Echo Burning

growing and spreading into an impressive stain. But the best barroom etiquette doesn’t let you linger on such a sight, and the guy caught Reacher staring.
    “Who you looking at?” he said.
    It was said low and aggressively, but Reacher ignored it.
    “Who you looking at?” the guy said again.
    Reacher’s experience was, they say it once, maybe nothing’s going to happen. But they say it twice, then trouble’s on the way. Fundamental problem is, they take a lack of response as evidence that you’re worried. That they’re winning. But then, they won’t let you answer, anyway.
    “You looking at me?” the guy said.
    “No,” Reacher answered.
    “Don’t you be looking at me, boy,” the guy said.
    The way he said boy made Reacher think he was maybe a foreman in a lumber mill or a cotton operation. Whatever muscle work was done around Lubbock. Some kind of a traditional trade passed down through the generations. Certainly the word cop never came to his mind. But then, he was relatively new to Texas.
    “Don’t you look at me,” the guy said.
    Reacher turned his head and looked at him. Not really to antagonize the guy. Just to size him up. Life is endlessly capable of surprises, so he knew one day he would come face to face with his physical equal. With somebody who might worry him. But he looked and saw this wasn’t the day. So he just smiled and looked away again.
    Then the guy jabbed him with his finger.
    “I told you not to look at me,” he said, and jabbed.
    It was a meaty forefinger and it was covered in grease. It left a definite mark on Reacher’s shirt.
    “Don’t do that,” Reacher said.
    The guy jabbed again.
    “Or what?” he said. “You want to make something out of it?”
    Reacher looked down. Now there were two marks. The guy jabbed again. Three jabs, three marks. Reacher clamped his teeth. What were three greasy marks on a shirt? He started a slow count to ten. Then the guy jabbed again, before he even reached eight.
    “You deaf?” Reacher said. “I told you not to do that.”
    “You want to do something about it?”
    “No,” Reacher said. “I really don’t. I just want you to stop doing it, is all.”
    The guy smiled. “Then you’re a yellow-bellied piece of shit.”
    “Whatever,” Reacher said. “Just keep your hands off me.”
    “Or what? What you going to do?”
    Reacher restarted his count. Eight, nine .
    “You want to take this outside?” the guy asked.
    Ten .
    “Touch me again and you’ll find out,” Reacher said. “I warned you four times.”
    The guy paused a second. Then, of course, he went for it again. Reacher caught the finger on the way in and snapped it at the first knuckle. Just folded it upward like he was turning a door handle. Then because he was irritated he leaned forward and headbutted the guy full in the face. It was a smooth move, well delivered, but it was backed off to maybe a half of what it might have been. No need to put a guy in a coma, over four grease marks on a shirt. He moved a pace to give the man room to fall, and backed into the woman on his right.
    “Excuse me, ma’am,” he said.
    The woman nodded vaguely, disoriented by the noise, concentrating on her drink, unaware of what was happening. The big guy thumped silently on the floorboards and Reacher used the sole of his shoe to roll him half onto his front. Then he nudged him under the chin with his toe to pull his head back and straighten his airway. The recovery position, paramedics call it. Stops you choking while you’re out.
    Then he paid for his drinks and walked back to his motel, and didn’t give the guy another thought until he was at the bathroom mirror and saw him out and about in a cop’s uniform. Then he thought hard, and as fast as he could.
    He spent the first second calculating reflected angles and figuring if I can see him, does that mean he can see me? The answer was yes, of course he can. If he was looking the right way, which he wasn’t yet. He spent the next second mad at himself. He should have picked up the signs. They had been there. Who else would be poking at a guy built like him, except somebody with some kind of protected status? Somekind of imagined invulnerability? He should have picked up on it.
    So what to do? The guy was a cop on his own turf. And Reacher was an easily recognizable target. Apart from anything else he still had the four grease spots on his shirt, and a brand-new bruise on his forehead. There were probably forensics people