I was in El Dorado sometime back, on a recruiting trip for the residential high school where I teach. My school paid for the trip so I got a room at the Super 8 near the highway, checked in and bought some dinner at a tacqueria where the menu was written in Spanish. The dining area was like a late-night Laundromat, the walls filthy with hand prints and smudges, the place empty except for a couple kids coloring at a table, and a short man up front digging through a box of bootleg spanish-language DVD's.

Afterward I drove back to the Super 8 and sat in my car pondering going inside and watching television until I fell asleep. I circled the lot a couple times trying to make up my mind then drove to a roadhouse I’d seen just past the lumberyard and the Merriot Inn, where highway 82 gets dark and narrows down to two lanes.

Out front there were four trucks, a couple older cars, and three motorcycles, all Harleys.

The place was laid out like just about every other roadhouse I’ve ever been in, the building just a cinder block rectangle with a concrete slab floor, with the bar in the middle of the room and pool tables on one side, a stage and some tables on the other. Stools and ragged padding around the edge of the bar and liquor bottles shelved and potato chips lined up near a hand-written sign and a jukebox—digital, newer, no whirring machinery, just a display screen. Across the bar were three women in their forties, further away a couple of pool players buying beer and on my side three guys in leather jackets, two of them conferring about something.

I sat next to the third man in leather, who had big meaty hands and craggy skin and thick white hair that had been dyed black some time back--the roots were maybe two inches of snow white. The effect was to give him something of a skunk-like appearance.

I only had to sit there for about five minutes before he started talking to me. Asked if I was up in El Dorado looking for a job. I told him I was just passing through. That I lived in Hot Springs. He said he used to work there as a hot walker, somebody who had to run around the track leading race horses, cooling them down after workouts. I told him about my friends who work at the track, now, including one who sometimes works as a hot walker. I mentioned he’d had his foot stepped on some time back.

The guy said his name was Mike and I gave him my name and shook his hand and it was like gripping a brick, heavy and rough.

I sat there long enough to drink two beers. I was in no hurry. In that time, I learned that he’d been to the Salvation Army in Hot Springs, and that it was smaller than the Salvation Army shelter in El Dorado. He told me he’d worked on small oil drills, then about a recent death, the son of a friend who wrecked riding his bike going 100 mph. Mike's theory was the kid let off his gas too quick and the back wheel locked up on him.

The worst part, he said, was they had all left him behind at a bar and the kid was hurrying to catch up.

I ordered another beer and silently toasted my good fortune. Five minutes in a strange bar and I'd made a friend. I'd been reticent about walking into the place, and now I felt a surge of faith in the essential goodwill of the human race. I congratulated myself on not just holing up in the motel room.

Then Mike mentioned he’d been having trouble finding work lately because of "the blacks." He asked me if I didn’t think it was a problem that they got all the jobs and then they don’t work and then the company has to move off. He asked me if I had trouble with blacks stealing my job.

I considered taking umbrage, and maybe I ought to have done so. But I was tired and despaired at trying to argue somebody out of some stupid belief. So I just told him I thought in my ideal world there would be enough work for everybody. He asked didn't I agree with him about black people and I said I liked judging people one at a time rather than in large groups.

He said he'd hated black people ever since his wife left him for one. He started telling the story, and it was a wild one, but I had a sour taste in my mouth and I wasn't really listening, anymore.

Everything seemed pathetic. I noticed for the first time how dirty the floor was, how the duct tape used to repair the arm rest had been taped over and retaped in layers, much of it peeling and rolled up and gummy. Everybody in the place looked downright miserable. After a minute, one of the other bikers leaned over to talk to Mike and I dropped down a dollar for a tip and left, drove back to the motel and turned on the television.