.

“Girlie’s gonna drop that arm!” one of the women shouts like a roided-up sports announcer.

“Drop your arm, girlie!” 

“No way—she’s gonna win!” 

There is discord among the Beaumont Bitches. Another proclaims that I am “one of those LA yoga bitches,” and I am immediately sure there is a corresponding tank top with this moniker. 

“Number Nineteen!”

“Number Eleven!” 

“Number Nineteen!” 

I am waiting to feel their beer soak my skin. What the crowd doesn’t know, would never expect or fathom, is that I have an autoimmune disease that causes my body to completely shut down if I ingest wheat. That beer is made from wheat. That if I were to be soaked in beer, I would at the very least suffer a full-body rash. My lips are pinched tightly together as the seconds wear on. My whole face is crumbling in on itself like a raisin. I’d close my eyes, too, but I need them for balance, need them for staring over the heads of the mob and into the ancient, dark green oaks, waiting to see God or the ghost of Einstein or Elizabeth Taylor or Lassie the Fucking Dog.  

For a moment, I floor it past pain, ramp it, catch air, and land on the other side of feeling. I am one with the live oaks, numb as the golden bell of an acorn. I have shed the pain suit of the body and oh, oh it feels good, feels like nothing at all. I might be smiling or gaping, my mouth ready to drink the poison rain….

“Number Eleven wins!” 

At first, I don’t hear it, don’t want to, high on the velveteen feeling of no feeling, the exquisité of nerve-damage. But then I hear JM cheering, and I know I must come back down. 

All the Beaumont Bitches are cheering for me now. One of them shouts triumphantly, totally assured of her assessment, pointing so hard her arm might pop out of socket, “It’s all that yoga shit she do!” 

Number Nineteen has already disappeared back into the crowd, and it feels as though I might have been alone the entire last minute. I lower my arm and take in the enthusiastic mob who all urgently, desperately want me to drink my beer. I feel like I should try to say something, that I owe the raucous bunch more than I have already given them, some kind of explanation. I want to tell them everything, that I am just now reentering society after years of debilitating illness, that everything is much too bright, much too loud. Tell them that I don’t do yoga. That I’m from a little town not too far away. They pump their fists and beg for me to drink my beer, drink it, DRINK the goddamn beer already! 

“I can’t drink it!” I shout back. 

“Yeah, drink it! Chug! Chug, girlie! Chug!” 

“I can’t!” 

A few people cup their ears and make the universal sign for, “huh?” 

“Chug! Chug!” 

“I CAN’T DRINK IT! I’M ALLERGIC! ALLERGIC TO BEER!”

And I have lost them. Most people are gathering up their stuff, looking around for their kids. Hawk-Eye Bob, who sounds tired now, says through the megaphone that I can collect my gift certificate in the lobby. He says it was a good line-up this year and reminds everyone to pick up their trash.  

JM is at my side, and we are looking around for someone to give the stein to, but everyone is sick of beer. Everyone is stumbling away, drunk, sunburned, feeling around in their pockets and bags for car keys.

An ambulance has been called for Grandma Ester, who now sits slumped under the shade of an oak with kids standing over her, fanning her with dirty paper plates. JM, who used to be an EMT, jogs over to wait with her until the paramedics come. 

We like to believe that winning is just about grit, talent, our personal, magnificent whatever—but there is also luck, chance, a whole shitshow of cosmic circumstances waiting to help us or harm us. There are cells rapidly dividing without our permission. Things growing in the dark of our bodies. The genes of our parents. What we ate for lunch. No matter how strong you are, there is a guy out there with nerve damage, working over the stein-holding competition circuits of the world, winning all the gift certificates. 

My shoes are ruined, but my feet are somehow dry. I step out of them and walk barefoot on the grass. Dehydrated and a little dizzy, I am feeling light now, unburdened by gravity, my right arm a windsock without a breeze. Wafts of lavender mix with the greasy aromata of processed meats, and I wonder if Einstein saw the whole day unfold, amused and bemused by the silly things humans do to prove themselves. What is wrong with these people; what kind of purulent illness is this? 

I think about the reasons folks had for participating, for watching, for screaming their heads off, and do they feel better now? Relieved of some irritant? I think about the women—those who wanted to and those who felt they had to and wonder which one am I. Both, probably. 

The ambulance has arrived without a siren. The fire truck pulls up and then leaves. The EMTs in their blue uniforms walk without urgency to the elderly woman and her flock of grandchildren under the enormous oak. Grandma Ester and JM, good friends now, touch each other’s shoulders and elbows, tenderly saying their goodbyes. The guys in blue take her vital signs as she tries to wave them away, embarrassed by all the attention. 

JM comes back to me, his face flushed, holding the empty stein of beer, which he has poured out along the way. He is excited to tell me that Grandma Ester is conscious and can carry on a conversation. This was her fifth time competing. Happens to her every year. “She’s exhausted, but she’s ok,” he says. “She’s going to be ok.” 

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L.I. Henley was born and raised in Joshua Tree, California. An artist and writer, she is the author of many books including Starshine Road, (Perugia Press). Her art, poetry, and prose have appeared in Adroit, Brevity, The Indianapolis Review, Ninth Letter, and Arts & Letters. Her essay, “Drive!” was chosen as the winner of the Arts & Letters/Susan Atefat Prize in 2020. Visit her at www.lihenley.com. 

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18 August 2022