Clayton said nothing, and Darby was done arguing. “Lucky’s it is.”
Lucky’s was the kind of place that took on a different tone depending on where the sun was positioned in relation to the Earth. During the day, a cantankerous old man named Hollis “Lucky” Peterman and his equally disgruntled brother, Harvey, served biscuits and gravy and the best cornmeal flapjacks in the state to the deer hunters and working folk of Waymore Valley. But in the evening, Harvey’s daughter, Nicole, poured bourbon cocktails and pitchers of Bud Light from behind the bar. Lucky’s had a built-in crowd, mostly because Lucky’s was the only bar in the Valley. Clayton half-stumbled out of the Bronco under the influence of Val’s apple-pie moonshine. He grabbed the frame of the car door, steadied himself, and slammed it shut.
And that’s how it happens, he thought. One drink, on a particularly bad day, and a year’s sobriety blown to hell like it never happened. Clayton was sure, by night’s end, he’d be a smoker again, too, but these revelations weren’t enough to keep him from walking into the bar. He pushed those thoughts to the back of his clouded mind and made for the front door. The place was jumping. Old-school Hank Williams Jr. belted out from the jukebox: “. . . and I get whiskey bent and hell bound.” It set the tone with an appropriate anthem for the night. Nicole looked as beautiful as ever slinging liquor behind the bar. Most of the women in Waymore wore clothes they cut from patterns or bought from the discount stores that peppered the countryside, but Nicole was a different type. She wore high heels with her blue jeans. She shopped at the outlet malls down in Buford and Commerce. Tonight Nicole wore a shiny black sequined top that sparkled under the bar lights and dark blue jeans tight enough to keep a man Clayton’s age looking straight ahead, in fear of feeling like a dirty old man. Clayton spied an open seat at the end of the bar and slipped in, barely aware of the foul mood, or the shame, he was toting in with him. He eased onto the bar stool and took in a deep lungful of secondhand smoke. It smelled bad and good. He took off his hat and laid it on the bar, accidentally nudging the arm of a large gentleman to his left.
“Hey, buddy, watch your—” The look of recognition registered on Big Joe Dooley’s face before he finished his sentence. “Sorry, Sheriff, I didn’t see you there. My bad.” Joe was known to get a little rowdy. Clayton and Choctaw both had locked him up in the drunk tank once or twice to let him sleep it off before sending him home to his wife and kids, but otherwise, the big boy was relatively harmless.
“S’okay, Joe.” Clayton hailed Nicole, who immediately stopped what she was doing, smiled a big pearly smile, and poured the sheriff a ginger ale from a squatty green bottle under the bar. Clayton’s most recent usual. She slapped a bar napkin down and set the soda in front of the sheriff, then took notice of his swollen eye and split lip. Her pretty smile contorted into a pretty grimace.
“Ouch,” she said. “Holy cow, Sheriff. How does the other guy look?”
“Much better than me, I’m afraid.”
“You want me to make you an ice pack for that?”
“That’s okay, Nicole.”
“It’s no problem. I got clean rags in the back. I could fix you up.”
“Nah, it’s just a scratch. I’ll be okay. Busy night tonight, huh?”
“It’s a busy night every night, sir.” Nicole leaned forward on the bar with both elbows, maybe not so unintentionally creating a perfect view of her sun-freckled cleavage. Clayton did his best not to look. She didn’t make it easy. Her big green eyes would stop traffic even without all the eye makeup she shrouded them in, but girls her age never believed that. She was a looker, but a good girl. Clayton liked her. Big Joe made no attempt to reel in his slack-jawed stare and shifted his cumbersome weight on the bar stool to lean toward her and Clayton’s conversation. “You think I could get a beer, or do I have to be wearin’ a silver star on my shirt, too?”
“Just a second, Joe,” Nicole said without looking at him.
Joe frowned an exaggerated drunken frown. “I been waiting here almost ten minutes, girlie.”
This time she did look at him. “Look around you, Joe. It’s a little busy. I’ll be right with you.”
Joe shot a quick glance at Clayton, then mumbled something shitty into his empty glass. Clayton assumed it would have been a lot louder if he hadn’t been sitting there. He ignored him and took a sip of the ginger ale. That wasn’t going to do it.
“I’ll be back shortly, Sheriff. Are you hungry? Uncle Hollis’s got some country fried steak left over from the lunch rush.”