Sacrificial Ground

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He drained the last of the bourbon from the glass, then glanced over his shoulder toward the dance floor. The music had slowed, and the dancers were swaying languidly to the country drone of Waylon Jennings. Strings of yellow lights hung like a web above them, bathing them in a hard light. At other places, pink and blue coils of neon formed themselves into longhorn steers and cowboy hats.

Frank turned back to the bar and tapped his empty glass.

The bartender stepped up. He was dressed in a bright red western shirt with pearl-handled six-guns embroidered on the shoulders. “Another bourbon?” he asked.

Frank nodded.

The bartender filled the glass, and stepped away.

Frank took a drink, then swiveled around on the stool. The place was called The Bottom Rail, and it was not his favorite spot on earth, but the drinks were cheap, the music loud, and the smoke thick and engulfing. Across the dance floor, he could see a large bearded man in bib overalls smoking a Mississippi Crook. It was a zigzag-shaped, whiskey-soaked cigar, and he had not seen one since he’d left the piney woods of the Alabama north country eighteen years ago to come to Atlanta. He remembered a game he’d played with a few friends, something they called “smoke-out,” which was nothing more than six people in a car in the summer and all of them smoking Mississippi Crooks until someone finally broke and ran gasping from the car. Summer had not seemed so terrible then. He’d had the high, cool streams and the shady pine breaks of the mountains. He shook his head slightly, remembering them. But in Atlanta, summer became a nightmare of thick, motionless heat which everything made worse, the steaming pavement and sweltering sidewalks, the glass towers baking in the sun.

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