Sometimes Billie wished that Mr. John could have gotten a glimpse of where all his money had gone.
The way he’d single-handedly propped up the local economy of Ben Wheeler, Texas.
The bartender at Billie’s local biker bar had been one especially grateful recipient of Mr. John’s generosity. And so, on Thanksgiving weekend, Billie; Stacey; Stacey’s son, Dustin; and a whole host of East Texas knuckleheads gathered there, helping themselves to the bartender’s endless supply of booze and ducking in and out of the bathrooms, where pills and powders were being bought and sold. Way in the back of the bar, in the shadows, an ex-con named Michael Lorence lit one match after another and flicked them into an empty beer bottle.
Dustin eyed Lorence suspiciously. The man was a stranger in a bar where everyone always knew everyone else. But Lorence did not make eye contact.
“Hey, partner,” Dustin said.
The stranger did not respond. He kept his eyes on his matches, and Dustin let the matter drop.
When Dustin looked the stranger’s way again, he saw that the man had gone, slipping quietly out of the bar.
The Firebird Billie had bought for his daughter was parked outside, though she wouldn’t be driving it for a while. At least not until Billie paid to fix the windshield he’d smashed up with an old Louisville Slugger.
Billie’s new bike was out there, too, but it was in even sorrier shape, since Billie, probably high on meth, had decided to drag the motorcycle around on a chain behind his new pickup truck.
Billie didn’t know why he did these things. Long-term thinking and planning ahead had never been his strong suits. Meanness was what Billie brought to the family table.
“Boy,” an uncle had said to him when he was young, “it’s like you’ve got all this poison inside you. Deep down, like oil buried underground, eating away at your guts. Soon as something breaks through the surface, that oil’s going to gush, and it’s going to be black, and not you or no one else is going to have the wherewithal to control it.”
Billie’s uncle was wrong. Billie had all sorts of nasty stuff inside. But he also had perfect control. If he wanted to not bash up his bike, he wouldn’t have done it. If he wanted to not bash in his daughter’s windshield, he wouldn’t have done that either. What the people around him did not understand was that Billie wanted to do all the things that he did. And age hadn’t mellowed him out at all.
“Heya!” he shouted as his nephew Michael Speck walked into the bar. “Grab a stool. This round and every round’s on Mr. John!”
Michael ordered a Jack on the rocks and a Michelob chaser. Scanning the room, he saw Stacey and Dustin hunched over at one of the banquettes.
“What’s going on with that now anyways?”
“Same old,” said Billie. “Dude’s dumb as a goldfish but flush as a Saudi Arabian prince.”
“And that thing he keeps talking about?”
“We’ll talk about that, too, at some point,” said Billie. “For now, let’s have a toast!”
Over at their banquette, Stacey and Dustin perked up. The bartender hit Mute on the TV, poured himself a shot, and held the glass up as Billie raised his own glass and said, “Here’s to the human ATM!”
“To Mr. Johnny!” the others joined in.