Outer Banks (28 page)

 

T
HE
V
ALLEY
C
AFÉ
was a neighborhood tavern located in a row of wood tenements south of the center of Ausable Chasm at the edge of the Ausable Chasm River, which, a few miles downstream, emptied into Lake Champlain. It was a small place, a storefront, actually, with a dark bar along one side of the room and a dozen or so red plastic-seated booths along the other. At the back were three doors, one leading from behind the bar to the small kitchen, the second leading to a pair of filthy, unventilated rest-rooms, the third, marked by an Exit sign, leading to an alley. At
the front there were two large plate glass windows painted dark green from the low sills to eye level, with a small red neon sign in each pane that rapidly blinked
VALLEY CAFÉ
.

The place was quiet, dimly lit, almost empty. In its own toughly cynical way, the bar was friendly. It worked hard at seeming to be no more than what it was, a neighborhood bar. Anything that was deliberately atmospheric, as if to attract strangers, would not have made sense, no more to the patrons than to the owners. A juke box was allowed, was not thought pretentious or, worse, naïve, but only if the songs were the type of melancholy love songs that celebrated stoical loss, songs ten years out of date sung by middle-aged crooners who'd broken in with the big bands in the thirties and forties.

Alvin and Feeney walked up to the bar and ordered Seven-and-Sevens from the beefy, T-shirted bartender. He was a chinless, balding man in his fifties, his thick arms covered with faded red and blue tattoos. His T-shirt was stretched tightly across a belly that clung to the front of him like a tortoise shell, below which he had tied a white apron like a bib. He served the boys quickly and went back to his post at the front of the bar, where he had spread his newspaper. Planting both elbows on the counter, his chin resting against his knuckles, he resumed reading, slowly moving his lips as he read.

In a few seconds, having grown accustomed to the semidarkness of the room, the boys took a look around them to see where, in fact, they were and who was there with them. At the far end of the bar, in a bank of shadows, hunched a man in his late sixties, a serious afternoon drinker with a shot of blond whiskey and a glass of flat draft beer arranged precisely in front of him. In one of the booths, with his back to the bar, a young man in khaki work clothes was arguing in a hissing voice with a tubby, bleached-blond, middle-aged woman who was barely listening, but now and then making a low-voiced comment that would set the young man off and hissing again. He chain-smoked from a
pack of Camels in front of him, and she affectionately studied her pink-painted fingernails. For a minute Alvin wondered why the young man was haranguing her. Were they married to each other? Lovers? Brother and sister? He gulped down the last of his drink and called for another.

Maybe she was a prostitute and he was her pimp. Naw, impossible. The guy's wearing work clothes. Besides, she's too old and fat to be a prostitute. What's it like, he wondered, to fuck a woman that old and that fat?

She was looking across at him then, not quite staring, but openly, undeniably, looking at him. Alvin returned her gaze. Feeney, staring down into his glass, went on chattering, something about California, L.A., swimming year-round, beautiful cars, a '49 Olds 88… Alvin noticed that the woman's face was not unattractive. She had bright, dark, heavily made-up eyes that were wide apart and low on her face, and a full mouth that she had painted pink, to match her fingernails. Her hair was short and curly, fluffy almost. The color of vanilla ice cream, Alvin thought. She was wearing a maroon short-sleeved sweater and a navy blue wool skirt, both of which clung tightly to her bulky, round torso. Her arms and breasts, though exceptionally large, looked firm to Alvin. Maybe she's not really that old, he thought. In her late thirties, maybe. And the guy is her brother-in-law and he's complaining about something that his wife, her sister, did to him, and she really doesn't give much of a shit because she doesn't like the guy much in the first place and he's constantly whining in the second place. And anyhow, what she's really interested in is
me.
Finishing off his drink, he ordered another.

Feeney ordered another too. “Gimme a coupla Slim Jims, will ya?” he said to the bartender.

Other people, mostly men, came into the bar, drank awhile, and left. It grew dark outside, and the bartender turned on a set of rose-shaded lights. Alvin played the juke box, half a dozen
Frank Sinatra songs, and while the records played, Alvin, back at the bar, snapped his fingers to the beat. He drank, ordered again, and drank again.

Feeney started talking about the drive home, four hours, and Alvin said, “Yeah, yeah, sure. Later, later,” and because it was Alvin's car, Feeney forgot about it. What the hell, he could always sleep in the back and let Alvin worry about the driving. He was only along for the laughs, he explained—but Alvin didn't seem to hear him.

A pair of sailors, quite cheerfully drunk, wandered into the place and took stools next to Alvin and continued their drinking. The young man with the woman in the booth started to get up to leave, but as he rose from his seat, he saw that the woman was looking intently at Alvin, who was leaning off his stool in her direction, like a tower about to fall, and the young man quickly sat down again.

One of the sailors, a thin, red-headed boy with freckles swarming across his face, elbowed Alvin in the side and, grinning good-naturedly, said to him, “You got somethin' goin' with Blondie over there, ain't you?”

Slowly Alvin turned and looked at the sailor. All he could see was the red-headed boy's huge grin, a tooth-filled half-moon, and to Alvin at that moment the sailor's great, good-hearted grin was the silliest, weakest thing he'd ever seen, so he said, “Whyn't you mind your own fuckin' business?” and watched with pleasure the collapse of the grin.

“Fuck you,” the sailor quietly offered, and he turned away.

Satisfied, Alvin resumed watching the woman in the booth, who had now placed herself so that Alvin could see her legs, crossed, halfway up her thighs.

By this time Feeney, too, had realized that Alvin's attention was focused solely on one person, and also that the person's attention seemed to be focused on Alvin as well. “Go easy, Al,” he warned. “We're a long ways from home, y'know.”

Alvin brushed his friend's warning aside with a crooked smile, and the next thing he knew he was standing beside the booth, staring down at the blond woman. “Buy you a drink?” he asked, flashing the same crooked smile he had given Feeney a moment before.

The woman looked up at him, her face wide open and pleased, but before she could answer, the man seated opposite her snarled, “Screw, kid. Get fuckin'
lost,
will ya?”

In a dead voice Alvin said, “I didn't offer to buy
you
a drink.” And for the first time he saw that the man was actually quite a bit older than he'd thought, was in fact the same age as the woman, probably in his late thirties. Up close, Alvin could see that the man was large, and muscular too, red-faced from working outside, with large tanned hands crossed with pencil-thick veins.

The man jammed an unlit cigarette between his thin lips, and with one motion he snapped open his lighter and lit the cigarette while with his free hand he pointed first his index finger at Alvin's chest and then a hooked thumb at the barstool Alvin had just left. Inhaling deeply, blowing the smoke from flared nostrils, the man repeated his instructions: “Screw, kid. The lady's with me. Now get fuckin'
lost,
will ya!”

The woman smiled helplessly up at Alvin and remained silent.

Alvin looked coldly into the man's pale blue eyes. “Shut up,” he said evenly. “I'm talkin' to her, not you.”

“Lissen, honey, maybe some other time, okay?” the woman said to him in a husky voice. She was still smiling up at him.

“I'm from outa town, I'm leavin' tonight, so whyn't you let someone who's just passin' through buy you a drink? Whaddaya drinkin', anyhow?” Alvin peered down into her glass, as if peering down a well.

“Gin and tonic.”

“Gin and tonic!” Alvin called to the bartender. “An' another Seven-an'-Seven!” He started to sit down next to the woman,
who quickly slid over to make room, when suddenly the man reached across and clamped onto Alvin's wrist, stopping him.

“Kid,” he hissed, “if you don't turn around an' get the hell outa here I'm gonna take you apart.”

Swinging his other hand around in front of him, Alvin wrenched the man's hand free of his wrist and threw it against the table. “You ain't takin' anybody apart tonight, pal.”

Alvin felt wonderful. Like a tractor or bull or tree. And fast, like a cobra or lariat or chain saw. And fearless, like a block of ice or a surgeon or the wind. Here was a big man who was older than he, a tough, wiry man facing him with threats and anger, yet to Alvin the man was like a curtain that could easily be brushed aside. So he turned all his attention to the woman, asking her name and did she live around here.

The man stood up and grabbed Alvin's right shoulder. “Let's go. Out.” His voice was hurried but low and smooth, almost pleasant, as if he were putting his cat out for the night.

At the bar, Feeney, the sailors, the bartender, and three or four other customers, all older men, were watching intently. Only Feeney looked frightened. He got off his stool and took a step toward the booth, then a sideways step toward the door that led out to the street and Alvin's car. From the juke box at the back Frank Sinatra was singing “On the Road to Mandalay,” but otherwise the place was silent, still, and waiting.

Alvin looked down at the man's hand clamped to his shoulder. He said, “You wanta step outside
with
me, pal? 'Cause that's the only way I'm goin'.”

“Some other time, kid. I ain't got time to play games with punks like you. Now get outa here.”

“Screw you. Either you step outside with me, mister, and get the shit pounded outa you, or you just pick up your little lunch-box there and trot home alone. I plan to sit here awhile an' have a drink an' a talk with Mary. Is that your name, honey? What's your name?” he asked the woman with the vanilla ice cream hair.

“Helen.”

“Terrific. Terrific. What's you say you were drinkin'? Gin an' tonic?”

“Yeah.”

“Okay, honey. Bartender, let's have a gin an' tonic an' a Seven-an'-Seven over here!”

“Okay,” the man in khakis said. “You want your head beat in, you're gonna get it. Let's go, sonny. Outside,” he said, and he let go of Alvin's shoulder and strode angrily for the door in back that led to the alley.

Alvin grinned and slid out of the booth without looking back at the woman.

Feeney grabbed him by the arm. “C'mon, Al, let's get the fuck outa here. Whaddaya doin', for chrissakes? That guy'll kill ya!”

Pulling silently away, Alvin started for the exit to the alley, and Feeney shrugged his shoulders and followed his friend, averting his eyes as he passed the woman in the booth.

Jumping from their stools, the pair of sailors followed. “I hope the bastard gets
creamed,
” the red-headed one said.

The bartender, wiping up the bar with a dirty gray cloth, shook his head as if disgusted and slightly bored by the whole thing. “Fuckin' kid drinkers,” he mumbled to one of the men at the bar. “Who needs 'em?” Then he called over to the woman, who was lighting a cigarette from a lit butt in the ashtray in front of her. “Hey, Helen, you still want that drink?”

“Yeah.”

“Who's payin' for it?” the bartender asked, winking to the men along the bar.

“Whichever one comes back, Freddie. Whichever one comes back.” She laughed and started studying her pink fingernails again.

The man in the khaki work clothes was at least six feet tall and broad-shouldered, but still he wasn't as tall as Alvin or anywhere near as wide. He was thick and compact, though, one of
those men whose muscles are flat and short, an efficiently built, heavy-boned man with thick wrists and large hands.

When Alvin stepped out of the bar into the alley, he saw the man standing, facing him, a half-dozen paces away at the edge of a circle of light thrown by the single bulb burning over the door. In back of the man was a cinderblock wall about nine feet high, and beyond that was a belt of the dark gray, almost black sky that rose straight up from the river below. Next to the back door of the bar on either side were overflowing garbage cans and collapsing, rain-soaked, card-board boxes. The ground was puddled and muddy, and a nasty, erratic wind was blowing.

Alvin shed his suit jacket and handed it to Feeney, who tried to lean himself casually against the side of the building. The sailors came out and stood next to him, grinning, their arms folded over their chests. With one hand Alvin unknotted his necktie and passed that to Feeney.

Feeney said, “Thanks.”

Alvin said, “Yeah.”

The man said, “C'mon, kid,” and crouched slightly, his fists in front of him, his head pulled down into his bulky shoulders, his feet planted firmly on the ground. A puncher.

Taking two quick steps forward, Alvin drew his fists up in front of his face, quite high up, leaned slightly off the balls of his feet and then, for the first time in his life, he started to fistfight. As if he were in a trance, thinking consciously of the mechanics of what he was doing no more than he would if he were eating a meal, he slid to his left, feinted once, and jammed his right fist, twice, as if firing it, under the man's left arm, crashing his fist against the rib cage, driving the man off-balance to his side, where Alvin caught him with a knee slammed into the crotch as the man fell away. The man grunted and swung a couple of slow punches at Alvin's head, both missing weakly, and Alvin started moving swiftly in and out, his fisted hands attacking the man's neck, chest and belly, like a pack of dogs tearing at the
sides of a wounded deer, moving too fast, too relentlessly, too automatically, for the man to avoid them. As he started to collapse backward toward the cinderblock wall, with Alvin driving on like a crowd, the man, spitting blood, groaned, “Enough!” Alvin grabbed him by the shirtfront, held him at arm's length, and whacked him, hard, across the temple with one enormous paw, flipping the man out of his grasp into a heap in the mud. Walking over to him, he picked him up again and threw him back down again. He kicked him once on the shoulder. Then he left him alone.