Townie_ A Memoir - Andre Dubus [129]
“We’ll have to go right at him.”
I didn’t say anything. I wanted Sam’s help and I did not want his help, but more than this, I didn’t want to be here at all. In the cold air, my cheeks stung, my split lip too. It was going to hurt to get punched there again.
The 104 Club was as empty as it had been crowded the night before. Only one bartender was working, a thin man with a gray ponytail who stood at the far end watching the TV in the corner. Beneath it was a shuffleboard I hadn’t seen the night before, and two couples sat beside it in wooden chairs drinking and smoking and talking. Four or five others stood at the bar, men and women, Pop and Theresa among them. But no Devin Wallace. The air smelled like cigarette smoke and disinfectant and popcorn from the machine.
Sam called the bartender over and ordered two Buds. Saturday nights always seemed to start slow. It was date night, people going out to dinner or the movies, maybe a dance club somewhere. Around ten they’d come in for a drink that would turn into two, then three, then by last call business would be as good as the night before. But now it was after ten and still this place was quiet. Maybe all the regulars were as hungover as I was and had stayed home. I didn’t know, but I was relieved and took a sip of the Budweiser that tonight was like drinking lighter fluid or chicken grease. I put my bottle down. The door opened and four or five men walked in with the icy air, Ben Wallace one of them. A dark wool cap was pulled down around his ears and his whiskered chin jutted out, and as he walked by me and Sam, he took us in and his eyes changed from expectant of a good time to something darker. I looked down the bar at Pop and Theresa. Both of them were smoking a cigarette, but Pop’s eyes were on mine. I shook my head once, then tapped Sam on the hand. “If Devin shows, we’re way fucking outnumbered. This was a bad idea.”
“See that tall one with Ben? I played hockey with him. What’s he doing with Wallace?”
Theresa stood in front of us. Somebody had put a quarter in the jukebox, and Huey Lewis & the News was singing about believing in love. She leaned in close. “Is he one of them?”
Sam shook his head and drained his beer. “This isn’t going anywhere. Let’s shoot up to Ronnie D’s.”
Theresa went back for Pop, and maybe that’s what she’d told him, that this wasn’t going anywhere, which really meant it was going somewhere but not where we’d pictured it back in my father’s small campus house full of books, some precise act of revenge on one man, a big man at that, one I was happy to concede to now.
Pop stood on the sidewalk under the light. His face was shadowed by the brim of his Akubra. “Why’re we leaving?”
“It’s dead, Pop. Nobody’s in there tonight. We’re heading up to Ronnie D’s. Maybe he’s there.”
Most likely Pop knew I was lying; bars had their regulars and Ronnie D’s across the river had never had a Wallace as one, but maybe Pop, too, had come to feel this was all a bad idea.
He smiled at Theresa and held out his arm. “Let’s go, darlin’.”
Theresa laughed and hooked her arm in his, and Sam and I were heading for the Duster, a strip of ice cracking under my boots, when behind us the door to the bar swung back on its hinges and Ben Wallace and his crew came walking fast into the lot. “Fuck you, Dubis. You’re down here waiting for my brother, you and your fuckin’ friends.” Spit arced out of his mouth, and he was already a few feet away from me, and I never realized how tall he was, taller than his handsome, stronger brother. On both sides of him stood men I did not know, but Sam moved toward them and was calling out the name of his hockey mate, calling it in the warm tone of an old friend glad to see another.
I said, “I’m just here for a beer, Ben.”
“Fuck you, you are. My brother kicked the shit out of you last night, that’s why you’re here.” He was closer to me now, a step away from punching range, but my body wasn’t having anything to do with this. My weight was even on both feet, and there was