AT THE TIME OF THE call to dispatch, Hastings is the closest. He lives only two blocks from Main Street. When he gets to Frank’s Place, three men run out the back door into the alley and speed off in a Demont truck. He watches them leave. It isn’t the right time. Inside, the fight is over, and seven Barnesville men remain nursing their injuries with whiskey and ice.
He assesses the scene. Blood speckles the wooden floor, shattered bottles, a broken stool. Behind the counter Frank smokes a cigarette and wipes a bleached cloth along his baseball bat, his gray hair wild, a grizzled bear guarding his den.
“Alright,” Hastings says. “Who wants to talk to me?”
They gather around him like kids in a huddle. Hastings knows every face, a few old men, a couple of former classmates. They all talk at once until Hastings instructs them to choose a single voice, a primary witness, and then the rest can confirm or deny when appropriate. It’s agreed that Derek Styron is the most articulate and sober. He’s a handsome young man in his late twenties, an Afghanistan veteran with high cheeks and a cleft chin. His left eye now swollen, bloodied red.
Hastings sets a digital recorder on the counter and says, “Go.”
“At first it was the usual crowd, the Kaufmanns playing pool, me and Uncle Rob in the back booth. Guys from the dairy, village road crew. Barnesville’s people, every one. Then around five or so the guys from the rigs came in, about six of them. Went right up to the bar and slammed cash down, wanting shots, wanting this and that. Some asshole asked for fried oysters. Frank told him this wasn’t the Gulf, said he’d never eaten an oyster in his life, looked like snotty rotten twat. Usual kind of back-and-forth with those assholes, ball busting. We all do it. I kick their asses in pool all the time, happy to take their money.”
“We all are,” Robert Strahl says.
“Hey,” Derek says. “I’m sorry, Officer. Can I cuss? Am I allowed to cuss?”
“You can cuss.”
“Okay. It wasn’t friendly tonight. They came looking for a fight. This oyster guy, some spic, he calls Frank an inbred hill-jack, tells him to just get their shots, keep them coming, all that. Now, if you know Frank, you know he’ll put up with that kind of talk, keep his mouth shut, but you won’t be leaving this place the way you came in.”
“That’s him saying that, Hastings.” Frank looks at the recorder. “I didn’t say that.”
“I understand. Go on.”
“So Frank served them. Now, I hate these guys. I’ll say that. And not because they’re frackers, and not because some are Hispanic or whatever, but because they’re assholes. These guys strut like fucking roosters, think most men in this town are scared of them because we don’t talk back. That isn’t our way. We just let these southern boys squawk their syrupy bullshit and let those others feel like they’re banditos. But tonight was different.”
The men nod approval.
“These two other guys come in. Bastards are wearing suits, like actual suits with ties. Look like they just walked out of a men’s bridal magazine. They’re with Demont.”
“Don’t even order drinks,” Frank says.
“Me and Uncle Rob just watched them circling around, asking questions. They come up to us, asked us straightforward. Do either of you gentlemen know what happened yesterday evening at Slope Creek? My unc, who’s never been called a gentleman in his life, told them their tank erupted and a man who shouldn’t have even worked for them died.”
Robert Strahl leans against Hastings’s arm. “They didn’t like my tone.”
“They asked if we knew the deceased,” Derek says. “I told them I went to school with him, hoped they catch the fucker who did it. They said his service with the company was admirable. Then they told us Demont’s offering a thirty-thousand-dollar reward for information. We both perked up at that. They gave us business cards.”
Derek stops, looks around. They all have bloody knuckles and crazed hair and torn shirts. Their skin is welting. They shake with adrenaline. An unspoken bond unites them.
“Go on,” Hastings says. “I just want the truth.”
“I don’t know,” Derek says.
They all avoid eye contact with him, start to reconsider. The silence is too long.
Hastings touches the recorder and says, “It’s paused. I don’t care who started it. Tell me the rest, off the record.”
Frank smiles. “Hastings is alright, boys. Go on.”
Derek takes a long drink. “After they left, place is real quiet for a bit, then one of the frackers laughs and says something about how it takes a hillbilly to catch a hillbilly, how we’re the kind of people who’d lick shit off a boot for a couple grand.” He looks at his uncle. “It okay if I tell him this part?”
“You go ahead and tell him.”
“My uncle finishes his rye, then hitches up his pants, walks up real slow, grabs a chair, lifts it smooth and fast so it doesn’t even scuff the floor, then he launches it at the dude. Cracks him right in the face. That’s how it started. They couldn’t believe it. Their smart-ass buddy was on the ground, and they just couldn’t believe it.”
“I had cause,” Robert says. “They disrespected us.”
“They didn’t know what to do,” Derek says. “We did. Me and Nate and Timothy were right there before they could reach my uncle. We’d all been waiting for it a long time, and it was like something just changed in the air, you know. A spring snapped.”
They all look at Hastings, but they can’t read his face with any certainty.
Frank says, “I came up over the bar and busted that oyster faggot in the stomach with a bat.”
“I tore one’s ear off,” Derek says. “Nearly. He left with it dangling off his face.”
Hastings straightens his black cuffs. “How many were in here, Frank?”
“A lot. We had a good throw-down.”
“Of course you didn’t call.”
“We handled it.” He scoots Hastings a pint. “So, you know who called?”
“I do,” Hastings says.
“And you ain’t telling?”
“I’m not. And I’m not drinking that. I’m on duty.”
“Mr. By-the-Book white knight over here, married to the town slut.” Timothy Schilling leans against a post and flashes Hastings a grin. His eyelids flutter. His gut swells over his pants. He’s thirty-three, a former high school quarterback.
Hastings stares at him for a long time. Then he regards the rest. They all seem to shrink and cringe. He touches the recorder and says, “So who wants to give the official version?”
“I will,” Frank says. “It’s my place.”
Hastings lets Frank tell a story about how some unknown fracker busted a beer bottle over Nate’s head. And then chaos ensued, regrettably. Frank did his best to maintain order and told someone to call the police. When he’s finished, Hastings encourages everyone to get to the hospital should they need it, especially Derek, whose eye seems to be filling to the brim.
The men offer thanks.
“That’s it?” Derek says.
“Nobody here’s pressing charges,” Hastings says. “But. If one of them comes to the station, we’ll know what really happened. I’ll go type up the report right now.”
They disperse, relieved and satisfied. Timothy stumbles into the bathroom behind the booths and jukebox.
Hastings sets his watch and says, “Mind if I take a piss, Frank?”
“Sure thing, bud.”
He walks back knowing they all see him. But none follow.
He opens the door and finds Timothy at the urinal with his head against the wall. He sings a garbled song about lost love and wild horses.
Hastings seizes his face and slams it against the porcelain, a single strike. The jaw snaps. Teeth rattle into the drain like dice. Timothy screams and falls to his knees, drools blood from a shattered mouth.
Hastings leaves as quickly as he came, glances at his wrist, less than twenty seconds.
“You guys might want to check on, Timmy. Think he took a bad fall.”
“What happened?” Derek says.
“Somebody must have hit him hard during your fight. Or maybe he just drank too much and misstepped. I’m sure you guys will help him remember the official version.”
Derek blinks a few times. This is a story he doesn’t know.
“Hey, Officer.” Robert smiles. “That thing was never paused at all, was it?”
Frank laughs and hangs a dripping glass from the ceiling.