Mausoleum by Justin Scott Page A

Sherman Chevalley, “I got to talk to you. I’ll buy you a beer when I get back.”
    â€œBuy me one now so I’ll stay.”
    â€œGreg,” I called, “A beer for my cousin, please.”
    Instead of saying thank you to me, Sherman looked Donny in the face and said, “Pussy.”
    â€œWhat did you say?” asked Donny.
    â€œPussy. Takin’ all that crap.”
    I got quickly between them and said, “Back off, Sherman.”
    My cousin, a man of few words, immediately threw a punch, which I slipped while managing to kick his feet out from under him. He landed on his back with a crash that shook the building and laughed. “You see that, Greg? The kid’s growing up.”
    Knowing Sherman too well, I was backing away as fast as I could, though not fast enough. Sherman sprang quick as a cobra, wasting a mere giga-second to pick up a bar stool to swing at my head. But if Sherman was a cobra, Wide Greg was a broad-shouldered barrel-chested mongoose. If you were to gather a hundred warring Hells Angels, Pagans, Mongols, and Devils Disciples in a parking lot, the rivals would all agree on one thing: Wide Greg was the fastest biker-bar proprietor on the planet.
    His sawed off baseball bat materialized in his hand. Before Sherman could hit me with the stool, he went down for the second time in two breaths, popped hard, but not so hard as to be concussed thanks to Wide Greg’s fine-tuned sense of proportion. Flat on his back, holding his head, groaning, his eyes grew large with terror. For how many weeks would Wide Greg bar him from the White Birch? How many long, lonely nights would pass alone with the History Channel?
    But Wide Greg did nothing to excess. Order restored, justice dispensed, he slipped his bat back in its scabbard of PVC pipe nailed under the bar, picked up a towel, and resumed polishing.
    I walked Donny out to my car.
    He looked around blearily. “What is this piece of crap?”
    â€œRented from Pink. Put on your seat belt.”
    I got him home and up his front steps, in the door and up the stairs to his bedroom. When I came back down, his mother, a white-haired lady in her seventies with whom he moved in after his last divorce, was in the front parlor wiping her hands on dishtowel. “Oh it’s you. Hello Ben. Donny okay?”
    â€œTouch of flu.”
    She looked at me. “Yes, it’s going around this summer.”
    Mercy Mission accomplished, I went back to the White Birch where I found Sherman yawning over a new beer. “What was all that about?” I asked. “What were you on Donny’s case for?”
    Sherman shrugged.
    â€œAnd why’d you take a swing me? Donny’s your pal, I’m your cousin. What’s going on?”
    â€œStressed, man.”
    â€œOver what?”
    â€œStress.”
    â€œYou’re stressed out by stress?”
    â€œBig joke. You’d be stressed too.”
    â€œParole officer on your case?”
    â€œNaw. He don’t have anything on me…Nothin’ that’ll stick.” He glanced over at Greg polishing and lowered his voice. “Thing is, man, somebody’s leaning on me.”
    â€œWho?” I asked, wondering who would dare.
    â€œI don’t know.”
    â€œWell, what do you mean leaning?”
    â€œTried to kill me.”
    â€œWhat?”
    â€œYou heard me.”
    â€œSomeone’s trying to kill you and you have no idea who it is?”
    â€œNope.”
    I looked at him. He looked back.
    Sherman was a first class liar. His vast arsenal of mendacity had been honed in prison where congenital prowess takes on a professional edge. It made him an excellent judge of character and a keen observer of motive. I did not doubt that someone was trying to kill him. Several of the worlds he inhabited could generate enemies; some, for sure, who regarded death as an appropriate closing argument. But I did doubt that he didn’t know