He flew into town still gripping the steering wheel in rage that had begun to subside after two days on the road. Where the tourists parked to page at the mineral mound of the hot spring and the cold, clear San Juan River, he pulled in and cut the engine. The old blue Dodge rattled to silence.
The sudden quiet deafened him and he sat in a slow-witted stupor trying to decide what to do next. He tried to make a mental list:
Find a room.
Find food.
Find a name.
A name. He didn’t need a new name for this place. He needed an old name. One these people, the older ones anyway, the ones who bothered knowing their own history, would recognize. The name he grew to loathe because of the people he shared it with. Baxter.
I’m JAB again, he thought. Why not? For the first time since high school, use his real name. JAB. He’d always liked that. Had carved it under desks and into playground equipment until he became someone else. When he stopped being JAB and simply started to live it. Punch, jab, kick, slap. That’s what she had told him two days ago. He grinned. It still felt like a falling scream into the heart-stopping cold water of the river below. Punch, jab, kick, slap. That’s what they’d done to him when he had been JAB. Then he became the one who did the punch, jab, kick, slap. Only he’d specialized in nonphysical ways. He used his brain, he thought, not his brawn. Mental martial art.
I’m starving, he thought, his stomach making an alarming high-pitched gurgle.
Across the highway that ran down from Wolf Creek Pass west to Durango, he saw a bar. An old-style bar, hidden like a dim spot of grime among the clean tourist-facing businesses. He smiled. Useful people could be found in places like that. Desperate people. Weak people. Like he used to be.
He got out and slammed the truck door and didn’t bother to lock it. His possessions consisted of so little, he could replace everything he owned, including the truck, for a few hundred. And he carried much more than that in his money belt. Lean, he thought. Live lean. Jab hard. And hide when you need to.
His knees and lower back ached and he limped like an old rodeo cowboy to the crosswalk with blinking amber lights embedded into the road surface, which stopped traffic in both directions. It gave him an odd sense of power. From the opposite side a family of four crossed, licking ice cream cones. The parents were pasty-white and overweight, with two willow-thin little girls as dark as tanned leather. They studiously avoided eye contact with him. Baxter nodded his assent. Perfect victims, he thought if he needed any.
The bar was dim and smoky, two pool tables, Johnny Cash crooning everywhere he’s been but not too loud to talk and hear.
He walked up and splayed his hand palm-down on the bar, feeling the cool of the ancient wood stained twice as dark as the two little sisters on the crosswalk. The bartender approached with the vacant question in his eyes, unspoken but clear. He wiped his hands on a dirty cloth. He had a thin frame with a bulging belly, clean bald up top with a rim of gray-streaked hair remaining grown long and twisted into a pigtail.
“What’s your best tequila?” Baxter asked.
“Patron,” the barkeep said in a low voice.
“Añejo?”
The barkeep looked up high on the shelves behind him. “Yeah, we got that.”
“Double shot, no salt. And pour pre-Prohibition if you got any balls.”
The barkeep nodded. “I got balls if you got bills.” He pulled out a stool, reached high, and slid a very generous double shot to Baxter, who smiled and nodded.
Baxter slid a $100 bill across the bar. “Bring me another like this in a few minutes, and we’ll be even, Mr. Big Balls.”
The barkeep grinned at him and nodded. He likely wouldn’t make that much again in tips all day.
“Anybody name of Baxter around here?” Baxter asked.
The barkeep creased his brow and nodded his head. “Used to be a family here by that name. Not no more. They up and left maybe twenty years ago.” The barkeep eyed him. “You ain’t here for the gold, are you?”
Baxter looked him in the eye and took a sip of the tequila. He held it in his mouth, swished it around, then let it trickle slowly down his throat. He winked at the barkeep and took another sip.
“Where can I get a burger without being surrounded by tourists?”
The barkeep nodded toward a man playing pool by himself. “Uno there will fetch if for you. Hey! Uno!”
Uno laid his cue stick carefully on the table, disturbing no balls, and Baxter realized the man had an arm missing. His right arm. He looked Mexican. Maybe Indian. His face showed no emotion. A neutral mask. A crust under which anything could boil. The kind of man, Baxter thought, who would make a loyal sidekick until he calmly stabbed you in the back.
“Go to Bear Creek and get this man a burger,” said the barkeep. “What else you want?” he asked, turning to Baxter.
Baxter kept his eyes on Uno. One. For one-arm? He wondered what the man’s real name was. As if names had anything to do with anything. “What do you suggest?” Baxter asked.
Uno turned his expressionless eyes to the barkeep.
“They got good curly fries. And a double-meat burger if you’re really hungry.”
Uno looked back to Baxter and a flicker of something ran through his eyes. Resentment at doing the menial bidding of the white man? Or momentary excitement for the drink or two he would earn from running the errand?
“You hungry, Uno? I’m buying.”
Blank Uno started to look at the barkeep for permission, but then something hardened in his eyes and he held them on Baxter. He nodded, for the first time giving evidence of the metal inside the man. Baxter held out another $100 bill.
“We’ll drink up the change,” said Baxter.
What might have passed for a glimmer of a smile flickered across Uno’s face, then he turned abruptly and went out the back door.
“Mister. You ain’t likely to see him again anytime soon,” said the barkeep.
Baxter nodded, feeling certain Uno would be back. He sat in a dark corner of the bar, sipped his tequila, and waited. Uno was just the kind of man he needed right now.
