He tapped his frosted beer mug against Levi’s as he scanned the Rusty Nail. It was that time of night when the early crowd, made up of couples and groups of friends, were finishing their second beer or second margarita, wiping their hands free of grease from the buffalo wings or cheese fries, and packing up to go home.
The later crowd was just coming in, consisting of more hardened drinkers, truckers, sugar beet farmers, not dressed up, just coming in from the fields, it seemed like. They would want beer and whiskey and then more whiskey.
There was a little lull in the music, so Clay got up, digging into his pockets, and smiled when Levi handed three quarters over so Clay could go over to the jukebox and pick just the right songs to help the Saturday night party shift into high revel. He picked two classics,Boot Scoot BoogieandHonky Tonk Badonkadonk,and was just about to pick his third song when through the swinging louvered doors to the bar’s kitchen he saw Eddie Piggot.
Of course Clay knew Eddie owned the bar, but he preferred to forget about it. Out of loyalty, Clay shouldn’t be at the Rusty Nail at all, especially after what had happened with Ellis, the ex-con doing parole on the ranch. But the next closest bar was in Chugwater, or Cheyenne, and most Saturday nights that felt too far to drive. Or, if Clay got roaring drunk, it felt too far to ask Levi or Brody to drive. So here he was, holding the final quarter Levi had given him between his thumb and forefinger, about to drop it in the slot of the jukebox, when he heard Eddie shout.
Eddie always sounded on the verge of a breakdown on account of he seemed to feel like life had dealt him a handful of jokers when he wanted straight aces or kings or whatever. Clay wasn’t much of a card sharp, but he knew a losing player when he saw one. No matter how much Eddie screamed about the ranch taking away business from real cattlemen, as long as he ran a second-rate bar, nothing was going to change for him.
Not that Clay minded the plywood floors and the chipped paint in the men’s bathrooms. He rather liked it, liked the story the bar seemed to tell. But with Eddie at the helm, the whole outfit was a down-at-the-heels affair and just about two steps from being at the bottom of the barrel. So shouting in the kitchen was normal, only this time, as the swinging doors swung slowly on their sagging hinges, Clay saw Eddie smack some kid, smack him hard.
The kid, who couldn’t have been more than nineteen, staggered back, glaring at Eddie, which seemed to earn him another hard-palmed slap. Now the kid’s mouth had blood on it, and there was a gleam of sweat across his forehead. The kid looked to be just about too young to be working in a bar, anyhow, and though Clay didn’t figure himself to be some kind of Superman rescuer, suddenly he couldn’t stomach it.
Bounding in through the swinging doors, he grabbed Eddie by the shoulder and hauled him back.
“Knock it off, you fuckwad,” said Clay, almost conversationally.
Eddie jumped back, as though shocked to see Clay there. As for the kid, at the same time he was goggling open-mouthed at his sudden rescue, he also seemed to be looking around the kitchen, as though for a good, hard implement to hit Eddie with.
“Who asked you, you piece of shit,” said Eddie, shouting, spittle flying from his mouth. “This here ain’t none of your concern. Get your fat ass out of here and go back to your stupid fake pony farm!”
“Fat ass?” asked Clay, though everything else Eddie had said rankled just as badly. “I’ll have you know—” He paused to point his thumb at his own ass. “—that this is Grade APrime, and you’d be lucky to even get a piece of this.”
When Eddie swung at Clay, Clay was ready. He might not be drunk enough to blame all of this on beer, but he was loose and relaxed and his fists were plenty fast to block Eddie’s arm and hit him good and hard right in his stupid mouth. Eddie, who must have been gearing up for this kind of interaction all day, punched right back. Two hard taps, one to Clay’s mouth, and the other to Clay’s eye.
At which point some woman in a tight capped-sleeve t-shirt and blue eyeshadow, her hair clasped in white barrettes on either side of her forehead, flew at them.
“Leave him alone, leave him alone,” she screeched, battering at Clay with her manicured hands.
“Who the fuck’er you?” asked Clay, a little dumbfounded to find out that Eddie had a girlfriend, for that’s exactly who she must be. As to what kind of person would want to bed Eddie Piggot, well, that was another matter.
“That’s my mom,” said the kid as he wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “Better get.”
“Fuck it,” said Clay. “I’m out of here.”
Clay slunk through the swinging doors, listening to the shouting grow dim behind him as he found Levi and jerked his head at the door.
“What did you do?” asked Levi, though he asked it in a way that suggested he was not at all surprised that Clay had gotten mixed up in something. “Was that Eddie Piggot who hit you?”
“Yes,” said Clay with a grunt. His lip felt large and swollen, and he could taste blood in his teeth. Not to mention his left eye, which was puffing up and throbbing.
“Do you need ice?” asked Levi, ever polite.
“No,” said Clay. He licked his lip. “Let’s just go home.”
That Eddie Piggot would not call the cops on Clay was almost a foregone conclusion, partly because Eddie hated anything to do with the local law and partly because the kid Clay had just rescued was surely not old enough to be working in a bar. Or maybe he was old enough to be working in the kitchens, but not in the front serving alcohol? Clay couldn’t be sure, but that he and Levi could get into Levi’s truck and trundle back to the ranch without red and blue bubble lights swinging up behind them said a lot.
Not that Clay was off Scott free, no, of course not. There was still the Sunday morning meeting to contend with. Leland would take note if Clay was missing from the weekly all-call that Leland held before that weeks’ guests started arriving at noon.
Levi dropped Clay off in front of the path that led to the staff quarters, and Clay got to his room before anyone spotted him. His room was on the top floor at the very end, overlooking the three managers’ cabins nestled among the trees. It was a simple space with only a bed, a dresser, a little desk, and a small bookshelf, but he had his own bathroom, clean sheets and clean towels delivered once a week, and it felt more like home to him than anyplace else he’d ever lived.
In the bathroom, he shrugged out of his blood-dappled shirt, tossing it on the closed toilet before examining his face in the mirror. His left eye had taken the worst of it, swollen almost shut, swiftly coloring to dark purple. The split in his mouth felt deep to his tongue, was tender, and tasted of blood, though it didn’t look too bad. Still, Leland would notice right away when he saw Clay, and he would want answers.
He spent the night in the bathroom with a cold cloth pressed to his eye and another cold cloth with ice bundled inside pressed to his mouth. Every other minute, it felt like, he checked in the square mirror in his bathroom, just to see.
In the morning, the curve of his eye was still purple and dark on one side, the shape distorted. The circles under his eyes were purple-blue. There was no way Leland was going to miss the state of Clay’s face, and not even Clay’s best puppy dog expression was going to put Leland off from one of his famous lectures.
And indeed it did not, for as hard as Clay tried to stay inconspicuous the next morning during the daily meeting, as studiously as he stood in the back row, half-hiding behind Jasper’s broad back, Leland was as sharp-eyed as a hawk on a clear day. While Leland and Maddy went through the list of special requests from the guests, and mentioned once again to keep sharp eyes out for mountain lions and, as always, went over the protocol about tips from guests and suchlike, there was no point, not one, that Clay did not imagine Leland had not seen the shape of Clay’s face. Leland’s gesture to Clay as all the other employees disbanded to their various tasks and routines proved it.
