Dressed as he was in that odd outfit--black wool suit, high collar white shirt, string tie, riding boots, wide-rimmed leather hat—the smallish, narrow shouldered, goateed stranger stuck out like a sore thumb among the Saturday night crowd of burly rednecks at the Wahoo roadside cafe.
He was seated at the bar sipping a ginger ale, his eyes fixed on the TV set on the wall behind the bar, watching the evening news about a shooting in the nearby town of Rock City, when Billy Joe Roper, all six-foot-six, 280 lbs of him, strode into the cafe.
The room went silent at the sight of the big man. As if on cue, the redneck patrons lowered or shifted their gaze, to avoid eye contact with him, as casually as they could, trying not show fear, though to little avail. Only Studs, the bartender and owner the cafe, dared a brief eye-contact. The fact that the Wahoo was his sole means of income, a family business going back three generations, instilled in Studs a measure of courage. His index finger was already inching toward the alarm button under the counter, ready to push it at the first sign of trouble, though he suspected it wouldn’t have done much good, as everyone for miles around, security guards and cops included, knew how much harm the big man could wreak if pissed off beyond his abnormally low tolerance level. Billy Joe Roper was not someone to mess with.
“Beer. Tall draft,” Billy Joe ordered, bellying up to the bar and pounding on the counter with the palm of his huge hand.
Studs served Billy Joe his beer. The big man took a deep swig, glanced around the room, then noticing the oddly-dressed stranger, decided to have some fun with him.
“That your old Mustang in the parking lot? The one with the out-of-state plates?”
The stranger took his time responding. “The one with the Arizona plates? Yes, that’s my vehicle,” he said dismissively, his eyes remaining fixed on the TV. He had sensed what the big man was up to, and was deliberately, tauntingly, ignoring his presence.
The loud talk in the cafe fell to a near whisper.
“The reason, I ask,” Billy Joe said, raising his voice, “is that car of yours is parked too fuckin’ close to my truck. ”
The stranger again took his time responding. “Too close? That can’t be. I don’t recall there being any vehicles parked on either side of the space where I parked my car.”
“Well, there is one now,” Billy Joe snapped. “So you better get you little ass out there and move your goddam car.” Then chuckling derisively: “I wouldn’t want that piece of shit to roll sideways and scratch up my new truck.”
The stranger turned slowly to the big man towering next to him, and for a long minute looked him up and down, as one would a store window mannequin.
“Is that a National Rifle Association patch I see on your jacket?”
“Yeah, that’s what this is, an official NRA patch,” Billy Joe said, haughtily stroking the patch and flicking the stranger a contemptuous sneer. But the look in his eyes was one of self-doubt. By answering rather than asking questions he felt he was letting the stranger take control. The stranger did not seem at all cowed by him. The cafe patrons got the same feeling and ceased talking to each other, their attention now drawn entirely to the two men at the bar.
“Then you must be pretty familiar with firearms,” the stranger said cooly. .
“Firearms? Hell yes. I’m familiar with firearms, Got me a whole collection at home. Everything from 22 target pistols to AK 47’s. And in my truck, there I keep a deer rifle in the gun rack, and .44 Magnum under the seat. Both loaded. Wouldn’t hesitate to use them if anybody gave me any shit.” Then pointing an index finger at the stranger in a shooting gesture: “That answer your question? Asshole!”
Suddenly there was gun in the stranger’s hand. A long-barreled Colt .45 revolver, an antique piece, the kind seen only Western movies. Although all eyes in the cafe had been on the stranger as he spoke, nobody had seen him draw the gun. It had simply materialized in his hand.
The stranger flicked open the cylinder of the Colt .45, showing Billy Joe the six rounds inside, then flicking the cylinder shut, he twirled the gun, all with one hand, in one deft motion, and slowly put the gun back in the holster under his jacket from which he had drawn it faster than the human eye could detect. Then looking Billy Joe hard in the eye, said: “You tell me that you know a lot about guns and are not reluctant to use them. Right?”
“Yeah” the big man muttered weakly. The sight of the Colt in the stranger’s hand had fairly taken all the aggressiveness out him.
“Then, I assume,” the stranger continued, “that you have read all about—or, if you can’t read, at least seen it in movies—the gun dueling ritual of the Old West.”
Billy Joe said nothing, the look of self-doubt in his eyes now verging on fear.
“The code back then,” the stranger went on, “was simple enough. Today, if a man is disrespected by another, his only recourse is take the other guy to court, at a considerable expense, or, as it usually happens, forget about it. Reputation and honor mean nothing nowadays.”
The stranger took a sip of ginger ale and, with a handkerchief pulled from his pocked wiped his goatee. “But in the Old West it was different. If a man offended another, the one offended had the right, the manly obligation, really, to challenge the offender to a gun duel.”
A few minutes back, when Studs saw the Colt .45 materialize in the stranger’s hand, he was going to ask him to leave the cafe, but then, fascinated by what the man was saying and Billy Joe’s reaction to it, he held back, curious to see, along with the patrons, how the confrontation would play out.
“The two duelists,” the stranger lectured on, “would stand facing each other as close or far apart as they wished. There was no hard set distance rule. Then, at an eye signal from one or the other, they would draw their weapons and shoot, and keep shooting until one of them fell, dead or wounded. And woe to one left standing if he tried to finish off the other at close range. The on-lookers would kill him on the spot. The unwritten ethic had it that once one of them fell, the score was settled. Justice. Old West style.”
The stranger gazed around at his audience, giving them time to reflect, then tuning to Billy Joe. “You,” he said, stressing the word, “You have disrespected me in front of all these people, for no reason that I can see. I was just sitting here, watching the news, bothering no one, when you came in.”
Not longer intimidated by Billy Joe’s presence, some of the patrons nodded in agreement
“Well, mister, being an old-fashioned man of honor I can’t let that pass. You took it too far. You, therefore, give me no choice but to call you out to a duel, you and me, in the parking lot. You say you keep a Magnum in your truck and are not reluctant to use it? Well, I’ll give you a fair chance to prove it.”
The stranger paid for his ginger ale, adding a generous tip, and without turning to look back at Billy Joe, the gesture telling the big man that he was beneath looking at, he said to him. “Meet you outside.”
The collective gaze of the patrons followed the stranger as he exited the cafe. The smallish, narrow-shouldered, goateed, oddly-dressed fellow had in their eyes morphed into figure far more formidable than the big man at the bar had ever been.
A balding man with a gray pony tail who had once got beaten up by Billy Joe for having the gall to send him a bill for a job he had done for him, came up the bar and sat on the stool vacated by the stranger. “Well, Billy Joe,” the man said mockingly. “Like the little feller said. Here’s your chance to prove yourself. Don’t keep him waiting.”
“Yeah,” put in another former victim. “Go out there and show us the stuff you’re really made of. We wanna see it.”
“Yeah,” egged a third. “You’re an NRA man. Good with guns. Ain’t you? Well, don’t be scared. You can take him.”
Studs the bartender had leaned over counter to heap some mocking comments of his own, but seeing the anguished expression on Billy Joe’s face, and what appeared to be wet spot on his jeans, he took pity. “O.K. Fellas, Let him be. He done had enough.”
Billy Joe Roper plopped down on a stool and sat there, all six-foot-six, 280 lbs. of him, shaking his head and muttering incoherently. Some thought he was crying.
An hour or so later, the big man left the cafe through the back door. Relieved to see the stranger's Mustang gone from the parking lot, he got into his truck and drove home. He never again showed his face at the Wahoo, or at any other cafe in the vicinity. And the stranger, nobody in those parts ever saw or heard of him again. Just as the Colt .45 had materialized in the man’s hand, so had the man himself disappeared.
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