Spiral

nearly formed a single smile.
    Luke tipped back the Peterbilt and yelled, ”Hey, Donna. I got some satin sheets back of my truck. What do you say?” This time Moran wheeled on him, screaming. ”I say if you’d washed them after you flogged your three-inch dog all over them during your one good hard-on a month, you might find they’re just cheap shit, like you.”
    I glanced behind me, to make sure nobody else had come in that I might have to worry about.
    Luke was still grinning, but differently, and Hack didn’t seem happy at all.
    Looking down at the floor, Luke pawed it a little with the toe of a workboot. Then he started walking toward the bar, Hack in tow.
    And both still with their pool cues.
    Glancing down at my long-necked bottle, I said to Moran’s back, ”What’ve you got behind there?”
    Over her shoulder with, ”Just a bitty little billy club.”
    ”That’s it?”
    ”Why the place is called ‘Billy’s’ to start with.”
    Passing on my Bud bottle, I got off the stool, slipping the oversized towel from the bar so Peterbilt and Bandanna couldn’t see it.
    ”Boy,” said Luke, his upper teeth showing, ”don’t you be going nowhere, now. Cause you’re next, even with that bandage peeking out under your sleeve.”
    As Hack grew back his grin, I said, ”I’ve still got a lot to do today. Could you maybe take me first?”
    Luke and Hack both lost their grins, exchanged a quick glance.
    I said, ”After all, if I bolt out that door, you’d have to start running, too, unless you wanted everybody here to tell a story on you.”
    ”What kind of story?” said Luke.
    ”That you both ran yourselves ragged after this poor jerk in a suit while Ms. Moran called the Sheriffs Office.” Luke sneered at me. ”One, ‘Ms. Moran’ ain’t gonna call no Sheriffs Office. And two, ain’t no way somebody as old as you gonna outrun me and Hack.”
    ”I did the Boston Marathon not so long ago, my friend. Up hill and down dale for twenty-six miles without stopping.”
    Hack squinted, like a man in deep denial.
    Luke kept his sneer. ”Then maybe we shorten your legs some, make it a fairer race for us.”
    ”Anytime you’re ready.”
    I was hoping neither of them had been in the service, because drills with bayonets or even riot batons would have made two-on-one pretty untenable for me. But I was lucky: They’d watched more baseball games than training films.
    Luke dropped his hands to the tapered part of the cue and took the first swing, a right-handed batter going level for a line drive. I got the towel stretched between my hands and up, the wet cloth absorbing most of the momentum at the sweet spot of the cue, but drawing Luke off balance with its give. Then I dropped my left elbow quickly, catching the thick end of the cue under my left armpit. I yanked before Luke did, and his hands slipped off the tapered end as he stumbled backward.
    Hack came forward like a man intent on splitting a chunk of wood with a maul. While his arms were still rising on the upswing, I drove the tapered end of Luke’s cue into Hack’s belly until I thought it touched his spine.
    He went down, first coughing, then vomiting. Luke flexed his arms and clenched his fists, dancing around like he wanted me to come after him in a ”fair” fight.
    Holding the cue like a quarterstaff, I took two steps toward him, and he dropped back three. I advanced one more, he retreated three more.
    I said, ”Appears we’ve reached an understanding.” I looked over to the bar. ”Ms. Moran, thanks for your help.”
    As I moved to the door, the jukebox was signing off on the satin-sheets tune, making Hack a little more audible as be waited for his internal organs to realign themselves.
    I leaned the cue upright against the wall and spoke into the relative quiet. ”Never cared much for country and western.”
    ”Me, neither,” said Donna Moran, though I didn’t see her smiling about it.
    There was something else I didn’t see, at least not until I’d gotten back in the Cavalier and went to make a turn.

    ”You do know, Mr. Cuddy, that I am not here twenty-four hours a day to care for you?”
    ”Why I called ahead to be sure, Doctor.”
    ”We both know you did not.” The nice Haitian woman with the French/Creole accent smiled more wisely than tiredly. ”Now, hold still while I see how many sutures are... ugh. What strenuous thing did you do that tore open so many of these?”
    ”Pool.”
    ”Then the dressings would be wet,