Part 2 (2/2)
Tricia turned to see Jack Everett smiling over her shoulder. Long and lean, and thirty years her senior, he was a soft touch, one who figured a drink or two, a meal and a night on the town to be enough to get into Tricia's pants. So far, he'd been right. But not tonight. Not yet, anyway.
”Well thanks, Jack,” she said, smiling as he plopped down on the stool beside her. He was tall and thin-a little too thin, maybe. His hair was grey; his sparkling eyes a darker shade of it. He owned a saw mill on the far edge of Pottsboro and several other enterprises in and around the county. A direct descendant of one of the founders of their fair town, he had a finger in d.a.m.n near every pie being produced in the place. He was a man used to being listened to, a man used to getting his way.
”The usual for me, Ziggy,” he said. And to Tricia, ”Why so sad, b.u.t.tercup?”
”Who says I'm sad?”
”The look on your face?”
”Yeah, well, looks can be deceiving.”
”So they say.”
”Yeah,” Tricia said. ”Don't they.”
Ziggy came back carrying their drinks, a Heineken for Jack, another shot for Tricia. He set them on the bar, and said, ”On the tab, Jack?”
”You betcha,” Jack told him.
Ziggy turned and walked away, and Jack said, ”So... What're you up to tonight?”
”You see it.”
”Same old same old, huh?”
”You know how it is.”
”Indeed I do.”
Jack picked up his beer, tipped back the bottle and took a nice long drink, returned the bottle to the bar, and said, ”Old man still ain't back, huh?”
”He ain't coming back.”
”Well, he's a G.o.dd.a.m.n fool...”
Tricia picked up her shot gla.s.s. ”You got that right,” she said, and then downed the whiskey and returned the gla.s.s to the bar. It felt good going down, better when it hit bottom, and that comforting warm feeling started rippling through her. Maybe if she had enough of them, pairing off with good old Jack wouldn't make her feel like taking a swan dive off the water tower.
”... leaving a fine-looking woman like you. Not to mention poor old Mick-”
”Jack, really... ” Tricia smiled. Jack was an important man around these parts, a good friend to have if you needed one, and G.o.d only knew with Rick gone, Tricia needed all the friends she could get. But the last thing she wanted to talk about right now was the worthless jacka.s.s who had so completely ruined her life. ”Let's just have a good time.”
”Now you're talking,” Jack said, then, ”I was thinking: why don't I grab a bottle and meet up with you back here a little later on tonight? Or I could come by your house.”
”And what, exactly, would I tell my son, Jack?”
”What, you're supposed to be a member of the Order now that your old man's took off? What do you tell him now?”
Tricia picked up her beer, tipped back the bottle and took a good long swig. Holding the bottle against her thigh, she said, ”He's thirteen years old, and Rick's all he thinks about. I tell him his daddy and I had a falling out. I don't know where he went, but I'm sure he'll get in touch with him sooner or later.”
”Maybe he will.”
Tricia, snorting out a laugh, said, ”Yeah, well, I'll believe it when I see it.”
”In the meantime, why don't I swing by your place, pick you up and show you a sweet old time?”
”What's all this my place bulls.h.i.+t, you afraid Velma's gonna find out you're down here sniffin' out somebody else's scent?”
”Velma don't run me. I run me, go where I want and do what I wanta do, and go home when I please. Or not at all, if I don't feel like it.”
She turned away from Jack, holding her nearly empty bottle up to Ziggy, who was wiping down a spot at the opposite end of the bar.
”So what do you think?” Jack said. ”Wanta get together and... ”
”What?” Tricia said, turning back to Jack, who had stopped midway through his sentence, and was now sitting slack-jawed on his stool, staring up at the ceiling; nothing, absolutely nothing in those cold, grey eyes of his. Nothing behind them either, as far as Tricia could tell. He mumbled something, but Tricia didn't understand what he'd said.
Then he got off his stool and started slowly toward the door.
”What the h.e.l.l?”
Tricia turned to see Ziggy staring across the barroom in utter disbelief, as one by one every male patron filed out into the street.
She swiveled around on her stool. Across the dimly lit room, Sheila McCrea sat alone at her table, hands held in front of her in a questioning pose, palms up, shaking her head as if she-like Ziggy and Tricia-didn't understand what was going on. She'd been sitting with her husband when Tricia first stepped into the Wagon Wheel. Tricia wondered if Jerry McCrea had, like Jack Everett and everybody else, just shuffled off like a bunch of stoned-out zombies, across the bar and out the door. A few stools down was Becka Turner. Tricia hadn't noticed her before because several guys had occupied the stools between them, one of them being Jack Everett. Now those stools were empty.
The door to the Ladies room popped open and out stepped Liz Fennel. ”The f.u.c.k?” she said. ”Somebody fart?” She stood there, staring at the door as Tricia hopped off her stool and Ziggy stepped around the bar and followed her across the room, where she opened the door and stepped outside, stumbling sideways when she tripped over an old discarded beer bottle.
Quickly righting herself, she looked over at Jack Everett and a whole host of others, all of them lined up in the middle of the street, staring up at the sky. Above them, a dark cloud, black as the Ace of spades, sat perfectly still, while another set of fluffy white clouds rolled slowly across the horizon. Shaped like a perfectly constructed top hat, this cloud-this dark abnormality-stood framed on all sides by the clear blue sky. The sun, like the unblinking bright eye of some mysterious tribal G.o.d, sat directly above it.
”The h.e.l.l is that?” Tricia said.
”f.u.c.k if I know,” said Ziggy, as Sheila McCrea came up behind them, and said, ”Look, over there.”
Across the street, Jim Kreigle and another man stood in front of the general store, eyes locked on the skyline. Up the block a car sat in the middle of the road, the driver's door left wide open while the owner stood still as a tombstone beside it.
”Jack?” Tricia said.
She punched his shoulder.
”Jack,” she said. ”Jack!”
But he didn't answer, just stared up at the sky as if he were standing alone in the middle of an alien landscape, oblivious to all around him.
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