Forty-Three
WE SEE ABBY, in a pretty summer dress, waiting for us at the end of the bar.
I wave to her before I look across the room in the next moment and see Roof and Lynyrd Crockett at a big, round table in the corner with some of their meathead friends.
I count three friends. Five in all at the table. The same number of guys who’d jumped me.
What are the odds?
Roof Crockett gives me a big wave now, like his best buddy has just walked into the place.
“Silas,” Abby says when we get to the bar. “Let’s go someplace else.” She’s looking nervously at the Crockett table, too. “Like my mom used to tell me when my sister and I would get into it when we were kids. Do not engage.”
I continue to stare at them. There’s an even bigger crowd than usual at Rowdy’s tonight, just about all the other tables occupied and all the chairs at the bar taken.
“They’re the ones who need to think about not engaging,” I say quietly, “if they know what’s good for them, that is.”
Vince has managed to situate himself in front of me.
“Dawg,” he says, “if some shit goes down here tonight, whose side do you think Nash Hader is going to take if somebody calls it in to him? ’Specially with the Crocketts involved. You told me how it went with him today. That man is just looking for a reason.”
“I just want to have a quick chat with them,” I say, looking over Vince’s head.
“If you’re going over there,” he says, “I’m going with you.”
“You stay with Abby,” I say. “I got this.”
When I’m standing over the table, they all stay in their chairs, Roof Crockett only reacting with one of his shit-eating grins.
Like he’s the one who’s got this.
“Heard you had some trouble over there at your barn,” he says.
Behind us, there seems to be less chatter in the room than there was before. There’s a song I don’t recognize playing over the sound system.
“Where’d you hear something like that?”
“Around,” he says.
“Was it you?”
“Was it me what?”
“Was it you calling the play?” I say, keeping my voice and myself calm. “Before you ran over my dog, that is.”
Roof turns to his brother and the rest of them at the table. The only other one I recognize is Lynyrd.
“Will you listen to this man?” Roof Crockett says. “Must be one of those players took too many hits to the head.”
“I’m still talking to you, Roof.”
I lean down close to him, just a little.
He flinches.
It’s not much of anything, not much more than a twitch. But I see it. His brother has to see it. They all do. So does anybody else at Rowdy’s watching this scene play out, to wherever it’s going.
“You need to walk back over there to the bar and your girlfriend,” he says. “Maybe before something else happens to you.”
“Or what?” I say, grinning at him now. “You’ll call your daddy?”
“I’d tell you to go to the cops if you’re accusing me of something,” Roof says. “But you already did that, didn’t you?” He turns back to his brother and his friends. “Wonder how that worked out for ol’ 109.”
“Little different tonight,” I say. “Nobody wearing masks and lots of witnesses. You want to take another shot at me, Roof, I’m right here.”
I know this is rolling out like a silly playground beef. But I don’t care. Or care that I’m poking the bear again. I’ve already gotten what I came over here for, because I can see the fear in Roof Crockett’s eyes as I’m still standing over him, probably looking as big to him as I ever have.
“Why not take your best shot with me looking at you?” I say, just loud enough for him and the others to hear. “I guess that’s what I’m asking.”
He doesn’t answer me right away.
Finally, he says, “Not tonight.”
“But soon.”
“Look forward to it,” he says.
“You sure?”
I reach toward him with my right hand now. This time he jerks back as if I just pulled a knife on him, his chair nearly going out from underneath him except the wall behind him stops it.
But all I do is reach down and pat him on the head, before turning around and walking back to the bar.
“Fuck you,” I hear Roof say from behind me.
“Good one,” I say over my shoulder.
Before I get to the bar, I see Taylor McCarter Webb standing just inside the front door. She shakes her head as she stares at me, obviously having seen what just went down, disappointment all over her face like I’ve just let her down.
When I walk over to her, because I can’t not, she says, “You promised.”
“But I didn’t do anything.”
“Yeah, Silas,” she says. “Yeah, you did.”
Then she turns without another word and walks out of Rowdy’s. There’s nothing for me to do except let her go, knowing that she’s right the way she almost always is, at least about me, and feeling in that moment like the real meathead in the bar is me.
I’m back with Vince and Abby a few minutes later when I feel the buzz from my phone that means a text is coming in.
It’s from a number I don’t recognize.
But the message is clear.
Hope the next person gets hurt isn’t somebody
you care about
I look across the room at Roof’s table. His brother is still there. So are the three other guys.
Roof is gone.