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upstairs in the apartment over the bar, eating dinner with his pregnant wife.
    “Sid! Goddamn it, I’m empty again! C’mere.”
    “You’ve had enough, Jake. Coffee, or nothin’.”
    “Fuck you! I’m the best customer you’ve got here. The rest of these dirt diggers come to diddle the women. Me, I’m takin’ no chances; locked up my cows, too. Hee, hee, hee.”
    “Shut your face, rummy, before I push it in.”
    The voice of doom had emanated from a hulking miner whose buttocks reached to the stools on either side of him, a man-ape with red cap and plaid shirt. The man neglected his half-empty beer stein and drank straight from the pitcher. He gave Jake a baleful stare.
    Jake Price was offended, and not the least bit frightened. “Ohhh, what a big man you are! Why don’t you threaten me when I’m sober?”
    “You name the time and place, big mouth, and I’ll be there with a pick.”
    “You’ll need more than that if you expect to—”
    “That’s enough from you, Jake! One more word, so help me Christ I’ll never serve you a drop again, and Pete will back me up. We’re both tired of your shit!” Sid leaned over the bar and grabbed Jake’s glass, sweeping the place clean in front of him. It got quiet for just a minute, people looking to see what Jake would do, but finally the man just put his head down on the bar, and started to cry.
    “Oh shit,” muttered Sid. He washed Jake’s glass in the suds, then filled it again for Sally, who had given up on the cooking and was now waiting tables. People were banging glasses on those tables, and Sally couldn’t move fast enough. That was it, Sid decided. Time to yell for help. He grabbed onto the rope hanging from the ceiling at the back of the bar and tugged on it frantically in Pete’s prearranged code for help. Just as he finished tugging, there was a crash and Jake’s head disappeared beneath the bar. Sid moved fast and pulled him up woozily from the floor, holding him from behind long enough to get him back on the bar stool and hoping he wouldn’t puke on the bar. The smell of booze, sweat and even hair on the animal heads mounted around on the lacquered pine walls didn’t help any, and there was no other place to put him because the dozen tables in the place were all filled up.
    It was getting ugly: glasses pounding on tables, big men yelling at Sally for service, and the stink of grease smoke in the air when suddenly the front door swung open so hard it slammed back against the wall, and everyone screamed in unison at the man whose huge frame filled the doorway.
    “Pete!” they all shouted.
    Peter Pelegeropoulis flashed black eyes and a heart-softening smile from his wide, square face, raised two massive arms above his head and did a little twisting, swaying dance into the room. Humming to himself, he passed close to each table, picking up women like a magnet, two of the bigger, more aggressive ones attaching themselves firmly to his wrestler’s body by the time he reached the bar. Everyone now hummed the familiar tune, a subtly wild thing that got faster and faster. Pete danced the women around and around the room until they were a blur, and the miners were chanting and clapping to the beat of Greek music that was nowhere except in their minds. In the meantime, Sally was scooping glasses off the tables, and Sid was buried in soapsuds behind the bar.
    A few moments later the crisis was over. Pete staggered around like he was ready to fall over, then dumped two exhausted girls into the lap of a delighted miner and kissed all three of them. Everyone was still laughing at the embarrassed miner when Pete turned and lumbered to the end of the bar, squeezing himself onto the stool next to Jake, who had started to cry again. It got a little quieter, then, people wanting to see what would happen with Jake. To most of the out-of-towners he was just an obnoxious drunk raising hell in a workingman’s bar until the owner showed up. But now Jake rocked back