Hank

 

As they left the bathroom together, Hank tried to stay calm, but unsettling thoughts kept buzzing through his drunken haze like persistent wasps.

 

Why had he done this?

 

Not just for the sex, surely—he'd had plenty of opportunities to get laid over the past year to distract him from his grief, and he'd ignored all of them. Did he have feelings for Beth? She'd been hanging around the club for so long he'd started to see her as a piece of furniture instead of the sexy woman she clearly was. So why did her sudden attraction to him make him feel like someone had reached inside of him and flipped on a light that had been dark for so long?

 

Was it because she bore a passing resemblance to Elena? Had he been so weak and liquored-up that some part of him decided to just tilt his head, squint, and pretend he was with her again for a few more precious moments?

 

If so, then acting on those desires made him feel like a piece of shit, especially where Beth was concerned. True, she was playing it loose and casual tonight with her whole smiling, let's-just-have-a-drink-and-see-what-happens act, but what if an act was all it was? He'd known lots of girls who pretended they were “cool with whatever” until the next morning, when suddenly they were full of expectations and demands and accusations. Before he'd gotten married, Hank had been good at blowing those girls off.

 

But Bib's niece? How would that go? How pissed would the club president be if Hank treated Beth like some party girl he could fuck and forget?

 

And anyway, what the hell kind of way was this to observe the one-year anniversary of the death of his wife and kid? What kind of selfish asshole treasures the memories of his loved ones by polishing off a bottle of cheap whiskey and banging some girl in a public toilet?

 

Beth was pulling Hank back toward their table for another drink, but in that moment, Hank decided he didn't want any more booze or sex tonight. Neither one would be good for him in his current condition. They'd only make his tortured mind thrash around more painfully, like an animal caught in a snare.

 

Sleep was what he needed, and lots of it. Maybe, once he'd had enough rest, he could re-evaluate his feelings related to Beth. Maybe there was something there worth exploring after all, as long as he didn't keep drinking tonight until he fucked it all up.

 

But as they passed the corner of the bar, Hank overheard some yahoo in blue jeans and a denim shirt talking loudly with an overweight slob with a filthy beard and a trucker hat.

 

“...so the kid starts whinin', right?” the yahoo said. “'Daddy, I wanna stay up! Daddy, my favorite show is on TV! Daddy, just five more minutes an' I'll go up to bed!'”

 

The trucker giggled. “What'd you do?”

 

“I marched right on over to 'im an' smacked his li'l face, that's what I did! Told 'im he'll go up to bed when I goddamn fuckin' say so, an' not a minute later.” The yahoo guffawed. “You shoulda seen it, man. He's got this big red hand print on his cheek, an' he's snufflin', with all kindsa tears an' snot runnin' down. My wife starts tellin' me I gotta calm down, an' I'm like, 'Bitch, I don't gotta do shit. Now get the fuck outta my face before you get a taste of what I gave the brat.'”

 

Beth's mouth was inches from Hank's ear, but her voice seemed to come from miles away. “Hank? You okay?”

 

A red haze filled his vision until the entire bar seemed soaked in blood. His hands were balled into fists so tight they ached, and his teeth were clenched so hard that the muscles of his jaw were twitching.

 

He'd lost his adoring wife. He'd lost his beautiful child. He'd never see them again, ever, no matter how much he hurt or how hard he wanted. Every year of the rest of his life stretched out ahead of him bleakly, each of them nothing but a grim promise that the two people he'd loved most in the world would never come back to him.

 

And this cocksucker had a wife and child, and here he was, bragging about beating them and making them cry.

 

“Hank?” Beth was looking directly into his eyes now, but it seemed like Hank had x-ray vision—all he could see was past her, through her, as he stared at the yahoo's doughy face and baggy eyes. The veins of Hank's face and neck were pulsing so hotly that he felt like his head might erupt into flames.

 

The yahoo noticed that Hank was staring at him and sneered. “You got a problem, faggot? Or are you just memorizin' my face to jerk off to later?”

 

In a split-second, the yahoo was on the floor of the bar, on his back amid the sawdust and peanut shells as Hank's fists crashed against his face. Hank couldn't actually remember lunging at the asshole, but he didn't care. He just kept punching and roaring incoherent curses, even as Beth and the Warriors tried to drag him away.

 

The yahoo gibbered and begged, as blood and tears rolled down his cheeks. His nose was crunched into the middle of his face. He was spitting out broken teeth between punches, and his jaw was hanging and misshapen, with several shattered bones protruding from the flesh.

 

Another punch, and a bone in the yahoo's cheek cracked. He stopped struggling and went limp.

 

Another punch, and another, and another. A whirlwind of brutal rage, unstoppable, until the combined efforts of all of the bikers succeeded in pulling him off the yahoo's prone body. Hank kept struggling and howling with anger until blue lights flickered through the bar's windows and the cops came in to cuff him.

 

After that night, Hank was enveloped by a numbing gray cloud of mindless drudgery that lasted for months.

 

There were weeks spent in holding cells at the county jail, staring at the concrete walls and wordlessly consuming trays of bland food. There were endless interviews with cops and lawyers, and forms to fill out and initial in triplicate. There were handcuffs, and a shuffling trip onto a bus which took him to the courthouse, where he spent less than half a day in a courtroom listening to witnesses tell the story of the beating. To Hank, it sounded like something that someone else had done, not him. The yahoo's jaw was wired shut, so he couldn't testify himself—he just sat at the back of the courtroom, glaring.

 

Then more handcuffs, and another bus trip to the jail. Then a bus trip back to the courthouse the next day to hear the judge pronounce his sentence: Two years at the Bluebonnet Correctional Facility. Then handcuffs again, and more forms to sign, and another bus.

 

But before any of that, Hank curled up on a cot in the jailhouse holding cell—with the yahoo's blood still under his fingernails, and Beth's intoxicating scent still clinging to his clothes—and finally slept.