Gadarene

The memory of cold clamped Jack's neck like a vise. Even sitting in the booth, the humid smoke of the tavern swirling about him, it clutched him. In his hand, he held a more welcome cold, but the comfort of the bottle was denied him. He was too far from home for any more than pretense at drink.

The beer was stage dressing, a way to fit in with the crowd as he endured the night.

He had drawn stares when he'd come through the door, but that was to be expected. It was 40 degrees outside, with a wind scouring the empty fields, and he'd crept into the bar in a t-shirt and jeans, exposed flesh ruddying instantly in the interior heat. But other than rolling eyes and sharp laughter, he'd hadn't drawn too much attention. Nothing like he would have if he'd worn his colors.

That had been a no-brainer. He wasn't about to wear colors in an unknown tavern, even in a hick town like Acacia, Indiana, population 1,045 . . . 1,046 if you counted Jack. But he didn't plan on staying long enough to make the census. Didn't plan on doing much, other than sitting on his ass. Not when his club was a state away and his bike was dead on the curb, 24 ounces of heroin stashed in the bike's gas tank.

But even without his colors -- the Stomper's scarlet and green boar's head glaring porcine slaughter out from the dark leather of his vest -- he'd felt eyes linger. A barely-twenty something over in the corner, nursing a drink and a half-drunken boyfriend, kept glancing his way, the glances lasting longer and longer as the night progressed. Off to his right, a gaggle of middle-aged women -- probably just come off a factory shift and looking for something, anything, to spend their hours on -- cackled a little too loudly and smiled a little too broadly every time he trucked back from the john.

If he'd been in Cleveland, he'd have taken on either -- on a good night, maybe even both. But this wasn't Cleveland and this wasn't a good night. It was a night for avoiding trouble. The sort of trouble that came from a girlfriend's boyfriend who was probably sober enough to follow his girlfriend's eye back to Jack, but too damn drunk to size up the threat he was looking at. Or, a bunch of squawking hens, tail-feathers ruffled because they weren't the one getting gobbled by the fox that'd crept into the hen house.

No, tonight had its surfeit of trouble.

He'd been been roaring down a long stretch of graveled nothing, bordered by two fields full of stubbled nothing. Although he wasn't sure what they grew in Indiana -- in fact, the only crops he'd ever paid attention to grew in basements, under hydroponic lamps -- whatever it was it had been harvested a long time before he shown up for his break down. One minute, he was tunneling through the frigid dark, headlight and muffler flushing-out banded raccoons and yellow-eyed possums. The next, he was coasting to a stop, broken remnants of his drive chain whip-cracking against the frozen gravel.

Somehow, remarkably, his phone had shown bars, and GPS indicated a town less than two miles down the nearest intersection -- if you could call the butt-crack between empty fields an intersection. Better yet, a yellow squiggle on the screen had meant that he'd have the perfect place to park his bike, even in the middle of nowhere Indiana.

So off he'd trudged, pushing his dead bike and dragging his sorry ass to Donovan's Tavern.

And he told himself to play it safe. For once.

#

When he'd nursed the cold beer to warm piss, Jack decided he'd chance another. Rather than wait on the waitress, and to give him an excuse to relocate booths, he headed up to the bar. With a name like Donovan's, Jack, who'd burned through a chunk of the nineties in Boston, had expected the usual faux-Irish regalia -- Guinness on tap, Gaelic graffiti scrawled everywhere, maybe even some red-cheeked geezer who looked like Spencer Tracy's redneck lovechild.

But if this place knew about Ireland, he'd blow a leprechaun.

The bar was a stained formica plank studded with drink-rings and nut bowls, padded stools sprinkled in the front, a serving slot slashing open the wall behind. Someone had tried their hand at corn-pone rustic decades earlier, but now the faded Cola signs and the blunted farm implements hanging on the wall looked like somebody's grandpa's rummage-sale leftovers, left to mildew and rot in the garage out yonder.

As he slipped onto a stool between two knots of chattering farmers -- it seemed the Colts couldn't catch a break that year -- the warm smell of fried onions and hot grease slid over him. His stomach kicked him a good one, just to remind him that he hadn't eaten since Champagne, Illinois, and that had been half-burned pancakes rustled up by his dealer's cracked-out girlfriend. With cooking like that, she'd had to fuck like a rabbit.

So, he rethought his beer and looked over the menu hanging above the serving slot, entries written in chalk that looked like it hadn't been erased since Ronnie Reagan drew down on the Evil Empire.

"It's mostly shit."

He looked over at the husky voice. The bartender was tapping beer into three tall glasses. She looked up at him as she set them on a waitress's tray. "Seriously."

He smiled.

"You've got a way of selling the merchandise."

She shrugged. "You'd figure it out on your own pretty damn fast."

"What would you suggest then?"

"Me, I'd suggest just about any place but here. But since you seem to be stuck here," she poured two shots of whiskey, slid one in front of him. "I'd order the cheeseburger, then shoot that to cover up the taste."

"Well then, a cheeseburger it is." He tipped back the shot, trickling Jim Beam down his throat. By the time his glass touched the formica, the bartender and the other shot were gone.

He sat there, the whisky somewhat making up for his missing leather, and waited while an invisible backline cook threw his sandwich together. The whiskey shot was dicey -- he needed his wits. But, he pulled out his watch, he'd been here for over an hour, and the most threatening thing so far had been that table full of mom-a-sons. And even they had drifted away, chatting up a thirty-year-old who was in the middle of transforming his high school muscle to middle-aged flab, one Budweiser at a time. Jack could almost imagine a faded Varsity jacket tucked in the dude's closet.

The cheeseburger that showed up wasn't half as bad as the bartender had made it out to be. Jack found himself wolfing through it, hot grease and cheese joining forces with the whiskey to finally loosen the ice vise from his neck. His opinion of pissant Indiana mellowed inside a haze of carbohydrates and bourbon.

"Not too shitty," he said, as the bartender made her way past his corner of the formica.

"Trust me, that shot helped." She swabbed the counter beside him with a terrycloth. "I've seen them make those things."

"Spare me the details. I like my illusions."

She smiled at him. "Most men do."

A little warmer, a little loosened, he took her in. Maybe it was because she was the only friendly thing in a room full of strange, but she was easy on his eyes. Built small, she seemed tucked behind the heavy bar. Jack wondered if he'd found his leprechaun, after all. Her reddish brown hair, worn long and fringing her shoulders, would have blended in perfectly in any Boston bar. The shoulders and upper arms that rose from her low-cut blouse were soft and round, hinting that she carried a few extra pounds. Jack fell to wondering what that flesh would feel like on top of him, a cushion of woman, soft and warm.

He realized he was staring.

So was the bartender.

Busted, grinning, he held out his hand. "Jack."

She shook it, her palm and fingers moist from the bar cloth. "Pam."

"And here I was hoping for a Diane." He cocked an eyebrow.

"We don't play Johnny-fucking-Cougar in here." She cocked an eyebrow back at him and headed off down the bar.

#

For the next hour, he haunted a booth near the end of the bar, sipping through a series of cokes. The bartender had picked him out so easily, that he had to second-guess his efforts at camouflage. As he doused his bourbon buzz under a steady stream of caffeinated drinks, he let his eyes rove over the tavern, looking for anyone else that was looking at him.

But his eyes betrayed him, kept landing back on the bartender. She flowed up and down the bar, shooting him glimpses of white flesh as knots of drinkers hid and then revealed her. Peekabo, Jackie-boy. I see you. From his new vantage point, he could tilt his head up over his drink and keep his eyes fastened on her, watch her blue-jeaned ass swivel away, her white-bloused breasts sway back.

When the phone vibrated against his leg, he came back to himself with a start.

"We just crossed the state line," Taggert said. "Jimbo thought we were made by a State cruiser, but he was full of shit. Like usual."

Jack smiled into his coke and tucked the phone between head and shoulder as he fished his Dad's old watch out of his pocket. "That puts you here no earlier than four o'clock, right? No speeding."

"No speeding, boss." Taggert's reply had all the exasperation of a husband-chided wife. "It's not like this is my first time. I was pulling runs like this when you were still shitting yourself."

"If you show up with a cop on your ass, I'll be shitting myself all over again." Jack looked up from his coke as someone walked close by his booth. In a swirl of perfume and residual spirits, the bartender was past him, headed for the front door.

He listened to Taggert prattle on for a few more seconds, not really listening, but thinking hard, fast, the sort of electric fragment of thought that shot through his head when he was guiding in the next punch, or steering through an icy curve. Not quite instinct, but not far from it.

Fuck it. If this were stupid, so be it. "Listen, Tag, I gotta drain the lizard. Give me a call when you hit Gas City. That's about an hour from here, according to Mr. Google."

Then he was out of the booth, headed towards the front door.

#

Donovan's was one tooth in a mouthful of buildings that jutted along what passed for main street in rural Indiana. The buildings were tall, narrow-windowed survivors from when the farmers had rolled into town behind the asses of fat old mules. Over time, buildings had blazed up or fallen down, and the street had a gap-toothed look, with over-wide alleys passing between the brick-fronted buildings. Pam was taking a smoke break in a skinny door just past the maw of an alley, the gap in the facade making it seem she floated alone and isolated in the darkness.

For a few seconds, Jack stood just outside the doorway, suspended in an orange neon penumbra, sinuses contracting so fast in the cold air that his eyes teared up, duplicating the bartender in salty tears. Blinking clear, he refocused, eyes settling on his bike, halfway down the block on the far side of where she stood. He hitched his jeans up and moved down towards it, rubbing the back of his hand over his wet eyes.

As he crossed the middle of the street, boots rasping over the bubbled asphalt, the smart part of him that lived north of the belt buckle gave the southern resident a lecture about what he should be doing. He didn't know this woman -- or this area -- and the smart thing was to check his bike over like a good little weekend biker, then stroll back into the tavern and wait out his ride.

He could, maybe, spare her a nod, maybe even a smile, on his way back in. Cold night, huh?

Obediently, he gave the Harley a glance over, carefully ignoring the gas tank. The fender bib at the rear of the softail was empty except for a handful of tools and extra ear plugs -- he'd stashed his colors further up the road, wrapped in a black trash bag and carefully stuffed into a silver drainage pipe. Anyone filching through would find a whole lot of nothing for their frigid trouble.

Satisfied, he started back across the street. That's when the northerner started jabbering, asking why he was crossing all the fuck of the way up here. Didn't he know he'd have to walk right past her? The plan. He was fucking up the plan! But his damn feet kept clickity-clacking over the sidewalk, just the same.

The south shall rise again.

As he neared her, the icy wind carried the scent of her -- cigarette smoke and perfume, gray thorns nestled inside a pink corsage.

"How's the bike," she asked as he drew near. The tip of her cigarette winked an orange eye at him as she took a long drag.

"Cold," he answered. "Thinks he ought to be let inside. Too fucking cold out here."

She laughed softly and shook her head, a brunette wave that crashed around her shoulders. His eyes flicked past that motion to where the white cotton of her blouse gathered over her breasts, hardened nipples announcing the cold. She plumed out a fan of smoke that wreathed around their faces, hazed her torso from him like a faded daguerreotype.

"Some things," she tipped her cigarette hand toward him, "you have to suffer for."

Jack leaned up against the other side of the door. They stood close, less than an arm's length apart. She didn't move, just stood looking at him. In the dark, she was glittering eyes and pale skin, her face fading in and out with every draw of the cigarette, lambent features cycling to smoke-filled darkness and then back again. Waves of Pam, flowing over and over him.

For a few minutes they just stood there while she smoked. Jack was cold and growing colder but liked where he was. He watched, and she allowed herself to be watched.

"You're here for the duration, aren't you?" Her words were chugs of white.

"Looks that way."

"We don't see many like you on a Saturday." She flicked the ember of her cigarette into the street, then lit another, sparking red highlights against the dark overhang of her hair. Something primal inside of Jack ignited along with that flint. "You're quite the topic of conversation."

He set his lips and leaned back into the doorway, thinking.

"We mainly draw farmers and factory joes out for a few beers and flirts before the wife wants them home." She looked across, eyes reading him. "But we get a few off-hour firemen and at least one deputy. The type that notice things."

Jack let his eyes drift over to his bike. Maybe he could spend some time working on it, tools clearly spread out on a blanket beside him. Although he knew he couldn't fix the chain, it would at explain his presence. But there were two problems with that scenario. One, he hated the fucking cold. And two, what if one of those good-natured types that noticed things decided to play the Samaritan and offer him a ride somewhere?

No, thanks officer. I'm just waiting on my club to pick me and my heroin up. Thanks for the offer, though.

"So, Jack-who-doesn't-have-a-jacket, maybe you should find a reason for hanging around." Pam leaned back in the doorway and smiled at him. "Something you're waiting for."

And for the second time that night, Jack found himself smiling.

#

At 2:55, every bar is the same. They may start off with potted plants and dartboards, or maybe sawdust and cowboys crooning out the jukebox, but they end the same. Jack watched a handful of middle-aged men stare into their beers, thinking that if they ignored the clock on the wall, it would leave them be. But the time came, as it always did, and the bartender's voice pierced through the fumes of alcohol that misted their faces, blurred their memories. Like a single, barely articulated beast, they stumbled to their feet, doughy faces already smarting from the sharp, not-yet-morning cold that waited for them on the concrete outside.

Most of the bar staff were gone by now, trickling out as the night drew on. A surly looking fat man came out from the backline, wiping his lobster-red hands on his apron and eying Jack like one more chore that needed tending. Pam was down at the far corner of the formica, tapping Morse code into the till. Before the fat man reached him, Jack pried himself off the bar stool and tipped a handful of folded bills onto the counter.

As he joined the sluggish promenade out the door, he fought the urge to look over his shoulder. The night was past, without any questions from ham-fisted rednecks. That should have been enough. Pam had passed through his orbit through the hours, close enough to show the bubba's that she didn't mind the stranger talking her up, but not so close as to imply that he was getting anywhere. If he looked at her now, the fat man might take notice. It was one thing to chatter the night away with the bartender, it was another to wait for her in the darkness.

Like she'd asked him to.

Outside, the cold shook their bones.

While flannel-coated men fumbled their way into their pickups and rust-buckets, he sat on his bike and fiddled purposefully with the handlebars, hands mimicking the normal start up routine. Kicking back the stand, he heeled the dead bike in a wide, slow arc across the street, just past the mouth of the alleyway where Pam had smoked her break. With a quick, smooth glance up and down the street, like it was the most natural thing in the world he was about to do, he planted his feet and shoved off, spearing his bike backward into the shadows of the alley.

Grunting with the effort, he backpedalled through the sodden, newspaper-carpeted alley. As the Harley glided silently backward, tire-flattened beer cans glittered up at him from the asphalt like a collapsed Milky Way. An overloaded dumpster swept by on Jack's right and he turned the handlebars left, angling the softback into the darker shadows. He squeezed the brakes too hard for his slight speed and nearly tumbled off the back of the bike. With a brittle, frosty crunch, the bike stopped.

Wrapped in silence and cold, he listened to pickups coughing awake and cars pulling away, One by one, they ghosted past the mouth of the alleyway. And with every one, he felt a little less part of the world beyond the alley, more tied to the darkness and the filth around him. His awareness contracted to the patch of streetlight at the mouth of the alley and the throbbing heat against the front of his jeans.

He waited.

#

Longer than he thought it would take, he saw the fat man, dishwater hands faded to a normal pink, waddle around the corner of the alley and stop. The man was huge, and the parka wrapped around him made him look like a bald-headed bear. He stared down the alley, craning his head to the side. Jack almost imagined he could hear the bear-man sniffing, scenting him out. Keeping his body still, Jack slid his hand slowly down his right calf, toward the knife tucked in the cuff of his boot.

The man spat into the alley.

"Damn it. I thought Ray's said they were going to clean that dumpster out. Looks like a fucking rat nest back there."

From back toward the tavern, a husky voice answered him. "They said Tuesday, Jim. Tuesday."

Jim shook his head and kicked a flattened can. It cartwheeled down the alley, glittering past where Jack hunched low on the bike, shallow breaths crystallizing out of him.

"Lazy sons-of-bitches."

Pam stopped in the alley, a brunette Goldilocks beside Papa Bear. A spark and then smoke curling above her head. "It's always been Tuesday."

Jim shook himself, then looked at her. "Yeah, I guess it has." He swept out a massive arm and gave her a hug that scooped her half-off her feet. "Sorry, darling. You know how I get."

Wheezing out something between a laugh and a cough, he released her, lumbered out of view. Jack sat in his darkness and watched as the bartender followed, trailing smoke over her shoulder. Then, a door squealing open and shut, an engine turning over and finally catching, then a rusty truck rolled past, billowing clouds of exhaust. As the engine receded, Jack heard footsteps dwindling up the street.