Poor Clint—he can’t sing for shit, but it’s too late now.  He knows the game.  He knows the consequence.  He’s over near the lottery machine, in that cluttered corner of the bar we call “the stage.”  He’s behind the Peavey amp, microphone to mouth, belting out Prince’s “Raspberry Beret,” swigging beer from the bottle he holds between his knuckles.  He’s got on a bright red “I’m a Pepper” T-shirt, and it’s making me ill to see it, making me think violence like I’m some riled-up bull. 

It’s his own damn fault, rushing into this five-man karaoke showdown with the stakes so high.  His ex-wife Miranda pours us free drinks at the bar—blend of Canada Dry and Jim Beam we call the Bronze Horseman.  The liquor hazes in through the pop like the way heat waves cut though air.  Miranda, bleach blond angel with a lip ring, she’s quiet tonight, Clint’s ex-wife, ashamed for him though she’s got no reason no more.  The dude she’s with now, the one she dumped Clint for, he’s some hero off fixing Hummers and jeeps in Iraq.

What makes a man like Clint, twenty-nine years old, think he can croon smooth enough to save his life?  Hasn’t he ever heard his own ugly wail in the shower?  Hasn’t he ever brooded on the subject of his own shortcomings? 

Roger says, “Clint, that is poor, incredibly poor.” 

We’re already closing in on him, the teleprompter still scrolling out lyrics.  Battery-operated disco ball spins blue and silver slashes across the paneled walls.  Clint’s shaking his head, trying to finish the song, belting out the high notes, but Glenn yanks the mike out of his hand and that ends it.  Feedback.  As usual, Lars goes overboard, leans over the bar and swipes the owner’s twelve gauge from its hiding spot, too fast for Miranda to whip him with her wet dishrag. 

 So here Clint’s got this shotgun aimed at his face, but he don’t put up a fight, unless whimpering and squirming counts.  Roger says, “Come on, man.  You lost fair and square and you know it.”  So we lead Clint into the storage room with the empty liquor boxes and the rat crap, sit him down on a keg so we can bind his arms and legs with the duct tape we brought along.  I help him on with the padded ski jacket while Glenn snaps his bike helmet into place.  The helmet’s plastic, but it’s made to look like it’s covered in green lizard scales.  I got no idea where it came from.  When he starts wailing—Jesus, we slap a length of tape over his trap.

We lug him to the back parking lot like pallbearers too cheap to buy a box, hitch him by six feet of rope to Lars’s pickup truck, ankles tied tight, face down in the snow.  There was a storm and no plows come through yet, so it’s like a cushion God laid down just for Clint, a miracle. None of us wanted, in particular, to fuck him over like this.  It’s just the rules, is all.  Hell, five months back, I remember poor Clint spotted me half his hundred-dollar scratch-off winnings just ‘cause I was in the truck cab with him when he rubbed off a winning row of three apples with the bottle opener on his key ring. 

I can see it in each one of our faces, caught in the bar’s back porch motion detector light. We like Clint all right, but we’re pent up from days of stringing electric wire, spraying paint onto warehouse walls, bolting new combines together on C-shift assembly lines.  For right now it’s stopped snowing, but it’s still ball-biting cold.  I got no idea where I put my jacket.  Them frosted black garbage bags piled over by the dumpster are getting to seem as good a place as any to catch a nap. 

Lars says, “Let’s move, let’s get this done.”  He props the shotgun butt against his hip, barrel aimed skyways, like he’s some swaggering chain gang guard. 

Roger crouches down and says, “Good luck, bro.”  He slaps Clint’s helmet twice. 

We crowd into the truck cab, four of us, me crunched in the middle with my knees up against the radio knobs and I don’t know whose hands are mine.  Lars strikes the ignition.  Motorhead blares from the tapedeck.  I don’t tell them what none of them noticed, being all of us too drunk—which is that I never got my chance to sing.

Lars motors down Route 31 with the brights on and his muffler’s so full of holes it’s all we hear, that demon roar.  He’s got his window cracked to accommodate the full length of his shotgun.  We crane our heads to get a look back, but all’s we see is pale taillight and winter dark and the stubble on each other’s faces.  A mile out past Stumblin’ Inn, Lars swerves on black ice, careens into a ditch, fires the shotgun, sends the pickup airborne, jams it almost upright against a telephone pole.  Overhead electric wires hiss like a pit of pissed off snakes.  Snow sprinkles down on us through the gap where the windshield was before the crash.  We’re sprawled across each other’s laps with snapped limbs and leaky wounds.  Funny how nobody’s dead, somehow.  Roger digs a tooth from out of his mouth that does not belong to him.  I’ve never seen these guys so pale.  I pass out for a second and get a dream where I’m floating in oil at the bottom of a mine shaft with a dead bullfrog shoved in my mouth.

When Lars kicks open the driver door we tumble out like clowns into a snowbank and rest there for a while longer.  The shotgun blast has made all our eardrums sing a single, high pitch.  We have to shout to be heard.  A car or two slides by on the road, flashes headlamps at us, but nobody dares to stop.  I don’t blame them.  Eventually Glenn, who’s got part of his wrist bone poking out through his skin, remembers to check on Clint. 

Turns out, that sneaky fucker has broken from his line like some sly fish.  We sit around in bloodstained snow and shine our flashlights at the woods.  Some deer shine their eyes back, but no Clint.  So we aim the lights back down the road, and there he is, about a hundred yards back.  He’s in retreat, pogo jumping down the shoulder with his ankles still taped together.  He drops, and the helmet rolls off his head into the road.  He shimmies himself back up and resumes his hop-along.  He takes one bug-eyed backward glance to gauge the status of our pursuit. 

But none of us is in any shape to be taking down a fugitive.  Lars raises his gun, aims, pulls the trigger, remembers his shell is already spent.  Clint keeps hopping, safe and sound.  We pass around a bottle of Maker’s Mark.  We toast to the fact that we’re each mostly in one piece.  Roger tries to sing, but it all comes out liquid and red.

 

Derek Nikitas's debut novel Pyres was published by St. Martin's Minotaur in October '07 and nominated for an Edgar Award for Best First Novel. The paperback is out December 9th. He's published short stories in Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine, Chelsea, The Ontario Review, The Pedestal Magazine, New South, the anthology Killer Year: Stories to Die For, and has a story forthcoming in Thuglit. He's been nominated for a Pushcart Award, teaches fiction writing at Eastern Kentucky University, and is finishing his second novel.