Amateur Night

It's St. Patrick's Day at Murphy's Pub, in a small town in Colorado. Because Murphy's has a shamrock on its sign and is easily identifiable as the Irish place, it's crowded, and is selling a lot of alcohol.

Jerry O'Brian is Irish and is a regular at Murphy's Pub. He doesn't like St. Patrick's Day, which he calls "Amateur Night," because there are too many non-drinkers at the bar and too many of them are drunk. He himself holds his alcohol - he can drink whiskey all night and not do anything rash or violent, but these people, one or two beers and they start yelling or punching each other like they'd been holding it in all year.

One of these so-called amateurs is named Jake, and he has been hitting on Rose, another regular at the bar. Jerry, like many guys at the bar, is somewhat protective of Rose if only because she's a regular. They've all hit on her too at some point or another and who knows who she has actually ever gone home with, not Jerry for sure. But Jerry gets in Jake's face at one point because he's being too forward with Rose. He tells Jake to bug off and go find someone else. Jake takes a swing at Jerry. But he's so drunk he ends up falling on the floor, the swing missing Jerry by a country mile.

Now people rush in to keep the two separated. They make moves to get Jake out of there; he's the guilty party. Jerry watches Jake with a hardened eye - it's hard to tell whether he is memorizing his features so as to pound him later, or whether he simply doesn't believe anyone would be stupid enough to take such a wide swing at him.

Rick the bartender has played the biggest role in trying to get a fallen Jake out of the bar, tossed out onto the curb and told not to come back tonight. He hasn't gotten very far because the bar is so crowded. With a man on the floor everyone has to jostle around to get their drinks and take them to their tables. One guy, Scott, actually spills his scotch onto Rick while Rick is dragging Jake across the floor.

This is the last straw for Rick, who stops what he's doing and just tells Scott to leave the bar also. "Just leave before I pop you one," he tells Scott, but Scott is also drunk beyond his usual limit, and doesn't take him seriously. Besides, he'd just bought a Scotch and was now eager to drink part of it. He swigs what's left in his glass and looks seriously at Rick. It's like he's trying to figure out if Rick is serious or not.

But Rick is dead serious, and he knows he should never back down from a demand he's made of any customer. If he thinks Scott should leave, Scott should leave, and he'll stare Scott down until he does, and get back-up help if necessary. There are at least four people working the floor, three of them big enough to help him in a pinch. He wants Scott to leave and he's not backing down.

There's an Irish band over in the corner. This is quite unusual for a small town in Colorado, but this bar found the band, and employed them, and they're busy playing lots of Irish music. The fiddler, Seamus, is out front and he knows he needs a lot of elbow room to do his job. He's not happy that people keep spilling drinks so near to their cords and mics and electric equipment. He's somewhat superstitious about losing all the power just because people are so drunk and so crowded they can't hold a drink upright. He's got his eyes on Rose who for some reason got his attention the minute they started playing.

Rose for her part has stayed close to Jerry, thinking that if she stays close to him, he won't pound that Jake guy who is drunk on the floor and being dragged out of the place by Rick. Jerry puts his arm around her and gives her a big wet sloppy kiss. They are old friends if nothing else and it's St. Patrick's Day, maybe they feel it's their way of celebrating to just let go and enjoy the situation. Seamus steams a little as he watches but he's busy fiddling; there isn't much he can do.

The bar has degenerated a little into a fight with lots of pushing and shoving. This started because Scott took a swing at Rick the bartender, and missed and hit some other guy, who then jumped into it like it was his opportunity to let go of a year's built up stress and tension. It was an accident, for God's sake. But this guy doesn't care, and goes swinging at everyone, Scott, Rick, whoever is anywhere near him.

When the police show up he's the guy they're after, because he's already decked three or four guys and he's not afraid to do as much damage as he possibly can. He's all dressed up, but strong underneath all those fancy clothes, and nobody's ever seen him before, like he just popped in out of nowhere with an agenda to beat everyone up. At one point a gun appears, in the hands of some guy that got popped in the jaw, but cooler heads prevail and this is just before the police arrive, so in that situation it's best to keep the gun out of sight and out of the fight. Jerry at some point goes over to deal with the guy with the gun and after that, to explain to the police a little of what happened, and he gets drawn into the argument about who started it all.

This is Seamus' opportunity, and he offers Rose a ride home, which she accepts. The night is over. Too much damage has been done already. The band takes down its equipment and gets ready to go home; it's at least midnight anyway. The police are now swarming the place, having called for backup, so no one is going to have a good time from this time out, unless you count those who have slipped out the back, like Seamus and Rose. It's another one for the books. The management of Murphy's just wants to close the place and have everyone go home. Out on the street, police are patrolling for drunken drivers, who are plentiful, so it's best just to walk home, if you live in the town.