Vengeance by Eric Prochaska

that corner. Like kids in a Catholic school. But that other fella, he thinks he has them beat like a dog thinks it scared the mailman away because the mailman moved on to the next house. And when he sees Rook standing there, staring him down, giving him one last chance to play by the house rules, that stupid mother fucker says, ‘What’re you looking at?’ like he’s gonna scare Rook away, too.”
    The man at the end of the bar past my dad had started tapping his empty bottle on the bar to get Lenny’s attention. Now Lenny looked at him over his shoulder and waved at him to settle down. “Yeah, yeah!” Then to us again, “Fucking deadbeat. Anyway, Loudmouth says that and the goddam world stops spinning as far as this room’s concerned. Rook steps forward as if he’s walking to his own car door. Loudmouth has a smirk on his face like he’s going to call Rook’s bluff. He doesn’t understand he’s a watermelon playing chicken with a locomotive. Rook grabs him by the back of the neck and walks out the front door dragging that screaming pussy like a five pound bag of trash.
    “That door blasts open and he strides right outside with the guy, out of sight. No one in here moves. We just listen to Loudmouth screaming for mercy. To hear a man scream like that, to know his own life is in another man’s hands. It’ll chill your blood. But if Rook took him outside, he didn’t want an audience. Loudmouth’s friends get up to follow, but something about the stillness of the room tells them to stay put. We’re all about to breathe again when this crash like a sledge hammer crushing a metal garbage can makes us all jump. That’s Rook ramming this fucker’s head right into the wall. Hang on.”
    Lenny took care of the customer at the end of the bar. He filled his own glass with club soda and came back to lean down on his forearms across from us.
    “The door’s still open,” he said, picking up the story. “I’m staring outside, expecting Rook to come in any second. Instead, I see him, but he’s almost out to the road. He’s still got Loudmouth by the back of the neck, but there’s no screaming anymore. He was dragging that boy like a rag doll. Loudmouth’s friends gather at the door. I can barely see through them as Rook stops at the edge of the road, reaches down and lugs that limp body clean over his head. That’s when I hear it, a semi-truck. The headlights are sweeping the pavement, so it’s only a second away. Rook throws Loudmouth right into the path of the semi. The trucker hits his horn and it roars while the whole length of that rig barrels past. Loudmouth’s friends scream and damn near shit themselves. They run out to the road while Rook walks back in. He nods to me to carry on and shuts himself in his office.”
    “Holy shit,” I said. I had finished my beer during the first half of the story and now wished I had some left. I knew the story was probably mostly fiction, but I went along with their attempt to put the fear of Rook into me. “Was the guy dead? Did the semi hit him?”
    “No,” Lenny said.
    “Rook threw him all the way into the ditch,” my dad said. “If you believe what you hear.”
    “Or maybe just past the first lane, and he landed and rolled across the second lane. I think the lucky fuck was out cold. Probably wound up with some road rash and bruises.”
    “On top of a concussion,” my dad added.
    “We never heard from Loudmouth again. His friends must have taken him to a hospital. Maybe they even called the police. But certain cops would try to talk him out of pressing charges for anything that happens here. Others might write down what he said and stuff it in their pocket to throw away when they get home.”
    “Shit,” I reiterated.
    “Shit,” my dad said sharply. I had inverted his mood with one word. “You’re patronizing again. You don’t even know what we told you. You think I’m trying to scare you?” He got up and dropped a few limp bills on the bar.