WE SEE ABBY, in a pretty summer dress, waiting for us at the end of the bar.
I wave to her before I look across the room in the next moment and see Roof and Lynyrd Crockett at a big, round table in the corner with some of their meathead friends.
I count three friends. Five in all at the table. The same number of guys who’d jumped me.
Whatarethe odds?
Roof Crockett gives me a big wave now, like his best buddy has just walked into the place.
“Silas,” Abby says when we get to the bar. “Let’s go someplace else.” She’s looking nervously at the Crockett table, too. “Like my mom used to tell me when my sister and I would get into it when we were kids. Donotengage.”
I continue to stare at them. There’s an even bigger crowd than usual at Rowdy’s tonight, just about all the other tables occupied and all the chairs at the bar taken.
“They’re the ones who need to think about not engaging,” I say quietly, “if they know what’s good for them, that is.”
Vince has managed to situate himself in front of me.
“Dawg,” he says, “if some shit goes down here tonight, whose side do you think Nash Hader is going to take if somebody calls it in to him? ’Specially with the Crocketts involved. You told me how it went with him today. That man is just looking for a reason.”
“I just want to have a quick chat with them,” I say, looking over Vince’s head.
“If you’re going over there,” he says, “I’m going with you.”
“You stay with Abby,” I say. “I got this.”
When I’m standing over the table, they all stay in their chairs, Roof Crockett only reacting with one of his shit-eating grins.
Like he’s the one who’s got this.
“Heard you had some trouble over there at your barn,” he says.
Behind us, there seems to be less chatter in the room than there was before. There’s a song I don’t recognize playing over the sound system.
“Where’d you hear something like that?”
“Around,” he says.
“Was it you?”
“Was it mewhat?”
“Was it you calling the play?” I say, keeping my voice and myself calm. “Before you ran over my dog, that is.”
Roof turns to his brother and the rest of them at the table. The only other one I recognize is Lynyrd.
“Will you listen to this man?” Roof Crockett says. “Must be one of those players took too many hits to the head.”
“I’m still talking to you, Roof.”
I lean down close to him, just a little.
He flinches.
It’s not much of anything, not much more than a twitch. But I see it. His brother has to see it. They all do. So does anybody else at Rowdy’s watching this scene play out, to wherever it’s going.
“You need to walk back over there to the bar and your girlfriend,” he says. “Maybe before something else happens to you.”
“Or what?” I say, grinning at him now. “You’ll call your daddy?”
