CHAPTER THREE - Gunfire

My head automatically followed Lance's quickening exit to my right, out the single wooden door that appeared to lead to a back deck. It was testament to his familiarity with this place, because I wouldn't have picked that as an escape. I was still seated, but twisting ever so slowly on the denim-polished wooded tops of the barstool. I wasn't quite in 'escape mode' yet, as Lance apparently was - I didn't know who the hell these guys were and they apparently didn't know me. No-Neck had, thankfully, laid his cue stick on the table, disrupting the lay of the balls, and elicited a scowl from one of the girls lining up her next shot. His eyes focused on Lance's back, clearly in a less-than-friendly mood. I couldn't judge Lance's mood from the rear, but I had a fairly good clue.

My attention turned to the second biker, frozen in mid-light of his cigar. Weathered hands cupped in front of his face, eyebrows up and eyes turned to his left as he watched his buddy hurry out the door. His face was lit from below by his lighter and an intense cloud of blue smoke enveloped his face and ears. Without moving another muscle, of which there appeared to be many, his dark eyes snapped back in my direction, and fixed on my face. "Oh shit" once again, seemed an appropriate response. With his hand still cupped in front of his face, I saw his ears go back.

Under ordinary circumstances, I would have interpreted that as a growing smile. As these weren't ordinary circumstances, I interpreted this as, "This is gonna be fun!" Ohhhhh shit. Now, if you've never been in a dark seedy little bar on a rainy day, watching your buddy scamper out the back door with a rough-looking dude on his tail, and his buddy smiling at ya, then you'll just have to imagine this.

There's an old saying, 'If my ass had teeth, there'd be bite marks on the chair'. I now had first-hand experience at how that got its origin. So far, the remainder of the bar patrons, of which there were few, were unaware of the heightened alarm my mind was going through. The girls still bent over the green table accentuating their late-teen year old asses, the other barmaid - who we uncharacteristically didn't know the name of yet - was still wiping down the far corner of the bartop, and Charlie Daniels still wailed-on about some fiddle player in Georgia. The machinery between my ears, though, was in high gear.

Whatever bullshit Lance got himself into, was his problem. I've known this guy for less than three hours now. My immediate problem was finding an available ball bat. Cue sticks, on the other hand, were in abundance on this guy's side of the room. Still unmoving, I regain focus on the ever-growing hint of a smile behind his hands.

The broad smile was confirmed when he lowered his hands, butane lighter still spewing blue flame, and tendrils of smoke dissipated above his head. His now exposed face not only revealed the suspected smile, but the grin of an old friend.

Instantly, my ass unclenched a bit, the immediate threat of pain and bloodshed diminished, and I allowed a return smirk as I raised my hand, finger pointing at a fellow Barbarian from years back.

"Stoner!" I greeted my old riding buddy as I rose from the stool and crossed the room in three strides. He had no idea how glad I was to see him…well; actually how glad I was that it was he and not some crazed biker out for a little mid-day entertainment. We clasped each other's forearm in traditional Barbarian handshake, slapped each other on the shoulder with the other hand. No time for pleasantries, as I judged Lance might be in need of rescue, I nodded in the direction of the back door and asked, "What the hell is that all about?"

"I dunno," Stoner offered, "seems like Two-Tone don't like him much though. Better go see if either one of 'em needs rescuing"

All this happened in less than a few seconds, and in less than a few more, Stoner and I were out the back door. We found nothing but an old party deck and broken bench seats scattered around weathered wooden wire spools, discarded by the power company, which apparently served as tables on dryer days.

We jumped down the rear steps, two at a time, looped around the dumpsters near the side parking area, and approached the front parking area, I heard Lance's voice, clearly pissed about something, and followed it to the front of the bar where we recently parked the bikes.

Splayed out in a puddle near Ol' Huck's front tire, Two-Tone had a knee in Lance's back, one beefy paw clasped either side of his neck forcing his face sideways in the gravel, while the other pulled out my new friend's wallet from his back pocket, still attached to his belt loop by its chain.

Man, I wasn't in the mood to be out here in the rain witness to a mugging, but Lance's plea of, "Get the fuck off me, Two-Tone," made it clear this was just a score being settled, and nobody was gonna get hurt real bad.

Stoner and I scurried under the awning overhang, cigar smoke trailing behind him, and I scrunched down on my haunches within Lance's peripheral view and ask, to no-one in particular, "Wanna tell me what's going on?"

Two-Tone glanced back at me with an intense scowl on his bearded face, and asked, "You know this guy?"

Hmmmm… better tread very carefully here, I told myself. Guilt by association can be just as painful as being guilty yourself. But I knew I needed to stand with my new bud, and said, "Yeah, we been riding for a while."

OK, so it's a little bit of a lie, but with Stoner at my side - and I KNEW he'd speak for me - I doubt anything'd come of admitting I knew him. I obviously rode in with him minutes earlier.

Stoner put his hand on my shoulder and says, "This is Muthuh - old friend of mine." Two-Tone's eyes went from Stoner to me and back to Stoner, then he slowly stood up with Lances Wallet in his hand at his side, still tethered to its rightful belt loop by its chain, yet firmly under the control of it's new owner.

I hadn't had a lot of time to ponder what to do next, because with no warning, Lance twisted on the ground convulsively, swung his right leg with amazing speed, caught the big lumbering biker off-guard and dumbfounded as he looked at his feet being kicked out from under him. With nothing but gravity between him and the pavement, the 250-pound would-be wallet thief hit the ground on his side with an unbelievably loud explosion.

At the same moment, life suddenly in slow motion, chunks of wood splintered off the post that held up the roof overhang, and a smoking hole in Two-Tone's front pocket revealed the tell-tale Blue/Black muzzle of what looked like a .38 caliber revolver, poking through the new hole of his well-worn jeans.

I was still on my haunches, with little time to react to what had happened other than instinctively hunching over, elbows raised to ward off whatever the hell was happening. Lance had rolled over, still on the ground, with his arms coming up to cover his head. Stoner was in mid-dive for the porch deck behind him, and Two-Tone was eyes-wide-shut in the rain, having connected skull with asphalt from 6 foot up.

Wanna know the first thing that crossed my mind? … If the cops come right now, our beers would remain full on the bar while we went to see the magistrate.

Lance straightened up first, tucked his wallet back in his pocket, took one step over to the prone figure on the ground, reached into the smoking pocket and withdrew the small revolver. He looked at it momentarily, shook his head once, turned to me and muttered, "Thanks," turned and walked through the open front door of the bar for the second time in less than two minutes.

My eyes met Stoner's again with an understood "whaddafuck?" expression on both our faces. Cigar hanging from his lips he appeared to be as shocked as I was. I stood, took a few steps backwards toward the front door and said to him, pointing to his friend, "see if he's OK," then turned and followed Lance into the building.

I found him standing at the bar, reclaiming his Budweiser, wiping off the road debris from his pants, wet and soiled from lying on his stomach in the rain. Two old guys (OK, older than me, all right?) were sitting next to the Coors Light poster near the Men's Room, both with one hand on their bottle, heads turned in our direction and mouths gaping open seemed poised to get out of their seats and run for the door. I held out one hand, palm facing them in a gesture of "Be cool," as I walked over to the otherwise empty bar at the back corner of this stale smelling place. Lance had just asked the other barmaid what her name was when I reached him. Jill was nowhere in sight.

Tina, as we found out, had already reached for the phone with her shiny red fake fingernails ready to dial, likely 911. Lance told her all was OK, that there was an accidental discharge out front but no problems… She looked from him to me, pleading for someone to tell her what to do. I nodded agreement that all was OK in the world, looked at the phone in her hand and nodded once at the cradle, indicating to hang it up.

She didn't see the gesture, receiver frozen to her ear. "What was that noise?" she asked, eyes still open in uncertainty.

"The big guy with the bald head fell down and the revolver in his pocket went off," was all I said, not wanting to tell her too much and confuse her even more. I grabbed my beer, walked over to Stoner's table and grabbed his, smiling at the two young ladies still playing pool as if nothing has happened. Likely in their minds, nothing had.

I left Lance smiling at the barmaid, but clearly pissed, as I sauntered back over to and out of the front door. By then Two-Tone had sat up, still on the ground, with Stoner testing his verbal responses to see if he was OK. He got a pretty good whack to the head from that swan dive he just took, and still looked rather bewildered.

I stood above them, reached out with Stoner's Natural Light and handed it to him, from which he took a healthy swallow before he stood up and once again shook hands with an old friend.

"Looks like he'll live to talk about it," was all he said, as he looked back down, shaking his head. The big guy's eyes were fixed on some far-away point; tears welled up in their corners. I knew that hurt.

With him still seated, I turned to him and asked, "What your beef with Lance?" wary of any sudden reaction and standing far enough away to prevent a similar leg kick aimed at me.

"Son of a bitch owes me a hundred bucks, and ever-damned time I see his ass he never has it. This time I aim to take it one way or the other" I saw him shifting his weight to get up, something I wasn't likely going to be able to prevent, so I reached out with my right hand, grabbed his wrist, and hoisted him to his feet.

"Do ya mind doing it without getting one of us shot in the process?" was all I said. I turned my back to him, gambling the nonchalant attitude would impress him. In actuality my ears were keen for the sound of shuffling feet lunging at my back. I didn't hear it.

I walked back into the bar, followed at a distance by the two of them. I, frankly, just wanted to get out of the rain and away from the prying eyes of the neighbors who had come out to investigate the shot.

Two-Tone stopped just inside the front door, pointing at Lance saying, "Pay me what ya owe me now, or I take it outta yer ass!" It was a less than enthusiastic growl, but with him being over 6 foot, it was still a statement that made you sit up and take notice.

Man, it was just like in the friggin movies, I pictured Clint Eastwood sitting at the bar, ignoring the threat, taking a long slow slug of his beer, setting it down in front of him carefully and talking into his beer bottle, but meant for us all to hear, "Two-Tone, ya cheatin' bastard, you didn't win that game of pool, ya sunk the Eight in the wrong pocket and ya know you did. You come after me again like that… nearly shoot my head off … and I'll blow yer nuts off with yer own gun!"

Stoner and I raised an eyebrow at each other trying to figure out where this was gonna go again. Lance was still sideways to him, but Two-Tone wasn't coming any further into the room. I walked over to Lance, put my hand out palm up, curling my fingers in a "Give it up" motion, and he breathed a heavy sigh.

Looking directly at Two-Tone, still framed by the front door, he reached into his front pants pocket and placed the now cooled Smith & Wesson .38 in my hand, real slowly, with the barrel pointing purposefully right at Two-Tone about 20 feet away, and looked back into the beer bottle.

The implied threat was palpable, but it was obvious that he wished to diffuse the situation the same as the rest of us.

I pushed the tiny thumb-latch releasing the cylinder, tilted the gun up, dropping the six cartridges, one less its load, into my palm, and while walking over to Two-Tone, pocketed them like loose change. With a flip of the wrist, just like ol' Clint would do, the cylinder chamber popped back in place, and I grabbed the barrel with my other hand, handing him his gun back. What the hell else was there to do? After all, if the cops DID show up, I'd rather he had it in his pocket, the one with the hole in it, not Lances.

Before I let go, though, with both of us holding on to either end of the gun, I told him I'd settle it with one game of Nine Ball, "You forget the hundred if I win, I'll pay up if I lose?"

See, I figured this guy must already play Eight Ball pretty good if he is playing for that kind of money. May as well take a chance his strategy skills were less advanced in Nine Ball, and it IS my game.

He looked over at Lance, who was still ignoring him, then at Stoner, (couldn't tell you what his reaction was, because I was intent on Two-Tone's face), and then returned his gaze to me. Still a bit sheepish about being ass-whooped like he had - this may be a way to save face. He nodded once.

I smiled, stuck out my hand and said, "Good decision, Two-Tone, you break … and the name's Muthuh."

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