Bryan Gruley - The Hanging Tree

He leaned closer. “That lard-ass in the coveralls plays that damn song about seventy-two times a day.”

“At least it’s not ‘Dream Weaver.’”

“These guys think this is their goddamn living room. That one had his daughter’s fucking baby shower here the other day.”

“Must be good extra cash, though.”

“No. Lost my ass giving toasts away. And they left without paying the bill. Assbag down there”-Soupy jabbed his elbow in that direction without looking-“says put it on his tab.”

“That’s not good,” I said. “Kind of makes you wonder how a guy can afford to shut his bar down early with all his hockey pals coming in.”

Soupy ignored me. “So we tied, eh? Heard you hit the post.”

“Yeah. Where the hell were you?”

“Can’t be missing empty nets, Trap.”

“Where were you, Soup?”

Soupy never missed hockey. When the Chowder Heads were skating, he left Enright’s in the hands of his other bartender, Dave Lubienski. But Soupy had been a no-show the night before. Then we found the bar closed hours before last call.

“Loob’s wife had a chicks’ night out, and he had to stay with the kid. I tried to get Tatch to fill in but as usual he had his head up his ass.” He picked up the dishrag and began wiping down the sink behind the bar. “Ready for the game tomorrow? The Linke boys were in last night talking shit.”

The Linkes played for the Mighty Minnows of Jordan Bait and Tackle, our first-round opponents. Soupy was trying to change the subject. I decided to play along, for now.

“Should be fun,” I said. “Did you get the hats?”

“Oh, Trap, fucking-ay, hang on.”

Soupy hurried back into the kitchen. Every year, he bought the Chowder Heads hats for the playoffs. He thought they brought us good luck. His team hadn’t actually won the playoffs in three years, but Soupy did not relinquish his superstitions easily.

He emerged wearing a red wool cap with a fluffy white ball on the top and black tassels dangling to his shoulders. A pair of soup spoons crossed to look like hockey sticks were embroidered into the front of the hat.

“Awesome or what?” Soupy said. The regulars glanced up, unimpressed. “I ain’t even going to wear a helmet, man.”

“Sweet,” I said. “Is that mine?”

“Fucking-ay.”

He tore the cap off of his head and threw it at me. I pulled it on my head and looked in the mirror behind the bar, mugging. Soupy laughed and reached over the bar for a hand slap.

When I had played goalie for the Rats and for Soupy’s men’s league team, the Chowder Heads, Soupy had always been my best defenseman, the smartest at staying between the puck and me, the most adept at stealing the puck and hurrying it to the other end of the ice. If an opposing player gave me the slightest bump, or whacked one too many times at my pads, I could count on Soupy giving him a stick shaft to the back of the neck, maybe a glove to the face.

After his hockey career evaporated in a steam of booze and drugs in the minors, Soupy had stopped expecting much from life. It didn’t take much to make him happy anymore. A case of beer, a bag of barbecue chips, a Red Wings game on the tube, a new cap for a playoff game. Gracie’s return had been a bonus. She was at once the new woman in town, since she’d been gone so long, and a familiar one, who knew Soupy well enough to have no expectations, except for a few drinks, a little reefer, a night in his bed.

For a while I had been glad for him. But eventually came the creeping suspicion that my apparent satisfaction with Soupy’s lot was a symptom of my own complacency, a sign that I too was now willing to settle for a day-to-day existence in Starvation, with none of the visions I once carried around about changing the world with the things I could find out and write down.

“I like it,” I said, stuffing the cap in a coat pocket.

“Yeah, buddy. Calls for a shot.”

He snatched two glasses and a bottle of Jack Daniel’s off the back bar and poured us two fat shots. I really didn’t need it, but it gave me an opportunity to change the subject again.

I raised my glass. “To Gracie,” I said.

Soupy hesitated before clinking my glass. He drank the Jack down in a gulp, winced, poured himself another, swallowed that. I drank half of mine, set the glass down. “You all right?” I said.

“Fine.”

I knew he’d enjoyed sleeping with her, because he talked about it almost constantly. I wasn’t sure whether he’d gotten his heart as involved as his pecker, because he didn’t talk about that.

“Sorry, man. I know you liked her.”

“Yeah. Cool chick.”

“Are we going to talk about it?”

He picked up the dishrag again, held his arms up in an exaggerated shrug. “What’s to talk about? Obviously she wasn’t happy. So”-he looked into the sink-“she did what she did.”

“No, Soup.”

“Chickenshit, if you ask me.”

“No.” I lowered my voice. “She didn’t kill herself.”

“How the hell do you know?”

“Cops been to see you?”

He sneaked a look at the regulars. They weren’t looking, but the jukebox was off again, so they could hear. For months, Soupy had imagined, or pretended to imagine, that only a few locals knew that he and Gracie were sleeping together, even though she came into Enright’s every night around nine, sat at the same end-of-the-bar stool beneath a picture of young Soupy celebrating after a goal, drank her eight or nine gin and Squirts, stayed until the bar was empty, and left through the back door with Soupy.

“What the hell would the cops want with me?”

“You tell me. Soupy Campbell closed his bar early last night. That’s front-page news right there.”

“There was a big fucking storm last night, you know.”

“There’s a big fucking storm every two weeks and you never close early. And you weren’t at the rink. You think Dingus isn’t going to notice?”

“Dingus?” He was getting louder now. One of the regulars had turned his head to watch. Soupy looked at him. “What’s your problem, Lenny? You interested in settling up?”

Lenny returned to his cocoon. Soupy glared at me.

“What the fuck, Trap? You selling me out to your girlfriend?”

“Oh, Jesus, give me a break. You could get yourself in trouble here, buddy. Where were you?”

“Good question,” came a voice from the front of the bar.

We turned to see Sheriff Dingus Aho standing in the open front doorway, his cruiser’s lights flickering on the street behind him.

“Damn,” I said. “This is not good.”

“Christ, Dingus,” Soupy said. “Did you have to use the lights? I got a business to run here.”

Dingus spared Soupy the handcuffs. By the time they pulled away, Soupy in the backseat staring straight ahead, a small audience had gathered on the sidewalk, and Soupy’s bar had closed early for the second time in less than twenty-four hours.

“What’s all the hubbub out there?”

Phyllis Bontrager asked me the question as I came through the front door of the Pilot. Her eyes, replicas of her daughter Darlene’s, widened behind the huge lenses she’d worn for as long as I’d known her. As kids, we had called her Tweety Bird.

“You didn’t see?” I said. “The cops took Soupy in.”

Mrs. B pursed her lips and popped her glasses up onto her head. She was standing behind the front counter wearing a red cardigan with the shapes of reindeer heads knitted into it. A game show flickered silently on a black-and-white TV at the other end of the counter.

“Are you all right?” she said.

I must have looked worried, though I was telling myself the sheriff was probably just going to grill Soupy before letting him go. He could have done it more quietly, but Dingus had his own way of doing things.