Rescue

deadpan face in a blue, pocketed T-shirt, tattoos on both forearms and one bicep.
    As I moved into the bar, I caught some of the conversations to my left and right. Leftie was regaling his companion, a woman in biker gear, with his “most recent“ appearance before the grand jury. Rightie was saying, “I’m telling you’ there’s so many goddam cubano spies in that Miami town, gotten so’s I get a nigger waiting on me in a place, I wanta kiss his thick black lips, just account of he can speak English you know?“
    Seeing some long-necked Budweisers around me, I ordered one.
    The bartender opened it on a device screwed into the sink between us, then set it in front of me. Over the music he yelled, “Deuce.“
    I gave him a five, he came back with three in change just as the band was between songs.
    I said, “Thanks. How’s it going?“
    “Next couple on the dance floor hits the beat’ll be the first, but otherwise fair to middling. You?“
    I took a sip of the beer. “Good.“
    One of the bikers at the pool table suddenly butt-ended another with a cue. The receiver held up a hand, meaning no more. The keep saw all this with me, didn’t even twitch.
    I said, “Friendly discussion.“
    He looked at me. “Nothing worth shedding blood over, anyways.“
    “That kind of thing, always makes me feel a little religious.“
    The deadpan look. “Religious.“
    “Yeah. I hear there’s this outfit down on Mercy, what’s the name—oh, yeah. The Church of the Lord Vigilant.“
    The band struck up some chords, then seemed to need a readjustment of equipment.
    The keep leaned into me, lowering his voice. “You got a badge?“
    “If I did, I sure wouldn’t show it after that last song.“
    The keep nodded, then picked up my beer and poured it slowly into the sink. Setting the bottle down very deliberately in front of me, he said, “No refunds.“
    “The conversation was worth the money, only just barely.“
    “Don’t hurry back.“

    I tried two other places up and down the Overseas High ly without any better luck. It seemed nobody wanted to about the Church, the Reverend Royel, or the Dragon Lady from Hee-Haw. Then I stopped at a smaller place with a tree-ringed, gravel parking lot off a side street on the ocean side, the name PINKY’S in the same color neon lit over door.
    Inside, the linoleum was old, peanuts and popcorn in wicker baskets on the bar. There was the smell of fried fish coming from somewhere in back, but it looked like the kind of joint where the bar tabs would be bigger than the dinner bills. Trophies for what seemed to be softball lined a shell under the small, ceiling-mounted television, and taxidermy on plaques labeled SNOOK, TARPON, and BONEFISH looked as though they actually might once have been alive.
    A foursome of guys shared a bucket of beer at a corner table, all working stiffs to look at them. A bearded white, a bald white, a tall African-American, and a short Latino. At the far end of the bar, a solo white guy in his late twenties hunched over a mug, drawing on a cigarette and staring morosely into his beer. In the center of the bar, a middle-aged tourist couple was listening intently to the bartender, a woman also on the kind side of thirty with natural blond hair, a healthy tan, and a bare midriff showing the kind of abdominals you get only by working out hard and keep only by working out harder.
    The bartender was gamely, even enthusiastically advising the tourists on other places they might hit. “If you like blues the Padd-Thai up around mile marker 103 has a great band, Jimmy Hawkins and the Cyclones. You want just nice music, there’s these two brothers up at Snapper’s, they do great guitar duets and a just hilarious redneck routine.“
    The couple glanced at each other. “We don’t know, Donna...“—stretching out the first syllable like it was “Dawn.“
    “Oh, it’ s not what you might think. No racist stuff or anything. More like, ‘You might be a redneck if your front porch collapses, and it kills more than three dogs.’“
    The couple laughed.
    “Or, ‘You might be a redneck if your family tree doesn’t branch.’“
    Bigger laugh.
    Donna said, “I don’t want to spoil it for you, but they got a million more.“ Confidentially, “You want something a little raunchier, there’s ‘Big Dick and the Extenders’ down at Islamorada, around mile marker 82 or so. They perform in a bar called Woody’s, gray place that’s got this old-time woodsided