The jukebox was playing Lynyrd Skynyrd’s Freebird. The tempo was picking up, and Bo, a young biker/stranger in this small berg, reached out to pick up a little something himself. Linda Lou, a hot looking local number that regularly melted strangers, had been shaking her tits at him for the past two or three songs, so he thought he’d call her bluff and ask her to dance.
He was about an inch and a half from twin heavenly peaks when the music stopped and he heard the cylinder of a .38 rotate as the hammer was drawn into its firing position behind his right ear. He froze as the cold steel chilled the side of his skull. Looking across the scuffed hardwood dance floor, Bo noticed the guys behind the pool table moving to one side, out of the line of fire.
Bo looked at Linda Lou. Her plaid Western shirt was unbuttoned almost to the center of the hardest belly Bo had seen in a month of traveling. She was looking at him with a mixture of fear and excitement. A funny little crooked smile raised the corner her rosy lips. Bo knew as the hair stood up on the back of his neck, it meant something sinister was happening.
“OK you cocksucking, yellow-haired sonuvabitch,” a voice behind him said, “turn around real slow. I ain’t so low that I’d shoot any sum’bitch in the back of the head.” Bo wasn’t inclined to believe this, but it was his only option. Bo wasn’t a big dude, in fact he knew his tolerance for violence was low. His Pa beat him severely behind the barn as a small, gangly teenager. As he grew, so did his flinch from anyone who might raise a hand to him. His self-esteem was at the bottom of the barrel when he hit 18 and snuck out the back of the farmhouse, high-tailed it across 3 miles of cornfields to his neighbors barn and the ratty Flathead ’45 he had built and stashed there, ’cause the old man would have beat him within an inch of his life if he knew what Bo was up to.
As Bo turned slowly to face the stranger, he saw a large dark circle in his field of vision. The circle was surrounded by blue steel and it was pointed directly at the bridge of Bo’s nose. As he concentrated on his fate, he noticed he had gone cross-eyed looking down the barrel of this gun. Sweat poured from his throbbing temple and his knees turned to Jell-O.
“You fucking bikers are all alike,” the gunman said. “You bastards come into town, raid the bars, and ride off with our women. That bitch over there is my woman and nobody looks at my woman, nobody dances with my woman, and nobody touches my woman unless I say so.”
Every time this slovenly fucker barked, “My,” Bo thought he’d piss himself.
“Listen buddy,” Bo said, visibly shaking. “I just asked her to dance. That’s all. Why don’t you put down the gun and let me buy you a beer?”
“Shut up asshole. I ain’t gonna drink with a whiny little prick like you.”
“Mister…” Bo began.
“I told you to shut up weasel boy,” interrupted the gunman.
“Maaaaan,” Bo stuttered like a broken record. It was a consequence of the fear his old man beat into him. The more he stuttered, the more the old man beat him. The more he got smacked, the more he stuttered.
Jake, the local bully behind the 8-inch barrel .38, liked the fear he saw in Bo’s eyes. He was a veteran bully. His degree in intimidation was renowned. He had bullied the best, and the rest were plain fearful. So he made his living pushing people, collecting debts and being an all-around musclehead. “OK asshole, this is the deal. It’s up to you. You prove to me that you weren’t gonna take Linda Lou off somewhere on the back of your hog,” he emphasized the word hog in a snide kind of way, “out in the bushes somewhere, fuck her brains out, and leave her alongside the road, and I’ll let you live.”
Bo just looked at him. His fear was like a locomotive running him down. He couldn’t breathe, he couldn’t talk, think, or run. He had run from every confrontation in his entire life. He tried to get over it, tried to study and learn about fear to control it, but nothing helped. He recently read about Dave Barr who had both his legs blown off in Angola and was riding around the world. Dave said of fear, “I have no time for fear.” Part of Bo was so scared to death, he didn’t care anymore. Something in Bo wanted him to ask this big-armed slob to cap him and get it over with. “I wasn’t going tooooooo do that. I was just gooooonna ask her to dance with me.”
“That ain’t gonna cut it cumwad.” Cumwad?” Jake snarled, the barrel resting on Bo’s frozen nose. The sharp edge of the barrel cut his tender flesh and a droplet of blood ran down the side of his nose. “You’d better ask me real nice to let you live.”
“Ooooookay,” Bo said. “Loooooook, I don’t wannnnnnt any trouble from you, OK? Why don’t you just puuuuuput the gun away…”
Bo could see the lead hollow points waiting to be discharged. “Listen,” Bo attempted to say, shaking, “Yo, Yo, Yo, You take a ni, ni, ni, nice, long look at your girl over the, the, the, the, there. I’ll take three big steps toward the door. I’ll be gone by the time you look back.”
“Well now,” said the gunman, grinning from ear to bearded ear. “I like a stuttering punk who knows when to run. That just might work. OK shithead. I hope you got long legs.”
Jake pressed the barrel against the bridge of Bo’s nose so hard it began to bleed down both sides, then he removed it with a chuckle and turned to Linda Lou. As soon as he did, she started to yell at him. “Jake, you asshole,” she screamed. “You always do this. What the hell is the matter with you?”
Jake treated the women in town the same as he treated the men. He moved the gun to his left hand and backslapped Linda Lou across her pretty face with his right. She spun a like a balsa wood top and went down, taking a barstool with her. The power of the back of Jake’s hambone-sized hand busted her lip and bloodied her nose. Jake picked up the girl by the hair, “I’ve about had it with you, bitch. You’ve got a lesson coming you’ll feel for a month.” He began to drag her toward the pool table.
They say that when you are drowning or facing imminent death, your whole life flashes before your eyes. This didn’t happen to Bo; what he saw instead was his future. He saw a scrawny, yellow-haired wuss running from problems just like always. By the time he was half way through his first step toward the door, he was turning to a bag of shit. This chick wasn’t his problem. She was the town sleaze, Bo thought, trying to take another step while listening to her wailing in the background.
Bo never did a brave thing in his life, except save an old woman’s dog once. He ran from fast moving shadows, hid behind his long, scruffy blond hair and a full beard that concealed his fear of everyday dilemmas. He roamed from job to job, working on his motorcycle alone so he could avoid dealing with people. Even alcohol didn’t help Bo. Linda Lou shrieked, “Help me.”
He turned back toward the domestic quarrel, replacing his failed confrontation with this big guy. It was as if there were an invisible brick wall forcing Bo to run for the door. He couldn’t turn back. It was physically impossible. Bo looked around, no one was making a move to save Linda Lou as big Jake slammed her against the pool table, then hoisted her slender 5-foot form onto the faded felt.
In an instance of frozen clarity, Bo noticed the surrounding men cringing from the one-sided domestic confrontation. He could see their fear, and it gave him strength. He could hear Dave Barr saying, “I have no time for fear.” He remembered a Hells Angel he met who liked to say, “If in doubt, knock ’em out.”
Suddenly, he heard breaking glass. He looked at Linda Lou. Her angelic face was crimson with blood. She had a broken beer bottle in her hand and she was threatening Jake with it. He laughed at her as she plead, “Not here Jake, please.” Jake laughed, snarled, and shoved the gun barrel into her Levi-covered crotch.
Everyone in the bar was looking at Linda Lou and Jake, not at Bo. Bo watched the precious woman, half the big man’s size, attempt to defend herself. He looked at the multitude of men standing around the room, many holding pool cues immobile, and something snapped in Bo. It was as if a high-tension wire pulled way past its limit for decades finally let go. He spotted a heavy straight-backed chair at a nearby table and snatched it amid full stride. He wound up and swung it low and hard. The chair caught Jake on the back of his legs just above the knee. Instinctively, Bo jerked the chair free as Jake’s hamhock legs buckled and he stumbled back. However, Jake’s legs didn’t collapse as Bo expected. Instead Jake turned, a large sinister smirk crossing his face. Bo hit him alongside the head with the chair and it exploded as Jake attempted to raise the .38.
“You are a brave li’l sum’bitch aren’tcha?” Jake laughed and fired.
The revolver was pointed directly at the center of Bo’s chest as he jumped for cover. The round hit Bo in the left shoulder. The impact of the bullet spun him around and he went down hard. Bo got back to his feet immediately as Linda Lou plunged the broken longneck into Jake’s back. As Jake’s eyes got big and wide, Bo took another step toward him and stopped. Jake pulled the hammer back with his thumb and squeezed he trigger. With the remainder of the back of the wood chair still in his hand, Bo slapped the big man’s face. The bullet missed its target.
Blood spurted out of the arm of Bo’s leather jacket, and the pain shot through him like 220 volts. He took one more step toward Jake. This time Jake pointed the gun at Bo’s head.
Bo didn’t figure he’d get a third step as Jake raised the revolver less than a foot from Bo’s chest. Suddenly Linda Lou drove the broken beer bottle into Jake’s back once more. Jake turned white, although he still had the gun. His hand was shaking and his eyes were wide. He was trying to pull the trigger, but couldn’t.
Jake went down on his knees. He was trying to turn and grab at Linda Lou and keep the gun trained on Bo.
Amazingly, Linda Lou grabbed another beer bottle and broke it over Jake’s head. She was sobbing almost uncontrollably now, but she kept up her attack. Bo just stood there in amazement, bleeding profusely.
Jake tried hard to get up, but he was weak from losing too much blood and his hands kept slipping on the slick, wet floor under him. He finally stopped trying and spoke to Linda Lou, his head nearly on the floor. “You are a bitch. You always were and you always will be. You’re momma was a bitch just like you. I guess that’s where you got it.”
“Daddy,” Linda Lou replied, “if I’m a bitch, I didn’t get it from momma. She was an angel that you pulled down from heaven and ground into the dust.”
Bo reached down and picked up the .38 from the pool of blood spreading on the battered hardwood floor. He could smell the gun powder mixed with stale beer. Linda Lou suddenly grabbed it from Bo’s grasp. “This is for my momma,” she said as she pointed the gun at Jake’s head and pulled the trigger. Most of Jake’s head splattered across the floor of the barroom. Linda Lou stumbled into Bo’s good arm and looked into his clear blue eyes, her face red and swollen. “Thank you.”
“We’ll have that dance, yet,” Bo said, leading her to the door. It was the first time since he was 15 that the words came naturally without the annoying stutter.
