Written by Tom Davis – MATURE THEME – I was just sitting there minding my own business, wanting to drink my beer in peace. Gladys don’t like me drinking much, but I don’t never get drunk no more. Hardly. Guess I outgrowed it. Anyways, I wasn’t bothering nobody, when this fella stumbled up and bumped me.
I knowed he was Somebody from the way he dressed and the way he carried on. Kinda like he owned the whole damn world and let you live in it until he decided to throw you out. He had money, ya know—gold watch, snake skin boots, hundred-dollar wide-brim hat. Even smelled rich, kinda like musky flowers.
“Excuse me,” he said, not meaning it.
“It’s okay,” I said, not meaning it either.
I felt trouble in my bones, and my bones don’t lie. Shoulda got up and left. But being too proud, I just sat there, watching him in the mirror behind the bar. He was a big un, bigger’n me even. Stump of a neck and hands like baseball mitts.
What else told me he was Somebody was how the bartender ran over and sucked up. Like he was gonna get a twenty dollar tip or something.
“Boilermaker,” said the fella.
A boilermaker and him already ’bout half drunk. Ordering a drink like that, he wanted trouble. Really. Drunk ’em myself ’til I got so sick one night I throwed up most all my stomach. Felt like I’d turned it inside out.
“Don’t believe I’ve ever seen you before,” he said with a put-on smile. I knowed it was put-on from his eyes. Them tin gray marbles looked as cold as a metal government issued coffin.
“That’s ’cause I just moved here.” I took a swallow. Once I started talking, I couldn’t up and leave. ’Specially since I’d taken only three or four pulls out of the mug.
“Figured as much,” he said, sneering now.
Me, I’m thinking chug down and get outta here. My bones started screaming.
’Bout then he said with a sorry ass slit of smile, “I gotta take a leak.”
I should’ve known. I heard his zipper go down. And with a grin stretched across his face, he whipped it out and started hosing down the bar. Tried my damnest not to look at him ’cause that’s what he wanted, but when I felt my leg soaking, I figured—enough’s enough.
My pa always told me, “If you gonna get into a fight,” meaning a real spit-on-your-hands fight, and my bones sure told me this was gonna be one, “you gotta hit first and hit hard, hard as you can. Hit him so’s he won’t be getting up, leastways not right away.”
So that’s what I did. Slammed the mug of beer up side his head. Busted the glass. Did more than a bit o’ mess to the side of his face. Laid him out, tits up. A lesser man would’ve stayed that way. But not him. Hell. He couldn’t let no no-account tobacco chewer sucker punch him. So he shook his head, wiped his bloody face with his shoulder, and started getting up. Nothing short of killing would keep him down.
Pushing himself off the floor, he slid his hand into his boot and pulled out this hawkbilled bone-handled cutter. But before he could open it, he slipped in his blood and fell forward. This gave me the chance I needed.
I’d worn the brogans Gladys bought me down at K-Mart last week, and I let him have one. The one he peed on. Slammed it square in his face.
What with him falling down and my boot coming up, the two met, and I could hear his neck bone crack.
This time he wasn’t getting up. Nobody had to say nothing. There he lay like a chicken with its neck cranked. Tin eyes wide and staring.
“You done it now,” said the bartender. “You killed Mr. Vinson’s oldest boy. You in big trouble.” Like I didn’t know it.
Sheriff Bodine came and carted me off to jail. Took my brogans, overalls, and all. Gave me blue pants and shirt, and a pair of square-toed shoes ’bout three sizes too small.
They shoved me into a cell where I couldn’t hardly turn around. I sat on the bed. Instead of a mattress, it had plywood on a scrawny metal frame. The toilet didn’t have a seat. No paper neither. Light so bad I couldn’t hardly see. Smelled God-awful. Reminded me of the peach packing shed’s outhouse in mid-July.
Down the street in the Red Front Café, they had the jukebox cranked back up. I could hear old Hank singing ’bout that lonesome whippoorwill, and I thought of Gladys.
If she ever saw this place, wouldn’t nothing do but she’d have to clean it up. Thinking of Gladys pained me.
Saw a lawyer. Told him I ain’t got no money, leastways not to be paying him with. He said no matter. If you can’t afford it, they make one do it for free. But one thing I know, you get what you pay for. You sure do.
Anyway, this fella called himself John Neal. Don’t know if Neal was his last name or his middle one. He didn’t look much older’n Mary. She’s my daughter and ’ll graduate high school this year—if she and Gladys are here long enough.
You shoulda seen that boy lawyer. Clean as a whistle. All dressed up in a coat and tie and toting a yard of yellow paper in one hand and a fancy black fountain pen in the other. Wore them thin wire-rimmed glasses, too. Looked like he knowed something, and I guess he did.
He said they’d charged me with voluntary manslaughter, but not to worry none ’cause he thinks he can get me off with probation, what with it being self-defense and all. I didn’t tell him I planned to kill that tin-eyed fella even before he pulled the cutter.
He can say what he wants to. But I been in a few towns like this one, and I know a thing or two, leastways my bones do. And you know what my bones say? Say it don’t matter for nothing. When a nobody kills a Somebody, that nobody’s in big trouble. Leastways, around here he is.
Tom Davis’ publishing credits include Poets Forum, The Carolina Runner, Triathlon Today, Georgia Athlete, Proud to Be: Writings by American Warriors Vol. 3, A Loving Voice Vol. I and II, Special Warfare., and Winston-Salem Writers’ POETRY IN PLAIN SIGHT program for May 2013 (poetry month). He’s authored the following books: The Life and Times of Rip Jackson, The Most Fun I Ever Had With My Clothes On, The Patrol Order; and The R-complex. www.oldmp.com/e-book Tom lives in Webster, NC.
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