Some Velvet Morning: Two
(Part 2: “That Mean Kind of Quiet.” “Some Velvet Morning” begins here.)
“Gimme a whiskey,” he rasped to the gal behind the counter, pointing behind her. “The bottle.”
Like I say, I never saw the man anything less than calm before. But here he was, agitated as all hell, needing a few drinks to calm his nerves.
“You okay, Bill?” Dolly, my bartender, asked him. “You don’t look so good.”
“Just pour,” he said quietly. That mean kinda quiet, tells you if you don’t do it, there’ll be consequences.
She poured him a shot and left the bottle like he asked, when a young punk name of Silas Champ sat down beside him. Silas fancied himself a gunslinger, but fact is, outside of his shootin’ a drunkard in the leg one night on a dare, nobody’d ever seen him do anything all that impressive with his guns.
I was on the stairs, checking out the room, and I saw where this was going before Silas did. Maybe even before Bill did.
“You see this?” Silas asked, putting his Colt on the bar, then spinning it around a few times before stopping it hard, the barrel pointing at Bill. “I killed me a lotta men with this piece. How 
many men you killed, Mister Larkin?”
“Piss off, boy,” Bill muttered between shots.
“Come on now, just curious,” Silas kept on. “Lotta guys round here think you’re a pretty tough hombre, so I’m just askin’: you kill anybody since last time you was here?”
Bill slammed down his glass, turned his head slowly towards Silas. “Have you?”
The slamming of the glass made Silas jump. He covered, asking, “Now whaddaya mean by that?”
Turning his whole body to face the boy, Bill asked, “I mean you ain’t killed nothin’ since your mama died shittin’ you out.”
That was all Silas needed, and Bill knew it. I figured the boy’d just take a swing at Bill, but Silas took up his Colt, tried to smack Bill in the head with the butt. Bill’s a fast son of a bitch, though, and a couple of swift gut punches put Silas down.
The dumb bastard was gasping on the floor when Bill started kicking him in the ribs and shouting. “Fuck you! Fuck you!”
Over and over, he kept kicking the kid. And then he pulled a knife off his belt.
That’s when I ran down, put my hands to Bill’s chest. “Enough, Bill! He’s done!”
For a second, Bill didn’t even seem to know me. I think he woulda started in on me if I hadn’t yelled, “BILL!”
After that, he cooled, just a little. Turned back to the bar. Back to the bottle he’d asked for.
“What the hell was that, man? Pullin’ a knife in my bar? Where you think you are?!” I was mad, yeah. This weren’t the Bill Larkin I was used to dealing with, so why should I be the barkeep he was used to?
His mood being what it was, I half expected him to turn the knife on me. But he just tossed it onto the floor, turned back to the whiskey. “Sorry, Joe. I’m sorry.” Then he threw in, “But you ain’t been where I been.”
Seemed like such a silly thing to hear, coming from a guy like Bill Larkin. Figured he was pulling a fast one on me. “What the hell’s that mean?” I asked, grinning. “I been here this whole time.”
“Forget it.” No jokes in his tone.
So I matched it. “You damn near killed that boy,” I told him. Scolding him like a child. My second mistake. The man had earned his say, and I weren’t in my rights to ignore that.
“Told you I was sorry. Back off, Joe.”
“The fuck I back off. What the hell’s gotten into you?”
He breathed deep, then let it out, calming himself down. “I don’t even know. Wouldn’t believe me if I told you,” he muttered. Angry and sad all at once.
I didn’t understand the tone one bit. And I was still angry at the ruckus he’d caused, so I poked at him some more. “You tell me what’s stuck in your craw, or you’re outta this place faster than you even know which way’s up.”
He poured himself a drink, then sat staring it for a few moments before picking it up and swallowing it down. “You believe in the Devil, Joe?”
(To Be Continued.)
