Chapter 3 Benji
I’m on my second vodka soda when the looks start from the car show table.
Four guys in their forties with sunburned faces and matching T-shirts that say Dixie Classic Cruiser’s.
They’re on their fourth round and they’ve been glancing at me since I sat down.
I’m not worried. I’ve been dealing with this kind of attention since I was twelve.
I slowly take a sip of my drink. One of the guys makes a comment to the others. His head tilts in my direction and he laughs.
Sheila appears with my second drink. When she sets it down, she holds my eye for a half second longer than necessary.
“Sweetie,” she says, her voice low and just for me. “Those boys at that table have been drinking since three o’clock and they’re looking for a reason to start trouble. Don’t give them one.”
I frown at her. “I’m not doing anything, I’m just sitting here, Sheila. Minding my own business.”
“I know what you’re doing, and I know what they’re doing, and I’m telling you to let it go. Finish your drink and I’ll call you a cab. On me.”
She’s not wrong. She’s offering me an exit and it’s a good one. I should take it.
But I don’t take it.
I’ve been dealing with assholes since middle school. I never let a group of men run me off.
The biggest guy from the table gets up to order at the bar.
He positions himself next to me, leaning on the bar top, close enough that I catch beer and sour sweat coming off him in waves.
He’s about six feet, thick in the middle, baseball cap pulled low.
He orders a round for his table and while he waits, he looks at me.
“You lost, sweetheart?”
“Not even a little,” I say. “But thank you for your concern. It’s touching.”
“Seems like you might be more comfortable somewhere else. This is kind of a man’s bar.”
“Well, I’m kind of a man,” I say. “Last time I checked.”
He snorts. “Right.” He takes his beers back to the table and his friends lean in closer. His buddies look at me and the temperature at their table shifts from amused to hostile.
I turn back to my drink. Sheila catches my eye from the other end of the bar. Her look says, I warned you and you still have time.
I take a sip of my vodka soda and straighten my spine.
Twenty minutes pass. I order a third drink.
The car show table is drinking more, getting louder, doing more of whatever it is that makes men turn mean in packs.
One of them catches my eye across the room and makes a kissing face. His friends howl.
I blow him a kiss back because I’m not standing down.
That gets a reaction. The big one says something sharp to the others and they all look at me at once. Four sets of eyes staring me down. They’re not amused anymore.
Sheila’s hand lands on the bar in front of me, palm down. I look up. She leans towards me and her face is steel. “Benji. I’m asking you one more time. Let me call you a cab.”
“Sheila, I’m fine. They’re just…”
“They’re not just anything. I’ve been doing this for thirty years and I know what’s coming. Please. You need to leave.”
I hear her. I really do. I hear the worry in her voice and see the experience in her eyes. I know she’s right. Every survival instinct I have is telling me she’s right.
“I’m not leaving,” I tell her.
Sheila raises her eyebrows at me, blows out a breath and turns away.
I need to use the restroom and know I probably should’ve gone before the third vodka soda.
I slide off the stool and head toward the back where a sign says RESTROOMS in letters made out of bottle caps.
The hallway is narrow, dimly lit, with one door marked COWBOYS and one marked COWGIRLS.
There’s a bulletin board covered in flyers for fishing charters and lost dogs.
I push through the COWBOYS door and hurry to do my business. Before leaving, I check my face in the mirror. Still good. Hair doing its thing. I push the door open.
They’re in the hallway. All four of them. Standing between me and the bar. The big one is in front, arms crossed, his three buddies fanned out behind him. It’s five feet wide and they’re filling it. The noise from the bar is muffled back here. The music sounds far away.
My heart starts beating faster. This is different from the table. At the table there were witnesses, bartenders, a room full of people. Back here it’s just a narrow corridor and four men who followed me.
“You’ve got a real smart mouth on you,” the big one says. He’s not smiling anymore. “Someone should’ve taught you when to shut it.”
“Many have tried,” I say. “I’m difficult to train.”
“We don’t want your kind in here. Why don’t you take your faggot ass back to wherever you came from before something happens to that pretty face.”
The word ‘faggot’ hits hard. I’ve been hearing it since I was eight years old and it still hits the same place every time, that tender spot that never fully heals over.
I should say nothing. I should put my head down, push past them, and get the hell out of here.
Instead, I look the big guy straight in the eyes. “Your shirt has a grammar error,” I say. “Cruiser’s with an apostrophe is possessive. You want plural. Also, that font is criminal.”
I realize what I’m doing is stupid. But when someone tries to make me small, I make them smaller. It’s not smart. It’s not survival. It’s just the only thing I have.
He draws back and hits me. Closed fist, hard, across the left side of my face.
My head snaps sideways and my shoulder hits the wall.
I bounce off it and go down on one knee.
The second one grabs my shirt from behind and yanks.
I hear the silk tear, feel the fabric rip down the back, and that registers before the pain does.
My beautiful shirt that I bought on sale at Nordstrom Rack and still paid too much for. It’s the nicest thing I own and they’re ripping it off me in a corridor that smells like spilled beer.
A kick from a boot catches me in the ribs and I fold sideways.
Then I’m sprawled on the floor and there are more boots kicking.
Somebody steps on my hand, pressing down on my rings, and the pain is sharp.
I curl into myself how I learned to do when I was fourteen and the boys at school decided to teach me a lesson.
Trying my best to protect my face and head.
A boot catches me low in my stomach. I can’t breathe. Someone spits on me. I feel it hit the back of my neck, hot and wet.
“How do you like it now?” one of them asks.
“Not so smart now, are you, pretty boy?”
I’m trying to get up but my arms won’t hold me. There’s blood in my mouth from where my lip split against my teeth. It spots on my white jeans, bright red on white.
Then suddenly the hallway explodes. There’s a ferocious roar that shakes the walls.
Deep and booming and furious. The biggest human being I’ve ever seen in person comes around the corner like a freight train.
He is enormous. Six-five at least, wide as the walls themselves, beard, tattoos, wearing jeans and an apron smeared with barbecue sauce.
He doesn’t slow down. He grabs the nearest car show guy by the back of his shirt and throws him into the opposite wall. The man hits the drywall hard enough to crack it and crumples.
The big one turns and swings at the giant. He catches the punch in his hand like he’s catching a baseball. He squeezes. I hear knuckles pop. Then he drives his other fist into the man’s face and the man sits right down on the floor like his legs stopped working.
Now there’s two men left. They’re scrambling backward but there’s nowhere to go because coming through the door behind the giant is a cop. I see him from the floor through tears and blood. And even from down here, beaten and bleeding, some part of my brain stops to look.
He’s tall. Over six feet. Blonde hair cut short, shoulders broad enough to block the light behind him. He’s wearing a dark green sheriff’s uniform. He doesn’t ask what’s happening or hesitate.
“Bay County Sheriff’s Office,” he yells out. “Everybody on the ground. Now.”
The giant has two of them handled. The cop grabs one of the remaining two by the arm, spins him, and pins him face-first into the wall.
He’s professional and fast. The last guy, the youngest one, mid-twenties, wiry, the one who’s been hanging back the whole time, puts his hands up and drops to his knees.
It’s over. Thank fuck.
The whole thing, from the giant coming around the corner to the last man on the floor, has taken maybe a minute or less. The hallway is a wreck of bodies and cracked drywall. The noise from the bar is starting to filter back in, muffled and distant, a different world from this one.
The cop is quickly cuffing the man against the wall. The giant turns to check on me and that’s when I see it. The young one on his knees. The one nobody’s watching. He’s holding his right hand up, but his left hand is drifting down toward his jacket.
The cop turns his head. One snap of his chin to the right, eyes locking on the movement, and everything that happens next happens in less than a second.
He drops the man he’s cuffing and steps between me and the man on the floor.
One fucking step.
He doesn’t reach for his own weapon. He doesn’t yell. He just moves and plants himself there.
The sound is the loudest thing I’ve ever heard in my life.
The gunshot comes from inside the jacket. The guy’s hand is still in his pocket when the gun goes off. A concealed gun in a side pocket that his drunk, panicked hand went reaching for and found.
The cop’s body slams backward straight into mine. His heavy weight crashes into me and drives me flat against the floor. The back of his head hits my shoulder. His weight pins me and I can’t breathe.
I can’t move and there’s wet heat spreading across my stomach, soaking through my shirt, soaking through my jeans. Blood. His blood is pouring onto me and I’m pinned beneath him on the dirty floor. His body is shuddering against mine with every breath he tries to take.