by Cole Savage
“Actually, Tyler. Officer Washington is my brother,” Kyle said reaching out to greet Cameron Washington of the West Virginia Highway Patrol. Tyler winced at Kyle, furrowed his eye brows, and looked way up to Officer Washington.
“You’re Brother. Are you serious, T.D?” With Nicki standing next to Kyle, Kyle hugged Officer Washington, Nicki looked at Tyler and said, “Sweetheart, its Kyle. His name is Kyle.”
“Oh, yeah. I forgot, Mom” Tyler said sarcastically.
“Your damn right, Tyler. Cameron is my brother from another mother.”
“T.D, can I talk to you for a minute,” Officer Washington said, tipping his hat to Nicki.
“Good afternoon, Ma’am— Boys.”
“Nicki, this is my brother Cameron.” Kyle turned his head to the boys. “C.W, meet my wife Nicki, and my sons Tyler and Cole.”
Cameron took the hat off, scratched his head and said, “T.D, I don’t recall you bein’ married?”
“Boy, C.W. That’s a tale for another day.” Kyle shook his head, “What brings you to this neck of the woods?”
“Can I talk frankly here, T.D?”
“We’re all blood here.” Nicki and the boys inched closer to listen.
“It’s Slack Jaw, T.D. Skinheads from the Black Knights busted him up real bad. He was up at Grafton hawking Kentucky Blue, and it seems he wasn’t welcome there.”
“Where’s Slack, C.W?” Kyle stood rigid, his face deadpan. “Is he going to be all right?”
“He’s at United summit in Grafton. They got him in intensive care. They busted his cheek bone perty good, and the rest of him looks like buzzard bait. Broke his arm, his leg, and he can’t see out of one eye. T.D, it’s pretty bad.”
“What’s the name of the bar in Grafton, C.W?”
“Kyle, no,” protested Nicki.
“T.D, we can’t be hasty here. We can’t go in there Kyle Tillman style and bust up the place. Those skinheads are well connected.” Nicki put her hand up and said, “Officer, Washington, can’t you apprehend them and charge them?”
“It’s Cameron, Ma’am, and what am I supposed to charge them with? Slack was selling illegal drugs. I should be holdin’ Slack Jaw.” Standing next to Kyle, Tyler and Cole looked up at Kyle, Nicki was facing Cameron, biting her nails. Kyle looking catatonic, looked away from Nicki and said, “Okay, C.W. You’re taking me to pick up Hooch and were going to Grafton. Nicki take the boys to Karen’s, then run to Grafton to be with Slack Jaw.” Kyle paused to think.
“Call me and keep me updated, Nicki.”
“Kyle, I’m pleading with you, let Officer Washington figure this out. You’re going to risk your new position at West Virginia.”
“Look at me, Nicki,” he said, inching closer to Nicki. “This is what we do in West Virginia when somebody fucks with bloodlines… Please don’t ask me again.”
“T.D, can we go with Mom. We love Slack Jaw.” Tyler asked peevishly.
“That’s up to your mom, but I’m sure Slack would love to see the two of you.”
Kyle got in Cameron’s interceptor and they headed for Grafton. He called Hooch and told him about Slack Jaw; said he’d be picking him and Skeeter up in about thirty minutes. Both of them lived in Parsons, half way between Grafton and Seneca Rocks.
Officer Washington and Kyle picked up Hooch and Skeeter and decided to go by United Summit first, to see Slack Jaw. He called Nicki and told her he would see her at the hospital, and an hour later, Cameron and the boys converged at United Summit to see Slack Jaw.
Kyle was seething, while Officer Washington explained that they had to do it his way or his job could be on the line. Kyle stared into space, a look of dull bitterness while Cameron reprimanded him to maintain control. Nicki and the boys were already at the hospital when Kyle and his friends stepped into the intensive care unit. A quiet white room that smelled sterile. The only sound was the beeping of the heart monitor.
Kyle never liked hospitals. The electronic equipment, the smell of medication and hospital food. The septic white walls covered in subway tile, air that reeked of sickness, trauma, and death. The way People always talked quietly around the injured or dying, like noise would stop their hearts instantly. It was melancholy and he avoided hospital visits whenever possible. He had been there too many times to visit players and it was always a somber and lugubrious experience for him.
Kyle and the boys walked in and saw Nicki sitting next to Slack Jaw, petting his bandage covered face. Tyler and Cole standing at the foot of the bed with moist eyes. Kyle, Cameron, Skeeter, and Hooch, surround the bed where Slack Jaw was sleeping, suffering from the effects of sleeping aids, pain medications, and muscle relaxants. His bandaged face exposed his eyes and nose. His right leg and left arm were suspended from the ceiling; on traction.
“Slack, wake up. Slack.” Kyle nudged him ever so gently. Slack Jaw stirred, managed to open his right eye, his left eye was swollen shut, infused with the color of blood and pomegranate. He managed a half smile, trying to focus on the people in the room.
“Slack, I know you can’t talk. We need you to tell us about the bar in Grafton?”
“Hey, T.D. Hey, guys. Am I gonna die?” Everyone took a moment to put their hands on Slack Jaw as a gesture of galvanization.
“Shit, Slack. You ain’t gonna die. You ain’t got nuthin’ that hard liquor and a hammer can’t fix,” said Hooch wearing overalls and no shirt.
“Hey, boys. Sorry, I didn’t want to free-lance, I know you boys was busy so I ran up to Grafton to sell giggle grass. Didn’t know it was a Black Knight hangout. They were on me like flies on a turd, you know what I mean?” Slack Jaw tried to sit up, but couldn’t.
“Can’t remember much. Before they kicked the tar out of me, they took a twenty-pound bag of giggle weed from my truck.”
The door opened and a nurse came through the door chastising them. A pear-shaped blonde wearing blue hospital issues, with attitude tattooed on her forehead.
“You gentlemen can’t be here. This patient needs to sleep. He’s on massive doses of medications.”
“Hey, Betty. Is that your name?” said Skeeter, wearing rolled jeans and a red plaid shirt open to the navel.
“No. I’m Nurse Blacken Bergh.”
“Listen, Betty,” Hooch mused.
“Looky here, sweet sister, there ain’t enough smack in this cadaver hotel to give old Slack a buzz, so back off. Mind your manners and let us tend to our business. There’s been a crime committed and someone has to pay. We’ll be out of your panties shortly.”
“My name’s not Betty.”
“Whatever, darlin’. We’ll be out of here before you can shake your tail feathers.”
“Officer, if you’re not going to do anything I’m going to get security.” Cameron, with his thumbs hooked on his belt, shrugged his shoulders and pressed his lips tightly together in a gesture of indifference.
“Sweetheart, you better have the Confederate army out there if you’re expectin’ us to leave, otherwise, shut your pie hole.” Nurse Blacken Bergh stormed out of the room and attention shifted back to Slack Jaw, who seemed to be fading into a drug induced slumber.
“Slack, wake up. How many people were at the honky-tonk?” Slack Jaw forced his eyes open.
“It was a place off Charles Street across from the Blue Mont cemetery. I think it’s called The Lions Den.”
“We know, Slack. How many guys were there,” asked Hooch.
“The wheelman; I think the wheelman’s name was Rollins, but they call him The Snowman. I can’t remember how many. At least six downstairs, but I heard noises upstairs.”
“Okay, brother. Get some rest. Nicki and the boys are staying. We’ll check back with you later,” Kyle said heading for the door.
“T.D, watch out for the one they call Opie. That pilgrim is big as a house and meaner than Trisha’s pit-bull, you know what I’m sayin?”
“Let’s go, boys.” Kyle shifted his gaze to Cameron.
“C.W, you know the place?”<
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“Well, I can’t say I’ve had a whiskey there, you know. My type ain’t welcome there, but I know where it is. It’s across the Three Forks River, off Highway 119.
“Nicki, we’ll be back in a flash. Look after Slack.”
“Don’t do anything stupid, Kyle, these boys need you.” Nicki said biting her nails. “Saying don’t do something stupid to a hillbilly is like saying don’t breathe, doing something stupid is what makes us hillbillies—our ethos,” said Kyle.
The four of them left the hospital, boarded Cameron’s interceptor and made their way across the river to the Lion’s Den. Officer Washington parked half a block from the Lion’s Den, on Charles Street, and threw the transmission into Park. Cameron told the boys that he couldn’t be a willing participant, but he would be around the corner if things got ugly. Kyle was sitting in the front seat with a look of contempt, and Cameron had his arm resting on the seatback. He looked at Skeeter and Hooch in the back seat. “Skeet, sometimes Hooch and T.D don’t know when to walk away, you know. Boys, my hands are tied as long as I’m wearin’ this badge… Skeet, give me the sign and we can live to fight another day. I’ll be close by.”
Cameron got out of the cruiser and let the boys out of the back. Kyle opened the passenger door and waited for Hooch and Skeeter. Skeeter reached into his pocket, pulled out brass knuckles and asked Cameron for his nightstick.
“Now what in tarnation do you need that for, Skeet?” Hooch said while Skeeter placed the brass knuckles on his right hand.
“Put that away, Skeet. You walk in there with that they’ll be on you like stink on shit,” Cameron said.
“Boys, I thought we was just here to get Slacks Kentucky Blue back?” asked Cameron doggedly.
Kyle turned and said, “Something like that, Cameron. Let’s go, boys.”
CHAPTER 32
Kyle, still in his plaid shirt, denim pants, and hiking boots, lead the three of them on the sidewalk, across multiple business fronts, towards the Bar. Kyle looked straight ahead, aloof, still in a fiery rage, but forming a plan. The one thing that Kyle learned about fighting over the years was never to allow anger to control the momentum of a fight. He knew when emotions led the way the outcome would almost certainly end in failure. He Looked around trying to familiarize himself with the landscape in case they had to make a hasty withdrawal, and he noticed the cemetery across Charles Street. He cracked a grin and thought, Ahh, the irony.
Cameron rolled his cruiser slowly behind them, he parked thirty feet from the front door; out of line of sight from the bar, on the corner of Charles and Herb Street. Lion’s Den was a turn of the century, two story, dour brick and mortar cube. The upper front of the building had been updated recently, in dark brown metal siding that didn’t seem to mesh well with the charm of the older part of the edifice. The old building had the feel of a Pittsburgh factory town at the turn of the century.
Kyle was the first to go through the brown double wood doors; the boys followed him as he made his way down the three wood planked steps, over to the bar. Hooch looked around and noticed how nice the old place looked. The L-shaped floor was two teared with new wood planks throughout. The Upper precipice was lined with a silver metal tube railing that separated the top eating area from the lower— undoubtedly to keep patrons that had a little too much to drink from falling off the upper tier. On the ceiling Skeet could see black metal grid work suspended under a black plastered ceiling, high back wood chairs, and mahogany wood table tops supported by silver tubes were organized neatly around the floor. Kyle made his way to a black granite bar top with ten high back wood stools under the counter. The place was quaint, modern, and void of the usual acrid smell of smoke one associates with small town bars.
Behind the bar counter on a black wall, ‘Lion’s Den’ was illuminated by white neon tubes, and under the sign, on staggered glass shelves, sat a profusion of liquor bottles, and two flat paneled televisions suspended from the roof were on either side of the sign. Kyle looked around making mental notes of the patrons, who are negligible at this time of the day, and he observed a modern pool table in an adjacent room with a black and white SS flag hanging from the black rafters.
Opie, the one Slack Jaw warned them about, looked over with feigned interest; his shirtless chest revealed man boobs that looked like tracts of land with layers of under boobs. His chesticles had eight-gauge nuts and bolts pierced through them and his torso was the size of a giant redwood. His legs and cankles looked like concrete pylons that could hold up the Brooklyn Bridge. The rest of the SS crew wore black Doc Marten boots, plaid shirts, black dickies and matching suspenders; most of them were fit and slim. Rommel’s rejects were also sporting red bandanas on their arms, indicating to Kyle that these were hardcore Aryans; embellished with an assortment of Nazi and white power tats. Skeeter laughed when he saw the myriad of hairdos, ranging from Faux hawks, Mohawks, and shaved sides with Nazi insignias—complemented with splashes of bright neon. Opie was the only true skinhead among the Hitler Youth, the others were all flash.
Kyle counted seven skinheads, not including the ones upstairs. No staircase was visible from their vantage point, but music filtered down from a second floor.
A thin white man dressed in Dickies, a plaid shirt with suspenders, walked behind the counter, a toxic look in his eyes. He put both arms on the black granite and looked at Kyle.
“You boys see that sign,” he said pointing to a sign hanging on the double front door. Kyle turned his head. Proprietor refuses the right to serve niggers, wiggers, chinks, chugs, Dagos, greasers, spicks, hicks, gooks, hadjis, yanks, nigger lovers, and snip cocks.
“Wouldn’t it be easier to say only members of the Master Race served here?” Kyle said facetiously.
“What do you want, Whiskey Tango?” (white trash) The bartender asked sardonically, drying glasses with a towel.
“Seriously, Fritz. We’re not looking for trouble. We just need to talk to a guy named Rollins, or The Snowman.”
“He doesn’t want to speak to you.” The bartender’s phone beeped, he read the text, then said, “I’ll be back. Don’t you Jethro’s go stealing anything.”
“We’ll be right here, Duchy,” Kyle said winking at the boys.
“T.D, why are you tryin’ to piss them off? We came to get our product back,” said Skeeter.
“And you think they’re just going to hand it over because we asked, Skeet? Reality check, brother.”
“Hooch, you got the tower of power over there, me and Skeet can handle the other Huns.”
“Why do I get the big guy, T.D? I got the big one last time.”
“Because you’re the size of a house and I got the last big guy in Alexandria.”
“T.D, that was like ten years ago.”
“Listen, Hooch, we don’t have time to argue.”
“No, T.D, let’s do rock, paper, scissors.”
“Fine Hooch—one out of one.”
“Okay”
“1, 2, 3, shoot. Rock crushes scissors. I win, T.D.”
“Best out of three, Hooch.”
“No, T.D, I won.”
“Fine, Hooch.” Kyle looked over at Skeeter who was pulling the brass knuckles out of his pocket.
“Put that away Skeet. Not yet.” Skeeter put them back in his pocket with a grimace. Then, coming around a blind corner, Kyle watched the tender walking in their direction, next to a member of the master race wearing rolled up denim pants, Doc Martens, a black t-shirt with an olive green faded army jacket covered in Nazi patches. The man was quite handsome, sporting a short stubble, green eyes, and square chin.
“I’m sure Adolf would be proud of this specimen, most likely a progeny of a miscreant scumbag in a long line of scumbags.” Kyle murmured to Skeeter with faint amusement. The Nazi had two red short lines tattooed under his right eye, a German officer’s insignias, and in a surprising gesture, he reached his hand out to Kyle and said in a Slavic accent with a quicksilver smile. “I know you… You’re the Football coach from
West Virginia.” Kyle crossed his arms in a mocking gesture, leaving The Snowman hanging, and one of Rollin’s cronies made a quick, aggressive move towards Kyle, but Rollins pulled him back with his right arm. “It’s okay, Finn.”
“What can we do for you today, Mr. Tillman?”
“Listen, Fritz. We didn’t come here for trouble. We just want what you took from our friend, before you and your fascist sidekicks rolled him in a lopsided fight.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about, Mr. Tillman.” Kyle got off his seat, slid in front of the Nazi with his six-foot-four-inch frame, towering over Rollins, who didn’t even flinch, and Rollins said, “Be careful, Mr. Tillman. I don’t suppose your familiar with Freidrich Nietzsche who said: Remorse—never yield to remorse, but at once, tell yourse”-Kyle guffawed, interrupted Rollins and finished the sentence. “Tell yourself— remorse would simply mean adding to the first act of stupidity, a second.”
“A learned man— what a surprise, Mr. Tillman. Not the uncultured boorish man one would associate with unrefined vacuous hillbillies like your unfortunate inbred friend, Slack Jaw. To borrow from Sherwood Anderson: A tragic sadness of sophistication, said Rollins, and Kyle added, throw rules into the abyss and say: Here is my thanks to the monster who didn’t succeed in swallowing me alive. Or perhaps you’d like this one better, Rollins: Madness is something rare in individuals—but in groups, parties, peoples and ages, it is the rule.” Rollins was floored, and his eyed showed it, staring blankly at Kyle who finished by saying. “Yeah, I’ve read Nietzsche—he’s the only Kraut to come out of that German cesspool that wasn’t an asshole…And maybe you’ve heard this? Manliness consist not in a bluff, bravado, or lordliness. It consists in doing the right thing, despite the consequences…His name is Slack Jaw, Kraut. You and your meatheads busted him up pretty good.” Kyle’s quick move triggered a response from the members of the Black Knights, and half the patrons drew weapons from their pants and jackets, including a couple of hunting knives. With clenched fist, Opie lumbered over to protect The Snowman. The tension reached a boiling point when Officer Cameron came through the front door with his hands on his holster.