A Perfect SEAL

After I nod to her, she climbs on the bike just like I told her, like she’s done it a hundred times.

“Okay,” I say loudly, over the noise of the muffler. “You just wrap your arms around me and hang on, okay? You just do what I do. Don't lean away from me when we turn, either. Just trust me and do what I do, okay?”

“Okay!” she yells.

“It's going to be scary. You’re gonna love it!”

Owen rides ahead of us on the dark roads, his headlight cutting out a triangular swath of the dusty, country roads. It's almost pitch black out here. Every once in a while I see movement along the ditches as raccoons and other things scurry away from all the noise we’re making.

All too soon, I can see the lights of the roadhouse up ahead. We roll in, swinging around to the back side and parking the bikes near the service door. When I cut off the engine, she climbs down, still smiling broadly. She pulls the helmet off and her hair flies up and covers her face.

“That was wonderful!” she exclaims. “My legs are still all shaky!”

Owen glances at me knowingly and jerks his chin toward the parking lot.

“There's an awful lot of cars here,” I suggest to him. “Did you have something to do with this?”

He shrugs. “I just made a few phone calls. Nothing unusual. Word gets around. You know.”

Word gets around. I turn the phrase over in my mind.

It must have gotten around quite a bit. We enter discreetly through the back door, taking the measure of the situation inside. Brother Owen goes first, with Angel discreetly sandwiched between us. I don’t want this all landing on her all at once. She's never been in a bar. She's never experienced this kind of outrageous music. She's never seen people drunk and smoking and grabbing each other's asses and all the other crap these people get down to.

And here I am, leading her right into the middle of it.

The room is large, lit in all different colors of light bulbs that try to get through the fog of cigarette smoke in vain. The music is something stupid, some angry hard rock that makes people want to move their hips and do shots of Tequila.

As we turn around the corner, an older woman behind the bar slows the motion of her hand as she's wiping up some spill. She squints at us with poison in her gaze. Maybe that’s the lady I talked to on the phone.

She looks to be about sixty years old, wearing a halter top that's slung so low that one good shrug will reveal a nipple. She's also wearing teenager jeans with sparkles on the pockets and exposing about five inches of her midriff.

An older guy in a backwards baseball cap cuts us off, planting his feet about shoulder width apart and crossing his arms. He lowers his chin and glares at Owen.

“Evening, Dustin,” Owen smirks. “How about a couple of beers? Silas, you want a beer?”

“No.”

“Get Silas a beer too,” Owen continues without looking at me.

“What about her?” Dustin asks, chuckling and jerking his stubbly chin toward my Angel. “She drink too?”

“Course not,” Owen answers.

“Better not!” Dustin laughs, tipping his head back and laughing at the ceiling, exposing his blackened molars and the furry inside of his nose.

He waves toward the bartender with two fingers up, then changes that to three fingers. She rolls her eyes and bends over, exposing the pink line of the top of her thong.

“Well, now, aren't you pretty little thing?” Dustin drawls as he rakes his eyes over Angel. She presses back, leaning into me like a baby deer or something. “You best get her onstage for people. Folks are gonna want to take a look at what they're throwing their good money at.”

“Stage?” Owen asks as the bartender shoves a beer bottle in his hand. He takes a long swig and I try to restrain my contempt for that. He shouldn't drink. Our dad was a drunk. It’s in our blood. It’s so easy to fall into that ditch, why would he risk it?

And I feel it too, that thirst. The smell of whisky and beer brings it all back. I remember what it was like. How good it felt to slake that deep, bottomless thirst. The first few drinks felt great, but only for a few minutes. After that the thirst will return, doubled in strength. You can never quite catch up, not for more than a moment. Chasing it felt like falling down a well.

“Stage? Yeah, change of plans,” Dustin shrugs, downing half the beer in one long series of gulps. “Seems like your little girl here already has some kinda fan club. You are gonna have to auction her off. I'll take 10%. And the bidders’ fees.”

“Bidders’ fee?” I repeat numbly. I just keep looking around, looking at all the men gazing at Angel with their mouths open like they've never seen anything like her. This is not what I thought was going to happen.

Dustin leads us through the crowd to the small stage in the corner, the kind where some crappy band could set up and yell out cover tunes for a few hours. A row of tables is clustered protectively in front of the stage, and a few men sit in wobbly stacking chairs. On the middle table is a pile of cash, some in rubber-banded bills, some crumpled and fluttering slightly as though licked by an invisible wind. On the top of the pile is a handgun. Vintage Colt 45, by the looks of it.