The cowboy looked at the door and then at Ray-Ray as though for confirmation.

“Mais oui,” Ray-Ray volunteered. “On the nother side that door, they got some jeune filles for forty dollars what look like them Dallas Cowgirl. But you got to be fast to get past the old man at the door who ask too many damn question.”

The cowboy motioned to Zumo, who came up and killed a roach on the bar with an empty bottle. “Is there a whorehouse through there or what?”

Zumo stared at him just one second before answering. “Shit yeah, man. We got a whole Comrade Hilton back there.” The bartender walked away to check a cooler and Bucky Tyler slid off his padded stool.

Ray-Ray leaned close to Paul’s ear. “Hey, man, if he walks out that door, it’ll be like walking outside a spaceship, only worse, you know, when you think about the drop-off and that pile of garbage.”

Paul remembered that Scadlock threw his crab shells, fish guts, and tons of bottles and cans right out the back door into the bayou. There was a healthy five-foot drop to the swamp pit of glass, tin, and rot.

Bucky pulled his hat down over his eyes and sucked in his little paunch. Ray-Ray and Paul kept an eye on his back as he walked to the door, opened it with a flourish, and stepped out into the blackness, disappearing instantly. They heard the rattle of cans and the tinkle of bottle glass. One or two bar patrons turned to look through the open door as a gaggle of moths trembled into the light. Paul and Ray-Ray drew on their beer bottles and watched the front door. After a full five minutes, the cowboy appeared, his hat gone, his arms scratched up, a red gash over his nose.

“Hello, baby,” Ray-Ray said. “You get you a quickie?”

Paul began taking off his shirt. “People from Texas never could stay in the saddle long.”

Bucky Tyler walked up to the bar and kicked Ray-Ray off his stool with a pointed boot, and Paul grabbed his leg, spilling him like a wheelbarrow. When he got up, Paul hit him square in the face, but the cowboy took it and returned two more, putting the machinist on the floor. The punches were like gunshots coming out of a foggy night, and Paul became angry with himself that he was too drunk to put up his best fight against the man who had dated his wife. Before he could get to his feet, Tyler turned and shoved Ray-Ray against a table. Paul grabbed his shoulder and the cowboy turned for him. They traded punches and slipped to the floor, wrestling in spilled beer and cigarette ashes. Paul got in three hard uppercuts, and the cowboy began to holler that he had had enough.

“Hol’ up, now. You gonna kill me.”

Paul stood and staggered back against the bar, his body struggling with beer and the electric excitement of the fight. A flash at the cowboy’s hip told him to jump and a skinning knife arced past his stomach. Paul gave Ray-Ray a flicker of a look and they ran, putting a heavy plank table between them and the cowboy, picking it up and sailing it off in his direction. Bucky Tylor dropped his knife to fend off the flying furniture, which ironed him out against the floor. Paul and Ray-Ray each grabbed a boot and dragged him into the men’s room, a foul and slimy place with no urinal, just two boards ripped out of the floor next to the rear wall, Bayou LaFont gleaming darkly below. “Listen up, son of a bitch,” Paul told him. “This is what Cajuns do to shit-heads who pull knives.” Ray-Ray put his foot on the man’s stomach and Paul towed him next to the wall and twisted him through the hole. There was a watery splat, followed by a little twangy moan.