Page 99 of Torch Songs

It was damned near full, and while there was no live music playing tonight, as there sometimes was, the juke box was loud, and the rednecks were hollering, and Guthrie was forced to wonder how many of the kids he’d sort of gone to school with had stayed here in Sand Cut, where there was no future and no forgiveness and no hope.

God. All he wanted was a fucking beer some place besides Butch’s house. Was that really too much to ask?

The place hadn’t changed that much from when Guthrie, Butch, and Jock had played it when he’d been a kid. Ralph Simpson at the bar looked the same—just skinnier, more grizzled, and yellower from nicotine. He wasn’t allowed to smoke in the place, but he disappeared every half hour like clockwork to get his fix out back. The wood was still weathered and smoky, the smells coming from the kitchen were still full of grease that hadn’t been changed in far too long, and the brass was still buried under a week’s worth of fingerprints.

And Bud Light was still on tap.

Guthrie found himself the quietest corner he could, and without acknowledging Ralph’s startled spark of recognition, pointed to the tap and held up a finger.

One to start.

He didn’t want to talk.

He leaned his head against the wall for a moment and peered around the room more closely. It was almost the exact same crowd, he thought with a touch of sorrow, except the old drunks of his childhood had been replaced with the adults he’d known as children.

The head cheerleader had put on weight, had a couple of kids, and now dyed her hairallthe way blond. The football quarterback had done the same, but he didn’t have enough hair to dye. Guthrie accepted his beer from Ralph and took them in, noting that her mouth was turning down at the corners, and her husband, the football player, had lips that were flat and thin and grim.

He’d say trouble in paradise, but they’d both been cruel and shallow in high school and had probably made each other’s lives cruel and shallow too. As he watched, a waitress—probably barely twenty-one herself—sashayed by the football player, and he patted her behind when his wife wasn’t looking.

Classy.

Guthrie sighed and went back to his beer, trying to let the taste of something fresh from the tap wash out the words he’d hurled at Butch.

Nope. He was going to need another swallow.

He was on his second beer and starting to relax when it happened, which was a shame because he would have liked the excuse for being on hissixthbeer and a little incapacitated. But no, it had to happen when he was on his second beer and still spoiling for a fight.

Dwight Climp strolled in, and with the sort of gaydar that could be found in a lot of repressed rednecks, his vision went straight to Guthrie, nursing his brew in the shadows and trying hard not to interact with a soul.

“Guthrie? Guthrie fucking Woodson?” Dwight called across the bar. “I thought we kicked your faggoty ass out of this town years ago!”

Maybe because it was Butch’s favorite slur too, but Guthrie was reluctant to smile and sidle out. “No, sir, I left this flea-shit town all by myself.”

“That didn’t last long,” Dwight scoffed, and Guthrie rolled his eyes.

“You’re assuming I got nowhere to go when my business is through. Buddy, I amspoiledfor choices. I got so many places I can live when I leave this shithole, I got people begging me to come drinktheirbeer. Who wants you besides San Quentin?” Yeah, he’d heard that Dwight had done two years—not in the big house but in a local minimum security. It didn’t matter, though. He’d scored a direct hit.

Dwight hissed and moved in closer, his eyes narrowed and rattlesnake mean. “You want to know the best thing about prison, you fucking fag?”

“The cuisine?” Guthrie asked, chuckling to himself. Yeah, he knew what was coming. God, you blew one football player in high school and the whole world knew your business. He hadn’t even known Dwight’s name. His attendance had been so spotty at the time, the guy hadn’t even known Guthriewentto Sand Cut High.

“Those boys know how to take it without bawling like a baby,” Dwight laughed. “I mean, I hearyouwhine like a little piss-boy, is that true?”

Guthrie smiled at him and finished off his beer, feeling the inevitable settling down on his shoulders. He’d wanted to drink, but a fight had just walked in, and who was he to look some gift therapy in the meth-rotted teeth?

“Well, I don’t know,” Guthrie drawled. “But only someone who liked my lips on his dick would know for sure. Is thatyou, Dwight? Didyoulike my lips on your dick? Because if youdid,that would make you….” He glanced around the bar like he was telling a secret. “You know,” he said, leaning his head in conspiratorially. “Gay.”

Dwight let out a howl of rage and charged Guthrie like a bull.

Guthrie took a step to his left and threw Dwight into the wall headfirst. Dwight fell on his ass, but he’d brought in three buddies who didn’t like that atall, and as Guthrie spun lightly on his heel, he caught a blow to the jaw and the fight was on.

GUTHRIE’S HEADached and his arm ached and somebody was bothering him with something cold on the…ouch, was that a cut? On the meat of his bicep.

“I don’t know you well enough to let you do that,” he mumbled, but the chuckle from the man next to him sounded familiar.

“I am disappointed to hear that, Guthrie. I thought we were friends.”

Guthrie squinted past the pain in his head, his body trying to process his surroundings while his brain processed that voice.

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