Mohawk

I’d keep my calves indoors. I hear he don’t talk no more at all.”
    “Hasn’t said a word in three months, according to Harry.”
    “Better than that shit he used to come up with. That
‘oughta’
shit. Remember that?”
    By the time they got to The Velvet Pussycat, the place was hopping pretty good. At closing time the bartender stopped serving alcohol to those who didn’t want any more and kept on pouring for those who did. The owner had been to court half-a-dozen times for serving after-hours, and even paid several two-hundred-dollar fines. But for the fact he took in an easy five hundred between two and five, he probably would’ve stopped. A local band was rattling the windows. The lead singer had shoulder-length hair, and Benny D. glowered at him. “Some fuckin’ place this is.”
    Dallas had never been there either. And though he thought he knew everybody in Mohawk, the place was mobbed with strangers. John had beat them out there and, dancing with some woman who wasn’t his wife, waved at Dallas and Benny D.
    “How much you want to bet he never even buys us a drink,” asked Benny D.
    “He’s tight,” Dallas said, “as a rabbit’s ass.”
    “How much you figure he took us for tonight?”
    “He’s going to pay tomorrow. His luck’s already changed and he doesn’t know it.”
    “That doesn’t help me,” Benny D. said sadly. He ordered scotches for himself and Dallas and sent a round over to John and his bimbo.
    “I hope you won’t try to shame him,” Dallas said. “He’s a lawyer and we only got fifty bucks.”
    “What good is he?”
    Dallas explained how John had helped him beat a DWI a few months ago, but Benny D. wasn’t listening. A young waitress had come up to the cocktail station and was emptying lime sections and maraschino cherry stems and soaked cocktail napkins into the small trash bucket on the floor. She was working without a brassiere, and every time she bent over, Benny D. did too. Not that he really needed to. Dallas could see everything perfectly from two stools down. He let his story trail off. When the girl walked away, Benny D. turned to him. “Who’s she?”
    “Somebody’s daughter.”
    “Mmmm. And all growed up. Save my seat. I got to pee.”
    When the band stopped, John came over and bought a drink. “Remind me to take you shopping sometime,” he said, running his index finger under Dallas’s shirt collar. “What’s with you and Benny D.?”
    “What do you mean?”
    “Nothing,” John said.
    “No
what
?”
    John shrugged. “He comes up with a lot of winners is all.”
    “He knows horses.”
    “Nobody knows horses,” John said.
    “You don’t,” Dallas admitted. “I save your ass three or four times a week. I’m getting sick and tired, now that I think about it.”
    John held up his hand. “Don’t get sore. It’s funny how your pal wins all the time is all.”
    “I don’t want to hear it.”
    “If he stays lucky, I’m going to have to cut you loose.”
    “I’m gone.”
    “Don’t get sore, we’re just talking here.”
    “Fuck you.”
    Benny D. came back from the men’s room and eyed the bar. “Don’t tell me this stiff actually bought a drink,” he said.
    “I don’t like you, Benny,” the lawyer said.
    “Well, break my fuckin’ heart,” Benny D. said. “That sure is a nice shirt. Won’t it stay buttoned?”
    “Unload the guy,” John said to Dallas. “Don’t hang around with him.”
    “Thanks for the drink,” Dallas said. “You seen my sister-in-law around?”
    “Not lately,” John said. “Her kid’s sick or something.”
    “I’ll have another drink,” Benny D. told the bartender. “On this gentleman, the one with the hairy chest and the fish hooks in his pockets.”
    “I don’t like you, Benny,” John said.
    “What’s wrong with the kid?”
    “I don’t know. Leukemia or something.”
    When the lawyer raised his glass, Dallas hit him, and suddenly John looked like somebody had swabbed him with a brush full of red paint. One large piece of glass lodged in his upper lip just beneath his nose. He wobbled, but instead of falling down brushed Dallas aside so he could look at his face in the mirror above the bar. Only a few people had seen what happened.
    “Jesus,” John said reverently, touching the piece of glass in his lip, lifting his chin to better see the blood running down his neck and into his open necked shirt.
    “Allow me,” Benny D. said, pulling the glass fragment out of the upper