Kate Calhoun broke the news when she came by to clean the other day. At first, she teased me with what my father always called “woman talk, who was dating who, who was sneaking off with who, that kind of thing. I sat in my easy chair in the living room and read the paper, nodding and grunting responses, the way I had when Muriel used to run her gob. But suddenly, she sucker punched me with something that hit deep.
“They’re closin’ up Chad Riley’s bar,” she announced.
Down came the paper, and I peered over my shoulder at her while she dusted off the living room lampshades. “What now?”
“Heard it from Dan Riley hisself!” she declared, as if I had dared contradict her. “They’re closin’ her up. Gonna sell it to some outfit from outta town.”
There was more, but I didn’t bother listening. My mind drifted immediately elsewhere, back to better days when I was a younger man. I sat there long after Kate had left and let the memories come flooding in like the tide. I could taste the cold draft beer, hear them pool balls clacking like cassinettes, and smell the mix of smoke, whiskey, and Chad Riley’s English Leather cologne that had always hung in the air around the bar.
And suddenly, I was there on the stool, which was my stool, at the corner of the bar which was my corner, and Dusty was there at my elbow like a ghost. I could even hear the boys, all the boys, from Johnny King to Nick Little, from Willy Cashum to Pete Bigelow, they were all there, laughing and drinking draft and talking about girls, trucks, anything and everything. Chad Riley’s, a lynchpin of my existence that had stood for five decades, and which I had taken for granted would stand for ten more.
I’ve lived in south Texas my whole life, in the same town where I and Muriel raised a family. I grew up on daddy’s farm, which I inherited when he retired. We had Bobby here, and I kept the place up after he moved and Muriel died. And all that time, nearly twenty-five years, there was a Chad Riley’s to serve as my second home. I was thirty when Chad opened it (he come down from Vegas, where he used to be a bar tender at one of them Caesar’s Palace-type outfits) and it had become as much a part of me as my fingers and toes.
Though I was sitting down, I could feel myself floating out of the chair and into the air, like one of them Astroturf projections that I heard about on TV. I was walking through the front door of Chad’s, into the dark wood interior with the tables all in one corner, the bar on the right by the jukebox, and two pool tables taking up the rest of the place with a little hallway that went to the bathrooms. Over the bar hung a wall-to-wall neon silhouette of a sexy lady showing some leg, which Muriel had once petitioned to have taken down to no avail. When you came into Chad’s, you felt like you were coming home, like the whole place always had its arms open, ready to embrace you.
Hearing about the bar being closed, I felt the way you would if somebody you loved had finally died of cancer. Watching them slog through life in pain was more burden than the thought of them dying, and you felt free when they finally kicked the big one. I had felt that way when Muriel passed, and I felt that way when I heard Chad Riley’s kids had finally decided it was time to end their father’s legacy.
The cancer that killed Chad’s, of course, was The Chopping Night. Nothing was ever the same after that, and those memories tainted the bar forever. Chad Riley retired a year after all that hullabaloo and his kids tried to keep the doors open, but the boys all gradually left off coming. Me and Dusty started hanging out at Rudy’s pub instead, and though we talked about going in to say hi to Dan Riley from time to time, we never did. We couldn’t.
Part of it was the men in suits, who showed up and started making life difficult. This is south Texas: nobody wears a suit, not even on Sundays. But after the Chopping Night, almost every day, two or three preppy fellas in two-piece business suits would troop in and hang around asking questions about Carl Bannon. They was like Joe Friday from that cop show, and made a habit of pestering everybody in the bar. Funny thing, even though Chad normally took absolutely no shit from anybody, he wouldn’t even look those button-up Bills in the eye. Willy and Pete petitioned him to have those suit guys barred several times, but Chad wouldn’t even give them a straight answer. It was clear as day he was scared of’em, and Chad Riley wasn’t scared of nobody except Marv McMurphy, who got the needle after he carried out one of the most brutal crimes in Texas history.
Oh, there’s books about the Chopping Night and true crime podcasts and even an episode of one of them crime report shows that Muriel used to watch. Over the years, I’ve talked to journalists and writers and even a couple of young people who blew into town to make a YouTube video about it. I told them the same balooey I’ve told everybody, the basic rundown that leaves out everything that actually happened. What me and Dusty and Chad Riley saw ain’t something you can tell folks. It ain’t’ something you can even admit to yourself, because it implies a universe that’s far too wide and far too deep to be comfortable in.
It’s been enough years, I guess, and everybody involved except me is dead. I’m eighty now, and I ain’t got much longer left. So, it’s as good a time as any. You won’t believe me, and I wouldn’t expect you to. When Muriel, God rest her, asked me about it I just changed the subject. Maybe it was them suit guys, and maybe it was just the idea of being sent to the funny farm, but I didn’t want to talk about the Chopping Night. But I saw what I saw, and I’ll go to my grave with that night floating in my memories.
The first thing I reckon you got to understand is what kind of man Marv McMurphy was, even before the Chopping Night. To sum it up: he was an ugly guy married to a beautiful woman. Loretta McMurphy was as gorgeous as a dream, and nobody could blame Marv for being jealous. But suspicion worked on Marv like one of them cocaine speedballs, making him powerful gungy whenever another man was within a hundred feet of his baby girl. When he came into Chad’s on Friday and Saturday nights, you had better not give his lady a look if she were with him. I had seen Marv lay one or two of the boys out on the floor for making eyes at Loretta and he beat Pete Bigelow half to death for giving Loretta a whistle. The sheriff had threatened him and Chad had talked of barring him, but Marv was a dangerous guy to cross and everybody in town knew it.
Poor Loretta. For a pretty woman, she never seemed to have no fun. I reckon she was about twenty-five then, but you could tell three childless years with Marv was aging her prematurely. I saw lines forming around her mouth and eyes, her skin folding under the pressure of being shackled to that crazy fool. Why she married him I can’t figure, but he had a miser’s love for her affection.
The other thing you got to understand is Carl Bannon. He was twenty-something, but what he did in the two decades before he wandered into town will forever be a mystery. He was a drifter who just blew in one day and was a quiet kind’a fellow who never talked much. The town was always small, and everybody knew everybody, so an out-and-out stranger like Carl stood out like a sore thumb. My best friend, Dusty Stalburg, said he just showed up in his office at the garage one day, hands in his pockets, looking kinda lost. He was dressed in faded denim with long, tangled blonde hair and a fidgety look to him.
“What you need, boy?” Dusty asked.
“Lookin’ for a job.”
“What makes you think I need anybody, son?”
The kid swallowed. “I’m good with my hands. I can show you.”
Dusty had a broken lawn mower that he had had been puzzling over all that week sitting in the corner of the workshop. He took Carl in and pointed at it. “That sucker won’t crank. You fix it, you got a job.”
Carl went over, took that thing apart, and had it roaring to life in an hour. Heck, Dusty said the kid went around the workshop, and it seemed like everything he touched just come to life again. He did two days’ work in about four hours, and it tickled Dusty to death. From then on, he was Dusty’s right-hand man, and folks come from all around to have their farm equipment worked on by the Wizard of Stalburg Repairs. That boy was gifted with electronics and mechanical parts, but he acted real shy whenever you asked him about his family or where he was from. I never even found out where he lived in town, or even how he got around without a car. It didn’t matter to Dusty, though: long as the boy could fix a car engine, he didn’t care.
I and Dusty were good friends, and we’d drink down at Chad’s just about every Friday. Dusty took Carl under his wing since the kid seemed to have trouble making friends, and he would always drink with us. I tried to be friendly to the kid, but I found that conversation dried up around Carl real fast. Part of the problem was, just looking at Carl was hard to do. At a distance, he was a scruffy fellow with blonde hair who looked like two decades of a bad time. But when you got up close to him, you saw that there was something not quite right about him. His face wasn’t right, like a mask made by somebody who wasn’t completely sure what humans looked like. Even the way he moved was unnatural, like his skin was on too tight. All his motions and gestures seemed almost mechanical.
Another thing that was right peculiar was how Carl would never drink no beer or whiskey. He would have Chad Riley bring him a pitcher of water with a glass and a plastic holder full of sugar packets. What he would do, he poured a glass of water and then dumped in a good five or six units of the sweet stuff. Then he would belt that diabetes potion down like straight vodka. He also never ate nothing, even though Dusty offered to spot him a basket of chili nachos or a sandwich every time. According to Dusty, Carl never ate no lunch either: he just drank water or tea from a canteen he always kept strapped to his belt.
But as odd as all that might be, the thing that creeped me out the most about Carl was something that happened when he got a little too drunk at Chad’s one night. It was Dusty’s birthday, and me and the boys were all throwing them back. At first, Carl was just sipping water, looking out-of-place and dodging all the offers for cake. Finally, Dusty (who was getting in deep) clapped him on the back and broached the subject we all had on our minds.
“Come on, son, it’s a party! At least have a little something!”
He gave Dusty a twisty smile. “Alcohol don’t agree with me much.”
But Dusty either didn’t hear him or didn’t care. He ordered a round and shoved a shot glass in Carl’s face. “Have one. Just one.”
Carl pushed his hand away. “I really can’t, Mr. Stalburg. It don’t go with me.”
Well, I tell you, maybe it was a mean thing to do, but we was all deep in the cups. The boys heard this little exchange, and they got it into their heads that by God, tonight of all nights, Carl Bannon was taking a drink. While Carl was pushing Dusty’s mammoth arm out of the way, they bum rushed him. Nick, Pete, John, and Willy all grabbed an arm or a leg and picked him up neat as you please. They pinned him down to the bar and held him while Dusty dumped that whisky shot down his gullet. Folks I’ve never seen a man get drunk faster! It was only the one shot, but it hit him hard as a full bottle of straight bourbon. First, he got woozy, then goofy, and then he projectile vomited across Chad’s floor. Chad cussed us all up and down while I took Carl by the arm and offered to drive him home.
While we were coming out of the bar, me half-dragging Carl, the kid suddenly stopped and dug his heels into the parking lot gravel. He had a blank look on his face, with his head tilted back and his mouth slightly opened. With that twisty smile of his on his lips, he pointed up to a cluster of lights off in the Big Empty.
“That’s home, up there” he slurred in a drunken voice. “It’s a long trip, but you’ll come to it if you follow those stars long enough. It’s a nice place, but we like to travel and learn about them what’s different from us. I’ve been learning a lot, living out here.”
And then that smile broadened, and just seeing him grin give me the shivers. I said goodnight and ran back inside, leaving him standing there staring at the sky. I said nothing to the boys about it, and for a long time, I figured Carl was too pickled to know up from down. After the Chopping Night, I don’t know what to think.
But none of that mattered to Dusty, so long as Carl kept a steady stream of business going through the garage. That kid really could do anything, even stuff that didn’t seem possible. If it was dead, he could bring it to life, like Jesus and Lazarus. Dusty said he tried watching the kid, to learn his technique and all, but he could never quite figure how he done his miracles. One time, just before the Chopping Night, he told me that he walked in on Carl using a tool that he had never laid eyes on before.
“Wassat?” he asked.
Carl tucked the thing under his arm, looking all shy and embarrassed. “Ain’t nothin’, Mr. Stalburg.”
“Naw, naw, lemme see it, boy! What is it?” He reached out and tried to grab it, but Carl pulled away. Dusty managed to grab the handle of the thing and jerk it out of Carl’s grasp. Both men cried out as it fell and hit the ground with a clack. Dusty said it looked like a long chrome flashlight, with attachments and buttons, but it had a strange luster to it. The word Dusty used to describe it was “unearthly”, and that’s probably as good a word as any. Carl snatched it up real quick and tucked it into the inside pocket of his boiler suit.
“Please don’t do that, Mr. Stalburg!” Carl said. “It ain’t nothing. Just something from home.”
Well, Dusty was too good a guy to press the matter further. He let it slide, but he still kept a close eye on Carl. That strange flashlight-thingy would pop up in Carl’s hand every now and then while he worked, but Dusty never did get a better look at it. He kept the cars running and the lawnmowers mowing, and at the end of the day, nothing else mattered.
That, I reckon, brings us back to Loretta McMurphy.
She came in with Marv one night, and the heel of her shoe snapped. She spilled out on the floor, neat as you please, and went sprawling. Marv didn’t notice, he was too busy arguing with John and Nick over a pool game. Carl, who was sitting at the bar with us, got up and helped the lady to her feet. Poor Loretta, when she saw who it was, she went pale as a ghost. But Carl just kinda smiled, asked her if she was ok, and she nodded and said yes.
That was when Marv showed up. He got between them, hands on his hips, them big shoulders sliding betwixt them. “You got a problem, bud?”
Carl shook his head.
“This man was just helping me Marvy,” she said.
But Marv was on a roll. He started shoving, and at first, Carl just kind of took it. Everybody sat around and watched, shaking their heads, while Marv pushed that kid into the middle of the bar snarlin’ and spittin’ about “his woman” this and “my girl” that. I knew what was coming, but I didn’t think I could warn Carl in time. Turns out, I didn’t have to. When Marv threw a punch, Carl caught it in one hand and socked Marv right in the face with the other. Blotto! Marv went down like a sack of grain and Loretta just watched with her hands over her mouth. We all gasped, and Chad dropped the glass he was cleaning. We never thought we’d live to see the day that Marv McMurphy took a tumble like that.
“I’m sorry you had to see that mam,” Carl said, and then he ran through the front door like a bat outta hell.
And that was the spark.
Whenever she come into the bar, they would exchange nods and smiles. At first, Loretta looked as uncomfortable with Carl grinning at her as anybody would be. She would give him a little wave and then quickly look away. But then, real slowly, something started to happen. I don’t know how or why, exactly, but he started to grow on her. She graduated from smiling at him to coming over to talk to him, and then from that to him going over to talk to her. Marv didn’t like it, and he gave Carl looks that would have made anybody else’s blood curdle. But Marv wasn’t used to being whupped, and I guess he was still trying to process it.
Suddenly, about a month after Carl laid Marv low, Loretta McMurphy’s car started breaking down regularly. Marv had a brand new truck, a sleek red Ford he would brag on like his favorite son, and left Loretta a hand-me-down old Camry that kept ticking only by some miracle of God. She would show up to Dusty’s garage about once every other week needing to have the engine checked or one of the parts replaced. And of course, Carl was always the one who volunteered to do it. I started to suspect that maybe those regular breakdowns were engineered, if not just straight-up lies altogether. I never had any proof to the contrary, but I still wonder.
I remember once, coming by Dusty’s garage to get my oil changed, and I saw Loretta and Carl sitting in her car, talking. Just talking. She was running her mouth and Carl was smiling and nodding. It give me the shudders, to see her so close to him, but Loretta looked happy. She was a pretty woman, but seeing her beam like that enhanced her beauty tenfold. The old girl practically glowed next to Carl Bannon, who looked like he was basking in the warmth of her shine.
“Pretty as a picture,” Dusty said with a nod.
“He’s gonna get hisself killed” I said.
Dusty nodded somberly. “There’s gonna be trouble you see if there ain’t.”
Week after week, we saw those two exchange cow-eyed glances down at Chad Riley’s and hold whispered conversations down at Dusty’s full of giggle and shy smiles. And that was just on the surface. What happened, I wonder now, behind the scenes? They were obsessed with each other, obviously, and I wondered what they got up to when Marv McMurphy’s back was turned. Carl took to “going out” for lunch instead of sitting in the garage with his canteen, and Marv McMurphy started coming into Chad Riley’s alone while grumbling that his wife was “with friends”. Me and Dusty knew, of course, and Pete, Nick, and the boys figured it out pretty soon as well. I can only guess that Marv knew too and was just too proud to acknowledge it. He had been put in his place for the first time ever, and he was still trying to figure how he ought to take it.
Then Loretta McMurphy got pregnant. I saw her in town a couple of days later, walking around in a maternity dress while proudly nursing a swollen bump. Marv was with her too, and he looked green as a cabbage. My eyes met with his, and I knew he was thinking the same thing: I wonder who’s it is? I wonder.
It was like watching a car crash in slow motion, and the bumpers were about to collide. A part of me wanted to stop it, to push the cars apart, but I knew that wasn’t possible. You get between two heavy, moving objects you end up getting crushed, and there was no sense in that. Besides, I had my own life with Muriel, my son, and the farm. Putting my neck out for a guy like Carl Bannon, a guy I barely knew, just seemed like a gamble I was destined to lose.
The night it happened, me, Dusty, and Carl was down at Chad’s on a Saturday night. I remember Carl was looking pretty sad, not just aloof like usual, but genuinely depressed. Loretta was swelling up like a balloon, and I knew that he was weighing the same probabilities as the rest of us. Dusty did all the talking, but I kept looking over at Carl. He was easier on the eyes when he looked vulnerable, and he was clearly chewing something over.
“You ok Carl?” I asked after a while.
Carl just give me a smile. He shook his head and stood up. “Bathroom,” he said, and he strode on out.
Me and Dusty were talking shop when Marv came storming in. He blew through the door with a kindling axe in one hand and a midnight special in the other. “Alright” he called out “where is he?” The boys glanced over at him, but nobody said nothing. We knew who he was talking about, and we all decided it was best to keep our distance. Marv looked around with them crazy eyes of his, and without a further word, he went stomping across the bar right up to the door of that toilet. He started pounding on the door hard enough to make the frames rattle and he told Carl he best come out. When he didn’t (and who would?) Marv tucked that special into his belt and started chopping.
Well, Chad Riley come out from behind the bar cussin’ Marv up and down. I guess seeing his bar desecrated finally put a fire under his behunkus about drawing the line for Marv. But Marv didn’t even blink as he took the handle of that axe and laid Chad out flat as a plank of wood. Then he went back to chopping. All while he knocked that door in, Carl was squalling at him and begging him to stop. And that was the first time we got clear confirmation for what we all already suspected.
“Loretta wouldn’t want it this way!” Carl was yelling back. “Please, Marv, don’t do anything you’re going to regret!”
But Marv didn’t answer. He had a hole big enough for his hand, and he reached through to unlock the door with a smile that would have chilled Satan’s blood.
It was then that me and the boys grabbed him. We had watched him lay out Chad Riley, and while Pete Bigelow went to call the cops, me, Dusty, and Nick made a beeline for Marv. He was a big man, and while we was wrestlin’ him away from that door, we tried to talk him down.
“Come on, Marv!” I called out. “Whatever it is, it ain’t worth killin’ a man over!”
“That thing ain’t a man!” Marv called back. We tried to hold him, but Marv was gorilla strong with piss and vinegar. He wore us down and then, when Dusty’s grip slipped, he threw us clean off. First, he whipped Dusty, then he whipped Nick, and then he whipped me, and put us down flat as Chad. Nick was out cold for the rest of the night, and I saw most of the rest from the ground with a headache like a ten-gun salute on repeat. With nobody left to get in the way, Marv kicked the door open and marched into the bathroom with his pistol drawn.
Things get a little confused after that, and I’ll try to explain it all best as I can. Carl had that flashlight-thing in his hand, and it looked like he was trying to cut a hole in the wall. There was a long beam of light coming out of a metal tube, and he was training it around the window frame, tracing a hole. Smoke was rising from where he was soldering his hole, and he only stopped when Marv come in. Carl shrieked and pointed that metal tube at him, but Marv already had the gun ready. I was getting up off the floor when I heard first one shot and then two in rapid succession. There was a pause, and then Marv emptied the whole enchilada into Carl’s chest while grinning like a kid plugging bandits at the local arcade. When I looked up, I saw Carl sliding down the wall with a grimace on his face and his hand clutching one of six bleeding wounds. .
And then Chad got up, followed by Dusty. Chad had a hand to his forehead and was threatening Marv with everything from the police to the SWAT team. Marv didn’t pay him any mind, and I saw him toss that pistol over his shoulder like it weren’t nothing but wastepaper. Carl was trying to slide away from Marv, leaving a trail of blood behind him as he crab-walked across the floor. It was then that I realized what was coming out of Carl’s body wasn’t red. There was blood there, sure enough, but it was mixing with something else. Something that was…
Well, orange. Goopy and orange, like technicolor motor oil.
I was moving towards Carl on my hands and knees, screaming at Marv, and I saw Dusty reach for the axe in Marv’s hand. Dusty was big, but he was slow, too slow that time. The axe rose, then fell, and I heard a gurgling cry. Something splashed across my face and Chad screamed. The axe rose and fell again before Carl’s head came clean off. His body twitched and went still as Marv kicked Carl’s severed noggin across the floor like a soccer ball. It rolled into a corner by the trashcan and…
Well
Before he died, Dusty told me something, something we had never talked about before. His wife had passed, and I was the only family he had. I went in to visit him from time to time, especially after his first stroke, and we would sit in that dreary living room of his and talk. He knew he was going: he was on an oxygen mask and God only knows how many pills he was taking for his blood pressure. One day, about a month before a heart attack whisked him off to Glory, we were talking over beers about old times, and he just flung it out there on the table.
“You remember when Marv sliced Carl up?”
“Course.”
“When his head come off…did you see it move?”
“What you mean?”
Dusty paused, adjusted the wheel on his oxygen tank, and took a wheezing breath. When he spoke again, his voice was just a soft whisper.
“His head was laying there on the bathroom floor, and I saw the lips was working, and the eyes were blinking at me. But it wasn’t smooth, like a person, but all stiff, like a machine. For about two minutes, it went on like that, moving and twitching. That ain’t possible, is it?”
“Let’s talk about something else,” I said.
But at that time, I was too shocked to notice much of anything except Marv standing there splattered with blood. Carl’s neck was dribbling something on the floor, something thick and slimy that smelled like pole cat stew. He took the handle of that axe and started beating on Carl’s chest, while grunting out a mantra that took me a few moments to understand.
“Come out, you sonuva bitch, come out!”
Then we saw Marv reach into Carl’s neck like a gunny sack and pull out something from the blood-soaked hole, something long that trailed slime. We all gasped, but Marv flung it on the ground with a laugh. It flopped for a bit, and then lay still, its mouth working, its eyes bulging. The best way to describe it would be to say that it looked like something between an eel and a slug, with a mouth that kept working. It lay in a puddle of goop, making a wheezing sound with its huge, yellow eyes rolling. I suddenly realized it was trying to breathe.
“Not so tough now, are you?” Marv said with a sneer.
Those big eyes fell on me, and I felt a heavy sadness drop on me like an anvil. I knew I should have stepped in, and because I didn’t a good man was on his last leg. The eyes went blank and then, that snake-like abomination withered up and started to fade into smoke. It was like the air itself was burning it away until the slimy body blackened and crumbled into nothing.
And really, that was the end. The cops came storming in about five minutes later and found Chad and Dusty wrestling that axe out of Marv’s hands. He went with them peacefully, and they drug him out in cuffs with a dazed look on his face. I and Muriel followed the court case on TV, and I watched Marv plead guilty to killing both Carl and his wife. I had heard they found Loretta at the house, with her abdomen burst open. The story was that she had confessed to Marv that the baby wasn’t his, and he had cut the fetus out of her with a kitchen knife before storming off to find Carl. Marv never gave no testimony to the contrary, and a couple years later, he got the needle.
Folks talked, of course, for about a month after. Rumors and conspiracy theories about the cops having a “secret suspect” in custody, all kinds of things. When them fellas in suits showed up, things got quiet real fast. It was about a decade before the podcasters and writers showed up, picking at the carcass like vultures, but by then it was all long over. A book come out, and you can buy it at the town welcome center for ten bucks. Curious minds still drift in, but mostly it’s been forgotten, and I reckon that’s for the best.
As to me and the boys, we went on with our lives. Chad left that place to his kids, Dusty went on running the garage, and I went on running the farm. Things passed, and then we all got old. The boys dropped off, mostly stuff like lung cancer or heart disease, the usual suspects. Dusty was the last of them except me, and now I’m the only one. I reckon when I’m gone, there won’t be anybody who was there, to know what actually happened. It probably doesn’t matter anyway: who would buy any of it? What could they even do about it if they did?
Before the cops came, Marv said one last thing, and it’s the thing that haunts me most. It makes me think about them men in suits, and what they must have done to cover it all up. Whatever happened to that flashlight-thing that Carl worked his miracles with? We all saw it fall from his hand when Marv plugged him, but after that, it vanished from history. Somebody must have picked it up, but who? And I think about the other thing them suit guys must have put away, in a cage somewhere, to keep it all a secret. And whether what they put away is still out there.
At first, we all just stood there looking to Marv, as if for an explanation. As he stood there, his wild face went blank. After a few moments, he finally spoke:
“You shoulda seen what come out of Loretta.”
Andrew Hodges was born in Suffolk, England, but spent the majority of his life in Virginia. He has worked as an ER volunteer, a research assistant, and a biology teacher, all experiences he draws on for his writing. He lives in Appalachia with his wife.