Die Dog or Eat the Hatchet

by Adam Howe

  I swear Walt kept that cutting on the wall just to bust my chops.

  “What’s that word say?” Smiley asked me.

  I don’t think he was being ironic.

  “Brutalized,” I edified him.

  Smiley snickered, and then the Apes took their drinks and commandeered the end of the runway stage, the regulars who were sitting there scattering like vultures when the lions arrive to feast on the carcass.

  Eliza was working the stage that way she did, making every man in the room believe she was dancing just for him. I admit I used to have a hankering for her myself, but I knew a classy gal like Eliza wouldn’t be interested in a pug-ugly bum like me. Buck Owens was playing on the juke as she danced. As Eliza snaked her hips to Who’s Gonna Mow Your Grass? I saw a lot of would-be gardeners who would’ve lopped off their left nut to give her a trim. Not that it looked like she needed one. Her G-string was leaving little to the imagination.

  I saw the way the Apes were leering at Eliza, even Baby Doll, and I knew right away a shitstorm was brewing. The Henhouse runs a strictly hands-off policy. There’s a big printed sign above the stage, replete with a red-circled symbol of a hand with a cross for it, for when the grab-assers get too shitfaced to read. Despite the sign, before the Buckaroos had reached Buck’s guitar solo, Eliza’s lithe body was tattooed with the Apes’ grubby paw prints.

  Eliza’s boyfriend, Lester, who never missed one of her shows, wasn’t doing shit to stop them. He clearly wasn’t happy about the situation, but if the Apes had climbed on the stage and started running a train on poor Eliza, Lester would’ve stood back making choo-choo noises. (Lester’s buddy, Ned, wasn’t with him at The Henhouse that night. At least, I hadn’t spotted him. And a guy wearing a baboon costume is kind of hard to miss. But we’ll come back to that.)

  Walt gave me the nod, but I was already heading over to the Apes’ table; if Walt’s like a daddy to his dancing girls, albeit an incestuous one, then I’m like their big brother, albeit ditto. I cleared my throat to get the Apes’ attention. They must’ve mistook me for the waiter because they just demanded another round of drinks. “You folks can’t keep your hands to yourself,” I said, “I’m gonna have to ask you to leave.”

  Third rule of bouncing: Be nice. Sure, I’ve seen Roadhouse—only about a hundred times—even used to wear my hair long at the back, just like Dalton, till I got tired of people yanking my mullet when we were brawling. Now I keep my hair short, like my patience was getting with the Apes.

  Smiley afforded me a lazy glance. “Ask away, Palooka,” he said. “Now fuck outta here, or we’ll do more than just ‘brutalize’ your punchy ass.”

  To hell with nice.

  I fixed his smile with a straight right that snapped his head back. Rotten teeth sprayed like dirty Scrabble tiles. He crashed off his chair to the floor. The other Apes lurched to their feet. Blubberguts swung a haymaker at my head. I ducked the shot and sprang back up, torpedoing the top of my skull into his chin; heard a muffled curse as his teeth snapped shut like a guillotine on the tip of his tongue. The next Ape got ready to pounce, and I booted him in the nuts like I was kicking a field goal, really put my laces through it, only realizing it was Baby Doll when she sank to her knees, clutching her cooter and hissing like a slashed tire. Now I respect the fairer sex—even the butt-ugly gals—I don’t hit ‘em as a rule and I’d never knowingly kick ‘em in the privates. I had half a mind to apologize, when glass shattered behind me, and I turned in time to see Shitface lunging at me with the jagged end of a broken beer bottle. I whipped my head to the side and the bottleneck whistled past my face by a pussy hair. Snatching his wrist, I twisted his arm hard, like I was wringing a wet towel. Shitface dropped the weapon and yowled. Then I hip-tossed him, and he smashed through the table in an explosion of beer and broken glass and lay crumpled on the floor.

  I did a little Ali shuffle, looking down at the Apes, waiting to see if they wanted any more.

  Then I saw it in their eyes: There was someone behind me.

  I suddenly remembered there’d been five bikes outside.

  I had time to think, Shit—

  Then whoever it was wrapped a pool stick over the back of my head, I went down like a sack of cement, and then next thing I knew, the whole colony of Apes were stomping me like they were trampling out a campfire. The only thing stopped them from killing me was when Walt fired a blast from the shotgun he kept under the bar. Plaster rained down from the ceiling, dusting Walt’s head like a sugared donut. He masked his embarrassment by racking the shotgun and suggesting the Apes leave before he Swiss-cheesed their ugly asses.

  The Apes glanced at the guy who’d sapped me with the pool stick. Built like a silverback, he was clearly in charge. He wore a Confederate flag do-rag, and a hoop toss of rusted iron chains around his neck, like a skid row Mr. T.

  Chains eyed Walt’s shotgun. “No need for that, old-timer.”

  Walt was outraged. I saw him mouth: Old-timer?!

  “We were just leaving.” Chains snapped his fingers at the other Apes.

  They didn’t like it, but they started filing out, clutching their war wounds and griping. Baby Doll evened the score as she hobbled past me, giving me a sly dig in the nuts with the steel-capped toe of her biker boot. Before I’d stopped rolling on the floor, whimpering, the Apes were outside and clambering onto their bikes.

  Chains straddled his hog. A shadowy figure was slouched in the sidecar attached to his bike. The figure flipped Walt the bird as the Apes roared from the lot.

  “Did you see that?” Walt said, as he helped me to my feet.

  “See it?” I wheezed, not yet fully recovered from that kick in the balls. “I felt it.”

  “Sonofabitch flipped me the bird.”

  “Oh,” I said, or maybe it was “Ow,” I’m not sure, I was banged up pretty good.

  Walt helped me back to my perch at the end of the bar slab. I sank down on my stool with a groan. He wrapped some ice in a bar towel, which I clamped on my pounding head like a Frenchman’s beret, then he poured me a stingy shot of Wild Turkey. Instead I took the bottle from his hand and swigged straight from that. He looked like he was about to object, but instead, he necked the shot he’d poured me, and knowing Walt, made a mental note to dock the bottle of Wild Turkey from my next paycheck. I heard him mutter, “Old-timer, my ass.”

  Eliza sauntered over, swaddled in Lester’s old Letterman jacket, and thanked me for defending her honor. She cut an accusing glance at Lester and he fidgeted from foot to foot and muttered something about being a lover, not a fighter.

  “De nada,” I said to Eliza, tipping her a weary salute.

  Still glaring at Lester, she stood on tiptoes to kiss my cheek.

  “Walt,” Lester said, “put Reggie’s bottle on my tab.”

  Walt said, “You ever planning on paying that thing?”

  But Lester was already walking away with his arm wrapped protectively around Eliza’s shoulders. I had to settle for the cold consolation of the bourbon.

  The regulars were watching me with interest.

  Walt clapped his hands, shooing them. “Mind your business. Carry on with your carryin’ on.” He fetched the bullhorn from under the bar and with a squawk of static, announced the next dancing girl to the stage.

  Out of earshot of anyone else, Walt asked me, “What happened, Reggie?”

  How’d I leave my back exposed and allow Chains to sucker me like that? I was wondering the same damn thing myself. There comes a time in every bouncer’s career when he stops being Dalton and starts being Wade Garrett; maybe I was getting too long in the tooth for this shit? ‘Course, I didn’t say as much to Walt.

  Dragging myself up off my stool, I steadied myself against the bar slab like a nervous swimmer clinging to the pool edge, and waited for my head to stop spinning. It slowed down enough that I tucked the bottle under my arm and then hobbled behind the bar towards the stockroom, where Walt kept an old army surplus rack. “Gonna take my break,” I said to Wa
lt. Before I shuffled off into the stockroom, I pointed at the news cutting on the wall. “And would you please take that damn thing down?” He called out behind me, “But Reggie—you oughta be proud!”

  Heeling the stockroom door shut behind me, I collapsed facedown on the cot like I’d been smacked with the pool stick again. Too tired to even kick off my boots, I sank down into deep sleep, and the same old bitter dream.

  2.

  ‘The Bigelow Bleeder’ Reggie Levine versus ‘Boar Hog’ Brannon for the light heavyweight state title. Brannon’s ring name was well deserved; he looked like the bastard offspring of The Thing from Fantastic Four and a razorback. At the weigh-in, I vowed to the boxing press I’d be leaving it all in the ring. “They’re gonna have to carry me out there!” And I was true to my word. For seven hellish rounds, Boar Hog busted me up like he was breaking rocks on a chain gang. The eighth was my best round—I finally hurt him—when Brannon broke his fist on my skull. Sensing a change in the tide, I went in for the kill, forgetting he still had one good hand and walking straight onto a mule-kick uppercut that put me down again for a record ninth trip to the canvas. At the count of six, I dragged myself up onto legs like stilts, chicken-danced around the ring, and then stumbled into the ref. My bloody mug printed a deformed smiley face on the front of his shirt.

  “How many fingers d’you see?” the ref asked me.

  Fingers? The ref had three heads and more arms than a Hindu god.

  “Two,” I guessed, and he waved it off.

  As he helped me to my corner, I glanced back across the ring, and before my swollen eyes pinched shut, I saw Boar Hog Brannon with his arms raised in victory, and I choked back a sob of shame.

  The ref consoled me with a slap on the shoulder that almost put me down again. “Son,” he said, “we ever go to war, you’re the sonofabitch I want in the foxhole beside me.”

  It was my first pro loss, and the last time I’d fight in the prize ring.

  Brannon went onto bigger, better things.

  I got a one-way ticket to Palookaville, via the emergency ward.

  The first face I saw in the hospital was Walt Wiley’s. He told me he’d lost a good chunk of change betting on me, and if I was interested in working off the debt, there’d be a job waiting for me at The Henhouse. I tried saying, “Who the hell are you, mister?” ‘Cause I’d never seen the guy before. But I was higher than God on the dope they’d given me, not to mention my jaw was wired shut, and all I could manage was a pitiful mewling sound. Walt left his business card on the nightstand and told me to think it over. Except it wasn’t a business card, it was a flyer for The Henhouse with a cartoon picture of a busty redhead on it. I’d heard of the place; the context was, “Stay away from that place.” But I appreciated the flyer Walt had left me. The picture of ole Red kept me company while I convalesced. ‘Course, I would’ve preferred my fiancée, Cheryl-Ann, kept me company, fetching in candy and kisses. But it turned out she and my trainer had eloped while the doctors were patching me up. Mad as I was about that, I was even madder they’d run off with my loser’s purse, because without it I couldn’t pay my hospital bill. So I took the job at The Henhouse.

  When I started working the door for Walt, I told myself it was just until something better came along, but something better never did, and I guess somewhere along the line I stopped even looking. Bouncing at The Henhouse wasn’t exactly where I’d pictured myself at age thirty-five. But my childhood dream of being a prizefighter was shattered, along with my jaw, that night I stepped in the ring with Boar Hog Brannon. Turns out I wasn’t the contender I’d always thought I was; I was just another bum, and I didn’t have no brother Charlie to blame it on.

  * * *

  I snorted awake on the cot in the stockroom, with little idea of how I’d got there, until I tried to move and my whole body screamed, and memories of the previous night started flashing back like the Apes were still sticking the boot in.

  I managed to sit up, swung my legs off the edge of the rack, and sucked deep breaths until the nausea passed. I swigged the dregs from my bottle of Wild Turkey, gargled with it, then spat bloody booze into the mop bucket next to the cot. Teetering to my feet, I tightrope-walked out to the bar.

  Walt was behind the slab. He was aiming a TV remote at the idiot box behind the bar. Stabbing buttons and cursing when the picture didn’t change. He grunted a greeting as I shuffled past him to fetch a bottle of breakfast from the beer cooler. “Why didn’t you wake me?” I said, secretly glad he hadn’t.

  “Don’t think I didn’t try,” Walt said.

  I slumped down on my stool, bit off the bottle cap, guzzled my Coors, belched heartily, and then glanced up at the TV. Scooby Doo was playing in Spanish. Scooby and Shaggy sounded like Cheech and Chong. Walt shook the remote control in his fist, gesticulating furiously. “Goddamn piece-ofshit batteries!”

  “Here’s a wild idea,” I said. “Try changing the channel by hand?”

  But Walt was a stubborn sonofabitch, and I knew he’d sooner blast the TV with his shotgun than lose this battle with the remote control.

  “Just mind your business and drink your breakfast,” he said.

  I glanced across the room.

  It was noon in The Henhouse. The only customer was old Lou, parked at the end of the stage with a beer and a stack of rumpled singles on the table in front of him. Marlene was giving Lou her matinee performance. Clutching the dance pole like a Sumo who’s thrown her back, Marlene gyrated her chunky caboose above Lou’s leering face. He waggled a buck beneath her butt like a corner man rousing his boxer with smelling salts. Marlene squatted over the buck, her butt cheeks snatching at the bill in Lou’s hand like a flabby arcade claw groping for a plush toy.

  Used to be, Marlene could part a fool from his money with her tight little tush quicker than Mr. Miyagi catching flies with chopsticks. But that was before her car accident and she was still a mite unsteady on her feet, on account of all the pain medication and the weight she’d piled on—a few dozen pounds, give or take, mostly give.

  Still, you couldn’t fault her for trying. She could’ve taken a knee and allowed Lou to slip the buck in her G-string. After everything she’d been through, there was no shame in it, no one would’ve blamed her. But nope, she had her pride. No car accident was going to deprive Marlene of her trademark move.

  On the fifth attempt, her buttocks snatched the buck from Lou and nearly took his hand at the wrist along with it. Lou’s eyes welled with proud tears. He applauded like the coach of an Olympic gold winner. From my perch at the end of the slab, I raised my bottle of Coors to show my appreciation. Marlene tore the buck from her ass crack and dabbed the sweat from her face with it. She did a little curtsy and then limped backstage.

  “She’s back,” I said to Walt, still farting around with the TV remote.

  “Who’s back?”

  “Marlene.”

  His face brightened. “She did her move?”

  I seesawed my hand. “Little rusty, but she got there in the end.”

  Walt chuckled paternally. “Good for her. I was afraid I’d have to let her go.”

  “Shame on you for even thinking it,” I chided him, but I didn’t think he really meant it.

  Walt looked about ready to hurl the remote at the TV; I took pity on him.

  “You mind?” I said. “I’m watching that.”

  “Zoinks!” the Mexican Shaggy exclaimed.

  Visibly relieved, but too stubborn to thank me, Walt tossed the remote away and started searching for something else to piss him off. He wet a rag and began scouring the slab like someone had Sharpied it with innuendo about his momma. As he scrubbed around where I was sitting, I knew he was working towards asking me something, and I had an idea what it was. “You think those boys will come back for seconds?” he said at last.

  Apart from Marlene, what happened last night was the other elephant in the room.

  I glanced at my reflection in the back-bar mirror.

  It looked
like someone had broken a branch off the ugly tree and beat my ass black and blue with it. I wish I could’ve said: You should see the other guys. But I was barely conscious when the Apes left, and I couldn’t say for sure how they’d looked. I know I got a few good licks in, but those boys, plus Baby Doll, would have to resemble the Elephant Man’s nut sack to look worse than I did now.

  “Christ, I hope not,” I said, and shuddered down another swig of Coors.

  Not the kind of thing a bar owner wants to hear from his bouncer, but what the hell, it was my ass they kicked.

  “You ever seen ‘em before?” Walt asked.

  I shook my head. “Probably just passing through.” Here’s hoping, I thought.

  Walt nodded, but he looked about as convinced as I’d sounded.

  That’s when we heard the roar of an engine approaching The Henhouse at speed. And what happened next, and what it led to, the whole sorry business, reminded me what they say about hoping in one hand and shitting in the other and seeing which hand fills up first.

  3.

  Walt grabbed the shotgun from under the slab and then joined me at the window. “Is it them?” He racked the shotgun.

  “I don’t think so …” I said, watching through the tinted glass as a pickup truck careened wildly about the parking lot.

  A thicket of tree branches were tangled in the grill and the mudguards and under the windshield wipers, like the truck was wearing a sniper suit. The truck tore donuts around the lot, leaves billowing in its wake, tires screeching on the asphalt and spewing smoke. It looked vaguely familiar: A rattletrap, rust-red Sierra Classic. Walt pointed out the Bigelow Baboons pennant flapping on the flagpole attached to the bumper. “Ain’t that Lester’s truck?”