Norman Partridge - The Man With the Barbed-Wire Fists

God knows how many pulls on that sucker.

Fifteen of them hit jackpots.

Two hundred silver dollars. Five hundred silver dollars. Seven-fifty. A piddly seventy-five. And on like that. Enough to fill up three Bucket of Blood Saloon slot buckets.

But those jackpots were just small change. The last one was the big one. Three black buckets tripped into view, each one dripping blood.

Ten thousand dollars.

The machine didn’t pay that one, of course. Roy handed me the check. I stared at it hard.

One of the barflies laughed. “I guess you’re buying!”

“I guess I am!” I said, not taking my eyes off the check.

The barfly stared over my shoulder at all those zeros. I could smell rum on his breath, but I didn’t spare him a glance. Not when I had the check to look at.

“You won ten thousand bucks off a quarter?” The barfly’s voice trembled with awe. “You gotta be the luckiest man alive!”

I started to tell the story again. I couldn’t help myself. How I was broke… flat… busted. How I found the quarter on the floor. How I figured what the hell and dropped it into the closest one-armed bandit —

A hand dropped on my shoulder and just about spun me out of my boots.

“That was my goddamn quarter.”

Surprisingly, I recognized the voice. The words were spoken by Big John Dingo, but it was the greaseball who had hold of my shoulder. They were one in the same. It shouldn’t have surprised me. After all, the greaseball had fixed the old arcade machine. He’d obviously supplied the gunfighter’s voice, too.

His eyes seared me like a hunk of dead steak. “I want my money.”

“Fuck that.” I shook him off and stood my ground. “I won that money It’s mine.”

“You won it with my fuckin’ quarter, dickhead. Give it up or there’s gonna be trouble.”

“No way — ”

A crashing blow from a big right hand and I felt like I was headed for the promised land. My knees banged hard against the weathered floorboards and a loud creak tore the air. For a second I couldn’t decide if the sound came from the floorboards buckling or my own tired bones —

“That’s enough, Big John.”

It was Roy’s voice. I couldn’t see him. I was on my knees, looking at Big John’s belt buckle. It was probably the only thing on him that was clean. Polished silver, and I could see my reflection in it, funhouse mirror-style.

I looked more than a little perplexed. And that’s the way I felt. The greaseball’s name was Big John, same as the gunslinging dummy. It was crazy. Twilight Zone stuff. I halfway expected to look over at the slot machine and see Rod Serling standing there —

But there was only Big John. He grabbed a handful of my hair and tilted my head until my eyes found his. He drew back that right hand again and I cringed.

“You give me that money — ”

Roy’s voice again, accompanied by a sharp clicking sound. “I mean it, Johnny boy. Don’t give me a reason.”

The greaseball let me go. A couple of the barflies helped me to my feet. I turned to the bar and saw Roy standing there, a pistol in his hand.

“I want that money, pilgrim,” Big John said. “I’ve a right to it. It’s mine. If you think you’re leavin’ Virginia City without givin’ it to me, you’d better think again, you pencil-dicked motherfucker.”

I could barely whisper. “Not one dime,” I said.

“That’s enough.” Roy cut me off with a sharp glance. “Say another word, and I’ll throw the both of you out.”

Big John headed for the door. “I got a gun of my own,” he said. “I’ll be back.”

“Wonderful,” Roy said.

A second later the bartender slammed a shot of whiskey onto the bar.

I drank it straight down.

“I’ve got to get out of here,” I said. “I’ve got to find my buddy. That girl… Doreen… you know where she lives?”

Roy nodded. “Apartment above a T-shirt shop. Across the street, about a half a block up.”

Jesus. That wasn’t much help. Every other store on the street was a T-shirt shop. “What’s the name of the place?” I asked.

Roy looked me dead in the eye.

“Big John’s,” Roy said, and then he sighed.

Happiness. Yeah. I know the definition of that.

Scotty’s Junction in your rearview mirror and Vegas comin’ up.

“Let that motherfucker try to mess with us!” I yell. “His ass didn’t know what he was in for!”

Mitch doesn’t say a word. I wonder if I’ve gone too far. I’m damn happy about the money. I’m happy about Big John, too. But Mitch isn’t.

Maybe it’s Doreen… Maybe that’s it… Maybe he’s worried about her.

Hell. He doesn’t have to worry. Big John isn’t going to lay a hand on Doreen. Not anymore.

I glance over at Mitch, at his T-shirt. At those bullet holes. I want him to be happy. I want us to be like Yul Brynner and Steve McQueen, headed for boot hill in The Magnificent Seven.

What was it Steve asked when those lousy sidewinders took a shot at Yul?

“You get elected?” Yeah. That was it.

I ask Mitch, “You get elected?”

He doesn’t say a word. So I say them for him.

“No, but I got nominated real good. ”

“You don’t want to mess with him,” Roy said. “Big John Dingo’s a real asshole. He’s been around town for a few years now. Blew in with a string of schemes that were gonna make him rich. He thought so, anyway. First it was the Big John Dingo Gunslinger machine. He fixed that old relic up for us, got the idea that he was gonna sell them things to every bar in the nation. Of course, reality sort of disabused him of that notion. Then it was the T-shirt shop. Then… well, poor Doreen… Shit, she ain’t the homecoming queen, but ain’t no girl deserves to have her man turnin’ her out.”

I heard what Roy said, but I was about three steps past him. “Let me borrow your gun.”

“Let me call the sheriff.”

“No,” I said. “We don’t have time for that. Dingo’s crazy. He said he was going after his own gun. And if he finds Doreen with my buddy — ”

“He don’t know the fella’s your friend. Hell, Doreen with another man… that’s just business as usual, as far as Big John’s concerned.”

“Oh, yeah. He won’t mind finding another man banging his girl after some lucky son of a bitch made a fortune off a quarter that he dropped on a barroom floor.”

“Don’t forget him gettin’ run off by a geriatric bartender with a gun,” one of the barflies put in.

“Yeah.” Roy sighed. “You boys maybe have a couple of good points there.”

“You bet your ass we do,” I said. “Let me borrow your gun.”

Roy stared down at the pistol. Then he glanced at the three buckets of dollar coins resting on the bar.

He squinted at me. “Can’t loan you my gun,” he said. “But might be you could get me to sell it, if the price was right.”

I pushed one of the buckets his way.

“I don’t know… ” Roy said.

I pushed another bucket across the bar.

Roy smiled. “That’ll about do her.”