They Come by Night by Tinnean Page B

damned tired of it.
    “Matt.” He gave a nod, doing his best to appear friendly. That was part of his job too. “Your usual?”
    “No.” Crist looked at him with bloodshot eyes. Jesus, had he been hitting the bottle already? “Give me a Jack, straight up.”
    Ah, shit. It was going to be one of those nights. He took down the bottle of Jack Daniel’s, filled a shot glass, and set it in front of Matt.
    “My grandfather died. I buried him today.”
    “I’m sorry!” Larry felt like an asshole.
    “So am I. He was the only one….” Crist scrubbed a hand over his face, his words petering out.
    “Had he been ill?”
    “No. He was a big man, strong as an ox, and he’d never been sick a day in his life. All of a sudden, he just keeled over.”
    “Heart attack?”
    “I guess. The autopsy report isn’t back yet.” Crist stared dolefully into the glass of whiskey, then picked it up and finished it in one swallow. He pushed the glass toward Larry. “Keep ’em coming.” He laid a couple of twenties on the bar.
    Larry shook his head, but filled the glass. “You want to take it easy, Matt.”
    “Why? No one cares.”
    “That’s not true. You’ve got family.”
    “Ha! That’s a laugh. My mother’s busy with her husband and those bratty twins he gave her. You’d think she forgot she had children before them.”
    Mama’s boy! Larry didn’t say it out loud, but he wanted to. Of all the bars in this town , he thought sourly. Crist had been coming to his bar since he’d reached the legal drinking age, and he complained every time about his half brothers. On the night his mother had given birth to those “bratty twins,” he’d gotten shitfaced, pissing and moaning to Larry and anyone else who would listen that she already had kids, didn’t need more, and besides, she was too old to start another family.
    “It’s like she can’t even be bothered with me. With us.”
    “That’s right, you mentioned siblings.”
    “They’ve got their own lives.” Crist made a scoffing sound.
    He was twenty-nine and still single, and as far as Larry knew, he wasn’t even dating—not a woman, not a man… not that that would have bothered him. He was pretty laid-back when it came to what his patrons did in the privacy of their own bedrooms, and that wasn’t just because it was good business. He figured their sexual preferences were their own, just as Larry’s were… well… his. He looked down the bar at the customer who was dressed as Captain Jack Sparrow, and he sighed. Wouldn’t he like to jump his bones?
    “And anyway”—Crist was still bemoaning the situation—“they were always jealous because Grandfather favored me the most. They didn’t show any respect this afternoon at the funeral home—they barely stayed long enough to say a prayer.” His gaze shifted away, and Larry wondered what had happened there. “And did they come to the cemetery? Go ahead, Larry, ask me that.”
    Larry sighed. “Okay, Matt. Did they—”
    “No, they did not !”
    “That’s families for you. Can’t live with ’em, can’t kill ’em.”
    “I could,” Crist said, his words so low Larry had to strain to hear them, and then he was sorry he had. “I could very easily! Hit me again, Larry.”
    “Make this one last, bud. The way you’re belting ’em back—You get stopped for a DUI, I could stand to lose my license.” Just to make sure, though, he’d be certain to be busy at the other end of the bar when Matt finished this one. Two whiskeys had him telling everyone and his brother his life history, three made him weepy, and four made him aggressive. Hopefully he wouldn’t push too hard for that fourth.
    “See? Everyone’s looking out for number one.” Crist’s voice had become truculent. Had he skipped over weepy and gone directly to aggressive?
    “Look, Matt,” he said as patiently as he could, “I get shut down, you don’t have a place to drink anymore.”
    “I guess.” Crist looked up at him, his eyes