I was in the kitchen, using a wet towel to clean off the grill. Steam blasted up, and I could feel my forearm getting burned, but I didn’t care. I usually didn’t because there would never in a million years be a lasting mark, but this was different. This was penance.
The phone rang. I never answered it because of my tendency to casually curse during conversation, or sometimes even when no one was around. Abraham answered the phone. I heard him ask who it was, and then he came back to the kitchen through the double doors.
“Phone’s for you,” he said.
“Who is it?”
“Some dude.”
“Did you get a fucking name?”
He shrugged. I swallowed. Took the phone.
“Yes?”
“Hey, killer,” said the voice.
I hung up.
Abraham saw me grinding my teeth. I told him to get the fuck out of the kitchen. A second later the phone began to ring again. I picked it up.
“Be seeing you,” said the voice.
I hung up.
I grabbed my pack of cigarettes and walked out of the kitchen. I had to get out of there. “Hey,” shouted Abe, “where the hell are you going?”
“I gotta go,” I said.
“But Carlos ain’t here yet.”
“I gotta go,” I repeated. I got in the truck and took off.
Like old Bill Parker I was circling Old Sherman Road. I couldn’t stop myself from doing it because it felt right. I knew it felt right for him too, and that’s why he did it.
When I got home it was after six. The second I walked in, the phone rang. It was with this phone call that I stopped teetering on that edge and finally fell. I picked up the receiver, and the voice said, “I’m sure Frank won’t be happy that you left early.”
“I’ll see you in hell,” I said.
“I’m counting on it, because I’m going to make you pay for what you did.”
“Who the fuck is this? Why are you doing this to me?”
“I’m the tooth fairy, Higgins.”
“Why don’t you come on over, then. I got something under my pillow for you.”
“Well,” said the voice, “I’ve already left something there for you.”
I hung up and rushed into the bedroom. My heart was beating in my ears. Everything looked the way I had left it in the morning. I walked over to my bed and lifted up the pillow. There was a note, folded in two.
“Oh my God,” I said out loud.
I lifted the piece of paper and unfolded it with my shaking hands.
It read, “IT’S OVER.”
I ran into the bathroom, where there was a small window that I had never wanted to nail shut because when I take a dump it is truly deadly. The window was halfway opened, the tiny little lock on the top of the frame was hanging on by one screw. Probably jimmied from the outside by a fucking flathead screwdriver. I clutched the doorframe for balance and screamed. A second later, the phone rang.
I pulled my truck into the parking lot of the first bar I came across. I couldn’t take it anymore. There was a time for being a stoic motherfucker, and a time for getting trashed and beating someone’s head in. This was a time for the latter.
I came in through the door and was greeted with honky-tonk music playing a bit too loud—just the way I used to like it—and the warm glow of a dozen neon beer signs. Sawdust littered the floor in mounds. It helped with the ambience by taking your attention away from the drunks passed out in the corners. I sauntered up to the bar, and the bartender came on over.
“Howdy,” he said. “You look pretty down. What’s going on, partner?”
“Oh, you know, lost my best friend, lost my whole way of living … all very Old Testament kind of bad things going on.”
“Sorry to hear that.” He chuckled, as if I was kidding. “Gimme a shot of whiskey and a pint. Whatever’s cheapest,” I said.
“I’m sorry, partner, I can’t do that.”
“Do what?”
“I can’t serve you any alcohol.”
I was flabbergasted. “Why the hell not? This is a bar, ain’t it? Ain’t that what gets done in these fucking places? Gimme a drink, goddamn it. I got cash money, just like every other sonofabitch in here.”
My attempt at getting wasted was not working out as planned.
“I’m sorry, I just can’t do it.”
“Well … why, man?”
“Last time you was in here, you fucked this place good and proper, and we can’t go on and let that happen again, can we?”
“Oh, you prick. What is this, a joke? Where the hell did I set foot in?”
“This is Cowboy’s Cabin.”
“No shit.”
“No shit. No, sir.”
“Well,” I shouted, “I guess I’m just gonna have to get one of these slim motherfuckers at the bar to buy a drink for me. What do you say, boys?”
Four younger guys in designer outfits sat down the bar from me, a few other guys filled up some tables behind me, and I was in the mood to rumble. More than anything else, I wanted one of these boys to do their best to kill me in hand-to-hand combat. The four guys looked at me, shook their heads no about buying me a drink, and looked down, then went back to drinking.
“Well, fuck each of you and all of you, then,” I shouted.
“Sir,” said the barkeep, “I think I’m gonna have to ask you to leave.”
“You know, it’s been a while since I’ve heard that. Let’s hear it again.”
“Will you please leave?”
“Don’t ask, pissant. Do it. Or try, if you think you can.”
I put my dukes up.
All of a sudden, I saw bits of wood flying past my head from behind me. A second later, I felt pain, and I realized someone had just busted a pool stick off my head.
I turned around, and the guy there looked awfully familiar. Someone, some time, had broken that nose of his good and proper. I tasted blood in my mouth, coming from somewhere up high on my head.
“Excuse me,” I said. “Did I ever fuck your sister?”
His two friends grabbed me from all sides and dragged me outside.
“Was it something I said?”
They went to work on me out in the parking lot, all of them. Bounced me off so many cars, I knew what flies felt like on country roads. They even incorporated a belt and a tire iron into the beating.
“You like that?” one of them shouted as he jammed his boot into my stomach.
“I like it like your mother likes it,” I grunted. “Do your fucking worst, faggot.”
The next thing I knew, I was handcuffed to a metal rod running along a gray cement wall. I was lying on a wood bench. A bright light burned overhead, and two of the guys that had vandalized my ass were cuffed to another rod on the wall to my right. They were immaculate. All I could see of myself were my hands, which looked like they had been run over by a pair of dirt bikes.
It had been a long time since I was behind bars. It didn’t bother me, being behind bars, but it bothered me that it had to happen in Evelyn, and not some other hick place that I could pass a fake name off in.
I looked at the two men and said, “Hey, I know where I know you guys from. You’re Moe and Curly. Where’s Larry?”
“He runs like a jackrabbit,” said Curly.
“How you boys feeling?”
“Fuck you,” said Moe. The other spat at me.
“That’s not very civil.”
“You broke my nose a few years ago,” said Moe. “The dang thing never healed right, man. I’ve been waiting years to get my hands on you, and by the grace of God that time finally came.”
I laughed, though it made my head hurt some.
A uniformed cop came to the bars and banged his nightstick against them. Behind him stood Van Buren in a suit with his detective’s shield pinned to a black holder fastened to his belt. The suit was no work of Italian finery, but cost a hell of a lot more than the brown layer of shit I’d worn to his partner’s funeral.