The Man With the Barbed-Wire Fists

by Norman Partridge

Mitch owned a couple of clubs in San Francisco, hole-in-the-wall joints in the Mission District. He started out on the cheap, backed only with a little bit of an inheritance from his dad, and there wasn’t anything fancy about either place. Just a come-one-come-all attitude, a half-dozen beers on tap, clean glasses, and live music a couple nights a week. Mitch said that the secret to his success was throwing a good party every night. He definitely knew how to do that.

  We’d been friends for a long time — since high school — and I was real happy for him. But mostly I wished I could be real happy for me, too. I’d been making my living as a writer for the last five years, but mine was a strictly hanging-on-by-the-skin-of-my-teeth kind of existence. I was more than a little tired of worrying about the rent, and the credit card bill, and the beater of a car that had been rolling atop four balding tires for the last five thousand miles. And I was sure enough sick of eating bologna sandwiches for dinner.

  I knew that in a lot of ways I was luckier than most. I sold everything I wrote. Four published novels under my belt, and a fifth on the way. Every one of them had garnered good reviews, and I had a drawerful of laudatory quotes from writers I admired.

  But I’d never come close to making the kind of score I wanted to make. No publisher had ever shot the big advance my way, or offered to send me on tour, or put a single penny into publicizing my books. No Hollywood bigwigs had optioned any of my novels for the movies. People I respected told me that I had a bright future and that financial success was just around the corner. But I’d been hearing that for so long that it annoyed me more than anything else.

  People told me other things, too. Like money isn’t everything. Of course, it was my considered opinion that people who spoke about money in those terms slapped filet mignon on the barbecue grill whenever the mood struck them and fed the scraps to the dog. To put it plainly, they hadn’t eaten a bologna sandwich in many many moons.

  My stomach growled. There was a popcorn machine at the end of the bar. Popcorn was free if you were buying a beer. I helped myself to a bowl.

  I glanced at my watch. It was a little past eight o’clock. Mitch must have gotten lucky. The tourist crowd at the saloon was starting to thin out. Plenty of barstools stood vacant, and the clatter of the slot machines was practically nonexistent. Roy was chatting with a few local alcoholics who appeared glued to their stools, but his heart sure didn’t seem to be in it.

  No such problem with Big John Dingo. He waited behind the barroom doors, the cassette tape rolling endlessly, spewing his rattler-rough come-on for just one more quarter.

  A guy wandered up to the mechanical gunslinger. He sure didn’t seem like the type. He looked as trail worn as Big John himself, and he wore a T-shirt that proclaimed: TOP HAND AT THE MUSTANG RANCH.

  The T-shirt was black, but the material was so faded that it couldn’t disguise several angry smears of machine oil. I wondered if the guy was a biker. He looked the part. I was just about to congratulate myself for my keen observational skill when he produced a key from a ring chained to his belt, unlocked Big John Dingo’s change box, and pawed a mound of quarters into his hand.

  The take wasn’t much more than what Mitch fed the machine a couple hours earlier. The greaseball wandered over to Roy and stacked quarters carefully on the bar. He slid two stacks to Roy and kept the other for himself.

  “Fucked up way to make a living,” the guy said.

  Roy stared at the greaseball. Or maybe he was staring at the greaseball’s T-shirt. Because what Roy said was, “There’s worse ways.”

  The words sent an uncomfortable shiver up my spine. For a second I thought there might be trouble, but the greaseball only shrugged and pocketed his quarters. He wandered over to one of the slot machines and fed the one-armed bandit until his money was gone. Then he glanced around the room, like he was waiting for someone.

  I knew how that felt, the same way I knew that this guy had made a mucho grande mistake — he’d shot his pathetic little wad and come up short one beer in his hand, so he didn’t have an excuse to hang around.

  “I’ll be back,” he said, and his shadow followed him outside like a thirty-weight stain.

  “Wonderful,” Roy said.

  I finished my popcorn and wandered around the saloon. The slots were old, not the electronic gizmos you find in Reno, Tahoe, and Vegas. Some of ’em, I could imagine dusty miners pulling the handles. After all, the Bucket of Blood Saloon had been open since 1876.

  My boots made muffled thuds against the weathered floorboards. A silver-haired lady smiled at me from behind the cashier’s cage. “Try your luck?” she asked. “How about a roll of quarters?”

  I shrugged and looked down, embarrassed by my empty pockets. Then I spotted it, on the floor in front of a quarter slot machine. A single quarter, gleaming in a pool of soft yellow light.

  I looked around. The greaseball was long gone. I sure wasn’t going to chase after him. Maybe he’d dropped the quarter. But maybe he didn’t. I’d watched several people play the slots in the last few hours. Any one of them might have dropped that quarter.

  I picked it up and slipped it into the slot machine.

  I pulled the handle.

  Three plums spun into place.

  The one on the right shuddered a little.

  Then a buzzer sounded, because the plum held firm.

  “I’m thinking maybe another bar is the way to go, ” I say. “If my luck holds in Vegas, I’ll go in on it with you as a partner. Of course, it would be your show…”

  I glance over at Mitch, but he doesn’t say a word. His head hangs low. He s staring into the brimming slot bucket between his feet.

  “Yeah, ” I say, backtracking in case I made a mistake. “Maybe that’s a bad idea. You’ve already got two bars. That’s nothing new for you. What we need is a challenge.”

  I drive on, through Tonopah. I’m not stopping. Not for anything. All I want is Vegas, another casino, a big one with acres of slots.

  Dollar machines. Five dollar machines. Ten dollar machines. ‘Movies,” I say. ‘We take one of my short stories. Do the damn thing ourselves. I write it. You produce it. We find a director who’ll get the motherfucker right. ”

  I slap the steering wheel with my hand. Yeah. That’s a hell of a good idea. Mitch has the connections, too. There’s a pack of youngun movie guys who hang out at one of his clubs.

  Man, I’m not even cold anymore. I honk the horn, long and loud.

  I step on the gas.

  I played the quarter slots for an hour. And then the dollar slots for two. Finally I ended up at a big monster of a dollar machine called THE BUCKET OF BLOOD.

  God knows how many pulls on that sucker.

  Fifteen of them hit jackpots.

  Two hundred silver dollars. Five hundred silver dollars. Seven-fifty. A piddly seventy-five. And on like that. Enough to fill up three Bucket of Blood Saloon slot buckets.

  But those jackpots were just small change. The last one was the big one. Three black buckets tripped into view, each one dripping blood.

  Ten thousand dollars.

  The machine didn’t pay that one, of course. Roy handed me the check. I stared at it hard.

  One of the barflies laughed. “I guess you’re buying!”

  “I guess I am!” I said, not taking my eyes off the check.

  The barfly stared over my shoulder at all those zeros. I could smell rum on his breath, but I didn’t spare him a glance. Not when I had the check to look at.

  “You won ten thousand bucks off a quarter?” The barfly’s voice trembled with awe. “You gotta be the luckiest man alive!”

  I started to tell the story again. I couldn’t help myself. How I was broke… flat… busted. How I found the quarter on the floor. How I figured what the hell and dropped it into the closest one-armed bandit —

  A hand dropped on my shoulder and just about spun me out of my boots.

  “That was my goddamn quarter.”

  Surprisingly, I recognized the voice. The
words were spoken by Big John Dingo, but it was the greaseball who had hold of my shoulder. They were one in the same. It shouldn’t have surprised me. After all, the greaseball had fixed the old arcade machine. He’d obviously supplied the gunfighter’s voice, too.

  His eyes seared me like a hunk of dead steak. “I want my money.”

  “Fuck that.” I shook him off and stood my ground. “I won that money It’s mine.”

  “You won it with my fuckin’ quarter, dickhead. Give it up or there’s gonna be trouble.”

  “No way — ”

  A crashing blow from a big right hand and I felt like I was headed for the promised land. My knees banged hard against the weathered floorboards and a loud creak tore the air. For a second I couldn’t decide if the sound came from the floorboards buckling or my own tired bones —

  “That’s enough, Big John.”

  It was Roy’s voice. I couldn’t see him. I was on my knees, looking at Big John’s belt buckle. It was probably the only thing on him that was clean. Polished silver, and I could see my reflection in it, funhouse mirror-style.

  I looked more than a little perplexed. And that’s the way I felt. The greaseball’s name was Big John, same as the gunslinging dummy. It was crazy. Twilight Zone stuff. I halfway expected to look over at the slot machine and see Rod Serling standing there —

  But there was only Big John. He grabbed a handful of my hair and tilted my head until my eyes found his. He drew back that right hand again and I cringed.

  “You give me that money — ”

  Roy’s voice again, accompanied by a sharp clicking sound. “I mean it, Johnny boy. Don’t give me a reason.”

  The greaseball let me go. A couple of the barflies helped me to my feet. I turned to the bar and saw Roy standing there, a pistol in his hand.

  “I want that money, pilgrim,” Big John said. “I’ve a right to it. It’s mine. If you think you’re leavin’ Virginia City without givin’ it to me, you’d better think again, you pencil-dicked motherfucker.”

  I could barely whisper. “Not one dime,” I said.

  “That’s enough.” Roy cut me off with a sharp glance. “Say another word, and I’ll throw the both of you out.”

  Big John headed for the door. “I got a gun of my own,” he said. “I’ll be back.”

  “Wonderful,” Roy said.

  A second later the bartender slammed a shot of whiskey onto the bar.

  I drank it straight down.

  “I’ve got to get out of here,” I said. “I’ve got to find my buddy. That girl… Doreen… you know where she lives?”

  Roy nodded. “Apartment above a T-shirt shop. Across the street, about a half a block up.”

  Jesus. That wasn’t much help. Every other store on the street was a T-shirt shop. “What’s the name of the place?” I asked.

  Roy looked me dead in the eye.

  “Big John’s,” Roy said, and then he sighed.

  Happiness. Yeah. I know the definition of that.

  Scotty’s Junction in your rearview mirror and Vegas comin’ up.

  “Let that motherfucker try to mess with us!” I yell. “His ass didn’t know what he was in for!”

  Mitch doesn’t say a word. I wonder if I’ve gone too far. I’m damn happy about the money. I’m happy about Big John, too. But Mitch isn’t.

  Maybe it’s Doreen… Maybe that’s it… Maybe he’s worried about her.

  Hell. He doesn’t have to worry. Big John isn’t going to lay a hand on Doreen. Not anymore.

  I glance over at Mitch, at his T-shirt. At those bullet holes. I want him to be happy. I want us to be like Yul Brynner and Steve McQueen, headed for boot hill in The Magnificent Seven.

  What was it Steve asked when those lousy sidewinders took a shot at Yul?

  “You get elected?” Yeah. That was it.

  I ask Mitch, “You get elected?”

  He doesn’t say a word. So I say them for him.

  “No, but I got nominated real good. ”

  “You don’t want to mess with him,” Roy said. “Big John Dingo’s a real asshole. He’s been around town for a few years now. Blew in with a string of schemes that were gonna make him rich. He thought so, anyway. First it was the Big John Dingo Gunslinger machine. He fixed that old relic up for us, got the idea that he was gonna sell them things to every bar in the nation. Of course, reality sort of disabused him of that notion. Then it was the T-shirt shop. Then… well, poor Doreen… Shit, she ain’t the homecoming queen, but ain’t no girl deserves to have her man turnin’ her out.”

  I heard what Roy said, but I was about three steps past him. “Let me borrow your gun.”

  “Let me call the sheriff.”

  “No,” I said. “We don’t have time for that. Dingo’s crazy. He said he was going after his own gun. And if he finds Doreen with my buddy — ”

  “He don’t know the fella’s your friend. Hell, Doreen with another man… that’s just business as usual, as far as Big John’s concerned.”

  “Oh, yeah. He won’t mind finding another man banging his girl after some lucky son of a bitch made a fortune off a quarter that he dropped on a barroom floor.”

  “Don’t forget him gettin’ run off by a geriatric bartender with a gun,” one of the barflies put in.

  “Yeah.” Roy sighed. “You boys maybe have a couple of good points there.”

  “You bet your ass we do,” I said. “Let me borrow your gun.”

  Roy stared down at the pistol. Then he glanced at the three buckets of dollar coins resting on the bar.

  He squinted at me. “Can’t loan you my gun,” he said. “But might be you could get me to sell it, if the price was right.”

  I pushed one of the buckets his way.

  “I don’t know… ” Roy said.

  I pushed another bucket across the bar.

  Roy smiled. “That’ll about do her.”

  If Mitch doesn’t want to talk, that’s fine with me.

  Maybe he wants to pout. Maybe he wishes he would have hung around, tried his luck on the slots instead of chasing after Doreen.

  He’s used to bailing me out. He’s used to it.

  But that’s not what happened tonight.

  Tonight the shoe was on the other foot.

  Tonight it was my turn.

  Maybe Mitch can’t handle that. I don’t care. I stare down at the bucket between his feet.

  I don’t care at all.

  Let him pout.

  I shove a tape into the cassette deck.

  I pump up the volume and punch the gas.

  The not-so-bright lights of Beatty, comin’ right up.

  I stepped onto the plank sidewalk — the gun clutched in one sweaty hand, the bucket of dollar coins cradled under my other arm — and I almost bumped into him.

  Mitch, all bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, wearing a SLOWEST GUN IN VIRGINIA CITY T-shirt and carrying a bag of high-priced souvenirs.

  “Shit,” he said, spotting the gun in my hand. “What the hell are you doing, Kurt?”

  I’m holding onto this damn bucket of dollars, I thought. That’s what I’m doing. You damn near made me spill my money all over this fucking sidewalk —

  “Kurt,” Mitch said. “Hey, Kurt. What’s up with the gun?”

  “Did you see him?” I asked, glancing over Mitch’s shoulder at the empty street.

  “Who?”

  “Dingo.” I shook my head, trying to clear it, but shaking my head only made me feel the punch I’d taken, and my ears started ringing again.

  “Who are you talking about?”

  “John,” I shouted, barely able to hear myself. “John Dingo. Did you see him?”

  “Big John Dingo?” Mitch laughed. “Sure I saw him. He walked straight out of the Bucket of Blood on those mechanical legs of his, and we had us a shootout on Main Street. I sent him to that big toy store in the sky.”

  “No,” I said. “John Dingo is real, Mitch. He’s Doreen’s guy. And if he sees us, he’s going to gun us down.”


  Mitch swore and started in with a barrage of questions. Most of them were about Doreen. I didn’t have a clue to the answers he was after. They weren’t important, anyway. But if I could get Mitch out of town faster by implying that a jealous boyfriend was after his hide, that was all right with me. I didn’t have time to explain about the money, and how I’d gotten it.

  I started talking. I held tight to the bucket of dollars. Dingo wanted that money. My money. He wanted to take it from me.

  Maybe it was his quarter that I found on the floor. But even if it was Dingo’s, that didn’t mean that the money I’d won belonged to him, too.

  I won that money. Dingo didn’t. It was mine. The bucket of dollar coins. And the ten thousand dollar check.

  Mine. And I was damn sure going to keep it.

  The most I owed Big John Dingo was a quarter.

  But the son of a bitch wasn’t going to get that much out of me.

  Not one thin dime.

  Not one plug nickel.

  Not one red fucking cent.

  I turned and started down the street. The gun felt good in my hand.

  “Hey,” Mitch said. “Hey! Where the hell do you think you’re going! Wait up!”

  Just past Beatty, Mitch starts talking.

  “Miserable sidewinder shuffled off his mortal coil in the streets of Virginia City,” he says. “That boy pissed on the wrong sombrero, and that’s for damn sure!”

  “Yeah,” I say. ‘Yeah!”

  Mitch has a head of steam up now. The sleep did him good. He’s talking and talking…

  And then we ’re laughing and laughing…

  Screeching laughter in the dry desert night.

  It was way past time to kiss Virginia City goodbye. I pressed the gas pedal and the Mustang pulled away from the curb.

  “Jesus!” Mitch said. “Is that him?”

  It was. Big John Dingo, top hand at the Mustang Ranch, striding down the street with a gun in his hand.

  His back was to us.

  “Turn around,” Mitch said. “Before he sees us! Flip a U-turn, and let’s get the hell out of here!”