“My boy is in Mississippi State Prison, been in there four years for beating a cop’s boy nearly to death,” said the stranger on the barstool two seats down from me and Herndie, my old climbing buddy who was out for a few months of R and R in the crisp Colorado air.

“I’m Ted, and you two are?”

We introduced ourselves and I thought that was the end of that.

Herndie and I had been driving around late evening looking for the OU game on a big TV. The University of Oklahoma football team was ranked number one and, both of us having gone to that school, we followed the team when they were doing well.

We ended up at the Crystal Club on the boulevard in Redstone, an enclave of 92 people, mostly retirees or owners of the various hotels and restaurants catering to tourists who spill through town when the weather is nice. The Crystal Club has satellite TV, two screens and I know the owner Billy and he’ll tune to whatever game you are looking for.

“My boy is only 5’ 7” but he can bench press 450 and look at my shoulder,” said Ted.

His shoulder looked fine, except when you actually looked at it you saw that the outside part of it was missing, as if it had been blown away by a cannon ball.

“I was wrestling with my boy and he twisted around and busted my shoulder. He’s in the Mississippi State Prison and I love him. He hasn’t gotten a single tattoo in the Penn. I told him that if he loved me he wouldn’t get a tattoo because when you get out, a tattoo marks you as a con,” Ted said, weeping a little and taking a slow pull off his beer.

“You guys wrestle?”

“Naw,” said Herndie, “but my friend here,” he pointed to me, “is a climber and he has the strongest grip.”

“You have a grip do you?” Ted said, and leaned out and around Herndie to get a good look at me.

Ted was about my height but had arms like steel pipes and a head like a fire hydrant and broad shoulders except for the one part that was missing. His hair stood up like straw and he had wild blue eyes, like Manson.

“I used to play football,” he said, “and I told myself I only played a good game if the next morning I couldn’t add two and two.”

Ted muttered something either about Teddy Roosevelt or Ted Bundy. I couldn’t quite make it out. Then a vexed look crossed his face.

“You have a grip do you?” he asked again, leaning out and around Herndie so I would be sure to hear him.

“No, no,” I replied, “he’s just kidding.”

“Let me see your hands!”

I held up my hands, knuckles scabbed and swollen and sporting a butterfly bandage covering a gash. I’d nearly cut myself to the bone on a sharp arete earlier that day.

“Your hands look awful,” Herndie chimed in.

Ted was quiet as he studied my hands. Then he held up his right hand, a meaty mitt covered in veins and the size of a shovel blade. “Meet The Hammer!” he exclaimed. “By God let’s get it on! Grip contest!

Ted shoved The Hammer toward me and I nearly grabbed it by instinct. He saw my hand approach and a wild look crossed his face.

“No, no my hands are old and broken,” I said and glanced toward the door 20 feet away but on the other side of Ted.

“He is old and broken,” said Herndie. “He’s got a steel rod in his neck and his shoulder is falling to pieces and he’s 51.

“I was the defensive coordinator for USC,” Ted said, “and I told myself it wasn’t a good game unless I woke up the next morning and couldn’t add four and four. I’m a plumber now and The Hammer can twist the nuts off a drilling rig.”

“Hey, you know I drill for oil and gas,” said Herndie, “but I’m a geologist and don’t work around here.”

“I can find water or oil with two bent coat hangers, or even a stick. Are you left or right eye dominant?” Ted asked Herndie.

“What?” Herndie said.

“Is your left or right eye dominant?” Ted asked again.

“Left, last time I went to the eye doctor a few years ago,” said Herndie.

“Gimme your glasses” Ted said and he snatched Herndie’s reading glasses off the bar top and, inexplicably, put them on. He then held up The Hammer and his other (unnamed) hand and using the index finger and thumb on each hand he touched them together to make a little triangle shape that he extended out at eye level toward Herndie.

“Get up,” he demanded.

Herndie got up.

“Walk toward me.”

Herndie walked toward him and Ted administered an eye test, holding his triangle steady and sighting through it as if Herndie were a 14-point buck.

“You walked to the right! You are right-eye dominant!” Ted exclaimed.

“The eye doctor said I was left eye,” said Herndie, “and half the deer I’ve shot I’ve sighted with my left eye.”

“Right eye, you walked to the right. Right eye!”

“But, but the optometrists said …”

“Right hand is dominant!” exclaimed Ted. “My boy was born right handed but I made him left handed so he could throw a ball with his left hand.”

It was one of those crazy moments, like the one in No Country For Old Men where Chigurh uses a murderous code to decide who will live and who will die by tossing a coin and making his pitiful victim call it, saying, “What’s the most you ever loss on a coin toss?”

I wanted to tell Herndie to just agree and go with the right eye and to also hurry up and drink his soda so we could split, but he nursed his Diet Mountain Dew seemingly oblivious to the tight situation. And, I thought painfully to myself, why did he have to mention that I had strong hands?

“You, Duane! You are a climber. You have a grip?” Ted asked, again holding The Hammer aloft.

I was grateful that I hadn’t mentioned my last name or said that I lived just down the street, where my wife Lisa was tucking the blankets up under the chins of our two little daughters right about now, details that you can sometimes stupidly blurt out when meeting someone whose well-loved right-handed boy made left handed was doing time in the Mississippi State Penn for beating someone almost to death.

“I used to have a grip,” I told Ted, “but look at my hands. Like Herndie said, they are awful.”

Ted looked again at my hands and let out a low whistle, then said, “51, eh? I’m 48. If my hands are going to look like yours in three years, I’m having another drink!”