Summer Night

This is another story from Knife Wound: A Collection of Murders.

Links to it and my other works can be found at bradchambers.net.

I eyed the bartender as I emptied the small tumbler, letting her know I was ready for a refill. She was a beautiful woman at sometime in the past. Not so much anymore. Years of late nights, hours on her feet, and dealing with drunks like the one making the commotion at the end of the bar had turned her hair gray and deepened the laugh lines into crevices in her pasty skin. Her blue eyes had probably twinkled at one time. Now they just stared flatly. There were no surprises left in her life. Rode hard and put away wet was an old but applicable saying.

She refilled my glass and as she moved away I caught a glimpse of myself in the dirty mirror behind the row off bottles that lined the shelf behind the bar. My thoughts about the bartender applied to myself also. Old enough to know better. It was hard to leave the life once you were in it though.

The drunk at the end of the bar was getting louder. He started stumbling around, talking to himself in a garbled, but obviously angry voice. He shuffled towards me with his head down. I kept watch on him out of the corner of my eye. When he bumped against the neighboring bar stool I braced myself for the impact. I managed not to spill the watered down whiskey as his shoulder slammed into mine.

The young man let out a roar as his beer bottle hit the floor and shattered. I knew what was coming and wanted no part of it.

The blurred eyes dragged the head behind them as they searched for the culprit. They seemed to almost focus on me for a second before the barrage of incoherent words erupted from the slack mouth accompanied by a shower of foamy spittle.

"Whada ya think yer doin?"

I just looked at him for a second then turned back to my glass. I was aware of him without looking his way. I could feel his eyes fighting to focus on me.

The bartender looked at me and shook her head slightly. She didn't want to deal with it tonight. I nodded back and continued to ignore the kid.

It didn't work.

His unintelligible words continued to be flung at me until he was fed up with talking to himself. He grabbed my shoulder and pulled at it, trying to turn me toward him.

I shrugged off his grip and continued to sip my drink.

It still didn't work.

His second attempted at turning me succeeded and I wound up face to face with the inebriated fool.

"Let me buy you a beer to replace the one you dropped," I said softly, trying to settle his anger a little.

That didn't work either.

"I don wan a beer," he slurred. "I wan you! Outside!"

I restrained the urge to punch him in the face and patted the stool next to me.

"Come on. I'm buying."

I turned back to my drink, knowing it would do no good.

I felt him punch my arm. When he was sober he may have been tough. Drunk, he hit like a little kid.

I looked at the bartender and shrugged. She shrugged in response understanding I had tried.

His nose broke from the impact of my scared fist. A thud sounded as his head hit the plank floor before the rest of his body.

I settled back to my stool and downed the last of my drink, as a pair of middle aged locals dragged the kid outside. He wouldn't be to happy when he woke up with blood on his face and two black eyes. Not to mention the doctor bill he would get when he got the nose fixed.

The bartender refilled my glass.

"On the house. Thanks for trying," she said in a voice roughened by to many years in the thick smoke that filled the room. This was one of those out of the way places where no one paid attention to the law prohibiting smoking in public buildings. No one here cared.

I just nodded at the woman and went back to my thoughts. They weren't very pleasant thoughts. Mostly about how I was too old and too worn out for my own good. The battered pickup in the gravel parking lot of this out of the way road side dive was all I had in the world. The two hundred dollars in my pocket was all I had to last until the next paying job. It didn't really matter what that job was or how legal it was. I did what ever I had to to get by.

The bartender lingered a little trying to catch my eye. I wasn't in the mood for that kind of company tonight.

I finished the free drink, left a small tip for the woman, and made my way past the tables to the door. It squeaked open into the night and then clanged shut behind me as my eyes adjusted to the night. A cloud of mosquitoes descended on me through the flashing strobe of the lightning bugs. I swatted at them and moved from the pool of dim light that the doors frosted window flung to the gravel.

Crunching my way across the lot to my old Chevy I let out a sigh. One of these days the wrong kid was going to pick a fight and I was going to wind up dead.

As I reached for the door handle I heard crunching on the gravel and then something slammed into me knocking me against the truck.

I recovered in time to dodge the knife that flashed in the starlight. It snagged my shirt as it past, leaving a slice across the chest pocket. The drunk kid was off balance from his wild swipe and his head was right there in front of me. Without thinking I punched him in the ear and got sprayed with blood as the cartilage crushed from the impact.

Hooking my booted foot under his unconscious form I rolled him a little to the side so I wouldn't run over him and climbed into the cab of my pickup.

A napkin from the glove box removed the few drops of blood that had hit my face and neck. I tossed it out the window and drove away.

I had almost completed the four mile drive to the bug infested motel I was staying in when I saw headlights coming up fast behind me. Someone was in a hurry.

The lights lead a jacked up 4x4 up alongside and held pace. I glanced at the driver and was disgusted to see it was the kid from the bar.

He just wouldn't let it go.

The jacked up Dodge swerved and I twisted my steering wheel to avoid being hit. I wound up driving down the shoulder with the kid holding steady in the right hand lane. I tried slowing down but he hit the brakes and stayed with me.

We came to the motel but I couldn't pull in with the kid blocking the road so we roared on passed. A quarter mile farther was a small bridge over a creek. There wasn't room on the shoulder and I had to stop. The drunk parked his 4x4 so that I couldn't reverse out.

I was trapped.

I shook my head and sighed.

Some people just wouldn't let go.

As I climbed from the cab of my truck the kid practically fell from his. Recovering his balance he came at me, the knife in his hand again. Despite his fall from the truck, he seemed to have sobered up a lot. His eyes were much clearer in the reflected glow from the headlights than they were back at the bar.

"You ain't gettin away this time."

I just looked at him. Waiting.

He wanted to talk about it before he did it.

"I'm gonna kill you old man."

I waited.

"Gonna cut you up in little pieces."

I waited.

"Feed ya to the coyotes."

I waited.

He was getting frustrated because I didn't respond to his threats. He expected me to be scared or threaten him back.

I did neither.

I waited.

When it came I saw the signs in plenty of time. The slight squint of the eyes, the tightening of the grip on the knife, the shift of the feet.

A sidestep caused the knife to miss completely. That angered him even more. After it happened twice more, he was so mad and frustrated he couldn't get out the treats he wanted to throw my way. He just growled at me.

I gave him a little smile. I had no reason for it other than to annoy him.

It worked.

He let out a roar and came at me with the knife held low. There was no sidestepping this time.

He tried to get me in a bear hug but I managed to push him off. My luck failed me though and I stepped on a large rock that rolled under my boot so that I lost my balance and fell back against the truck.

The kid took advantage and pounced on me again. This time I couldn't push him off and he got his arms around me. He was strong.

He was a lot younger and must have actually spent his days doing heavy lifting. My ribs ached as he increased the pressure. I tried to get my arms loose but couldn't.

My lungs began to burn.

My arms went numb.

My vision blurred.

Finally he tossed me to the ground like a piece of trash.

I gasped for air and fought to focus my eyes. It didn't happen in time. The air that was finally filling my lungs was interrupted by the knife blade. It slid between my ribs and the air wouldn't draw in anymore.

I fought to draw in the humid night air but it wouldn't come.

There was a roaring in my ears as my heart tried to pump harder to bring oxygen to my body but it just wasn't there.

My eyes focused for a second and I saw the kid give me a smile of triumph. The smile would be gone when he was in front of the judge, on trial for murder.

I smiled back and his faded as he realized what he had done.

My vision blurred again and then was gone.

The roaring in my ears stopped.

Silence.