AllFreeNovel
Share Us
"Miss Bainbridge is going to keep watch over you for a little bit, okay? But don't worry, I'll come and check on you every day, so if you need anything, anything at all—"
Jamie looked like he was about to lose it again, but he didn't. He nodded slowly, and then when Chris turned to look at her, she knew that it was her turn. How she was going to do it, that was the real question.
Fourteen
Chris watched from his place behind the bar closer than maybe he should have. The bar wasn't any kind of place for a kid, not even on a good night. Thankfully, tonight was a good night. Quiet, a little dead. He crossed over to the other side of the long bar and leaned over.
"Y'all doing alright?"
Jamie flinched at the sound of his voice, leaned down over a slate. The boy turned and gave a weak smile. "I'm okay," he says, like he's trying to reassure Chris rather than the other way around.
"Good," the bartender says back. There are a couple of clean plates sitting on front of both of them. There might be hell to pay at the end of it, but he couldn't exactly ask them to pay for it, so Stan will be footing the bill.
He steps back across the bar as a young man walks up. He's not from around here, and Chris doesn't immediately recognize him. The guy speaks up, though, and something in the back of the bartender's mind catches on a memory that he can't quite place.
"I'll have a beer," is all he says.
"Sure," Chris replies. It's a routine, one that's as automatic as breathing. His hand drops to the tray of glasses and starts pouring.
"Don't I know you from somewhere?"
Chris shrugs, his eyes cast down on the glass as it fills. "Might be."
"I swear I seen your face before."
For years, Chris had worried about people seeing his face in all the wrong sort of circumstances. None of it had born fruit, though. Most of the time, these days, he didn't let it rattle his cage.
"I don't know where, I ain't been around here that long."
"I'm just passin' through, myself," the guy says. The way he says it is familiar, too. Another vague, far-away memory that Chris can't place. He doesn't work too hard to make it happen, either. "So I doubt I'd know you from here if you had been."
"Where you from, then, originally?"
"Oh, just up a little ways. Still out of Oklahoma, but I used to tool around the panhandle, up north, you know?"
Chris did. If they knew each other, then that would be where they knew each other from. Which meant that the man in front of him would have known a very different person altogether.
"I can't say you're ringing any bells," Chris said. The beer finished pouring and he set it on the table. "You want to settle up now, or on your way out?"
The guy puts a quarter on the bar. "Will that do me?"
"You've overpaid," Chris answers. "I'll grab your change."
The way the man watches him sets off an instinct that he hasn't felt in a long time. He has to stifle it. Not with the kid right there. There won't be any trouble.
"Right, my mistake," says the guy after a minute, as he notices Chris isn't moving to the register. He waits anyways, his hand not moving to change out the quarter.
Chris takes a deep breath and leans forward. His hand slips down to his pistol, tucked and hidden by the way he turns his shoulder.
"I don't want any trouble, man," he growls.
The guy looks at him. The confusion on his face is almost believable, but he's made it larger than life. "Trouble? No, no trouble at all."
His hand closed around the handle of his pistol and he eases it out of the holster, real slow and real easy. Silent. "Just put the piece on the bar, alright? Don't make any fast moves."
The fact that he knew the man on the other side of the bar was doubtless. The identity, though, remained a mystery. If he couldn't remember, then it must have been a real short while that they rode together. Maybe they never did, just passed once or twice.
"I don't know what you're talking about," the mystery guy said. But Chris didn't buy it.
