The Parting Gift(9)

“You are making a big mistake, Buddy,” Blaine whispered, leaning forward to meet his much shorter opponent’s eyes. Anger coursed through him, but he waited. Rather than throw the first punch in an uneven match-up, he would bait the little man into making a critical error. This way he could claim he had warned the fellow – that the guy just wouldn’t listen to reason.

Beneath the howls and hoots of the boys gathering around them, exasperation creased the man’s brow. Almost as if in slow motion, he cocked his left arm backwards and sent an awkward roundhouse swing sailing toward Blaine’s jaw. Ordinarily, the captain would have dodged it, but the whiskey had wreaked havoc on his reaction time, so he could do nothing more than watch the fist come flying toward his right eye.

The force of the blow snapped Blaine's head to the left, but even in the desperate defense of his manhood, the smaller man could do nothing more than momentarily daze Blaine. Luckily, the whiskey’s effects were two-fold… it doubled as a painkiller, and he didn’t feel a thing.

A collective gasp of breath sucked the rumbling from the room, and silence settled uneasily into its place, as the remaining patrons waited for the inevitable retaliating rage. He could hear his own heart beating, and he leveled his sights and locked on the target, in the same way he had done when he had flown over German territory during the war and sighted an enemy craft.

A visible shiver shook the man before him.

And then Blaine cold-cocked him.

Patrick and the boys leaped at him at once, cheering and pounding him on the back in congratulations. He brushed them off in annoyance and stalked to the bar, the muscle twitching in his jaw. His bottle was empty, and he was still standing. Time to remedy that situation.

“Another bottle of whiskey, Duke,” he muttered through clenched teeth.

“Not a chance, Blaine. You’ve had enough,” the bartender insisted. Blaine regarded him with an icy glare, weighing the possible battle against his altered judgment.

Suddenly, a light hand rested on his still tense forearm, distracting him from his current mission. He turned blearily to the woman draped over his right side. She smiled seductively up at him and traced her fingers up and down his flexed bicep lightly.

“Oh, Captain Graham, I’m just so sorry about that. The beast practically forced me to go dancing with him, even though I told him I just wanted my beauty rest.” Her southern drawl caressed his foggy awareness and entranced him momentarily. “You’re so… confident, Captain. You were so quiet before, I thought maybe you didn’t... I mean, I had no idea you felt so –” she drew close enough for him to feel her breath on his ear, “—strongly about me.”

Blaine gazed at her a moment. Her brown eyes tantalized him with fickle deception. No. Not even for a meaningless roll in the hay.

“I don’t,” he stated with a hint of cold steel in his voice, then took her wrist between his finger and thumb and tossed it away from his arm.

He spun on his heel to stalk out, but as he did the whole pub reeled around him, and he felt himself careen face-forward to the knotted wooden floor. As the darkness encompassed him, Duke’s deep voice washed over him. “Patrick, Tony, you boys help me out here. Let’s get him home. Boy’s gonna feel this in the morning.”



****



Blaine was awakened by the metallic resonance in his skull as the sledgehammer pounded the wedge into it. If it didn’t hurt so much to think, he would have reminded himself that this was the precise reason he avoided hard liquor.

He struggled into a sitting position and cradled his throbbing head in both hands. A wave of nausea swept over him, causing him to lunge forward onto the hard floor and expel the liquid-less remnants from his stomach. Exhausted and weak, he rolled over onto his back and groaned in misery, wishing for death to save him.

The rap at the door echoed in his head, and he cringed in pain. “Lad, mind ye don’t be hurlin’ on my good rug now!” Mrs. Callahan called from behind the door. “I’ll be holdin’ yer breakfast fer when ye are more sportin’. In the meantime, just get yerself back in that bed, young fool.”

Movement was impossible, so he lay there on the cold floor suffering from the skull-splitting headache. Blaine smacked his dry tongue against the thick stickiness lining the inside of his mouth. He could die right here on the floor from lack of moisture, and nobody would notice until he didn’t show up for supper.

Another knock on his door sent him careening into fetal position with a torrent of whispered curses pouring from his mouth.

“I beg yer pardon, laddie,” old Mr. Hanigan warned, as he sauntered in without an invitation. Blaine’s eyes felt like sandpaper as he squinted to trace the old man’s steps across the room, and then carefully stepped over the curdled puddle of the previous night’s indiscretion. He set a full glass on the bureau, then turned and offered Blaine his hand, pulling him up and guiding him back to sit on his bed.

“Here, m’boy.” Mr. Hanigan placed the glass in Blaine’s hand and helped him guide it to his mouth. “No, no. Don’t look at it, lad. Just close yer eyes and throw it back. Tastes like raw sewage, but ye’ll be thankin’ me later.”

Blaine did as he was told, though the strange concoction did cause him to gag several times before he was able to gulp down the whole thing. “What is in that?” he gasped, trying desperately to smack the taste away while sputtering for a fresh breath.