My first night in Evelyn, I had wandered into some dive called the Cowboy’s Cabin. I’d seen a million places just like it sprinkled across the world. The jukebox played either Hank Williams or Willie Nelson, and the women were either too young or too old. There was sawdust on the floor, and a pull handle on the crapper in the back. There were the serious drunks minding their own business in the corners, and making all the noise around the bar and the pool tables were the college boys and weekend partiers who wanted to hit somebody almost as much as they wanted to get laid.
I sauntered up to this one particular group of clowns who had claimed one of the pool tables and started staring at them really hard with this big, shit-eating grin on my face. They began to get uncomfortable and whisper among themselves. Finally, one of them summoned up the courage to ask me what in the blue hell I was looking at.
I said, “I’ve never seen anyone as ugly as you before.”
It was on.
In hindsight I guess it wasn’t so much a fight as it was a small-scale riot. The ordeal began with me and those three men at the pool table, a trio whom I will refer to as Larry, Curly, and Moe, because that’s what they looked like. As they came at me and I knocked them back, the other patrons became embroiled one by one. The fight kept getting bigger and bigger, like a plant (albeit a very violent plant), until the whole place was swinging, even the staff.
Shit was flying all around the place—tables, bottles, and chairs. It might have been the alcohol I’d consumed, but I think I even saw a guy hit another guy with a fake leg. That was a hell of a thing, let me tell you.
By the time the responding officers showed up, the mirror behind the bar had been replaced with an unconscious male, and a small fire was burning in the corner of the room.
One cop came in and was immediately confronted by one of the drunks. The drunk suffered a kick to the sac and crumpled up in a fetal position on the bloody floor. The cop doing the kicking was Danny Pearce. He didn’t bat an eye about what he’d done. He just moved on to the next fellow who needed some calming down.
The other cop, Danny’s partner, started blinding people with pepper spray the second he walked in. Bodies fell, caught in the pain and the seizure-like grip of freaking out because you think you’re never going to be able to see again. Everyone started screaming.
The screaming distracted me, and in that one instant, the guy I was duking it out with picked up a bottle and smashed it over the handsome side of my face. Some would say that’s the side of my face that doesn’t actually exist, but they would be wrong. I could feel the cold beer sink into my clothes, and the hot rush of salty blood running along the line of my jaw. I went down, merely because I could feel a piece of glass in my eye, and it made me a little weak in the knees. I couldn’t see. Pearce ran over to defend me as this fucking guy started dropping kicks into my ribs, with cowboy boots, no less.
Pearce clocked him good, brought him down with one punch.
“You okay?” Pearce shouted over the commotion.
“Good enough,” I said.
He helped me to my feet.
With my one good eye, I saw this other guy running up behind Pearce with a pool stick. I hollered something foul, grabbed Pearce by the shoulder, and pushed him out of the way. The stick hit me square on top of the head and broke, but there was no stopping me. I tackled the guy and went crazy on his face with a flurry of short punches.
Pearce pulled me off, but the poor bastard was already sleeping the sleep of the lost and swollen.
Afterward, I didn’t want medical treatment. I only wanted them to get the piece of glass out of my eye, but they wouldn’t listen.
They put me in the back of the ambulance, and just before it took off, Pearce got in and thanked me for saving his ass back there.
“Don’t mention it,” I said. “You’d have done the same for me.”
“I did,” he said. “You should be thanking me too.”
“I know, but I won’t.”
He laughed.
The friendship grew from there.
Considering the magnitude of that fight, he urged me not to go out drinking anymore. Up until that point, I hadn’t considered staying any longer than I already had. Before moving into that house on King Street, I had lived in a trailer that I carried around on the back of my truck. There was an army cot back there, and a hot plate. Previous to having come upon that trailer, I had lived in motel rooms and train stations for the better part of a dozen years.
It surprised me that my short reign of mayhem hadn’t caused this cop to run me out of town like a dozen other lawmen had done before him. Pearce was a deeply religious man, and I guess it was the inherent kindness that can come from that that allowed him to view me as an actual human being as opposed to a burnt-out vet with an ugly truck. That kind of kindness had never been my experience in all the towns I’d ever been.
I liked Evelyn. I liked the way the wind smelled. It carried on it a dozen different natural perfumes—earth smells. I liked that it was quiet (except for me), and I guess it was because of this kind of camaraderie that had blossomed almost out of nowhere that I promised him I wouldn’t raise hell anymore.
What amazed me then was that the promise actually meant something. I stopped going out, and before long, I stopped drinking altogether. I wouldn’t have done that if I hadn’t earned that man’s camaraderie.
Once I cleaned myself up, he vouched for me and helped me get my job at Long John’s. It wasn’t just that I was a good cook—no one makes a burger the way I do—it’s just that without his personal okay, Frank wouldn’t have hired a bum like me.
I hadn’t had a real job since high school, but when I was taken on at Long John’s I had to use my true name. It had been a very long time since I had last used it, but since I had flown under the radar for so many years with many an alias, my record was virtually spotless. That’s why the people in town knew who I actually was.
I’m sure my gleaming record surprised Pearce. To look at me, you’d have to presume there was a slew of felonies behind me, but on paper, there wasn’t. Pearce knew I wasn’t a stranger to the wrong side of the tracks, but I seemed to be reformed. That, coupled with my inherited urge to read every single newspaper I could get my hands on, eventually made him feel comfortable talking over his cases with me, figuring I’d have some genius insight into the minds of criminals. For him, he got a hooligan’s perspective on crime and an excuse to check up on me every so often. For me, I got information I would not have otherwise had, and any cases it seemed the Evelyn PD couldn’t solve became my problem—though neither he nor anyone else would ever know that.
Danny Pearce slammed the door to the cop car. He was wearing a pair of jeans, a button-down shirt, and a sports jacket. His shield hung on his belt. He was clean-shaven, but his blond hair was getting longer than you would think would be appropriate for a guy with his kind of job. But he had a kid on the way, and I guess his hair was the last thing on his mind.
He hopped up the stairs outside and entered the restaurant. The bell jangled. I could make out the silhouette of another human being back in the unmarked car. It was his partner, Clancy Van Buren. Van Buren and I didn’t get along. I guess you could say he hated my guts for some reason.
Danny was smiling, exposing a perfect row of glowing white teeth. He was excited about something, I didn’t know what. We exchanged nods as he came up to the counter and took a seat. I poured Pearce a cup of coffee, put the mandatory two packets of Equal in there, and set it in front of him.