Abby slides her chair closer to Vince.
“Silas,” Vince says.
Lynyrd tries to pull free, but now my hand is covering his and I’m squeezing it with all my might. My arm might not be what it was before the accident, but my grip is as strong as ever. I can see the strain on his face as I squeeze harder now.
“Cut the shit,” he says through clenched teeth.
“Am I hurting you?”
Roof begins to move around his brother now.
I look down at him and say, “Now, don’t you go and do something you’re going to regret.”
“You’re making a mistake,” Lynyrd says, his face starting to redden.
“People keep telling me that today.”
Vince stands now.
I say, “I got this.”
“Let him go,” Roof says, “before this shit gets real.”
“Hey there, boys,” the bartender, Earl, yells. “We don’t need any of this shit.”
“I got this,” I say to him now.
“Like hell you do,” Roof Crockett growls, taking a few steps over to the pool table, grabbing a cue off it, and swinging it in front of him like a sword as he heads back toward our table, everybody nearby giving him all the room he needs.
I wait until he’s close enough and then shove his brother back into him, knocking them both off-balance.
No fights for me in years,I think.Now two the same day.
Forget about the hereafter.
What are the odds of that?
Earl runs from behind the bar through the crowd. But Roof Crockett wheels when he sees him and uses the butt end of the cue to knock him down. Then Roof’s the one shoving his brother to the side and swinging the cue at my head. But I block it with my forearm, feeling the pain shoot all the way up to my shoulder and back before I take it away from him, grab the ends of it with both hands, and get it right up under his chin.
I’m backing him toward the pool table now, then bending him over it, shoving the cue harder against his neck. I hear a shout from behind me then, and out of the corner of my eye I see that Vince Tarplay has Lynyrd in a bear hug from behind. Vince was another one who always played bigger.
“You were never quick enough,” I say to Roof.
“… so… fucked” is the best the former linebacker can manage with what little air he’s getting in him with the cue still pressed against his neck.
“Hell, Roof,” I say. “That was true even before I got back home.”
I hear more shouts from behind me, just before I hear Burt Webb yelling over the shouts and saying, “Let him go, Silas.”
Then: “And please cut the shit.”
I feel him and Vince pulling me off Roof Crockett as the cue goes clattering to the floor.
“What is this, for fuck’s sake?” Burt asks. “Walking Tall?”
TWENTY-EIGHT
BURT HAS ARRIVED on the scene with an older cop, Case Miller, who manages to get the Crockett boys under control without having to pull his service weapon on them, even as they keep shouting at me across Rowdy’s about payback.
