Last Call

By Peter Jansen

The Nuclear Cowpoke swaggered up to the bar and asked for whisky, strong whisky. At his side, the Meltdown Kid, his faced blasted and bubbled into a hideous green goulash by fallout, his deformed body twisted and lumped, asked for the same. Behind the bar, Hombre looked the Kid up and down and snorted, his lip curling in a condescending sneer.
"We don't serve liquor to minors, son," he said sourly, "and last call was ten minutes ago." He made a grand sweeping gesture with his arm to indicate the establishments's emptiness. The Kid slapped a plastic chit onto the polished rosewood and repeated himself firmly:
"Whisky, bartender. Me 'n' my Paw take our cups tuggether. Always have."
Hombre's sneer deepened, employing his entire face.
"Hows ?bout y'have a root beer instead, huh? Boys like root beer."
The Kid's features hardened.
"Not root beer. Not this boy. Whisky. W-I-S-K-E-E."
Hombre's face lost its ruddy-cheeked good humour very quickly.
"You gonna kick up a stink about this? Is this gonna be a scene, you little snotbrain?"
"I'm Meltdown. Call me by my name."
The Nuclear Cowpoke's eyes followed the plastic chit as Hombre slid it back to the Kid.
"Do you whip the boy, Nuke?" the bartender asked. "Do you discipline him at all? He's got a mouth on 'im, so he does. He's got a wicked fresh tongue, and c'd use some hick'ry. Do you let 'im git away with rudeness like this? Do ya?"
The Cowpoke's eyes narrowed to desperado slits, his callused hands hovering perilously close to the butts of his concussion pistols.
"What business is that of yours, Hombre? Yours is not to question. Yours is not to judge. Yours is to serve us what we ask for. We're payin' customers, as y'c'n see."
To the Kid Hombre said, "If your daddy knew what was good for a boy, he'd have tanned your hide by now. He'd have cut enough switches to strip a rainforest. If YOU--" he jabbed a finger in the Kid's face "--knew what was good for a boy, you'd be mighty sorry. Repentant-like. You know your catechism? Sunday School and all that holy hogwash?"
Now the Kid was losing his cool.
"I'm the Meltdown Kid, dammit. There's been enough men who've died with that name on their lips to fill a good-sized boneyard, none of whom went quietly. It was a messy end for every last mother's son of 'em, I c'n tell ya. Y'd do well to 'member that."
Hombre looked at the Cowpoke, and, when he saw the unveiled animosity in his eyes, he laughed out loud. They were serious. Father and son stickin' tuggether. No durned surprise. He kept laughing as the Cowpoke and the Kid stared stonily at him.
"We don't want trouble," Nuke said softly. "All's we want is our whisky. Do you want our business or not? By the looks of this place, you really need it."
Still laughing, Hombre said, "I don't need your business any more'n I need your kidney. Beat it. Vamoose. Get in the freakin' wind." As he spoke, Hombre's dark, sweaty fingers caressed the stock of a sawed-off Remington concealed under the bar, fiddling nervously with one of the fat red shells behind his back with his other hand. Father and son exchanged glances and stood up, abandoning the padded stools. They slowly backed away from the bar, hands up. Hombre's fingers left the shotgun, but his other hand tightened around the shell hard enough to whiten the knuckles, squeezing them bloodless.
"Out."
Nuke blinked.
"Beg yer pardon?"
When the duo didn't comply, Hombre raised the shotgun, cocked it, and jammed the muzzle in the Cowpoke's face. When he spoke, his voice was dry ice, liquid nitrogen, absolute zero.
"Get yer sick 'n' sorry lice-hoppin' tick-crawlin' pox-addled arses outta my bar. I sed it once an' I ain't gonna say it agin."
"Out?" Nuke repeated, as if he had never heard the word before. "Is that what you said?"
Hombre nodded solemnly.
"Right now. Take the snotnose and hit the road before I splatter the both of ya 'gainst the back wall. I'm givin' you ten seconds, starting now. One . . . two . . ."
Although the radiation burns and DNA damage made this difficult to see, the Meltdown Kid's face flushed with pique, his hands dropping to the ivory-inlaid butts of his Death-Spitters.
"You'd be wise not to threaten us, Hombre," he said coolly. "We're the real McCoy."
". . .three. . .four. . . "
The Cowpoke slitted eyes narrowed even further, until they were almost Asian in appearance. His deadly hands floated at his sides, above his crisscrossed gunbelts.
"Put the piece away and serve us our whisky, Hombre. If we play this nice, everybody walks away. If you decide to cut up rough, you won't be doing any more walking. Dig?"
Hombre ignored this last; he had evidently opted not to dig.
". . .five. . .six. . .seven. . ."
A distended vein on the Kid's mutated forehead began to throb.
"Hombre," he said tonelessly. "Don't be a stupid jackass. Put. The gun. Away."
". . .eight. . .nine. . .I can make this look like a botched holdup, y'know. . ."
"Ten," Nuke said decisively, finishing for him.
Hombre's horny, nicotine-yellowed index trembled on the double triggers, trembled, but did not tighten. While Hombre's face indicated surprise and shame at his own weakness, the faces of father and son were expressionless, cold and steely. They were the faces of life-takers.
"Aw, hell," Hombre muttered, and lowered the truncated gun, setting it down on the bar. The Cowpoke's expression relaxed.
"Excellent," he said, the satisfaction resonant in his voice. "Now fer the whisky, if y'would."
Hombre's disgust in himself twisted his face to comedic extremes for a moment, then an indubitably bogus smile asserted itself, revealing a mouthful of blackening, eroded teeth.
"Whisky it is," he conceded with a sigh. "I serve you, then you make tracks. Deal?"
"Deal," father and son said tuggether.
"Lemme get you handy fellers some poison," Hombre said, pretending to reach for the shotglasses. Pretending. The Cowpoke could have beaten him to the draw piss drunk; he was as fast as greased lightning sober. The concussion pistols roared, and the bartender was thrown off his feet and launched across the room, the Remington flying from his slackening hand. He struck the far wall with enough force to crack the plaster and crumpled to the floorboards like a limp straw scarecrow, splinters of pulverized bone protruding from his flesh. He uttered a low blood-gurgling moan and breathed his last.
They watched the dead man for a few seconds, the two of them.
"You just killed a man, Paw."
"I know, son. I know."
"Can we get drunk now?"
"Yup. I reckon we can."
Nuke hopped over the bar and found the appropriate bottle with practised ease. It was almost full. He placed the glasses on the bar and filled each to the brim, smilingly anticipating the explosion of tingling warmth in his throat and belly. He slid one over to the Kid, clambered back to his stool, and raised the whisky to his lips.
"Wait Paw!"
"Whut?"
The Kid grinned sheepishly.
"I thank we shud raise a toast afore we quaff. That'd be right proper 'n' all."
The Cowpoke considered this, then raised his glass.
"To the Core Rod Lady and Isotope City, may the both of 'em never lose their grace 'n' booty."
"Grace and beauty?"
"That's whut I said, son. Booty."
They toasted home and happiness while the broken juke did not play.

That's all she wrote.
Comments for Peter Jansen? Email him:jansenm@sympatico.ca