Йен Райт: The Final Winter

Lucas leant over the bar toward Steph and spoke in a very clear voice. “Darling, you want to tell this young fella to wind his neck in before his peepers fall out on my shoes?”

Harry waited for combustion as the air in the room seemed to disappear, everyone in the bar sucking in their lungs like a disordered line of vacuum cleaners.

Lucas turned his head to Damien, who looked like he was about to go off like a firework. “Listen, laddy, I’m not a work of art, so take your beady little eyes off me and find something better to do.”

That’s it, Harry thought. The cat shit just hit the propeller.

Damien’s face contorted like a broken whiskey bottle, full of crags and sharp edges. His wiry arm drew back as his young body tensed up, ready to unleash a furious right hook.

In a move that seemed both casual and urgent at the same time, Lucas stepped back from the bar and slinked past his stool with leopard-like grace. At the precise moment Damien’s punch began its arcing descent towards him, Lucas threw a punch of his own. It was quick – it was vicious – and it connected perfectly with Damien’s incoming fist. There was a loud crack as the two men’s knuckles collided at full force.

“Fuck!” Damien howled, clutching his withered hand against his abdomen. “Jesus-goddamn-Christ!”

Lucas – who was clutching his own injured hand – began to laugh in what seemed like genuine amusement. “Not quite – but I’ll send you to go see him if you try that bollocks again, you little shithead.”

Damien glared. “You’re dead!”

“Wrong again, Sonny Jim. Unless you mean dead bored , which if I’m honest, I’m starting to get a wee bit. You’re keeping a man from his drink.”

Damien looked more furious than Harry had ever seen him. He was about to speak, no doubt to make more threats, but Steph cut him off first – not with her voice, but with the landlord’s bell pulled out from under the bar. She rang it vigorously in the faces of the two arguing men.

“Pack this shit in!” she hollered. “I’m in no mood for child’s play. Especially from you!” She scowled at Damien. “It’s freezing cold, we’re all stuck here, and we’re in the bloody dark. Do you two not think we have things bad enough without fisticuffs? Because you know something? If one of you gets hurt, I doubt there’s an ambulance in the world that can get here tonight.”

Or even this week, Harry thought.

Damien allowed his glare to turn into a grimace, before finally settling on a look of irritation. Lucas got back on his stool and quickly finished off his beer. He slid the empty toward Steph and said, “Two more, please. One for me and one for my new friend here with the broken hand.”

Damien hissed. “It isn’t broken, and I’m not your pissing friend.”

“Well,” said Lucas, offering a bottle of beer to Damien. “Perhaps you should be. It would make life easier.”

“Come on, Damien,” said Nigel from the far end of the bar. “If we’re all stuck here, we may as well have a drink together. Could even be a laugh.”

Damien turned his animalistic stare to the large, sweaty man at the end of the bar. “You think I want to waste a minute hanging around with a bunch of losers like you?”

Harry took offence. Being called a loser by a piece of scum like Damien did not sit well with him at all. “We don’t want to be stuck with you either,” he said, “but shit happens.”

Damien turned his glare to Harry, his body coiled and trembling like a pissed off panther. A panther ready to attack, thought Harry, regretting his comment already.

Before further words were exchanged though, Lucas pushed the bottle of beer towards Damien. “How bouts I buy your beers all night if you sit down and join in? Be an amicable chappy!”

Damien smirked. “I don’t need you to buy my drinks. I have enough money to buy your whole fucking family.”

Lucas smiled his cheeky grin. “I very much doubt that, lad, but why don’t we say I’m doing it to show my respect. I’m the new boy here and I obviously don’t know how things work now, do I? So accept my offer as an apology.”

Harry watched in anticipation as Damien scrutinised the man’s suggestion, but it seemed obvious that it had settled down his need for bravado. Harry admired Lucas’s savvy. The man had swallowed his own sense of pride and manipulated Damien into behaving. The young thug thought he’d won, but it was apparent to everyone else at the bar that Lucas had just used a modicum of intelligence to control the situation.

“Okay,” Damien finally said, snatching the bottle from Lucas. “Guess I can lower myself for one night and share a few beers with the peasants.”

Everyone was happy to ignore the insult, ready to play along with Lucas’s charade if it meant having peace. They raised their beers in the air and mumbled agreement.

Lucas put his hand on the bar; it was swollen and red in the candle light. “Don’t suppose you could get me some ice, luv?”

Steph sighed and nodded. “Sure.”

Damien suddenly slammed down his own fist on the bar and made the rest of them jump. Like Lucas, his hand was also swollen. “Yeah, I think I could do with some too.”

There was a brief silence before Damien began laughing. It was the least hostile Harry had ever seen the lad and, before long, the entire bar was sipping their drinks and laughing right along with him. The tension seemed to float away.

But Harry had a feeling it wouldn’t last .

“Dude, I’m starting to get totally frost-bitten. It’s like The Day After Tomorrow in here.”

Ben sighed. For some reason, Jerry had to speak almost entirely in film references. The fact that Ben’s father owned a video store didn’t help matters at all. Yet, despite his annoyance, Ben had to agree. It was getting uncomfortably cold.

“Can you hear me, B-dog?” Jerry shouted from the shop floor. “I said it’s like The Day aft-“

“Yes, I heard you. Hopefully the power will come back on soon, but there’s not a lot I can do about it in the meantime.”

“What? You saw those fuses! The lights ain’t coming on any time soon. You should just call your dad so we can get out of here.”

Ben fumbled his way through the dark from the office back to the shop floor, bumping into various shelving units along the way. “I tried already! My phone’s playing up. The display is all screwed.”

“No shit? My phone is like that too.”

Ben paused. What were the odds that both their phones would be playing up? “Really? You think it’s the weather or something?”

“I dunno,” Jerry said. “Can the weather do stuff like that?”

“Something’s responsible, not just for the phones but the power blowing out as well.”

Ben crossed the shop floor over to the thick glass door at the front of the shop. It was still snowing outside; heavy round flakes that seemed to sizzle as they hit the ground – or rather the top layer of snow two feet above the ground. He and Jerry had been clearing the entranceway throughout the day, keeping the place as accessible as possible. Of course, in such bad weather there had barely been a single customer all day anyway, especially in the last few hours – but Ben’s father never closed if he had the choice to open (especially on a day where everyone was stuck at home with nothing to do but maybe watch a rented DVD). Ben hadn’t complained. He’d known his father long enough not to expect the day off – even on a day where all other businesses had closed – so he’d decided to do a stock count, which had been perfect except for two missing copies of The Pianist (and a copy of Brain Dead that Ben knew was currently stashed in Jerry’s bedroom courtesy of ‘ a favour’) .