Chapter 12

Gunshots broke out near Roger’s Tavern, waking up Charles and Mike first, followed by Joey, Bill, and quickly the rest of them. They had slept in a bit, until noon in fact, but now the popping sound of a Thompson submachine gun burst through the air, along with the crash of a door kicked in and the growl of a very angry man in his mid-twenties. He had reddish brown hair, unkempt, he smelled like cheap wine, and he had a lot of stubble on his face. He stood in a dirty gray trenchcoat, with a sweatshirt and dirty, wrinkled, faded blue jeans on, along with leather boots that had seen their better days. He also wore a Crocodile Dundee-style hat, but he was no Paul Hogan, not even Australian at all.

“James, leave us alone, okay? We’re over. Face it, okay? Just go wherever you like, but leave us the fuck alone!” Nicole tried to reason with her now ex-boyfriend, a very drunk and angry James Cavendish.

“That’s crazy talk! You’re my woman, Nicki! I own you! You belong together, soulmates for life, and I refuse to give you up! You’re to mate with me and have my spawn!” James shouted angrily, as he popped off another burst.

“Mister, you had best leave us the hell alone, or I’m going to put this round inside you like nobody’s business! The lady doesn’t want you anymore! Leave her be! Leave us be! I didn’t fight Taliban dickheads over in Afghanistan for years just to let you rape and kidnap a woman! That’s a lot like those pricks over there and how they treated women. She’s not a cow! You can’t own her, okay?” Mike warned the man, narrowing his eyes at him while training an AR-15 on him, semi-auto, of course.

“Not okay! It’s Kismet! We belong to each other! She’s mine! Give her back to me and I’ll leave you alone! All I want is my Nicki!” James hissed at Mike, but his aim was off due to his drunken state, so when he fired off another round, it only hit the waste basket, thankfully.

“Go away, James! I don’t want you anymore! Accept it! We’re done! We’re through!” Nicole tried to reason with him, but he wouldn’t listen.

James fired off one more round, and unfortunately, it hit Linus in the thigh. Al, Doc, and the ladies rushed to pull him aside and stop the bleeding as best they could, but it was touch and go whether or not it struck the femoral artery, so things were hectic a bit. James, however, didn’t get such a chance. Mike and Charles both hit him, Mike with the AR-15, Charles with the 12 gauge shotgun, and to finish him, Joey stood over him to put a single round from a. 357 magnum revolver in his head. He wasn’t taking any chances of letting James survive this to trouble them again.

“He’s dead, thank God,” Bill pronounced James deceased, adding, “Let’s get his body out of here somewhere, pour gasoline on it, and set it ablaze. We don’t need rotting corpses around here at all, do we?”

“Good idea. And as bad an apple as he was, I will still say prayers for his soul. I’m a rabbi. It’s what I do. A very quick service, but that’s for the best,” Rupert offered.

“Agreed, now lend me a hand, Rabbi,” Bill asked him, Rupert smiling sadly as he pitched in to carry the body out of the tavern and down the road to an empty alley near an abandoned barber shop.

Joey brought the gasoline, Larry the matches, and the group listened to Rupert quietly say an interfaith prayer of sorts, not being sure of the man’s religion, if any.

“Let the troubled and tormented soul of James Cavendish, free of his obsession with his former companion, have peace at last. We know that he was not evil, just sad and ill. We regret that we had no choice but to slay him, and having done so, we wish him peace and goodwill as he returns to his Maker and his body to the bosom of the Earth. Let the flames set his spirit free,” Rupert intoned, as Joey doused the carcass with gasoline and Larry struck the match that began the cremation.

“That was beautiful, if sad, but if we ever have to kill Powerball, he ain’t getting no funeral, not even like that one,” Bill commented, “I love Nicole, but we did owe it to James to treat him like a decent human being, even if he wasn’t one toward the end. He wasn’t a monster, just a jealous, paranoid man. Powerball is just a prick.”

“Amen!” Mike chimed in, while Charles clapped Bill on the back.

“Let’s go back,” Rupert urged them, “The smell of burnt and rotting flesh does a number on my stomach.”

“Here, here!” Joey agreed as they returned to find that Linus was alive and well, Doc having stopped the bleeding with a tourniquet.

“Luckily, James couldn’t hit the broadside of a barn, as they say, not in his drunken state. Even as unfortunate as the bullet wound was and is, he missed the femoral artery, albeit by mere inches. Linus will survive, but he’ll take a while to recover fully, and he’s lost a bit of blood, so he’ll need some iron pills and red meat ... and clam chowder. That and spinach or broccoli. In other words, a high-iron diet and supplement regimen. He’ll also have trouble walking in the future. He might very well have to use a cane for the rest of his life, since the bullet tore through some nerves, muscles, and bone.

“Linus, take it easy on that leg for a bit. There will be a time for physical therapy, but it’s too soon. Al, you’re on bedside duty until further notice. Take good care of your man. I’ll keep tabs, don’t worry, being the closest thing to an actual doctor that we have. Hopefully, Moon will keep helping me out, acting as our sorta nurse here,” Doc turned to his fiancee, Moon Williams, who nodded and smiled as she kissed him.

“Not even twenty-one years of age, and already he’s our medicine man. I’m proud as hell of him. It’s one thing to kill, and that’s sometimes necessary, but healing is a tougher, trickier art. He might not have an MD, but precious few do these days. My man is a physician none the less, even if he’s learned his trade the hard way,” Moon beamed with pride at her lover, an amateur surgeon who nevertheless proved to have a lot of natural healing skills.

“He’ll be a professional practitioner at this rate before you know it. I’m incredibly proud of my son. He has just always known how to stitch people up and heal and nurse them. He was relieving pain and suffering when he was just ten, even if it was just the neighborhood cats and dogs back then. He was a lifeguard back when he was eighteen right after high school, too. He saved two boys and three girls that summer, in fact. He was not in it just to stare at girls in bikinis, though he probably did some of that, being a teenage male and all,” Carrie grinned as she kissed her son on the forehead, not as a lover, just as a mother.

“It takes a lot of empathy and compassion for others to be a great doctor or nurse, and Doc has that for sure. It’s a good thing, too, with babies coming out before you know it. But for me, it matters most that he saved my boyfriend’s life. I’m never going to forget that fact,” Al hugged Doc, very pleased with him.

“Yes, thank you so much for saving me, Doc!” Linus managed to say, though Al and the others kept him from sitting up just yet.

“Stay down for now, babe. You need your rest. I guess that we need to stay here for a day or two before moving out, what do you say?” Al urged them all as he kissed Linus softly on the lips.

“Agreed. We could use the rest, anyway, but especially poor Linus. He’s been through quite an ordeal. Say a week, just to be safe, no longer than that, because we don’t want to risk anything with Powerball and his associates. A week should be fine, as long as we hit the ground running when the morning of the seventh day comes,” Joey proposed.

“I agree. That gives me time to say goodbye to this town properly and gather up some of what I thought that I had lost thanks to James. Thank you for ridding me of him, even if I didn’t like that he had to die. And sorry, Linus, that you got shot in the process. If you weren’t gay, I’d make it up to you with sex, but since you don’t care for women, will the largest piece of my mother’s lasagna recipe work for you? I know how to really do the ricotta right, I promise you!” Nicole told them, giving each of them hugs and kisses.