Boy in the Box

hands and arms flew at him; he ducked his head from the barrage. An arm wrapped around his neck from behind and squeezed, and Jonathan suddenly couldn’t inhale. He panicked, trying to pull the thick arm away from his neck. Jonathan pushed the big man back against the bar and rammed his lower back into the wood, punched him in the groin and nearly tore his own ear off pulling out of the chokehold. Jonathan stared the man in the eye for a moment – black, glossy marbles, dimmed with alcohol, a black-and-white goatee that reached his Adam’s apple, a look of violent intensity in his face – and then punched him square in the mouth. His fist scraped against whiskers and ripped across teeth, and the sheer violence of it suddenly made Jonathan want to quit and just take the beating. Conner and Michael struggled against Larry and two bigger, meaner-looking men, and then Jonathan saw the bartender, with his piece of pipe, wrap one of them around the throat and pull them off Michael. He grabbed them by their collars and pulled them away as if it were an old game he was accustomed to playing, like a woman with a lot of dogs who occasionally has to keep them from killing each other. His voice rang across the bar, and suddenly it all seemed to stop. Jonathan was tossed to the ground and landed hard on the old wood floor. He could see legs and jeans and boots and heard the bartender telling them to get the fuck out. “I’ve had enough of this shit every night, Larry! Get your shit and get out. Got enough trouble here!”

“Fuck yourself, Andy. You’re no fucking good anyway.” Larry was practically lunging at the bartender, who held up his pipe, ready to strike.

It was quiet, but there was electricity in the air; they were all panting, eyes bugging out of their heads, hearts pounding, blood pulsing, pulling at their clothes to put them back in their proper place, waiting for the next move. Jonathan stood up so he was ready, and the three of them stood facing the five locals with a pipe-wielding bartender holding the tentative peace.

Finally, Larry looked away from Michael and back to the bartender. Larry was bleeding from the nose, his red mustache and beard looked wet and tinged with darkness. “Fine, Andy. We’ll leave. But I didn’t lay a finger on that fucker. He hit first. You saw that.”

“You know what you said, Larry. I can’t be having this shit on a nightly basis with you.”

Larry pointed a finger at Michael. “This shit ain’t over. You fellas better watch your back.”

“The fuck is that supposed to mean?” Michael said.

“You all are strangers here. Don’t forget that shit. Enjoy Coombs’, you peckerwood pussies.”

Larry and his friends shouldered through and went out the rickety door into the night. Jonathan finally let down his guard and breathed and started taking account of any damage. He’d been hit a few times; he just wasn’t sure how bad yet. He rubbed a hand across the side of his face. His knuckles were bleeding where they’d cut across teeth. Blood leaked from the corner of his mouth, and his left ear felt like the skin had rubbed off. A knot formed on his forehead above his right eye. Michael and Conner were in similar shape. No missing teeth, no apparent broken bones, everyone tuned up and coming down and restless. Michael fumed.

Conner thanked the bartender, but he only stared, pipe in hand. “You don’t get too welcomed up here by getting into a fight with those boys. Some of them are all right. Some of them ain’t. Just sayin’. You boys best be finding Bill Flood and get the hell out of town.”

Defeat began to set in, and they sat back down at the table, still wanting to be anywhere but here.

“What the fuck happened?” Conner asked.

“He said something,” Michael said. “He was saying… I don’t know. Strange things. He threatened us.”

“So what?” Conner said. “It’s not worth pissing off guys like that up here.”

Jonathan could now see that Michael was drunker than he let on. He’d always had the ability to hide it well, his glazed-over eyes the only telltale sign.

“We’ll be lucky if we go up there and they don’t kill us in our sleep.”

“We have guns,” Michael said.

“They probably got a thousand guns!” Conner said. Then he lowered his voice to a whisper. “We can’t afford to be making mistakes. We can’t afford to be remembered. We can’t afford to have the police talking to us. Don’t lose focus on why we’re here. It’s certainly not to fuck around with the local wildlife.”

Jonathan watched the bartender for a time. They had pretty much chased out all his business for the night. He stood up and went to the bar to pay the tab. The bartender looked him up and down and seemed repulsed.

Jonathan paid the tab and tipped him a twenty. “Sorry about all that,” he said. “But thank you for not letting us get killed.”

The bartender’s eyes burned bright and huge beneath his long hair, as if he were riding some insane beast that only he could see. “I can’t stop you from getting killed, friend. I can only stop you from getting killed in here.”

Jonathan nodded. “Do you know how to get to Bill Flood’s cabin? It’s just we have nowhere to stay tonight and if someone could show us how to get there…”

“Never been there myself. Never had reason to. Place isn’t any good these days anyway. But there might be someone I can call. Bill’s good friends with this guy Daryl Teague. I know he knows how to get out there.”

Jonathan tipped him another ten. “It would be a big help,” he said. “It would get us out of here anyway.”

He took the ten and said, “Probably for the best then,” and walked to the phone.

Conner groaned the second they walked outside to wait