[Wesley]

Synopsis: This is a short story that is part of a larger one I've been working on for some time. The entire thing is based on Edward Hopper's painting "Nighthawks". The time line is somewhere between World War Two and 1961.



It happened in a bar outside of John's patrol route. It was always better to drink outside your district in hopes you wouldn't be recognized.

Several patrons were talking loudly in the corner, and, for the most part, they were unintelligible.

John sat at a small round table drawing on a napkin, and there were a lot of men in pinstriped suits to his right talking with an Asian fellow. The lights were lower than when he had first come in, and John checked his watch. Sure enough he had been on duty for almost three hours. He had already eaten two turkey sandwiches at the start of his shift, so getting drunk might be a little bit more difficult. Maybe he would get fired today.

'It's getting hot in here,' John thought. He wanted to remove his jacket and considered staying longer. No, his gun would show, and who knew what kind of people were in here?

There was another man seated at the table next to John. He was thirty, and looked irritated. His jacket was draped over the back of his chair, along with a red tie that was obviously old. The table was full of messy napkins, and Betsy had now picked up five or six of their cheapest beer bottles. His name was Dennis, but no one in this place knew that. It didn't matter though; he had only been here once, and now had ordered a second shot of spirits to really do him in.

The tall girl with "Betsy" on her name tag placed another coffee on his table as John looked toward her, and her messy blonde hair.

"Not drinkin' this evenin'?" John shook his head "No."

She smiled as she walked away; then John looked smug as he spiked his coffee and slid the flask back into his coat pocket.

The radio was playing loudly, so, of course, some drunk fools and their ladies got up to mingle, then danced, and there was not much room for dancing.

It was time to leave. John stood with his right hand flat on the table, "Easy," he said in a long sigh. With an hour of drinking behind him and seven more of mindlessly driving around town to look forward to, John stuffed is hat down on his head and tried to straighten his tie.

The Vietnamese man cupped his hand to his mouth and without regard to his thick accent hollered across the room to a fat man passing out sandwiches, "Hey Mac! Another round!" He nudged a younger man with curly red hair and the two continued laughing.

Dennis hadn't noticed the Asian amidst all the pinstriped suits. He turned his whole body with one finger pointing toward them. Dennis looked around the room, confused, as no one here seemed bothered to have a foreigner in here. He shifted around and pulled John lighlty by the coat, "You see that? Some gook barking orders at a white American!"

John swallowed the dryness in his mouth, "Unbelievable." He didn't care. He picked his cigarrettes from the table.

A fat man was laughing loudly at everything the smaller Vietnamese man said. Although he could hardly understand his English, the man brought a new business venture that promised a huge amount of income for all the men in pin stripe suits.

"Got a smoke, do ya?" Dennis wanted one.

John sighed and obliged. They lit them one after the other

"Got a minute?"

'No,' John thought. "What?" He said.

"You a cop?" Dennis motioned his chin to John's .45 under his left shoulder, "Your coats open, pal."

John cursed himself and pulled his jacket, "Yeah, I gotta go."

Dennis pulled on him again, "Wait up, pal. You can kick that gook outta here, right?"

"If he commits a crime, call the cops," John couldn't find enough change in his pockets to pay his tab. Now he was drunk and angry. He yanked his wallet out of his back pocket.

"Watch this, pal." Dennis smiled like a school child and mischief shone in his eyes.

John wasn't paying attention. He had found money for his tab and he was leaving this trouble magnet.

"Go back to China, you buck tooth gook!" Dennis stood from his chair and looked back at John, "You watchin', pal?"

John's stomach churned.

The man was Vietnamese. Dennis and he stared at each other, and Dennis yelled that the bar doesn't serve rice and that America has plenty of railroads.

"What you think this is in this box? Party toys?!" His broken English was understandable enough and the man pointed angrily at his breifcase as he held it. Dennis didn't mind the yelling and laughed, "You hear that voice, pal?"

John stood there, cigarette drooping from his mouth. 'Leave!' His mind was screaming. 'Why did I come here?' His eyes were shifting between the loud mouth and the Asian man as everything was silent now except for the very loud music.

Dennis slapped his table several times and threw out some inane sentences as the little man stood up. Dennis was really pleased with himself. Some of the men in pinstriped suits were standing up from their seats, and Dennis yelled, "Nobody wants you here, Ghengis Kahn! Go back to gook-land!"

John Malone wasn't going to arrest anyone; he was drinking on the job. In a flash, thoughts raced into his head and he realized that he didn't actually want to get fired; he needed this job. John was now in a situation he could not have foreseen, next to a drunk loud- mouth jerk in a town in which he had no excusable reason to be with zero authority, on duty, and higher than a kite.

When reality sat in it was too late. Dennis had provoked the man enough and they targeted each other. The Vietnamese man in the pin stripe suit pulled a pistol from his belt and fired several shots into Dennis' general direction. A couple rounds hit their mark and poor, foolish Dennis crashed to the floor.

Being shot felt like a explosion just above Johns hip as he ran for the door with five or six others. He couldn't believe he had been hit but his right leg wouldn't respond, and a pain like a hot iron ran up his side. Shotgun blasts shook the room from behind the bar and John went deaf, his head spinning. Dennis' brains along with his own blood were all over the front of his suit as he fell into some broken glass inches from the door and a man jumped over his head to escape. John crawled through the double doors and onto the cold, wet sidewalk.

Another shot from inside then two more. Screams came from inside the windows but Johns couldn't hear them. He couldn't let those people die. Or could he? He could run. He could get away.

Some of the men in pinstriped suits had been shot, and some pulled their pistols but they were all crouched behind their tables with at least one hand over an ear. It was so loud.

John pulled himself up onto the wall and a window next to him cracked as another few shots were fired. He couldn't tell who was shooting at whom now. He was very dizzy and heaved all of his dinner onto the broken glass and side walk.

His leg was stiff. 'Run, John. Run.' John pulled the .45 from his shoulder and switched the safety off. His right side hurt so bad, and he couldn't really bring his arm too far from his side. He gripped the pistol with his left hand and leaned on the wall under the window.

John couldn't see much, and the bar was filled with smoke. The men in pinstripes were walking carefully toward the bar like timid dogs. Carefully, the Asian man peered and pointed his pistol over the counter top. He fired once, then dropped the clip and dug another from his pocket, racked a round and fired several more times this time with more confidence.

John had never killed anyone before. His instincts were begging him to turn and flee. He was sweaty, it was cold. Blood stuck his pant leg to his skin and he felt stiff. The Vietnamese man was still on his toes looking and pointing his pistol over the counter when John laid his shoulder into the door and it swung open.

John didn't wait or think when he put his front sight on the Asian man's silhouette and pulled the trigger three times. The Vietnamese man dropped like a rag doll upon itself as he immediately began thinking about his family in Vietnam and the country he left. The events that led him to sell his uncle's opium, and the reasons he had come to America in the first place. He died after a hard few minutes staring up at the ceiling.

In what was a blur to John, he put down the other two gunmen with three well-placed rounds, and a stray fourth that knocked a light out of the wall. None of them had expected him, and had felt sure the threat had been extinguished. The slide was back on John's .45 when it dropped on the floor. On his left side, sunk into the tile floor, he struggled to be pain free. John's blood was warm on his stomach and his suit was twisted firmly in a wad around the neck. He could smell bile and burnt food. His mouth tasted rotten as more of his stomach came up.

John lay there cold, and like a child until an ambulance unit came to him. His hat blew a long way down the sidewalk.