This is an old one. I am only posting it to test something that WordPress is supposed to do automatically. A new one tomorrow.
fiction by Jason Edwards
Yee-haaa. It’s a good old-fashioned bar fight. Jed told Ned he was a fool for cheatin’ on Nellie, Ned punched Jed in his big old belly, Jed threw a glass of beer of old Ned’s head, it missed, hit Fred, and the blood flowed red.
Fred thought a pool cue would look good broken over Tim Crow’s back, and James Bear, who hated violence, ran into Big Nasty Louie on his way out the door. He bounced and knocked over The Runt, who because of his size always was itchin’ for a fight. After they pulled the ’67 Desoto out of the window, everyone would agree the fight was The Runt’s fault.
Let’s take a picture. Freeze Frame. Right at the instant when Marylane’s ’67 Desoto was just touching the plate glass of the Bull and Moose Bar and Saloon and Tavern. Look at it there. The glass is bowed just a little bit, just a smidge, there’s a crack moving out about three inches from where Marylane’s right front bumper is kissing it, above a fleck of paint from when her good for nothing boy and who cares if he fought in the Korean war he never amounted to nothin’ after that painted a dresser in a garage and drunk like his mother didn’t put the drop cloth on the Desoto very good. Marylane’s eyes are half-closed in terror, her hands loosely holding the wheel in fear, the horror of what’s about to occur painted in the way her slack lips glisten on the last swaller of Potato Rot and Hair Tonic she ever will have. Nothing bornes Christians again like a big old car crashing into a bar.
The Runt’s got his jaws clamped firmly on Jed’s calf, and Jed’s hand is wrapped tight around David Family’s throat, his other hand pulled back for a punch, a drop of snot from when he wiped his nose after he punched The Runt glistening from his high-school ring, but Jed’s back is arched from the pain in his calf, David Family’s face is twisted to the side on his skull, his hands halfway up to Jed’s arm to try and pull himself away. Standing on The Runt’s foot is Big Nasty Louie who’s eyes are wide but closing as Ned has brushed off one of his meatier punches and is returning one in kind, reaching up to do it, at this exact point in time Ned’s fist is so close to Louie’s jaw that if time continued but everybody stayed frozed but metabolic cellular development was allowed to continue, Louie’s chin would grow a bristle that would tickle Ned’s knuckle in about three and half hours.
Tim Crow’s got James Bear in a head lock but he doesn’t know it, and James Bear’s got one hand on the pool table searching for a ball to grab to hit Tim in the balls with. In the melee Tim mistook James for Fred when James got up off of the Runt and tripped over the good for nothin’ boy that Marylane sent off to Korea who was looking for dog-ends next to Big Nasty Louie’s table. Tim’s kung-fu took over but he was blinded by the pool lamp. Now his teeth are set and his eyes are pulled hard right at the sound of the ’67 Desoto screaming in 2nd gear: the waves propagating from the engine according to the Doppler effect have penetrated the glass and set up a sympathetic vibration in Tim’s cochlea, resulting in a pulse of electricity shooting into his brain and manifesting itself in a pattern which despite the subduing effects of the seven beers James bought him has finally, at this exact instant, flashed into a neural pattern which is the same as the one Tim possesses for: “Oh, Fuck, A Car.”
James Bear’s own brain is filtering out the flash of electricity which tells him he has brushed the three ball with his pinkie in favor of reminding him he can’t fucking breath.
Fred’s cousin Bernice is having sex with her husband, Walter Tightass Mr. Man Banker, about three thousand or so miles away in New York Big Shot Buncha Metros City. For them the episode of sex has been stretched and smeared from it’s beginning a few minutes ago to it’s end in a few minutes, making judging which second is which impossible; at this instant Bernice has both eyes closed, her thighs clamped tight around Walter’s ass, and his hands are scrunched white around the sheets next to her head and his own eyes are rolled so far back he’d be able to see his own brain if he was paying attention. Particle Physicists who insist on the integrity of the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle would say that no one knows for sure where exactly the sperm that will on this night penetrate Bernice’s egg is. But Fred, who’s standing off to one side with somebody else’s beer in his hand, the fight having gotten boring after he rearranged the covalent bonds between a few million atoms in the middle of his pool cue across Tim Crow’s back, will one day be the foster parent of the child born from the act, since three years from now Walter Fancy Pants Who Can’t Even Gut a Fish will get himself and Bernice who Fred once played doctor with when they was kids killed in a car wreck with a ’67 Desoto (coincidence). At this moment Fred’s head is back, the beer mug is resting on his bottom lip, the glass is at a 37 and half degree angle, the muscles in his throat have peristaltically closed on one swallow making the other swallow wait here, forever, in this frozen speck of time. The gash on the side of his face is in mid ooze. He’s pretty goddamned drunk.
Skeeter Horizon behind the bar is balanced on one toe as he is about to come around with his baseball bat that’s been sawed off like a shotgun except stupider. His hands are waist high, in close, elbows bent, head slightly forward in his neck since walking is just controlled falling, eyes in a slit, wife freshly divorced, eight payments left on his Ford, bottom lip stuck out, in the middle of an inhale through his nose.
So there they are for ya. Marylane airborne. The Runt biting Jed on his leg. Jed holding David Family’s throat, about to punch him. Big Nasty Louie standing on The Runt’s foot, about to get hit by Ned. Tim Crow holding James Bear in a headlock. Marylane’s good for nuthin’ on the floor, cringing. Fred off to the side, drinking a beer. And Skeeter Horizon coming around the bar. Can you see ’em?