"Ya' wanna tone it down, Meatball?" Lilith called from the server station at the end of the bar where the under-counter beer fridges were. Meatball laughed her off, lobbed a couple more wife comments at Erastus before wandering off to the pool tables.
"Did I not tell her?" Riot said, shaking his head. Told her or not, Lilith walked behind the bar and brought Erastus a fresh beer on the house and leaned forward with her elbows on the bar to engage him in quieting conversation.
Lilith had gotten a bit chubby and gone goth out of spite since we three landed here in Humbolt, but she was still my favourite cowgirl. Even with a purple stripe running through her silver hair and wearing outfits that looked like she'd raided a steamer trunk from the Rocky Horror Picture Show, she was the secret crush of half the men in Mad Dog's, myself included.
"Yeah, you told her." I agreed with Riot and smiled when I saw Erastus nodding his head and looking sheepish. Lilith leaned further in and kissed him on the cheek before walking back to the server station and winked at me.
I felt a smug satisfaction that Lilith had diverted the situation so Humbolt could keep its population steady for tonight at least, when out of the corner of my eye I saw Riot make a little hand flick and the next song that cued up on the Wurlitzer was 'Stand by Your Man', and I swear it was just that much louder than Twitty and Steagall.
"You're a son of a bitch." I told Riot.
"Yep."
Right on cue I saw Erastus' shoulders tighten before he downed the rest of his longneck, set the bottle down on the bar and walked over to the pool tables. I was still hoping he'd just use his fists or even a pool cue, but he grabbed the brass-headed rake and took Meatball down with one shot then proceeded to beat him to death with the heavy end like it was a potato masher as everyone in the vicinity backed away. A circle of no-man's-land grew around the two men that was just a little bigger radius than a swinging pool rake.
When he was done, Erastus stood up, spat on Meatball's bloody corpse and dropped the rake before walking out through Mad Dog's front door like nothing had happened. Half a dozen heartbeats later, Meatball got up and walked out too, but he used the wall.
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