Die Dog or Eat the Hatchet (3 page)

“How many fingers d’you see?” the ref asked me.

Fingers? The ref had three heads and more arms than a Hindu god.

“Two,” I guessed, and he waved it off.

As he helped me to my corner, I glanced back across the ring, and before my swollen eyes pinched shut, I saw Boar Hog Brannon with his arms raised in victory, and I choked back a sob of shame.

The ref consoled me with a slap on the shoulder that almost put me down again. “Son,” he said, “we ever go to war, you’re the sonofabitch I want in the foxhole beside me.”

It was my first pro loss, and the last time I’d fight in the prize ring.

Brannon went onto bigger, better things.

I got a one-way ticket to Palookaville, via the emergency ward.

The first face I saw in the hospital was Walt Wiley’s. He told me he’d lost a good chunk of change betting on me, and if I was interested in working off the debt, there’d be a job waiting for me at The Henhouse. I tried saying, “Who the hell are you, mister?” ‘Cause I’d never seen the guy before. But I was higher than God on the dope they’d given me, not to mention my jaw was wired shut, and all I could manage was a pitiful mewling sound. Walt left his business card on the nightstand and told me to think it over. Except it wasn’t a business card, it was a flyer for The Henhouse with a cartoon picture of a busty redhead on it. I’d heard of the place; the context was, “Stay away from that place.” But I appreciated the flyer Walt had left me. The picture of ole Red kept me company while I convalesced. ‘Course, I would’ve preferred my fiancée, Cheryl-Ann, kept me company, fetching in candy and kisses. But it turned out she and my trainer had eloped while the doctors were patching me up. Mad as I was about that, I was even madder they’d run off with my loser’s purse, because without it I couldn’t pay my hospital bill. So I took the job at The Henhouse.

When I started working the door for Walt, I told myself it was just until something better came along, but something better never did, and I guess somewhere along the line I stopped even looking. Bouncing at The Henhouse wasn’t exactly where I’d pictured myself at age thirty-five. But my childhood dream of being a prizefighter was shattered, along with my jaw, that night I stepped in the ring with Boar Hog Brannon. Turns out I wasn’t the contender I’d always thought I was; I was just another bum, and I didn’t have no brother Charlie to blame it on.

* * *

I snorted awake on the cot in the stockroom, with little idea of how I’d got there, until I tried to move and my whole body screamed, and memories of the previous night started flashing back like the Apes were still sticking the boot in.

I managed to sit up, swung my legs off the edge of the rack, and sucked deep breaths until the nausea passed. I swigged the dregs from my bottle of Wild Turkey, gargled with it, then spat bloody booze into the mop bucket next to the cot. Teetering to my feet, I tightrope-walked out to the bar.

Walt was behind the slab. He was aiming a TV remote at the idiot box behind the bar. Stabbing buttons and cursing when the picture didn’t change. He grunted a greeting as I shuffled past him to fetch a bottle of breakfast from the beer cooler. “Why didn’t you wake me?” I said, secretly glad he hadn’t.

“Don’t think I didn’t try,” Walt said.

I slumped down on my stool, bit off the bottle cap, guzzled my Coors, belched heartily, and then glanced up at the TV.
Scooby Doo
was playing in Spanish. Scooby and Shaggy sounded like Cheech and Chong. Walt shook the remote control in his fist, gesticulating furiously. “Goddamn piece-ofshit batteries!”

“Here’s a wild idea,” I said. “Try changing the channel by hand?”

But Walt was a stubborn sonofabitch, and I knew he’d sooner blast the TV with his shotgun than lose this battle with the remote control.

“Just mind your business and drink your breakfast,” he said.

I glanced across the room.

It was noon in The Henhouse. The only customer was old Lou, parked at the end of the stage with a beer and a stack of rumpled singles on the table in front of him. Marlene was giving Lou her matinee performance. Clutching the dance pole like a Sumo who’s thrown her back, Marlene gyrated her chunky caboose above Lou’s leering face. He waggled a buck beneath her butt like a corner man rousing his boxer with smelling salts. Marlene squatted over the buck, her butt cheeks snatching at the bill in Lou’s hand like a flabby arcade claw groping for a plush toy.

Used to be, Marlene could part a fool from his money with her tight little tush quicker than Mr. Miyagi catching flies with chopsticks. But that was before her car accident and she was still a mite unsteady on her feet, on account of all the pain medication and the weight she’d piled on—a few dozen pounds, give or take, mostly give.

Still, you couldn’t fault her for trying. She could’ve taken a knee and allowed Lou to slip the buck in her G-string. After everything she’d been through, there was no shame in it, no one would’ve blamed her. But nope, she had her pride. No car accident was going to deprive Marlene of her trademark move.

On the fifth attempt, her buttocks snatched the buck from Lou and nearly took his hand at the wrist along with it. Lou’s eyes welled with proud tears. He applauded like the coach of an Olympic gold winner. From my perch at the end of the slab, I raised my bottle of Coors to show my appreciation. Marlene tore the buck from her ass crack and dabbed the sweat from her face with it. She did a little curtsy and then limped backstage.

“She’s back,” I said to Walt, still farting around with the TV remote.

“Who’s back?”

“Marlene.”

His face brightened. “She did her move?”

I seesawed my hand. “Little rusty, but she got there in the end.”

Walt chuckled paternally. “Good for her. I was afraid I’d have to let her go.”

“Shame on you for even thinking it,” I chided him, but I didn’t think he really meant it.

Walt looked about ready to hurl the remote at the TV; I took pity on him.

“You mind?” I said. “I’m watching that.”

“Zoinks!” the Mexican Shaggy exclaimed.

Visibly relieved, but too stubborn to thank me, Walt tossed the remote away and started searching for something else to piss him off. He wet a rag and began scouring the slab like someone had Sharpied it with innuendo about his momma. As he scrubbed around where I was sitting, I knew he was working towards asking me something, and I had an idea what it was. “You think those boys will come back for seconds?” he said at last.

Apart from Marlene, what happened last night was the
other
elephant in the room.

I glanced at my reflection in the back-bar mirror.

It looked like someone had broken a branch off the ugly tree and beat my ass black and blue with it. I wish I could’ve said:
You should see the other guys
. But I was barely conscious when the Apes left, and I couldn’t say for sure how they’d looked. I know I got a few good licks in, but those boys, plus Baby Doll, would have to resemble the Elephant Man’s nut sack to look worse than I did now.

“Christ, I hope not,” I said, and shuddered down another swig of Coors.

Not the kind of thing a bar owner wants to hear from his bouncer, but what the hell, it was my ass they kicked.

“You ever seen ‘em before?” Walt asked.

I shook my head. “Probably just passing through.” Here’s hoping, I thought.

Walt nodded, but he looked about as convinced as I’d sounded.

That’s when we heard the roar of an engine approaching The Henhouse at speed. And what happened next, and what it led to, the whole sorry business, reminded me what they say about hoping in one hand and shitting in the other and seeing which hand fills up first.

Walt grabbed the shotgun from under the slab and then joined me at the window. “Is it them?” He racked the shotgun.

“I don’t think so …” I said, watching through the tinted glass as a pickup truck careened wildly about the parking lot.

A thicket of tree branches were tangled in the grill and the mudguards and under the windshield wipers, like the truck was wearing a sniper suit. The truck tore donuts around the lot, leaves billowing in its wake, tires screeching on the asphalt and spewing smoke. It looked vaguely familiar: A rattletrap, rust-red Sierra Classic. Walt pointed out the Bigelow Baboons pennant flapping on the flagpole attached to the bumper. “Ain’t that Lester’s truck?”

“Yeah,” I said, sighing with relief that it wasn’t the Apes.

Walt relaxed his grip on the shotgun. “The hell is that jackass doing?”

I was curious about that myself.

We continued to watch as the truck roared about the lot.

Then it swerved suddenly; started rocketing towards the bar like a missile.

“I’ll tell you what he ain’t doing …” I said.

Walt said, “Yeah?”

I said, “Stopping!”

I threw myself on Walt like a Secret Serviceman, tackling him to the floor as Lester’s truck crashed through the window where we’d been standing in an explosion of glass. The truck bulldozed through the room, smashing tables and chairs to splinters before it slammed to a stop against the bar slab, and the horn honked like it was demanding service. A shower of leaves and dust rained down over the room. It went quiet real sudden.

I staggered to my feet and helped Walt to his. Choking on tire smoke, fanning falling leaves from the air, we gaped at the truck, the hood crumpled against the bar. Then the driver’s-side door clattered open and Lester spilled from the cab. He thudded to the floor and started kissing it like he couldn’t believe he was alive, though the way Walt was staring at him, that wouldn’t be for much longer.

Sometimes, and this was one of those times, it was hard to remember that Lester Swash used to be something like a local sports star. Back in the day he’d played reserve quarterback for the Baboons, before he turned his throwing arm into a drinking arm, and pissed away whatever God-given talent he’d had. He was a lanky dude with a mop of blonde hair and a mustache he mistakenly believed made him look dashing, and not like a South-East Asian sex tourist.

Cradled to his chest was a video camera, but I didn’t give that much thought right away, on account of the truck being embedded where the bar used to be. Lester wobbled to his feet, but Walt seemed to prefer him where he was, because he slugged Lester in the mouth and put him back down again. I decided it was prudent to take the shotgun from Walt. He relinquished it reluctantly.

“Shit-for-brains peckerwood!” Walt barked at him. “Look what you done to my place!”

But Lester just started hollering, “It took him! It took Ned!”

Walt glanced at me—I shrugged—he frowned at Lester.

“The hell are you yammerin’ about?”

“The skunk ape!”

The look on Walt’s face, I was glad I’d taken the gun from him.

According to legend, the Bigelow Skunk Ape stalks the great sprawl of woods beyond town that locals call the Sticks. He’s Bigfoot with body odor, I guess. Our town’s very own Fouke Monster, Scape Ore Swamp Lizard Man, or the Goat Man who stalks the East Texas Bottoms.

My momma described him to me once. A shaggy-furred beast with devil-red eyes, standing tall enough to block out the sun; he could crush a man in his fist like Popeye opening a can of spinach. Momma warned me, if I lollygagged home from fishing the river, and was late back for supper, I might meet him myself.

Now in the cold light of day, I reckon I knew she was pulling my leg. But as dusk started creeping in, it was harder to convince myself. The sun retreated over the horizon like it was telling me:
Kid, if you’re damn fool enough to walk home at night with a skunk ape on the loose, you can do it alone.
Before full dark, I packed up my fishing pole and my tackle box, and then hauled ass home in time to set the supper table, ignoring Momma’s smug smile.

Years later, I learned the legend was started by moonshiners to spook folks away from the woods and their hidden whiskey stills. But even now people still sometimes talk about the Bigelow Skunk Ape as if he really is living out there in the Sticks someplace. Parents use him to keep their rug-rats in line. And maybe a guy in a bar will spin you a yarn about his encounter with the skunk ape, and if it’s a good one, you might shout him a beer for a tall tale well told.

Unfortunately for Lester, Walt was not in the fucking mood.

“Skunk ape?” Walt sputtered. “I’ll give you skunk ape!” But he gave Lester another punch in the mouth instead. “That goddamn skunk ape could prob’ly drive a truck better than you can!” I wrestled Walt into a bear hug before he could pop Lester again, and that’s when I noticed someone else in the truck.

“Eliza?”

I helped her from the truck cab. She was shivering, deathly pale and glassy eyed; leaves were tangled in her long blonde hair, and her arms and legs were viciously scratched as if she’d scrambled for her life through a briar patch. Of course, I noticed all that after I’d taken a moment to appreciate the fact that she was wearing a fuzzy brassiere and britches like Raquel Welch in
100 Million Years B.C.
And the cavewoman costume looked as fetching on Eliza as it did on Raquel. She really was quite a gal, even all scratched-up and upset like this.

I managed to unglue my eyes and told Walt to fetch some brandy.

He didn’t move; he didn’t blink.

“
Walt
!” I said, for the third time. “
Brandy
.”

He dragged himself away to get the brandy. I sat Eliza down at the end of the bar slab. Thank god for small miracles, Lester’s truck hadn’t demolished my spot. Walt returned with the brandy and poured Eliza a shot. She gulped it down and then reached for the rest of the bottle. Walt poured her another shot instead. It went the way of the first. “That’s enough for now,” I told Walt.

To Eliza, I said, “What happened, girl?”

“I told y’all what happened!” Lester cried. He was pacing the bar with the video camera cradled to his chest like a babe in arms. “The skunk ape took Ned!”

Walt reached under the slab for his shotgun, before remembering he’d given it to me. The best he could do was shoot Lester with a glare.

Ignoring Lester, I asked Eliza again. “What happened?”