The music became louder as he approached the place. It was a small white frame building with three cars parked in front of it. He went up three wooden steps and pulled the screen open and went in. The music stopped as the door slammed behind him. Four men in work clothes sat at a table near the back of the room. It was a barren room, too brightly lighted, decorated with the signs and symbols of the brewers. The bar was on the left. The bartender and the four men looked at Flagg as he walked in. It made him feel conspicuous, and his footsteps were loud on the worn wooden floor as he walked directly to the bar, hitched himself onto a stool of murky chrome and cracked red plastic. The big-lunged juke, flamboyant with tubes and rising bubbles and a dozen pastel colors, squatted against the rear wall and made thin metallic sounds, then blasted out in a startling way that drowned his voice as he gave his order to the bartender, so that he had to speak again, almost shout.
He sat there, running his thumb up and down the chill glass, wiping away the mist, staring at the three coins the bartender had slapped down, drenched by the juke noise. He felt unreal to be in this place so far from home. Unreal, and yet safe. Nothing was asked of him here. Enough to pay for his beer. No problem of whether to play it safe or try the long carry over the trees. He half smiled when he realized that he didn’t even know the name of the town.
When the music stopped again he heard the men wrangling. “Damn it, Willy, why you got to make Ed keep that box turned up so loud? I swear I’m getting all hoarsed up yelling this here conversation.”
A deep soft voice said, “It botherin’ you, Andy? It botherin’ you bad?”
“Now don’t get sore, Willy! Don’t you get yourself all...”
And the nervous words were interrupted by a thick sound and a splintering crash. Flagg turned quickly. One of the four men was on his feet. He was a husky animal, heavy in the shoulders, black hair tangled and worn long, eyes bright and blue and vivid in a lean brown face. A man sat on the floor beside the broken chair. It was evident that he had no urge to get up. The other two men looked humbly down into their beers.
The baldheaded bartender said, “Willy, you got no call to go breaking this place up. I tole you last time if you go bustin’ my place up again you...” He stopped as Willy came toward him, taking long quick strides, and put big hands flat on the bar.
“You like the music nice and loud, don’t you,
Ed?” Willy asked in that soft voice. “Don’t just bob your head at me. Tell it to me nice, Ed.”
“I... I like it loud good enough, Willy. But please...”
Willy swung back to the table. “How ’bout you, Andy?”
The man he had hit was standing up, feeling his jaw. “I think maybe you bust something the way you busted old...”
“We talking about the music, Andy.”
“Oh, sure. I like it real loud. I like it fine.” Andy swung another chair over from a nearby table and sat down hastily. Willy stood over the table, thumbs tucked under the waistband of his jeans, rocking from heel to toe.
One of the other men glanced up at him and looked down hastily and said firmly, “Louder it is the better I like it.”
“Me, too,” the other one said quickly. “Me too, Willy.”
Flagg turned quickly back to his beer. He heard Willy laugh. It was a soft fluid sound of delight. Flagg sensed what would happen. He felt incredulous about it, but knew there was nothing he could do. The slow steps came toward him, stopped in back of him.
“You got anything to say, mister?”
Flagg turned slowly, half smiling, though the smile made his lips feel stiff. “About what?”
“Maybe you don’t hear good. We talking about loud music. You got ideas on that?”
Flagg looked at the man. They were about the same height. Willy had 30, perhaps 40, pounds advantage. His forearms were thick, with heavy muscles that rolled under the skin. There was a crazy wildness in the blue eyes. They shifted constantly, rapidly, the black pupils, made small by the bright lights, shifting back and forth, back and forth across Flagg’s eyes. There was a sweat of tension on Willy’s face, and a thick smell of violence seemed to emanate from him.
“I never thought about it much,” Flagg said, keeping his voice mild, flushing as he heard the unexpected tremor.
“Leave him be, Willy,” the bartender said.
“Shut up, Ed,” Willy said, his eyes continuing that odd motion. “I talking to this here boy. Start thinking now about how you like your music.”
“I like it loud sometimes,” Flagg said. He saw the shift of weight and knew he had made a mistake. He tried to get his arm up but he wasn’t quick enough. A fist like a stone caught him over the ear and swept him from the stool so that he fell among the other stools, knocking them over, falling with them, landing sprawled and dazed on the floor. The lights seemed brighter than before, and Willy, high above him, said in an echoing faraway voice, “We like it plain loud all the time.”
Flagg wanted to tell him this was childishness. People didn’t do this sort of tiling. He shook his head to clear it.
“How you like your music?” Willy asked, sitting lithely on his heels, staring at Flagg, thick thighs straining the faded fabric of the jeans.
“Loud,” Flagg whispered.
“All the time, mister?”
“All the time,” Flagg said.
Willy smiled at him almost fondly and got up and strolled back to the juke box. He stood and began to study the selections. Flagg got quietly to his feet and went to the door. Just as he reached it he heard a running sound and he instinctively lunged out through the door into the night. When he heard the laughter from all of them he knew that Willy had turned and stamped his feet to make a running sound, the way you frighten children. When he was 100 feet from the place he heard the music start again.
Flagg went back to the station. The car was nearly ready. He waited. It caught at the first try, ran smoothly when the mechanic raced the motor. The mechanic got out, left it idling. Flagg paid him. He got into the car. He drove out and by the green neon.
It was childishness, he thought. It was something you could laugh about. I was down in this little town. My fuel pump quit and while it was being fixed I...
It would take some doctoring to make it a good story, an amusing story to tell in the locker room. This was a small town. He didn’t even know the name of it. Nobody knew his name in this town. Nobody had ever seen him before and he would never see any one of them again. There was no need to ever mention it to anyone. To Kate or anyone else.
Sure, you could get up and get your head knocked off. Or if you did hit that hard head of his, how were you going to hold onto a club at Belle Arbor? What does a brawl with a small-town punk prove? There’s nothing adult about getting up to be knocked down again. The prudent man stays down.
He drove through the town and out the far side. He got the car quickly up to cruising speed and then let it slow down again. He pulled over on the shoulder, off the concrete. He crossed his arms on the steering wheel and leaned his head against them. Nobody had to know. There was everything in the world to lose.
Just like at Melbourne. And Crest Ridge. And Pinelands. Each one making a tiny hole in the bottom of the place that held all your pride and your courage and that indefinable thing that made you a man. A gradual weakening of the structure so that when you met Willy the whole bottom fell out and everything ran out. And there was nothing at all left for Belle Arbor or any other tournament on the schedule, or for Kate when he got back.