Todd Robinson - The Hard Bounce

Buddy grabbed Mullet’s arm, and Mullet twitched like he’d been shocked.

“C’mon, man. Let’s go.” Buddy’s voice cracked like he’d just been kicked in the nuts. Now I know why he’d minded his own. Hard to talk a tough line when you sound like Minnie Mouse.

“Yeah. Fine. This bar’s full of faggots anyway,” Mullet muttered as he walked off.

“Fuck you very much, gentlemen. Have a good one.” I clipped a sharp one-fingered salute at them as they retreated.

The kids applauded and cheered as the two walked off. I shut them up quick with a glower. I made a hundred bucks a shift, plus a tip-out from the bar. Not enough money to be anybody’s pal.

More noise pollution began thumping from the basement. The group quickly ground out their smokes on the wet cement as they filtered back inside.

A girl with brightly dyed red hair lingered outside longer than the rest. I could feel her stare on the side of my neck like a sun lamp. I glanced over and she gave me a little smile. She couldn’t have been more than fifteen, but behind the smile was something older. Something that made me uncomfortable.

As she passed me going into the club, she brushed her tiny body against me, tiptoed up, and kissed me on the cheek. “My hero,” she whispered softly into my ear and went inside.

I shuddered with Nabokovian creeps and shifted my attention back to the crowd. (And yes, fuck you, I know who Nabokov is. I’m a bouncer, not a retard.)

I kept my thousand-yard stare front and center on the passing crowd, keeping my peripheral sharp for any run-up sucker punches. It happens. I was alert to every degree of my environment except what was directly behind me; which is why I nearly had a heart attack when a booming crash sounded from the back of the bar. Instinctively, I ducked, made sure my head was still intact. Inside the bar, every patron jerked his head toward the hallway leading to the parking lot out back. I bull-rushed through the thick crowd, almost knocking down a couple customers. Somebody’s beer spilled down the seat of my pants as I hit the hallway.

Junior was halfway up the back stairs when I hit the huge steel exit door at full clip. The door opened only a couple inches before slamming into something solid, my shoulder making a wet popping sound. The door clanged like a giant cymbal and I ricocheted back, landing on top of Junior. We both toppled hard onto the concrete stairwell. Pretty pink birdies chirped in my head as I lay sprawled on top of him.

“Christ! Get offa me!” Junior yelped.

I rolled onto my wounded arm, and that same something popped back into place inside my shoulder. I roared like a gut-shot bull.

Junior pulled himself up and pressed against the door with all his weight. The door barely budged. Whatever was jammed against the door squealed metallically against the concrete.

I pinwheeled my arm a couple times to make sure there was no permanent damage. Apart from a dull throb and some numbness in my fingers, I’d survive.

“You okay?” Junior asked.

“Seems like it.”

“Then do you wanna help me move this fucking thing or should I kiss your boo-boo first?”

“Would you?”

I pressed my good shoulder against the door beside Junior and pushed. Whatever was on the other side, it was heavy as hell. With a painful scraping of metal, the door slowly slid open. We had about an eighth of a second to wish it hadn’t.

A flood of garbage and scumwater came pouring through the crack. Plastic cups, beer cans, crusty napkins, and a few good gallons of dumpster juice slopped over our shoes. Somebody had toppled the entire Dumpster across the entryway. The stink was epic.

“Motherfucker!” Junior dry-heaved mightily, but didn’t puke. “I just bought these goddamn shoes!”

A horn honked in the parking lot. Mullet and Buddy sat in the cab of a black Ford Tundra. They were laughing their asses off and wagging middle fingers as they peeled out and shot the pickup toward the lot gate.

The truck got halfway across the lot before jamming up in the long line of exiting Sox Faithful. Other cars moved in from both sides and the rear, neatly boxing them in. They had nowhere to go.

Junior stomped across the parking lot, his temper giving him an Irish sunburn. “I’m going to kill you, then fuck you, you cocksucker!”

I’m not sure that was what Junior meant to convey, but I went with the sentiment. “That’s right,” I called out. “He’s not gay; he just likes to fuck dead things.”

In the large rearview mirrors, I could see the fear on Mullet’s face. Suddenly, I saw him lean over and grab for something. I was pretty sure it wasn’t going to be a kitten.

“He’s reaching!” I yelled to Junior. We took the last twenty feet at a sprint, and I swung a haymaker into the open driver’s side window. My fist cracked Mullet right in the back of his hairdo as he turned back.

“Gahh!” he replied. His hands were empty.

“Hey!” was all Buddy had time for before Junior reached into the passenger side, grabbed his head, and whacked his face hard onto the dashboard.

A pair of high voices cried out from the cab as two small faces in Red Sox caps smushed against the tinted glass. “Daddy!” one of the little boys cried in terror.

Bang.

The world exploded red and I had Mullet’s windpipe in the middle of my squeezing fingers.

“ Are you fucking nuts? Were you going to drive drunk with your fucking kids in the back?” Spittle flew from my lips onto Mullet’s reddening face. “Are you out of your fucking mind ?”

“Please don’t hurt my daddy!” Tiny fingers clasped at mine, trying to pry them open. Something deep inside was telling me to let go, but the rest of me wasn’t hearing it.

“Let him go, Boo.” Junior’s voice sounded miles away. I saw his hands on my arms, pulling me, but I couldn’t feel him there.

Mullet’s lips went blue, and his eyes started to roll up white.

Buddy was also trying frantically to loosen my grip. “Jesus Christ, you’re killing him! Let him go.” Buddy’s blood-slicked fingers kept slipping off mine.

Suddenly, an explosion shocked my hands off Mullet’s throat. I stepped back, my hands reflexively going to the place I thought I’d been shot. The truck listed down and to the left. Another explosion and the truck sank further. I wheeled my head to see Junior standing by the limp oversized tire, box-cutter in his hand. “Let’s go, Boo. They’re not going anywhere.”

I blinked a few times, regaining myself. One of the boys was halfway though the partition into the front seat. He was crying, snot running over his upper lip, screaming at me, the monster who was hurting his daddy. “Go away !” he shrieked. “Go away !” He threw an empty Red Sox souvenir cup at me. It bounced off my chest, clattered to the ground.

Junior took me by the arm and pulled me the long way around to the entrance of The Cellar so no one could tell the cops where to find us.

Junior walked at my side as we passed around the lot. I could feel his eyes on me. Without looking over, I said, “You got something to say?”

“Nothing specific. You okay?”

“Finer than Carolina. We just performed a public service, if you ask me.”

He didn’t ask me. “Fair enough,” he said. “You want a soda big guy?”

“Fuck off.”

Toward the front of the jam, an old lady in a beat up Dodge Omni and Red Sox cap gave me a big thumbs-up.

For some reason, that bothered me.

I could still hear the kids crying when we got back to the bar. I shouldn’t have been able to, but I did.

Soaked from the rain, we did our best to dry off with bar napkins. The flimsy napkins kept shredding, leaving little white pills on our clothes. Junior kept smirking, looking like he had something to say.