The Unwilling(62)

“It’s Vietnam,” I said. “Everyone feels that way.”

Chance nodded once, but this was a hard thing between us. “So you’re going home?”

“It’s getting late.”

It wasn’t an answer, and Chance knew it. “Call me later?”

“Sure. Course.”



* * *



When his friend was gone, Chance stood long in the twilight, thinking about the parts of his soul he’d just laid bare. It didn’t matter what Gibby had said or how calm he’d kept his features. A new doubt was in his friend. And it should be, Chance thought. The war was real. People like them were dying.

Inside the house, Chance knelt at the bed, and dragged out a box of magazines he’d collected about the war in Vietnam. The photographs were graphic. On one page, thirteen bodies were trampled into the mud, a soldier in the ditch with his jaw shot off. Another page showed a blinded marine no older than Chance and a North Vietnamese soldier trapped in a burning tank, bubble-skinned and screaming as his face melted and flames danced from the crown of his head. There were a thousand images just as bad, and Chance could spend all night with them.

He spent an hour this time, then tucked it all beneath the bed: the magazines he hid like pornography, the secret of his schoolboy shame.



* * *



I thought of Chance as I worked the car south. I didn’t know what he needed or what to tell him, but it was true I didn’t want him involved. As the Carriage Room drew closer, I thought less of my friend and more about what might happen next. When people got murdered in Charlotte, odds were pretty good they’d die within a two-mile radius of the Carriage Room. Drugs. Gangs. Pick your poison.

The bar was redbrick and narrow, a single story surrounded by cracked tarmac. Motorcycles and pickups filled the lot. The women going in and out showed mostly skin, and the men, mostly leather. I stood in the lot, and came very close to changing my mind. The sun was falling, darkness rolling out. I took a deep breath, and started walking, three men staring hard when they saw me. Patches on their vests said HELLS ANGELS instead of PAGANS, but no one stopped me, so I wedged myself at the bar, and waited for the bartender to notice me. A tall man with a towel on his shoulder, he said, “I think you’re in the wrong place, kid.”

I flashed a fifty. “It’s yours if you help me.”

“All right.” He made the money disappear. “Tell me what you need.”

I opened my mouth, ready to save my brother’s life.

I had no idea what to say.

At first, the bartender seemed amused. It didn’t last. “Fifty bucks is a lot of money, but it’s not that much. I’ll give you ten more seconds.”

“My brother is Jason French.”

“Yeah. So?”

“Um, do you know him?”

“Maybe.”

“He was here a while back. He got into a fight with some bikers.”

“Look around. We have lots of fights and lots of bikers.”

“He was with Tyra Norris.”

“Oh, that one.”

He rolled his eyes, shaking his head. It could mean anything, so I tried again. “She may have started the fight. Does that help?”

“Tyra Norris and a fight with some bikers.” The bartender’s face shut down, a cold, blank slate. “We’re done now.”

“If it’s about more money…” I emptied my wallet, and spread bills on the bar. “Sixty-three dollars. It’s all I have.”

He looked at the money, but didn’t touch it. “You don’t want to go this way, kid. Trust me.”

“Take the money. Please.”

The bartender took another look around the room, then pocketed the bills with a world-weary shrug. “I know your brother, and I know Tyra, too, tart little sex pistol that she was. And yeah, I was here when the fight went down, five on one against your brother. It cost me two busted tables and about thirty broken glasses. It started here, and spilled outside when they tossed your brother through that window.”

“What was the fight about?”

“What I told you is all I know.”

“It’s not enough.”

“Jesus, kid…”

“Tyra’s dead and my brother’s in prison. What would you do if you were me?”

“Look, I’m trying to save your ass.”

“So give me back the money.”

I held out my hand, but he didn’t reach for any bills. With another I-don’t-care-about-this-anyway kind of shrug, he said, “All right, tough guy. It’s your funeral. Wait here.”

He slid a bottle of beer into my hand, then ambled to the end of the bar where an older man hunched above a glass of brown liquor, four other bikers sharing the same corner. The bartender whispered a few words and then returned. “I told him you want to talk, and what about.”

“So I wait?”

“If you know what’s good for you, you’ll go home and go to bed. Other than that, yeah, you need to wait.”

But I had no desire to do that. Pushing through the crowd, I saw that the old man was younger than I’d thought, sixty maybe, or maybe a hard-won fifty. He was bigger than I’d thought, too, with hands like a mechanic’s. When I was five feet out, he said, “You don’t want to be here, kid.”