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a bin by the cash register. He looked at Reuben, tilting his head like a dog, most of his face and jaw eaten away by cancer.
    Most of the time he wore a bandanna over his mouth to cover the loose flesh and toothless opening of what had been a mouth. But tonight the skin grafts and holes and mush face glared back at him like a rotting jack-o’-lantern.
    Reuben tapped the cigarette pack against his palm and broke out one. It remained unlit and fresh in his mouth as he leaned against the bar and shook his head. Clyde Yarborough, six foot three and still as strong as an ape, garbled something unintelligible and shuffled off.
    Grime and dirt clung to the black-and-white linoleum floors and fingerprints and smudges filled the mirrors along the back of the long bar. A simple jukebox sat between the men’s and women’s bathrooms toward the back, and Reuben walked over and used a key to check the bin.
    Not even enough to empty. He used a few of the coins to play some Hank Williams, his old friend who used to drink with him in this very bar before that long, last ride.
    He looked down the long empty bar and toasted Yarborough, and hearing the music cutting on the jukebox, “I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry,” his rubbery face contorted into what may have very well been a smile and he snorted in what could’ve been a laugh.
    Reuben smoked and drank and, when he put down the beer, tapped his fingers against the beaten bar, in all the coolness of the room and the dull, dim light of the neon beer signs.
    About nine, he was piss-drunk and drinking each new beer with a side of Jack Daniel’s, thinking about arriving in Bora-Bora in that troop ship and being greeted at the landing craft by a half dozen crazed GIs who ended up ass-raping a fresh-faced boy from Iowa who’d never even fired a shot in combat.
    “Did I ever tell you about those goddamn monkeys in the Philippines?”
    Yarborough sliced through some lemons, a big mug of a soft gray gruel that he drank for food by his side. The big man shook his head.
    “They had monkeys all over the place. That’s what this place needs. A goddamn monkey. Lose the A-bomb, I’ll take a goddamn monkey any old time.”
    Yarborough’s white puckered face didn’t move, and his eyes and hands turned back to the lemons.
    About that time, the front door opened and in walked Bert Fuller, dressed in his full khaki outfit and wearing his Texas gun rig and his Stetson hat. He sidled up next to Reuben and asked Clyde for a shot of anything strong and just looked at the endless lines of booze behind the bar, his face flushing the color of a beet.
    “What you say, Bert?”
    “What you smiling at, asshole?”
    Reuben stubbed out his cigarette and stood from the chair.
    “Ain’t you heard? We’ve been overrun with little green men.”
    Reuben sat back down and looked at the bar. Fuller toasted himself in the mirror and sucked down the whiskey.
    “Doesn’t matter,” Reuben said. “It’s all talk and posturing. They been shutting down this place since the Civil War. Phenix City will close, they’ll bust up some slots and empty out some moonshine and then two months later it’ll open back up.”
    “Not this time.”
    “You want to make a bet?”
    Yarborough refilled Fuller’s glass and Fuller fired back the shot in his throat and wiped his mouth and it was all done quick and practiced as in every B western that Reuben had ever seen.
    Yarborough garbled out something, and his eyes, the only part of his face that revealed something human, flashed to Reuben.
    “He asked if you want another.”
    “I reckon not.”
    “Where you headed?”
    “I don’t know,” Fuller said. “I had a half dozen whores run off on me today. I heard a bunch of them were working out at some trailer park out in Columbus.”
    “You gonna drive ’em back?”
    “I’m gonna least get my cut of the gash they’re dishin’ out.”
    “Thatta boy.”
    “You think all this is funny, don’t you?”
    “Like I said,