The Far Empty by J. Todd Scott Page B

town for cheap beer or condoms or weed. This tiny part of Murfee had a dozen unflattering names—Beantown, Beanville, Little Mexico—just like all the people who lived in it, their nearby homes wrapped by chain-link fences and patrolled by dogs.
    Everyone talked about the place, everyone knew about it. Everyone always denied they came here. Fights and trouble had been common at Mancha’s even when Chris was in high school, and like so much else about Murfee, that hadn’t changed.
    Chris parked hard, throwing gravel and painting the crowd with his lights. He got out and approached with his Taser at high-ready. Not his Colt, not yet; he hoped there wasn’t a need for the gun he hadnever pulled in the line of duty. He just wanted everyone calmed down, and a clear line of sight to Delgado. Now, though, half the circle was watching Delgado, and the other half was yelling at
him
, pointing back and forth between the man with the knife and the man they thought had a gun.
    As Chris got closer, Delgado took up howling, jabbing the knife at the air, standing over the man he’d stabbed.
Stabbed
didn’t quite do it justice—Delgado had all but scalped Aguilar, had worked the knife hard at the edges of the other man’s face. In fact, Aguilar’s hands were the only thing holding it in place, his entire visage lopsided, uneven, like a cheap Halloween mask.
    Chris had never seen anything like it. Delgado didn’t look much better. He was clearly on something—skin taut, eyes weird, sunken and blinking
up/down, up/down
, like a windup toy. There was blood in his mouth, in his teeth.
    Chris tried to steady his hand, tightening his grip on the Taser, waving everyone back. If anything, the circle only tightened, protective; everyone now concerned about what Chris might do to their
compadre
Delgado. Sensing this, Delgado stood taller, shouted louder, curling his knife in graceful figure eights in Chris’s direction. He hopped from one foot to the other as Aguilar’s face slipped sideways in his hands. The crowd cheered and Chris had no idea who or what they were cheering for.
    Chris was bigger than almost any other man there and still felt helpless, suddenly unsure of what to do next. Wishing his Colt was in his hand, even though he couldn’t imagine how that would make the situation any better. He couldn’t shoot everyone; desperately didn’t want to shoot anyone.
    Fortunately, that was when Duane Dupree came to his rescue.Chris had been so intent on the crowd, on Delgado, he never heard Dupree pull up. Didn’t even realize the chief deputy was there until he saw it on all the other men’s faces. They fell silent, the circle widening a bit like it was alive—taking a deep, deep breath—as Chris turned just enough to see Dupree move up next to him.
    Dupree leveled his Remington 11-87 shotgun roughly in Delgado’s direction, gently sweeping the crowd with it as he did so, making his point. The Remington shined as if Dupree had been cleaning it with moleskin at his desk before appearing out of thin air here at Mancha’s. The shotgun had a fourteen-inch barrel and rifle sights and Dupree’s initials etched in pearl along the stock, a gift from the sheriff for his years of service, and it was weightless in Dupree’s hands. He moved it as easily as Delgado had waved his knife; Delgado had now gone silent as well.
    “Got a problem here, Chris?” Dupree spit a long cut into the gravel.
    “Yeah, a bit of one.”
    “You want me to get on down the road, let you handle it?”
    Chris shook his head. “No, don’t think so. I think I could use the help.”
    Dupree grinned, ugly, looking no better than Delgado. He winked. “Well, okay then.”
    Chris waited as Dupree moved forward. He zeroed his sights on Delgado, taking one slow, steady step after another, calling over his shoulder.
    “Eddie, you tell them beaner friends of yours to move back. You tell ’em
now
, or I’ll blow a hole through ’em.” Duane said it casually, as