Sam Knox.
He was sitting motionless, both arms folded on the bartop, staring sightlessly into a half-empty glass of bourbon or Scotch or Irish whiskey. His face was set in dark, brooding lines, and he had the look of somebody adrift inside himself, the look of a guy who has been doing a considerable amount of solitary drinking. I wondered if he had been here since leaving the camp in midmorning; I had not seen the Rambler wagon on the way to or from Sonora, or when I had driven in a few minutes ago, but he could have had it parked all along on a side street.
I went down there and got up on a stool next to him. He did not move, did not seem to know I was there. His eyes, unblinking, might have been made of dark glass. The bartender came over and asked me what I'd have, and I told him a bottle of Schlitz. I waited until he brought it, and then I made a little noise clinking the bottle against my glass and said to Knox, “Hello, Sam. Good to see you again.”
It took three or four seconds for him to react. Then he blinked once and moved his shoulders and brought his head around. Unlike Talesco, there were no marks on him-or at least none that I could see in the dim lighting. He stared at me blankly, blinked again, and finally his eyes unclouded and recognition seeped into them.
“The hell you want?” he said. The words were distinct, un-slurred, but there was a coarse, raspy quality to them, like a wood file on a piece of bark.
“Not a thing. I just came in for a beer and saw you sitting here.”
“Don't want company.”
“Drinking alone's not much of a pleasure.”
“Pleasure,” Knox said. “Shit.”
“Where's your friend Talesco today?”
“Hell do I know?”
“Well, I haven't seen him around the camp.”
He squinted at me. “No? You see her around?”
“Who? Mrs. Jerrold?”
“Yeah.”
“Not since early this morning.”
“Told him. Warned him, the stupid bastard.”
“About Mrs. Jerrold?”
“All his brains between his legs. Stupid.”
“Why did you warn him about her?”
“Stupid,” Knox said. “Never knew how stupid.”
“Has he been seeing her on the sly-that it?”
But he was not listening to me now. He wrapped one of his big hands around his glass, drained off the whiskey, slammed the glass down again. He mumbled something that I couldn't understand; then: “Stepped aside for him. Best friend, noble gesture. Bullshit.” Mumble. “Good woman, not a bitch, but she wanted him. Him.” Mumble. His face seemed to darken, although it was difficult to tell in that light, and his lips pulled into a crooked, angry slash. “Won't let him get away with it, not any of it. Fix him good this time.”
He was working himself up into a dangerous state; I thought with belated alarm: Christ, I handled it all wrong, I should know better than to provoke somebody who's been drinking the way he has. I put a hand on his arm, gently. “Take it easy, Knox-”
He shrugged my hand off and then pushed back from the bar with such sudden force that the legs of his stool tilted out from under him; the stool fell clattering. Knox staggered, threw out an arm, and I felt fingers like hooked steel prongs bite into my shoulder. He lurched into me, almost knocked me off my own stool. Flecks of saliva and the stale whiskey heat of his breath buffeted my face.
I wedged the left side of my body against the bar, shoved him off with my right shoulder, trying to steady him-but that was a mistake too. He took it as an aggression and leaned back toward me and swung wildly at my head.
And just like that, I was into it.
His fist missed me by a foot, but I could feel the wind of it: he was bull-strong. My groin knotted up and I twisted sideways and came off the stool onto my feet while he was trying to set himself for another swing. Somebody shouted. Knox swayed, made rumbling sounds in his throat, and put his head down and charged me. I side-stepped him easily enough-the liquor had made him reckless but turned his reflexes sluggish-and hit him over the collarbone with the flat of my left hand. He lost his balance, skidded into the bar, caromed off with his head jerking up to look for me, and he was wide open. I did not want to do it, but he had left me no choice; if I let this go on he would tear up the place, and maybe me along with it.
I clipped him on the point of the jaw.
I felt the shock clear into my armpit; the hand went numb for an instant. Knox's knees buckled and his eyes rolled up and he fell in a loose sprawl with his chest heaving like a bellows. But he was out. When you lay in a Sunday punch like that, you almost always put them out.
There was a dull ringing in my ears and I could hear myself breathing in a thick wheezing rhythm. The pit of my stomach felt hollow. The two guys in the booth were on their feet, and the bartender had come around from behind the plank, and the desk clerk was standing aghast in the lobby doorway; all of them were staring at Knox lying there on the pegged floor.