Page 106 of Bourbon & Blood

He looked back down at the picture of Maya and my girl’s smiling faces.

“Who’s the little ginger snap?” he asked. “Like to feel her wrapped around my cock while the light dies in those gray eyes,” he said. “You ever been balls deep when the life leaves one of ‘em?” he asked. “Does some amazin’ things when the body’s strugglin’ to stay alive. Ain’t nothin’—”

The shot was loud in the confined space of the bar. He blinked, his eyes wide, and looked down at the hole I’d punched in his gut from under the table. I’d heard more ‘n enough outta him. Wasn’t no sense in lettin’ him go on, especially about my girl. That shit certainly earned a man a one-way ticket to Hell.

“You’re lucky,” I said as he tried to stand up but couldn’t. He put his hands over the hole in him to try and stop the bleedin’ but that was neither here nor there. He would die. “I’m not much of a shot,” I confessed. “If I were, you’d be dyin’ a lot slower ‘n what you are.”

He coughed, blood flyin’ and misting my face from across the table.

I gritted my teeth and sighed.

“That’s gross, man. Keep it to yourself.” I pulled the paper band off the napkin around my silverware and calmly unraveled it from around the cutlery.

He looked across the table at me with somethin’ like hatred.

“You ain’t got nothin’ to worry ‘bout, my friend. Unlike you, we know how to make a body disappear ‘round these parts. Ain’t no one ever find you. They can look all they like.”

He was chokin’ hard now and I smiled.

“Think I clipped a lung. Good thing, too. You like suffocatin’ so much, let’s see how you like drownin’ in your own blood. Yeah?”

He stared at me wide-eyed and made a bunch of noises like he was tryin’ to speak, but couldn’t. He was a tenacious bastard, I had to give him that. It took him the better part of twenty minutes to die.

“You’re a cold piece,” Hex said when it was finally clear old boy was done. I looked over to where he sat at the bar and I threw him some chin sayin’, “You sittin’ there watchin’ him die just like the rest of us.”

He got up and brought over a glass of my favorite brand of bourbon and sat it down in front of me. He raised his own glass.

“To bein’ in good company,” he said and I nodded.

I looked at the rest of my club and asked, “Well what’ll y’all say to that?”

A rowdy cheer went up and we all drank what was in front of us.

The bourbon went down smooth, the scent of blood heavy in the air and it was a good combination.Bourbon and blood… who would have thought?

We did a thorough job cleanin’ up after ourselves. Policing our brass, Axe gettin’ the slug dug outta his guts just in case his body should be found.

By the time we was done, I don’t think Chaffee’s had ever been cleaner.

“We got this, boss, if you just wanna head home,” Cypress said, he and Axe loading the plastic-wrapped body into the van. I shook my head.

“Nah, I wanna see this one through,” I declared. The rest of the boys stayed behind to continue cleanin’ up the bar, shuttin’ it down for Troy, the owner.

The three of us, me, Axe, and Cy, took the body a way out into the swamp, disarticulatin’ it like a deer or a hog and dottin’ his ass all along the way. Rubbin’ his parts down with stinkin’ rotten beef blood, coagulating in a five-gallon bucket.

Gators didn’t like fresh meat. They grabbed somethin’ fresh, they tended to drag it down into the dark, stuff you up under a log or somethin’ and leave you for a day or two to marinate.

This just maybe hastened up the process some, and judgin’ by the thrashin’ and splashin’ out there in the dark, it sure was doin’ somethin’.

We stopped up in my place to shower off the blood and change our clothes. Sittin’ out on the barge with some fresh beers outta my fridge, fire cracklin’ in the ol burn barrel out on the edge of the barge, the fire chewin’ through any blood-stained scrap of anything we’d had on.

We talked, had a laugh or two, all as the sun started to rise with the mists off the water.

“Well, fuck,” Axe said. “Boat looks like a crime scene – that’s for sure.”

“I got bleach,” I declared and we got to work all over again, now that we could see, to scrub that shit clean.

By the time I rolled up an’ parked at the club, it was gettin’ well on into morning. I didn’t expect Alina to still be up, but when I went and keyed my way on in to her place, she sat up on her couch, lookin’ over the back of it at me all wide silver eyes flooded with worry and concern.

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