Rust On the Razor by Mark Richard Zubro

and you’ll wait in the car. He’ll come out with me. Maybe you better wait in the backseat.”
    The car bucked and rocked over the ruts and potholes in the dirt road for more than a mile and a half. We stopped in front of a shack maybe fifty feet long and twenty-five feet wide. The parking lot was loose gravel and had three or four cars and at least thirty pickup trucks in it.
    Unease lurked at the fine edge of my consciousness.
Could Violet be leading me out here for a convenient lynching? It had been years since she was close to Scott. Maybe this was her chance for revenge. I decided if more than one person came out of the shack heading in my direction, I’d run out of the car and take my chances in the woods.
    She seemed to sense my fear, because she leaned over and patted my arm. “It’s going to be fine. I’ll be out in a few minutes, but I’ll leave the keys in the ignition. If you feel uncomfortable, tear out of here fast.”
    The windows of the bar were wide open. Through the screens I got a clear view inside. If I lived here, I’d have preferred an establishment that kept the windows closed and the air-conditioning on high. I turned the ignition to power, lowered the window on my side from the master control on the driver’s side, then flicked the key back off.
    I listened to the calls of birds I didn’t recognize and crickets and frogs and the hum of insects. Blue-lit electric bug-zappers hung from the opposite corners of the bar’s roof overhang. The sound of death zaps punctuated the night air. The noise of the jukebox in the bar reached my ears easily, although Violet had parked as far away from the light as possible. A wall of bushes loomed on my left. Violet had put the car under a tree so it was in even deeper shadow. Through the branches and leaves I could see overhead a nearly full moon shining amid the millions of stars you can’t see from the city. Back to nature. How lovely. At the moment, for my money you could pave the entire state of Georgia and turn it into a parking lot.
    The minutes passed. I could see Violet inside speaking to a small crowd of men. I thought I caught glimpses of Cody with a cue stick in his hand.
    Most of the people I saw inside were white men in jeans and T-shirts, some with logos advertising particular beers, rock groups, or unpleasant things they’d like to do to their
enemies. A few women, both black and white, sat at the bar. They wore the same outfits as the men.
    Three guys appeared in the screen-door entryway and gazed out at the night. Were they looking toward me? Suddenly one of them burst from the door. He took several steps in my direction, abruptly turned to his right, and ran to the far side of the building. The sounds of him being sick added dissonance to the symphony of the velvet Georgia night. His buddies laughed uproariously, helped him to a dirty brown pickup, and tossed him in the back. They climbed into the cab and left.
    The remnants of the air-conditioning had all seeped from the car and I’d begun to sweat. I pulled my back away from the seat and yanked at my already damp shirt. The screen swung open and two guys walked to the opposite side of the parking lot. They swung themselves into a red pickup, turned on the lights, revved the motor, and drove off in a swirl of gravel. What if they were going to block my escape? I became more uneasy.
    Violet finally appeared in the doorway with her arm around Cody. The T-shirt that clung to his broad shoulders and enwrapped his slender torso said “Go Tech.” His jeans clung to his narrow hips. He nuzzled at her neck but seemed reluctant to leave. Several raucous calls came from inside. These had to do with how lucky Cody was.
    I switched the dome light off so it wouldn’t come on when the car door opened. I moved silently out of the front and crawled into the backseat. I inched my head up so I could see. I felt childish and stupid crouching