Page 55 of Whiskey Shivers

We were becoming less tolerant of their bullshit every day, especially when they had a bad batch out there, makin’ some of the crescent city’s poorer citizens very dead.

Somethin’ that hit different with some of our crew after that whole thing with Louie and his momma last year.

We were working toward a better and brighter future for the lot of us – one where it would be possible for some of us who wanted one, could pursue a family. With women who loved us and young’uns underfoot. I mean, I didn’t know how that all would shake out for us. I wouldn’t mind a son of my own if it was in the cards. A boy to raise like my daddy done me, out in the woods, huntin’ and shinin’, keeping the old ways alive for a future generation. Wouldn’t be possible if I didn’t secure the here and now, though.

We rode in formation, two by two, Cypress bein’ the wounded party up by me, as we led the way to ol’ Swamp Daddy’s, the bar that’d been commandeered just inside the city limits by the Bayou Brethren.

We pulled up out front, backing our bikes out across the lot and starin’ down a row of six out in front of the bar.

We locked up the important shit in our saddlebags and hard-sided cases, and I gave ol’ Moonlight, my Harley-Davidson Road King I bought new back in 2013, a pat. She was a beauty. I’d dropped a pretty penny into giving her a good ol’ custom paint job a few years back. A nice glossy black that I’d had overlaid with a fine mist of blue-white shifting pearl luster that was mighty fine when sun or streetlight hit it just right, like moonlight caught in the paint to go right along with her name.

Subtle, like. I liked subtle… except for tonight. Tonight, me and the boys? Subtle we were not.

“Well boys,” I said, re-fastening the Velcro on the backs of my fingerless riding gloves. “Last chance if you wanna pussy out. I’d understand it, I reckon.”

Axe grinned with a savage glee. “Not a fuckin’ chance.”

Saint cracked his knuckles and Cypress rolled his shoulders and cracked his neck.

“Away we fuckin’ go, then.”

There were some good ol’ boys out front, country born, and corn fed; likely from over the Texas border with their cowboy hats and boots, their wrangler jeans and rodeo macho swagger, thumbs hooked behind their belts and hands framing their belt buckles bigger ‘n their fuckin heads.

They had some goddamn sense in them, though when one pulled his cigarette from his lips and flicked it out into the parking lot, givin’ me a nod of respect and tellin’ his counterparts, “Well boys, I think we ought to call it an early night.” One of them thought to like to protest, but another one of them boys smacked him in the shoulder and gave a respectful nod in our direction.

“Good idea,” Saint declared as we passed them.

Axe added, “Y’all have a nice night now, y’hear?”

I reached for the door handle to the bar and dragged the door open. We were immediately assaulted by some good ol’ Creedence Clearwater Revival and the smell of beer and the sweat of a hard day’s work – or in one or two of these motherfucker’s cases, Cypress’s hard day’s work and their ill-gotten gains from it.

A bunch of the genial chatter inside ceased the second people caught sight of our colors, and a few people even took an unconscious step back as we sidled up to the bar in line with the six Bayou Brethren that were already bellied up to it.

“Whiskey,” I ordered from one of the bartenders. She was rode hard and put up wet, I tell you what. Her face pockmarked from drugs and prematurely aged. She looked sixty, the teeth in her mouth too perfect to be anything but dentures. She was skinny, too – too much of what I had to hazard was amphetamine or heroin use in her past. Her brown eyes were clear, though – so maybe in recovery. You couldn’t always tell. Still, while she looked sixty, I doubted she was a day out of her early forties, maybe even late thirties.

“None of that bottom shelf shit.” I stopped her when she reached for the house shit or whatever. “Gimme the Knob Creek,” I said. Their selection fucking sucked and that was the best they got. Jack was my usual go-to, bein’ a Tennessee staple, but I wasn’t in the mood tonight and they didn’t have the Sinatra Reserve.

“Make it four and make ‘em doubles,” I called.

She turned her head like “alright buddy” and brought out three more glasses, and asked, “Rocks?”

“Nah!”

She nodded and poured them neat and slid them one by one to me. I passed them back to my boys and slid her more than enough to cover the drinks and a generous tip. She didn’t say anything. She and the old guy with the gut, working behind the bar didn’t make eye contact with any of us. They knew. They knew a visit from us with a pack of Bayou Brethren in here wasn’t no fuckin’ social call. Not when the Brethren had been all but fuckin’ regulars lately.

“To what do we owe the pleasure?” the one standing closest to me asked. He’d brought a cigarette out of his back and was tapping the filter against it to pack it down further.

I sniffed and set my empty glass down on the bar, swallowing the fiery nectar down to put a fire in my belly.

“Got a name, son?” I asked. The dude had to be older ‘n me. I wasn’t tryin’ with comin’ with anything resembling respect here.

He sniffed and let out a barking bray of a laugh. One he cut short.

“They call me Chicory,” he said and moved the toothpick from one side of his mouth to the other before taking it out.

Chicory wasn’t no young buck, but I damn sure got the impression he was big for his britches.

“Wish I could say it was nice to meet you Chicory, but this here ain’t a social call. The fact I even have to ask you who the man in charge out of the lot of you is says all it needs to about this situation.”

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