Blood Red Winter: A Thriller

by J. Conrad

  At around 8:20 I rolled up to The Salt Lick. The parking lot was packed full and I had to find a place way in the back. A welcoming aroma of barbecue drew me through the rows of cars to the front door. The building reminded me of a Texas ranch house with the warm, orange glow of the lights against the stones.

  When I stepped inside, to my right was a giant pit of roasting meat, a fragrant cloud of mesquite hovering above it. I heard the beef sizzling as I walked by, and I craned my neck to see where Kyle and Elizabeth were. I was starving. I hadn’t eaten anything since noon.

  I wove my way toward the back of the restaurant where a few tables had been joined together. Laney and Kyle had their backs toward me. Across from them sat Elizabeth and people from Kyle’s firm I didn’t know. A man about my age, on Elizabeth’s left, stuck his chin out to have a look at me as I approached the table. There wasn’t a seat available next to her, so I took one by Kyle. He turned.

  “Hey, you made it,” he said. He whacked me on the back with the palm his hand. I said hello to him and Laney, and winked at Elizabeth.

  “Yeah,” I said. “Famished.” A tray piled with beef brisket, chicken and sausage links had been placed near this end of the table. A similar tray had been placed at the other side. I took an empty plate from the center and started loading it with meat from the tray.

  “Beer?” Kyle asked. He nodded toward the full pitcher.

  “No thanks,” I said. “I’m getting sick of drinking.” Kyle raised an eyebrow, and I sat back and stared blankly at the carnal feast in front of me. I had said something strange. “Huh,” I said. I started tearing into the beef brisket.

  “Trent,” Elizabeth said. She had that round-eyed look like the night she showed up at Chupacabra. “I didn’t um – I didn’t know that – I’d like you to meet my friend Jared.”

  I almost dropped my fork as my eyes swung over to the guy with the blond hair next to her. That same guy that had been eyeing me when I walked up.

  “Well,” I said. “Hi Jared.” My words came out with utter sarcasm. I extended my hand and Jared shook it, barely looking at me, barely smiling. What a pathetic coward. But what unbelievable nerve for him to show up here.

  I shot Elizabeth a look and she could tell I wanted to know if she’d invited him. “Jared was here with some family when I arrived.”

  Had she asked him to come sit with her? I stared at her for a second longer, then started slowly cutting my sausage with the steak knife. I felt Kyle’s eyes on me and knew he was picking up on things.

  “So you guys know each other?” he asked.

  “No,” I said. I managed to keep the snide out of my voice this time. “This is Elizabeth’s friend.”

  “Oh yeah?” Kyle said, directing his attention toward Elizabeth. “You guys know each other from work or something?”

  “Yes, from work,” Elizabeth said. “Jared works at Hollis with me.”

  She never told me that. How sweet.

  “Cool,” Kyle said. “What you do there?”

  “He fucks with other people’s fiancées, that’s what he does there,” I said to my food. I jerked my head up and glared at the man next to Elizabeth.

  Jared, in his blue striped button-up shirt, replied, “Whoa, damn, I think you got the wrong guy here.” He held up his hands in disgust.

  “Do I, Elizabeth? Do I ‘got the wrong guy?’” Snide was back. I glared at her. She remained femininely mute. Actually, the whole table had quieted down within the last few seconds.

  Kyle said, “Trent, you need to eat. I bet you haven’t eaten since noon.”

  Laney gave us all a warm smile and reached for the meat tray. “Trent, have you tried the chicken? It’s amazing. There’s some sauce over here – I can pass it down to you.”

  My hands, which were still busy slicing the sausage link into neat little coins, shook as I looked back to Elizabeth. “Wrong guy or not?”

  Elizabeth’s bottom lip was hanging there limp, like she was going to throw up.

  “I think we should go outside and talk about this like adults,” Jared said. His eyes met mine for a brief instant. Standing up from the bench seat, he gave Elizabeth a wave and a weak little frown. Like “sorry your fiancé had to show up and call me out, and life just isn’t fair.”

  “Yeah, I think we should,” I said. I set my knife and fork down carefully, so as not to slam them. I could communicate just fine. No need for both of us to act like victims. I stood up and stepped away from the bench, waiting for Jared to go around and start walking.

  “Jared,” Elizabeth said.

  “Trent,” said Kyle. “Come on man, let it go.”

  “There’s nothing to let go,” I said. “He wants to talk outside, we’ll talk outside.” I glared at Jared as he passed around the table and headed out. I proceeded to follow him.

  “Trent!” Elizabeth’s voice was somewhere in the background, but I barely heard it. Kyle grabbed my arm and tried to pull me back to the table, but I was already too far away for him to get a good grip.

  I’m only five-nine, not a bruiser like Officer Spade, but that didn’t mean I was afraid of a little confrontation. Jared sneaked a quick look back as he got to the door and gave it a shove, letting himself out in a draft of icy wind. I heard a flurry of conglomerated ruckus exploding in the background from Kyle and the others. There probably wasn’t any need for them to be concerned. We’d have our words, Jared would leave, and I’d go back to the table.

  I caught up to Jared and slipped out the door after him. I glared at him. “Okay. Let’s talk.”

  Jared snorted. “Yeah. The thing is…” He ran his hand through his hair and glanced at the entrance of the Salt Lick. With no warning, he turned and punched me in the face.

  I staggered back a few steps, unprepared for a guy with product in his hair to hit me out of nowhere like that. I swung at him and he ducked. As he was coming back up, I grabbed him and swung myself around behind him. I got my arm around his neck, squeezing with my bicep and letting my full weight fall on his back.

  Jared’s clumsy motions told me he wasn’t accustomed to fighting. Struggling and thrashing at my head with his left arm and grasping at his constricted neck with his right, he slammed me, back first, into the heavy metal doors. They resounded with a clanging thud and one swung open momentarily. The hinges squealed and the metal push bar shuddered. Then Jared fell down on his knees and I let go of him. I took him by the forehead and slammed the back of his head against the door.

  Jared’s body wavered at the shock of this. He had a moment of disorientation, then he sprang forward and swung at my face. I ducked and punched him square in the jaw. My fist cracked into it nicely and I heard his breath come out in a grunt. He said something which I didn’t hear and I started unloading on him, pounding him in the face again and again. Sometimes he successfully blocked me with his hands and arms. He got in a good swing and smashed his fist into my left ear, which hurt like hell. Then he got in another one on my left eye.

  I shoved his head into one of the doors again, and he got his hands around my neck in a death grip. I poked my thumb into his eye. He screamed bloody murder, swung his foot out and kicked my legs out from under me. I sailed into the pavement, landing right on my tailbone – so hard I wondered if I’d be able to get up again. God, it hurt so bad I thought I’d broken my spine.

  With his face contorted in a dry sob, Jared threw himself on top of me. He started wailing away on my face with everything he had. He got in maybe a dozen really good, solid licks to my left cheek. I took a cheap shot and jabbed him hard in the groin with my knee. Well, no cheaper than what he’d been doing with Elizabeth.

  At first he was frozen and he stopped assailing me. Finally he was able to get a few gasps of air. He fell forward and caught himself by his hand on the cement, with his chest against mine.

  “Ahhhh, you piece of shit,” he said into my ear. It was cruel, after all, that I’d defended myself after he hit me with no warning.

  I wrenched my k
nee up to my chest, got my foot against his stomach and pushed hard, with enough force to get him off me and dump him on the concrete. He lay there on his side, immobilized. He protectively cradled his package while blood dribbled out of his busted mouth. Tears ran down his swollen face.

  A flood of about twenty people came bursting through the doors. They were all set to grab us and stop the fight but it was already over. Three big guys got between us even though we lay on the pavement, unmoving.

  “Okay,” the guy hovering over me said. He had a goatee and a wife beater t-shirt. And those motorcycle boots that bikers wear. “You guys are done.”

  I wanted to laugh, but I couldn’t. I was hurting too bad. “Obviously,” I said. I was afraid to move. I wondered if my pelvis was shattered.

  Elizabeth rushed out from behind the crowd and looked back and forth between Jared and me, her face twisting into various expressions of horror. “Trent. Oh my God.” Looking at both of us, it wasn’t difficult to see that Jared had sustained most of the damage – at least most of the damage that was plainly visible.

  “Can you get up?” the guy with the goatee asked.

  “I don’t know,” I said. I tried to raise my back and a sharp, splitting pain shot through my tailbone. I gritted my teeth, groaning and laying my body down again, turning on my right side.

  Elizabeth was staring at me, but she crouched down next to Jared. She put her hand on his shoulder. I looked away; I didn’t want to see any more. My stomach started a free fall like I was trapped in a sinking elevator. I felt a real good dose of reality coming on. I stared up at the dark sky. Unlike in rural Georgetown, here the city lights obscured the stars.

  Kyle came to stand beside me and looked me over. I know that only because I moved my hand long enough to see part of his shoe. He didn’t say anything. It seemed like a long time passed, a period in which I listened to all the people around me talking. Some spoke in hushed voices, and occasionally some woman laughed. I heard things like “idiot” and exclamations about what was wrong with us. Most of the guests had no idea who started the fight or what happened. Only those from Kyle’s table actually saw me follow Jared out the door. After a moment, Kyle knelt down.

  “Can you get up?” he asked.

  “No,” I said.

  “Okay. I’ll call an ambulance,” he said.

  “Wait, I’ll try again,” I said. I managed to get my elbow out and felt it grind into the concrete. I pushed against it and tried to lift myself. The incredible bone-deep pain raced up from my tailbone and into my spinal cord in electric waves.

  I heard someone yell. That someone might have been me, but I wasn’t sure. My head rolled back, my body went slack and my arms fell limp on the ground.

  * * * * *

  I came around slowly. A rhythmic beeping sound was coming from somewhere to my right. That must be my alarm going off. I pried open my eyes just long enough to see how blindingly bright the room was. Did I oversleep? I must have got pretty hammered last night. I felt a grogginess I couldn’t shake off, like someone had slipped me a drug.

  Trying to stretch, I dragged something along which pinched me in the crook of my arm. I opened my eyes to see an unfamiliar paneled ceiling. I tried to sit up, but couldn’t. I lifted up my left arm to see that an IV tube had been inserted and secured with medical tape. I turned my head and looked around the room, at the heart monitor, the bag of fluid, the white walls and the sink. A curtain which had been pushed back. I was in the hospital.

  Kyle had told me he was going to call an ambulance. I swore and closed my eyes again. I had really done it. The fight with Jared – that was real.

  I needed to find my cell phone, but as I was searching for a likely table, the swinging door came open. A nurse with short blonde hair bustled in.

  “You’re awake,” she said. She smiled and began fiddling with my IV. “I was just coming to check on you. How are you feeling?”

  I didn’t know how I was feeling. “Can’t feel much of anything.”

  The nurse laughed. “Well good. The meds are working then.”

  “What happened? Did I break something?”

  “You broke your coccyx. Actually more like shattered it. That’s the bone on the end of your tailbone. It was damaged badly enough that it had to be surgically removed,” she said.

  “What about my back? Did I do anything to my spine?”

  “No, your back looks okay. You probably just strained it. But let us know if you have any pain or discomfort,” she said.

  “So a part of my tailbone is gone now? What does that mean?”

  “If you mean as far as getting around and living a normal life, you’ll be fine. I mean, not right away, you’re going to need bed rest and then you might use a cane for a while. But once you heal you’ll be just fine,” she said. “You’re lucky though. That was quite a nasty fall you had.”

  I finally looked at her name tag: Alice.

  “Yeah,” I said. I felt like a fraud, like I had somehow manipulated my way into the hospital and shouldn’t be here. I wondered if the pleasant nurse actually knew what happened. She might not be so pleasant then. “Is anyone in the waiting room to see me?”

  “No, not that I know of. No one’s come to the surgery desk. But I’d be happy to check. I can even page someone if you like.”

  A medicine ball dropped into the bottom of my gut. Logic dictated that Elizabeth should be out there, waiting to come see me to make sure I was okay. The memory of her crouching down by Jared as I blacked out didn’t help. Maybe she was in another part of this same hospital, holding his hand and speaking soothing words to his pretty face which he probably moisturized daily with Ralph Lauren after shave gel. I wanted to throw up.

  “That would be great. Could you page Elizabeth Reinhardt? Just in case she’s on this floor,” I said.

  “I sure can,” Alice said. She slipped out the same swinging door through which she entered and I heard my fiancée’s name on the overhead pager. Alice promptly reappeared. “I’ll let you know if she turns up.”

  In my fog of numbness from the anesthetic, I questioned Alice enough to orient myself. She told me I was in Seton Southwest in Austin, which was about fifteen minutes from The Salt Lick. Alice estimated I’d be staying only a few days and explained what my recovery would be like. I’d be taking prescription pain killers. I’d be taking stool softeners so that using the can wouldn’t be painful. For right now, though, I’d use the bed pan. There was a special doughnut cushion I’d need to buy so that I wouldn’t put pressure on the surgery site when I sat down. Then there were payment arrangements which needed to be made. I’d been admitted and operated on for Pete’s sake, and that wasn’t cheap. I was grateful to have my health insurance, but there would still be a copay.

  Alice handed me a plastic bag which contained yesterday’s clothing and the rest of my things: belt, wallet, phone, keys. I checked my cell to see who had called. Not so much as a text from Kyle. Elizabeth had left a message.

  “It’s me… I’m just calling to see if you’re okay. Call me back. (pause) Or text me.”

  I couldn’t blame her for being disgusted with me. I was pretty disgusted with myself too. The no-communication-whatsoever from Kyle, though, was an outright slap in the face, which let me know how bad I messed up. I typed out a text, apologizing, then deleted it. I pulled up his icon and pressed “call.” He answered within one ring.

  “Yeah,” he said. I wondered if I had misdialed.

  “Kyle. Hey man, I just want to say I am really sorry about –”

  “You just want to say you’re really sorry about starting a fight at the Salt Lick in front of my boss? And most of my co-workers? Is that what you’re sorry for?”

  I lay there holding the phone to my ear, numb from the meds, but frozen by his reaction. In over twenty years of friendship, I’d be hard-pressed to recall a time Kyle had been angry with me. Usually even my worst behavior seemed to roll off him like water off a duck’s back.

  “I didn’
t exactly start it,” I said. I stared stupidly at the white wall. “He hit me out of nowhere, and –”

  “And you’re really sorry? You’re really sorry for almost blinding someone that you don’t even know? You’re really sorry for committing a crime? Do you understand that? You committed a crime. Assault and battery. That is the reality of what you did, and what you did was illegal. And you want to know what the fucked up part is? This isn’t the first time! It’s what you do. And I’m no longer going to be a part of it.”

  I pulled my free hand across my length of my face. Stubble was already forming around my mouth and chin.

  “I understand,” I said.

  “Do you? Do you understand?”

  I tried to clear my throat. My eyes felt tight. “Yeah, I do.”

  “I really hope so. For Elizabeth’s sake, especially. Good bye, Trent.”

  It felt like he slammed the phone in my ear. The silence shredded my eardrums, like a mallet to a bronze gong. I watched the words “call ended” disappear, leaving my Dallas Cowboys star.

  Alice popped in and leaned her head in my direction, her stethoscope swinging at her chest. “Did you get a chance to call who I paged?”

  I cleared my throat again. Kyle hadn’t even asked if I was okay. “Not yet. I was just talking to – I just called someone real quick.”

  Alice squinted at me. “No problem. You’re still doing okay, right? Unless you need something, I’m going to go ahead and move you now.”

  “I’m fine.” No need to be a chump in front of a complete stranger. “Move me?”

  “Uh huh. This is post op, but since you’re stable and responding well, Doctor Linneman wants me to move you to the second floor.”

  “Oh. Sure, yeah.” If it were up to me I’d be moving myself right out the front door. I pushed the heels of my hands into the bed, again attempting to push myself up. It wasn’t happening.