“Why are you waiting?” she said between sobs. “Can’t you see he’s suffering?”
Roddy took the gun from his shoulder and switched off the safety. He pressed the recoil into his shoulder and aimed the barrel at the dog’s chest. His breathing was still in rhythm with the dog’s and he inhaled and pressed his finger lightly against the trigger. The wind rushed through the adjacent cornfield and passed over them. Roddy looked out over the field where the tall stalks leaned back into place, their ordered rows rising to a low swell at the field’s center. Beyond that was the tree line, low and black in the distance. Above it the sky sat bluish-gray and filled with stars. Roddy heard Linda crying behind him, quiet and even. He stopped what he was about to do, lowering the rifle from his shoulder. With the barrel pointed at the ground he turned and took a step toward his wife. Her hands were at her sides. With his free hand he lifted them both, one at a time, and placed the rifle in them. Linda cradled the gun awkwardly, letting the stock slide down into the crook of her elbow while holding the barrel weakly with her other hand.
“Here,” Roddy said. “You do it.” He walked across the road. When he reached the truck, he climbed into the cab, shut the door, and watched her, waiting to see what she would do.
Eyes Closed
BARS AND POOL HALLS were not places you went to turn your luck. Evan knew this. He was not fiercely realistic, but he was aware there was only one ending to those stories of people who drove to Las Vegas with their last penny in hopes of altering fate. But Evan also knew that occasionally some event, small as it might seem, could take place in a man’s life and set off other events, positive in fashion, that might place him on the right track, or at least a better track than the one he was currently traveling. With both of these realizations firmly in place Evan walked into the Gold Crown with six hundred dollars in his pocket, almost all the money he had left in the world, and took a seat at the bar. A few people noted his arrival by nodding at him or mouthing his name silently, and this recognition filled Evan with a swell of pride he’d not felt in some time. It was nice to be known somewhere. Evan removed his wet coat, and set it on the stool beside him. Outside a light hail fell, exploding against the pavement like shattered crystal.
On his way into the bar that night Evan saw a woman being pushed out of a parked car in the Crown’s lot. She was crying, struggling to remain inside, but finally the driver, a large man, had her out. Once he did he sped away quickly, the door still half open as he swerved onto Liberty. The woman, who hadn’t noticed Evan staring, stopped crying when the car was still in sight, and yelled, “It’s a goddamn shame is all.” She gathered her purse from where it had fallen and walked off in the opposite direction the car had taken.
Now inside, Evan tried to put the whole ordeal out of his mind. He had more important things to worry about.
The bartender, Thomas, was a wiry man in his fifties. He appeared old and fragmentary behind the high mahogany bar, but Evan had seen him break up fights with the strength of a man twice his size. He was old-school strong with a concrete handshake. Thomas was always indifferent to Evan. He’d bring him a drink or mention to him someone at the end of the bar who might be looking for a game, but that was the extent of it. He never perched himself in front of Evan and talked awhile like he did with the older men.
Evan ordered a Railbender and Thomas brought the beer. Evan rotated his barstool until he was facing the rows of tables behind him. The pool area of the establishment was separated from the bar by a waist-high wooden divider. You had to be over twenty-one to enter the bar, but anyone over eighteen could get a table. The pool room had its own way in as well, a glass door right next to the bar’s entrance. It was a Wednesday night and both the pool room and the bar were fairly empty. On the weekends, local college boys brought their dates here. Those were the nights you could make a quick score off some frat boy trying to impress a girl. They rarely played for anything over fifty, but it was fast and painless and you could stay in their good graces if you didn’t embarrass them during the payoff, if you made sure to say loud enough for their dates to hear that they were the best player you’d squared off against in weeks. Evan had done it before. He was always sure to be gracious to those types, the ones who knew they were almost certainly giving their money away. He probably got dozens of them laid. The dates loved the daring gambling boys. On weekdays though, it was just an old crowd, the same guys who’d played here for years. They were the ones who knew about the bumpy slate on number fourteen, who always complained about the bad leveling job on the upstairs tables, and who wouldn’t go near the Gandy’s because of the loose felt in the corners.
These were the men Tonya had warned him about. “In this world there are producers, and there are thinkers,” she’d said, “and those shiftless sons of bitches fall into neither category.”
Evan took a sip of beer and lit a cigarette. It had been nearly a month since Tonya left, and he still couldn’t quit, show her he was changed, or at least changing. She hated him smoking. He promised for a long time to stop, but in the end promising was as far as it got. Tonya was a smart girl and never shied away from telling Evan exactly what was on her mind. “I work, you should work,” she’d said, and so he found a job doing late-night snow removal during the harsh Great Lakes winter. Erie sat squarely in the Snowbelt and got piled on regularly. All night Evan listened to his Guns N’ Roses and Van Halen tapes, sipping coffee from a thermos Tonya prepared for him while he tore a beat-up S-10, plow down, through endless parking lots and driveways. He formed huge mountains out of the powder that blew in off the lake. That job had been good. He felt like he was building something, even if it was only temporary. Something inside him felt right when he saw those mounds of snow after he finished at a site, but now it was the beginning of spring, Tonya was gone, and most of Evan’s mountains were just dirty piles of ice.
Even with a job, Evan still came to the Crown to play. It wasn’t always for the money. Although money, winning it anyways, was nice. It was better than getting a paycheck, in the same way that catching a fish was better than buying one at the market. That was just part of it for Evan. He was twenty-six, and had come to places like the Crown since he was eighteen. He liked the idleness of the regulars at the bar, the way his clothes smelled like cigar smoke the next morning when he held them close to his face. He liked knowing that at any time you could come here and choose to place yourself, or at least some part of yourself, on the line.
Evan scanned the rows of tables and saw his friend Jonathan playing in back. Jonathan was in his late thirties and a welder for one of the trucking companies that had a hub down near the lake. He never played for money, and for this reason was a friend to almost all of the Crown’s regulars. He had no old beefs, owed nobody, and was in general a subpar player who mainly came to drink and talk. Evan walked over.
“What brings you out on such a lovely night?” Jonathan asked. He smiled, flashing a row of smoke-colored teeth.
“Looking for a game,” Evan said.
“I thought you only played weekends.”
“Usually,” Evan said, “but I’m looking for something a little bigger.”