“The J.D. then. I’ll hold my nose.” Corrigan watched Puddy splash some into a glass. “Maybe a beer to chase it down with, yeah?”
Corrigan took up his drink and spun around, elbows on the bar. All the eyeballs that had singed him from behind now swung back to their drinks or somewhere else. Berryhill and his little toadie openly glared at him. Corrigan raised his glass in a silent hail to the big man but Berryhill sneered and cued up the next ball.
Corrigan’s eye clocked the table crowded with books. A neighbour. “Hello Jim,” he said.
Jim shrank. He nodded back politely, feeling the collective eyeballs of the bar swing his way. Jim disliked attention of any kind. He withered under it, wishing his new neighbour would just bugger off, thank you very much. Corrigan seemed the exact opposite, brazenly courting attention and basking in the eye-daggers shot his way. Was the man a simpleton? Did he not know the hornet’s nest he was prodding by walking in here?
“Awfully quiet in here tonight.” Corrigan’s voice was loud in the shushed din. He sipped his drink and soaked in all the dirty looks. He tilted forward and addressed Bill. “How do you do. Mr. Berryhill?”
Berryhill didn’t even look at him, sinking the striped 7 ball. “Don’t talk to me, asshole.”
“Friendly” Corrigan bellowed back, louder than necessary. “I thought this was one of those small towns where everything is all smiles and apple pie.” Then, over his shoulder to the pub owner. “Am I wrong, Mr. Puddycombe?”
Puddy turned his back to him and loaded the washer.
“You must be dumber than a bag of rocks, mister.” Berryhill leaned on his cue and killed his beer. “I were you, I’d walk on outta here before they have to carry you out on a stretcher.”
“Ah, violent threats.” Corrigan raised his glass as if he’d been toasted. “Quel surprise. Tell me Berryhill, does murder run in the family?”
The cue slammed onto the felt pool table and Berryhill stomped towards the stranger, his intent crystal and unequivocal. “That’s it.”
Jim sprang out of his seat and headed Bill off at the pass. “Bill, come on. Don’t do anything stupid.”
Berryhill’s palms punched Jim’s chest, hurtling him backwards. “Why are you always defending this prick? You in cahoots with this fucker?”
Blood rushed to Jim’s cheeks. Humiliated. He hated fighting, hating losing control but at this precise moment he wanted nothing more than to rip Bill’s eyeballs clean from his thick skull. Something held him back, a hand on his shoulder.
It was Corrigan. “Thanks Jimmy but you’re spoiling the fun.”
Jim felt another slam as Berryhill shouldered him aside in a rush-tackle on Corrigan. He leapt at the stranger like it was the old days when he mangled the linemen standing in his way. Stomping the weak underfoot.
Corrigan was a blur, pivoting the big man’s own momentum against him. Berryhill cartwheeled overtop the man and crashed face first into a table. A chair snapped and Puddycombe cursed at them to stop.
Berryhill shook his head like a swatted puppy. Eyes plated with disbelief and then squinting into cold fury. His rage was cut short when a boot connected with his jaw. Bill’s head snapped back and bounced off the floor.
Corrigan raised his foot and stomped the man’s skull a second time, a look of insane glee in his eyes. He bellowed at Berryhill to get up, get up, get up. Bill shielded his melon with his hands and Corrigan hauled a chair overhead, intent on breaking it over the big man’s skull.
This all took ten or fifteen seconds but to Jim it unspooled in slow motion. Shock and disbelief slowing it all to a frame-by-frame crawl. Corrigan was like an animal unleashed, vicious and brutal and lethally fast. Corrigan lofted the broken chair and cursed the downed man as a motherfuckinghalfwitcocksucker.
It was long enough for Jim to snap out of his slow-mo and tackle the crazed man. They tumbled into a table and were doused by sloshing pitchers. Elbows and shoulders rammed into Jim as Hitchens and Combat Kyle dogpiled onto Corrigan.
Bill rolled away and moaned something awful. Kyle jackhammered his fist into Corrigan’s ear fast and hard until Puddycombe waded in and pushed him off.
The entire bar was on its feet. Those who piled on and those who lofted their drinks and backed away, watching and cheering.
Berryhill staggered to his feet and bumped through the tables, a bloody froth stringing down his chin. He swung out like a blind man, looking for anything and anyone to punish. “Lemme at him. Lemme at him.”
Puddycombe and a man named McGillivray held Bill back, got shoved and shoved back harder. “Enough!” yelled the pub owner. All simmered off at Puddycombe’s bark like scolded schoolboys. As proprietor, Puddy wielded some skein of authority.
Corrigan shrugged out of Jim’s grip and hurled the little rat in camouflage away from him. The son of a bitch was grinning, hollering. “Come on, ya fucking retard! Come and get some more!”
Jim and Hitchens crowded Corrigan into the boards and everyone shouted at everyone else to shut up. The hollering and the cursing low-geared into grumblings and both brawlers retreated to their corners.
Hitchens shook the wool from his head and looked around at the assembled faces. “Somebody call the frigging cops.”
Red and blue lights blinked against the windows of the Dublin House. The black and white cruiser was from the Exford branch of the Ontario Provincial Police. Cars travelling down Galway Road slowed to rubberneck the flashing lights.
Half the tables emptied when the cherries flashed in the window. Two more patrons slipped out the back when Constable Ray Bauer came through the door and surveyed the bar with keen indifference. Bauer, who loathed being called to a bar brawl, was born and raised in the area and recognized the men involved. Proprietor Brian Puddycombe, Jim Hawkshaw and Dave Hitchens. Bill Berryhill wasn’t a surprise, nor was his surly little sycophant Combat Kyle. These two pissants were often at the center of trouble and more than likely the same turn of events held true tonight.
One man sat alone at a table, watching everything unfold. A tall man grinning through a bloodied lip. Bauer immediately pegged him as trouble.
Bauer decided to start with the proprietor. Puddycombe had the most risk involved here and could therefore be counted on for the most reliable sequence of events. Puddycombe’s statement would serve as a basis to question the others. Halfway through the pub owner’s story, he spotted a newcomer and was surprised to see the mayor. Kate stood at the door and surveyed the broken chairs and upended tables.
Berryhill gave his statement and then slouched into a chair and pressed a wet bar towel to his bloodied mouth. He watched the OPP cop close his notebook and withdraw to a corner to make a call. Puddycombe handed him a clean towel and took the soiled one from him. He grimaced at the smear of blood on his linen. “I’m adding these to your bar tab,” he said.
Jim leaned on the jukebox, his hands still shaky from the fire of adrenalin. A bar fight for Christ’s. sakes When was the last time he’d been in one of those? Back when he was a brainless kid. It was downright embarrassing. His dug out his phone, debating whether to call Emma to tell her what had happened. Why he was so late getting home. He dropped it back into his pocket unused.
“Maybe you ought to sit down,” Kate said. She waved Jim over to join her at the table. When Puddycombe had called her, she thought he was pulling her leg. Grown men getting into a barroom brawl? Then he told her that the man Corrigan was involved. She had rushed over.
Although unmarked, Jim looked as if he’d taken the worst of it. “You look a little green,” she said.