But Tex picks him up. He grabs the back of Ron's shirt and hauls him upright like a man lifting a sack of grain, effortless, and he spins Ron around and drives a fist into his stomach that folds him in half. Ron drops to his knees. Tex grabs his collar and pulls him up again and hits him once, twice, three times in the face—professional, controlled, themeasured violence of a man who has been in enough bar fights to know exactly how much force to apply and exactly where to apply it.
"That's for the ribs," Tex says. He hits Ron again. Ron's head rocks back. "That's for the feet." Another hit. "That's for four years." Another. "That's for making him think he was worthless. "Andthis—" One more, a sharp uppercut that snaps Ron's head back and sends a spray of blood across the bar. Tex looks at the blood on the bar top. His father's bar top. He doesn't flinch. "That's for making me stand at my grill and listen to you describe what you did to the man I love while you smiled about it. You smiled, Ron. Let's see you smile now."
Ron collapses. Tex lets him fall. Ron hits the floor and doesn't move except for the wet, gurgling breathing of a man whose nose is destroyed and whose mouth is full of blood and whose body has absorbed more damage in five minutes than he's delivered in a lifetime.
Tex stands over him. The grin is gone now. What's left is the face from the parking lot, the face from the night he told me about Ron's visit, the face of a man who has done what needed to be done and would do it again without hesitation.
"You don't come back here, Ron," Tex says. "You don't call. You don't write. You don't drive through this town. You don't say his name. You don't think about him. If I hear your name anywhere near Bay County, anywhere near this bar, anywhere near him for the rest of your life—I won't stop next time. There won't be a next time. You'll just stop existing. Nod if you understand."
Ron nods. A tiny movement of a shattered head.
Sheila is already moving. She picks up the brass knuckles from the bar top where I left them, wraps them in a cocktail napkin, and drops the bundle into the leather purseshe keeps behind the bar. The clasp clicks shut. Her face is calm and steady. Not a single thing that just went into that purse has ever existed.
"I can hear the sirens getting closer," she says.
She's right. Faint but growing. Coming from the west on the beach road. Mickey. The twelve minutes are almost up.
I look down at Ron Jackson on the floor of my bar. The blood on the hardwood. The broken teeth. The ruined face. The scar on his cheek that will never heal clean. The gun still tucked in the back of his pants that Mickey is going to find and document. It'll be added to the report of an armed man who entered a bar and attacked an employee.
One last thing.
I step forward and kick Ron Jackson in the ribs as hard as I can.
The sound he makes is barely human. His body curls around the impact, fetal, and the gurgling breath hitches and stops and restarts in a wet, shattered rhythm. I feel the impact travel up through my foot and into my leg and it feels like punctuation. A period at the end of a very long sentence.
I step back.
Now I'm done.
The sirens are louder. Getting closer. The bikers at the entrance are already dispersing, casual, unhurried, men drifting back to their tables and their beers, the wall dissolving into a crowd that was never a wall. The music drops back to normal volume. Someone laughs outside. The night resumes its shape around the hole that the last ten minutes tore in it.
The hot pink shirt is spattered with blood. PROPERTY OF BIG TEX'S, partially obscured by red. The sweatpants are stained at the knees where I knelt with the knife. My hands areshaking. My chest is heaving. My eyes are burning with tears that haven't fallen yet because there's still work to do, there's still a story to tell when Mickey walks through that door, and the tears can wait.
Tex is covered in Ron's blood—his forearms, his shirt, his hands. He glances at Ron on the floor and at me. His gaze hits the broken plates, scattered rib bones, the blood on the hardwood, and Sheila behind the bar, wiping down glasses and humming to herself as if the last ten minutes never happened.
The grin comes back. Slow. The real one. The Big Tex one that grabbed my heart and never let go.
"Well," he says. "That escalated quickly."
I start laughing and it feels fucking fantastic.
Chapter 39: Tex
Mickey comes through the door nine minutes after I made the call.
Nine minutes. Not twelve. He must have been closer than the station on 98, or he drove faster than a deputy sheriff is supposed to drive. Either way, he comes through the open front of the bar in uniform with his hand on his belt and his eyes doing what cop eyes do—sweeping the room, assessing the scene, studying every detail in the first three seconds.
What he sees is Ron Jackson on the floor in a pool of blood and broken plates. Three overturned bar stools. Me, standing six feet from Ron with blood on my forearms and my shirt. Stormy, near the serving station in a blood-spattered hot pink shirt with his hands at his sides and his chest still heaving. Sheila behind the bar with her phone in one hand and a rag in the other, already wiping down the bar top.
Mickey raises his eyebrows at me, then he keys his radio.
"Dispatch, this is unit seven. I need an ambulance at Big Tex's Roadhouse on the beach road. I've got one male, late-forties, significant injuries, conscious but non-responsive. Possible broken bones, facial trauma, lacerations. He's breathing but he's going to need transport."
Dispatch confirms. Mickey clips the radio back to his belt and crosses the room to Ron and kneels down. He checks Ron's pulse. Checks his breathing. Then his hand moves to the small of Ron's back and he stops.
"He's armed," Mickey says, not surprised. Sheila told 911 he might be. He lifts the back of Ron's shirt and pulls a compact handgun from the waistband—a Ruger LC9, from what I can see, the kind of concealed carry piece that fits in the small of your back and goes unnoticed under a shirt. Mickeyejects the magazine, checks the chamber, clears the weapon, and sets it carefully on the bar top.
"Loaded," he says. "One in the chamber."
