Burning Bright - By Ron Rash Page 0,52
sickle in one hand and a black-and-white checkered victory flag in the other. The symbolism is unclear, except that anyone wearing such a cap, especially while gripping a thirty-six-ounce ball bat, is not someone you want to displease.
Sitting beside Hubert is his best friend, Joe Don Byers, formally Yusef Byers before he had his first name legally changed. While it seems every white male between fourteen and twenty-five is trying to look and act black, Joe Don is going the opposite way, a twenty-three-year-old black man trying to be a Skoal-dipping, country-music-listening good ole boy. But like the white kids with their ball caps turned sideways and pants hanging halfway down their asses, Joe Don can’t quite pull it off. The hubcap-sized belt buckle and snakeskin boots pass muster, but he wears his Stetson low over his right eye, the brim’s rakish tilt making him look more like a cross-dressing pimp than a cowboy. His truck is another giveaway, a Toyota two-wheel drive with four mud grips and a Dale Earnhardt sticker on the back windshield, unaware that any true Earnhardt fan would rather ride a lawn mower than drive anything other than a Chevy.
On the opposite side of the bar, Rodney is taking whatever people hand him—crumpled bills, handfuls of nickels and dimes, payroll checks, wedding rings, wristwatches. One time a guy offered a gold filling he’d dug out of his mouth with a pocketknife. Rodney didn’t even blink.
Watching him operate, it’s easy to believe Rodney’s simply an updated version of Flem Snopes, the kind of guy whose first successful business venture is showing photos of his naked sister to his junior high peers. But that’s not the case at all. Rodney graduated from the University of South Carolina with a degree in social work. He wanted to make the world better, but, according to Rodney, the world wasn’t interested.
His career as a social worker ended the same week it began. Rodney had borrowed a church bus to take some of Columbia’s disadvantaged youth to a Braves game. Halfway to Atlanta the teenagers mutinied. They beat Rodney with a tire iron, took his money and clothes, and left him naked and bleeding in a ditch. A week later, the same day Rodney got out of the hospital, the bus was found half submerged in the Okefenokee Swamp. It took another month to round up the youths, several of whom had procured entry-level positions in a Miami drug cartel.
Rodney says running The Last Chance is a philosophical statement. Above the cash register he’s plastered one of those Darwinian bumper stickers with the fish outline and four evolving legs. Rodney’s drawn a speech bubble in front of the fish’s mouth. Exterminate the brutes, the fish says.
Advice Rodney seems to have taken to heart. There’s only one mixed drink in The Last Chance, what Rodney calls the Terminator. It’s six ounces of Jack Daniel’s and six ounces of Surrey County moonshine and six ounces of Sam’s Choice tomato juice. Some customers claim a dash of lighter fluid is added for good measure. No one, not even Hubert, has ever drunk more than three of these and remained standing. It usually takes only two to put the drinkers onto the floor, tomato juice dribbling down their chins like they’ve been shot in the mouth.
When we finish “Roarin’” only three or four people clap. A lot of the crowd doesn’t know the song or, for that matter, who Gary Stewart was. Radio and Music Television have anesthetized them to the degree that they can’t recognize the real thing, even when it comes from their own gene pool.
And speaking of gene pools, I suddenly see Everette Evans, the man that, to my immense regret, is twenty-five percent of the genetic makeup of my son. He’s standing in the doorway, a camcorder in his hands. Everette lingers on Hubert a few seconds, then the various casualties of the evening before finally honing in on me.
I lay down the guitar and make my way toward the entrance. Everette’s still filming until I’m right up on him. He jerks the camera down to waist level and points it at me like it’s an Uzi.
“What are you up to, Everette?” I say.
He grins at me, though it’s one of those grins that is one part malice and one part nervous, like a politician being asked to explain a hundred thousand dollars in small bills he recently deposited in the bank.
“We’re just getting some additional evidence as to your parental