up to find that the bar and the dance-floor had emptied. The musicians had stopped playing and were standing together behind the lead microphone, as if they were discussing whether or not to join everybody else outside in the entrance way.
There was a fight going on, and it sounded big.
Twenty
When you want to know the colour of the night, girl,
ask the band.
—Shepherd’s Pie
“What's going on?” I called over to the band.
It was loud outside. One of the musicians answered, but I couldn’t hear him.
“Sorry?”
The guy stepped up to the mike and spoke into it. The sound-technician had left the setting on reverb, and it sounded like the voice of God.
“We just finished a song and someone screamed real loud over by the door and then all hell broke loose. People swinging punches. Place cleared like a loose bowel. Pardon me, ma’am.” Behind him, the rest of the band snickered manfully. We headed for the door.
A wall of people jammed the exit. There was the smell of adrenaline in the air and the crowd was pressing in to get a look-see, chattering away like greedy gray squirrels at a city picnic. It was first come, first served, and we were late. We joined the jam, at the very back.
“When I heard that gun go off, I spilled my beer on my wife,” one man said. “She’ll kill me for sure when we get home.”
“That was no gun,” the man next to him said. “Someone threw a chair.”
“Oh? Geez, so I spilled it for nuthin, then. Well, I’ll get hell anyway. Who screamed? You see?”
“Some woman. I was over by the bar. Fight broke out, four or five guys, right about where we’re standing.” Both men immediately looked at the floor, possibly for blood.
“Excuse me,” I said. “Can we get by, please?” The man who had spilled his beer on his wife glared at me.
“Wait your turn, dear,” he said.
Susan tapped me on the shoulder.
“Window,” she said, pointing.
We couldn’t see much because it was dark outside and the windows hadn’t been washed since Trudeau’s reign, but there was definitely a brawl going on. Lots of inarticulate profanity and what looked like some unpleasantness with fists.
“Do you think anyone’s called the cops?” I said.
“There’s a policeman there already,” Susan said.
“There he is, look. He just pulled the little one off the big one.”
“Oh, God. Becker. I have to get in there.”
“Why? You the cavalry?”
“No. The girlfriend,” I said. “Is there a back way?”
Susan gave me an eyebrow, then made for the washrooms again. I followed.
Next to the ladies’ room was a door marked FIRE EXIT ONLY—ALARM WILL SOUND. Susan pushed it open. I’m more Canadian than she is. I gasped. She chuckled.
“The alarm’s never been connected,” she said.
It was cold enough outside to see our breath. We walked along the side of the building, around behind the kitchen-extension and out to the front, where a set of stairs led up to the foyer of the old building.
The exterior lights were on, and it looked like a stage set, the brawlers front and centre, with a Greek chorus made up of Cedar Falls citizens, grouped artistically on the steps, beer glasses in hand.
We stuck to the bushes, finding ourselves a bit closer to the ringside than was comfortable. I’ve never been big on violence, and while I may have jumped in a time or two when Francy was in danger, I certainly had no intention of getting involved for Becker’s sake. He was holding his own.
The six guys fighting were the pickup boys, whose names I didn’t know, versus Becker and Vern, a giant, simple man I’d seen occasionally in the village. It was four against two, but three of the pickup boys were stagger-drunk. The other was right out of his mind with rage about something, but he was tiny, shorter than Susan is, and thinner than a winter birch.
Vern was easily identifiable as the focus of the trouble. The pickup boys were trying to kill him, but they weren’t having much luck. Their opponent stood his ground like a front-end loader, baffing them away with hands the size of dinner plates. Whenever two or more went for the giant at once, Becker stepped in and pulled them off, which meant a battle every time. Vern’s fists had dealt some stinging blows, but this just seemed to enrage the boys, the same way a rolled up magazine enrages a wasp.
They were all yelling.
“Back off now before somebody gets hurt.”
“Fucking touch my motherfucking girlfriend fucking asshole?”
“Neil, fucking help us, man.”
“Fucker smacked me right in the face.”
“Fucking kill him!”
From the giant came a low rumbling sound, like a semi out on the highway, getting closer. His eyes were half-closed and he had a serene, beatific smile on his face. His tweed cap hadn’t budged from his head.
Susan and I had crept round to where George and Otis Dermott stood near the front steps. Otis toasted us with his plastic glass.
“Vern’ll blow any minute now,” Otis said.
“Why isn’t anybody helping?” I said to George. “Surely three of you guys could go in there and help pull them off?”
“They started it,” Otis said. “Vern won’t get hurt none, although your cop friend may get hurt if he don’t stay out of the way.”
I raised an eyebrow, Susan style. “Cop friend?” I said.
Otis leered. “I remembered him,” he said. “I seen him talking to Freddy at the dump. You go for a man in uniform, eh? I should have wore my army coat.” He wheezed with laughter and swigged at his beer.
I looked at George and Susan. They gazed blandly at the fight, avoiding my eye. When I looked back at Otis, he was doing the same thing.
“It’s like this, eh?” Otis said, after a moment. “Them boys have been making trouble since they got to Cedar Falls. Everybody knows, but nobody’s been able to catch them at it.”
“This fight could be classified as trouble, couldn’t it?” I said. “Grounds for arrest?”
“What good would that do? They wouldn’t get a court-date till God knows, and there’d be worse trouble in between. Listen up. Them boys were
