Fifty-Seven
AFTER DINNER, I call Vince Tarplay and ask if he’s up for meeting me at Rowdy’s.
It’s not because I want to talk about what EJ had told me, because I don’t, not to anyone, not even her. It’s just because I don’t want quiet tonight. Don’t want to fill up on quiet, thinking about what she thought about my father’s death and what to do about it if I’m able to prove she’s right.
I just want some loud around me.
Loud music and loud conversation, even if it’s about the upcoming football season. Shooting the shit and maybe some pool.
I don’t even have the urge to drink a couple of beers, just to level myself off.
Vince has already ordered a beer of his own, sitting at one of the two stools he’s scored for us at the end of the bar.
As I move down the bar, I run into an old teammate from Cross Rivers High. T. J. Rhimes had been my center senior year. I haven’t run into him since I’ve been back, but he gets me into a hug and tells me, “I still like to tell people you’re the only man I ever let touch my butt.”
“Not what I hear,” Earl the bartender says, grinning at both of us.
As soon as I sit down next to Vince, he says, “You okay? You didn’t sound quite right to me on the phone.”
“All good,” I say. “Even better now that I’m here and you’re here.”
Vince toasts me with his mug. “Always.”
We do shoot some pool, me beating him every game until I finally switch to doing it left-handed. I keep beating him anyway, much to his loud dismay.
“Is there any game you’re not good at?”
“These days?” I say. “Most of them.”
“Don’t give me that,” he says. “You’re on the comeback trail, dawg. Not sure to where, mind you. But I’m seeing it even if nobody else does.”
I put an arm around him and walk us back to the bar.
“Always said you needed glasses.”
He limits himself to one beer because he’s driving.
I sip a root beer, ask if he wants to work out tomorrow afternoon.
He says he’s in. After he pays his check, refusing to let me do it, we walk together out to the back parking lot.
Then he’s the one hugging me.
“You know I’d do anything for you, right?”
“My whole life,” I say, then tell him he doesn’t even have to call ahead tomorrow, just show up at the gym around five.
I get into the truck and pull out of the lot, having already cranked up Blue ?yster Cult and “(Don’t Fear) The Reaper.”
Had my father feared the Reaper, even though I’d never known him to fear anybody or anything?
Or should I be the one fearing the Reaper these days?
I sing along anyway, one more song of my life where I know all the words by heart:
All our times have come here,
But now they’re gone…
I’m on SR 31, the road on which he’d been shot that day, when the flashing blue lights appear behind me, and I clearly hear the siren over the music pounding away at me in the front seat.
At first, I think it might be Burt Webb messing with me. But as I pull over to the shoulder, I see that the car is county and not local.
One of Sheriff Nash Hader’s cars, maybe even with Hader himself out for a drive, recognizing my truck and seizing an opportunity to act like a prick.
By the time I’ve shut off the engine, I’ve already got my wallet out. I hear the rap on the window as I’m pulling the registration out of the glove compartment.
The cop, one I don’t recognize, motions for me to roll down the window.
I do.
“What’s the problem, officer?” I say. “I know I wasn’t speeding.”
“Please step out of the vehicle, sir.”
I can see he’s a big man. Not bigger than me. But few are, especially around here.
I also don’t recognize the face of a second cop, standing a few feet away.
“I have my license and registration right here,” I say. “Don’t you need to see them first?”
“I know who you are,” the first one says. “And I’m not going to ask you again to step out of the vehicle.”
More snap in his voice now. A whip being cracked.
The two cops step back to give me room as I step out to the side of the road.
“Can you at least tell me what the purpose of this stop is?”
“We ask the questions,” the first cop says.
The second one adds, “Unless 109 thinks he still gets to call the plays.”
The first cop says, “Have you been drinking? We observed you coming out of Rowdy’s a few minutes ago.”
“One beer,” I say. “Does it count if it’s a root beer? If so, you got me.”
“You think this is funny?” the second cop asks.
“You guys really followed me out here?”
“We often monitor people leaving establishments where alcohol is served,” the first one says, “especially at this time of night.”
I can see the attitude coming off both of them, and I’m trying my best not to escalate the situation but getting more annoyed by the minute at being pulled over this way over nothing. And clearly because of who I am, not because of anything I did.
“Please walk a straight line, heel to toe, then turn and come back,” the first cop says.
“You’re shitting me.”
They both step closer, right up on me, just like that.
“Do we sound like we’re shitting you?” the second one says.
“Well, I’ll tell you in advance that I have a bad knee, and limp a little lately,” I say. “Might list a little to one side.”
“Tough shit,” the lead cop says. “Just do what you’re told.”
No “good cop, bad cop” tonight. Just a couple of country hard-asses with badges. And guns. The worst kind. Alone out here with me in the night, not a single car having passed us since I got out of the truck.
When I turn, the first cop suddenly shoves me in the back, the force of it surprising me enough to make me stumble a few feet forward.
When I have my balance, I spin around on them.
“The last hand you’re going to put on me was that one,” I say. “Just so we’re clear.”
The first cop smirks. “Or what? You’re going to sucker punch me the way you did the Crockett boys when you were overserved that night at Rowdy’s?”
I stop talking, turn, and do the perp walk that real drunks are forced to do, then make my way back to them.
“We done now?” I ask them.
They look at each other.
Finally, the first cop says, “For now.”
When I’m back over at the truck and reaching for the door handle, I get shoved again, much harder this time, enough that my face goes into one of the bars on the roof.
“Sorry,” I hear from behind me, not sure which one is doing the talking. “I must have listed a little to the side myself right there.”
I stay where I am, keeping my hands against the side of the truck, just turn my head enough to see them get back into their car and slowly begin to pull back out on 31.
But as they begin to pass me, they stop.
The one on the passenger side rolls down his window.
“To be continued, asshole,” he says.
Then they’re gone. No flashing lights. No sirens. Just gone into the night, toward town.
Yeah, I think to myself. To be continued.